Translation and interpreting

Abstract

This course is designed for third-year English language students, who will have completed an introductory translation course in their second year. The focus of the third-year lessons will be on developing the students' proficiency in navigating the diverse linguistic styles and constructions in both English and Arabic. Lessons will then explore a range of grammatical, cultural, lexical, stylistic, and pragmatic issues. For each topic, the course will provide a detailed theoretical examination of the nature of the problem, as well as the established methods, procedures, techniques, or strategies for addressing it. Fundamentally, the lessons are structured to train students to critically observe and analyze the linguistic differences between Arabic and English at the morphological, syntactic, semantic, discourse, and pragmatic levels. This practice is intended as a crucial first step, which will encourage students to become acutely aware that their ultimate goal is to achieve accuracy in translating into the target language. They will also be guided towards producing translations that are natural and fluent in both form and meaning. Consequently, students will be required not only to learn various translation techniques and methods but also to develop a strong command of paraphrasing and reformulation skills. This will enable them to adapt their translations to the rules and norms of the target language.