Theory and Techniques of English Translation

The aim of this course is to provide students with methodological tools to analyse a literary text from a translation perspective. Students will learn how to examine a text from a linguistic, stylistic and rhetorical point of view, taking into consideration the historical-cultural context in which the text was written and its authorial and linguistic peculiarities. The course also aims at increasing the students' awareness of the different issues a translator should tackle; in fact, a selected choice of texts written in English will be addressed considering the interdependence between client/publisher, translator and model reader.

At the end of the course students will be familiar with the main theories that have animated and still animate the international panorama of Translation Studies. Particular attention will be paid to contemporary translation theories - from the 1950s to the present - and to the Translation Studies perspective. In addition, students will be able to identify the dominant of a text, the model reader of its translation and the main rhetorical, linguistic and cultural aspects of the source text, paying particular attention to its literary genre and linguistic variety. Thanks to different translation techniques students will be able to cope with the deforming tendencies, manipulations and rewritings that every text can undergo in translation, and they will reflect on the ethics of difference in translation.