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TRA3210 Mass Media Translation: Home

Course Description

The course aims to familiarize students with the characteristics of a variety of media texts and equip them with the basic knowledge and techniques in handling the translation of these texts, including press releases, feature stories, promotional materials and audiovisual materials.

Recommended Books

Media and Translation: An Interdisciplinary Approach

This book is a collection of essays in the field of media and translation studies. Topics discussed include media interpreting, subtitling and interpreting for the deaf, Internet translation (on websites such as Google, IKEA, and Wikipedia), localization, computer game and translation, and computer aided translation, and the discussion involves various disciplines such as translation, communications, and film studies as well as linguistics and social linguistics, literary theory, cultural studies and children literature, humor studies, new media and psychology, marketing, and advertising, which exemplify the new trend of trans- or inter-disciplinary research.

In Other Words: A Coursebook On Translation

Assuming no knowledge of foreign languages, this book is a key text for students in Translation Studies. It progressively looks at the meaning of single words and expressions, combination of words and phrases, grammatical categories, word order and cohesion, texts use in communicative situations, interplay between verbal and visual elements, and reflections on ethics and morality. Rather than adopting the “top-down” approach of textual analysis, this book is organized bottom-up, starting with simple words and phrases, in hopes of benefiting those who are not trained linguists and in awareness that students need to understand how the lower levels control and shape the overall meaning of the text.

The Language of News Media

Based in the frameworks of sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, this book aims at exploring the use of language in the presentation of news, the primary language genre from the media. It emphasizes the importance of the processes which produce media language and stresses it is stories rather than articles that journalists and editors produce. These stories have viewpoint, values and structure that can be analysed. Bell also points out that the audience plays an important role in influencing media language styles, and in understanding, forgetting, or misconceiving the news presented to it.

Translation in Global News

This book considers the ways in which news agencies have developed historically and how they conceive of and employ translation in a global setting. It explores the highly complex set of processes that underpin the interlingual transfer of news items, processes that raise important questions about the boundaries and indeed definition of translation itself. It looks at global communication through an examination of translation practices, both diachronically through an account of the globalization of news in the 19th and 20th centuries, and synchronically in terms of contemporary journalist practice.

Audiovisual Translation: Language Transfer on Screen

This book introduces the reader to the subject of translating films and other audiovisual programs for the television, the cinema, the internet and the stage. It consists of 17 essays written by leading experts in this field. Part One focuses on subtitling and surtitling, two techniques that respect the original soundtrack and add the translation in the form of short written texts. Part Two is centered on revoicing, the technique of replacing the soundtrack of the original audiovisual program. Part Three discusses accessibility to the media. Part Four is devoted to the teaching and training of future experts and professionals in the field of subtitling.

Dubbing and Subtitling in a World Context

This volume is a collection of selected papers presented at the International Conference on Dubbing and Subtitling in a World Context in 2001. The papers collected in this book are categorized into three sections: history of the profession, theory, and practice. The four papers in the first section are about the history of subtitling and dubbing in Europe, Mainland China, Japan, and Korea. The five papers in the second section cover such theoretical issues of subtitling and dubbing as intrinsic dualism, the concept of multi-modality, etc. Papers in the third section cover different aspects of the practice of dubbing in various countries.

Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press

This book examines the crucial role of language in mediating reality, and argues that news is a practice constructed by the social and political world on which it reports, catching eyes on how language can shape, rather than mirror, the world. Starting with a general account of news values and the processes of selection and transformation which go to make up the news, the book goes on to consider newspaper representations of gender, power, authority and law and order. It discusses stereotyping, terms of abuse and endearment, the editorial voice and the formation of consensus.

Culture, Media, Language

This book brings together works from the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies, charting both the Center’s relation to the wider intellectual debates within cultural studies as well as the theoretical changes in its approach to its own work during the past decade. The articles in this book are drawn from the first nine issues of the Center’s journal- Working Papers in Cultural Studies. While two introductory articles trace the history and development of cultural studies and the English social development, other articles deal with four main topics- ethnographic work, the media, language, and English studies.

Journalism: Principles and Practice

This book, concerning how journalism works, can be used as a textbook and a “how to” guide for the study of journalism. Part One explores scholarly and practitioner accounts of journalism in the context of the real life conditions under which journalists operate, and examines some of the key roles played by journalists as news-gatherers, witnesses, reporters, investigators, and entertainers. Part Two goes on to explain and explore the range of multimedia skills expected of journals today as well as the basics that remain essential. Part Three considers some of the ways journalism has changed and some of the ways it hasn’t from an ethical approach.

Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide

This book explains the cultural shift that is occurring as consumers fight for control across disparate channels, changing the way we do business, elect our leaders, and educate our children. It looks at the phenomenon of reality television by examining Survivor and American Idol, examines The Matrix franchise as an example of transmedia storytelling, and deals with Star Wars and Harry Potter fans into the realm of participatory culture. Then it tutms from popular culture to public culture, applying the idea of convergence to offer a perspective on the 2004 American presidential campaign, exploring what it might take to make democracy more participatory.

Recommended Databases