Advanced Translation

Course Coordinator: Dr Kelly Chan, BA, MA (CityU of HK); PhD (Edinburgh)

The course emphasizes literary translation, and special attention is paid to the cultural borrowing, stylistic rendering and balancing accuracy, meaning and aesthetic values in the four literary genres: prose, novel, poetry and drama. Both English and Chinese materials are used for analysis. Writing essays on translation critique is one of the main assessment criteria apart from hands-on translation exercises and assignments.

Aims
This course aims to:

• Analyse different aspects of advanced-level translation with an emphasis on cultural and stylistic issues;
• Familiarize students with essential rhetorical features which characterize literary texts through extensive reading of literary works;
• Enable students to understand stylistic transfer between English and Chinese, their cultural differences, and aesthetic functions.

Contents
The course covers the following topics:

• Stylistics and rhetorical features
• Cultural issues and translation
• Translation of prose
• Translation of novels
• Translation of poetry
• Translation of drama

Contact hours
Normally three hours per week, plus 2 hours tutorials and/or consultation sessions.

Assessment
Two assignments (30% each), in-class presentation (30%) and class participation (10%). Students are required to submit assignments via the Online Learning Environment (OLE).

Set book(s)
There are no set books for this course.