Theory of translation

The discipline is read for first- and second-year students of a master course (1, 2, 3 semesters). The total working intensiveness amounts to 216 academic hours including class work (lectures and seminars) - 58 hours, self-instruction work – 122 hours, revision before an exam – 36 hours).  ECTS equals 6. While mastering the given discipline students are to take two credits and an exam.

The main goal of the discipline is to provide students with the skills necessary to conduct both translation and interpretation processes in the course of intercultural communication. Apart from practical skills students acquire profound knowledge in carrying out scientific research on professional level.

While mastering the academic discipline Theory of Translation students get to know the basic notions of Translation Studies as well as the main stages of Translation History in general. What is more, students are taught to apply the received theoretical knowledge in the course of practical translation taking into consideration all significant nuances of contemporary translation process as it is.

TranslationTheoryimplies studying types, methods and techniques of translation process. Students are taught to be an intermediary between users of two different languages (Russian and English), whose main target is to achieve successful communication results. They learn to meet constantly changing demands and requirements a modern-day translator/interpreter is to correspond to. As a result, students get a good command of translation skills, techniques and methods of translation on the whole.

The most important issues students are to cover while studying the given discipline are: General Problems of Translation, Translation as a Science, Translation as a Communication Type, Tasks and Methods of Translation, Translation Units, Grammatical and Stylistic Aspects of Translation, Means of Translation, Lexical and Grammatical Transformations in the course of Translation, Communicative and Stylistic Factors in the course of Translation, Types of Translation Activities, Information Sources in the course of Translation, Language Norms, Translation Mistakes, Idioms in the course of Translation, Main Principles of Translation Text Building, Theory of Equivalents, Equivalents Levels, Translation Process and its Stages.