Translation Studies Durham University

Overview

Description

Our students go on to successful international careers in professional translation and interpreting, academic research, diplomacy, business, journalism, and cultural entrepreneurship. They acquire mastery of several languages and vital expertise and experience in transcultural understanding.

What do we teach?

Practical skills

As members of the European Masters in Translation Network we specialise in a wide range of languages: Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. In addition, we offer core modules in the complex skills required of translators in the 21st century, including essential technological competences and strategies of intercultural mediation.

Critical and research skills

We teach our students to analyse translation as a profession, an academic discipline, and a wider set of cultural practices. In whichever direction our students choose to develop critical and research skills, our MA helps them to become better readers, listeners, communicators, and thinkers. 

Professional training

We offer our students an outstanding range of work placements from which to gain highly relevant professional experience. These placements take our students into the European Commission and other international institutions; into museums and galleries; and into many other parts of the culture, heritage, and creative sectors. Wherever they go, our students blaze a trail for future cohorts, creating a network of MA in TS graduates to which you will belong.

The Translation Studies MA course at Durham University offers a range of modules so that you can direct your programme of study either towards a training in professional translation or towards an in-depth study of the practises, theories and global impact of translation across history. Students opting for the first pathway tend to select translation projects for their independent study modules and specialised language or language-oriented courses for their optional modules. Students opting for the second pathway tend to select a dissertation as their independent study module and optional modules that take a broad view of translation, looking at translation in practice across cultures and time. Whichever direction you take, you will benefit from the varied delivery of content that consists of seminars, workshops, lectures, group projects, research seminars, and individual tutorials.