Today’s guest post by Elyas is another instalment in the ongoing MA review series. So far 11 former students of MAs in Europe have written about their courses in 8 articles. Before Christmas there’ll be another two posts on the MAs at Swansea and Leeds. If you have studied an MA and would like to share your experience, please get in touch (my email address is in the right margin). See this page for more details about writing for this blog.
I am a soon-to-be graduate from ISIT, the renowned Paris-based Translation and Interpreting school. I finished my MA in Intercultural Communication and Translation (CIT) a few weeks back. I am glad to share my experience and thoughts on this MA with you.
I started my translation studies at ISTI (the Institut Supérieur de Traducteurs et Interprètes, which is now part of the ULB, the Université Libre de Bruxelles) in Brussels, five years ago. After three years of a Bachelor’s degree in this department and an Erasmus at UEV in Valencia (Spain), I had fallen in love with translation and decided to continue my Master’s degree at ISTI (ULB).
At the beginning of the first year of the Master’s programme, students can choose between a career in translation or interpreting. Personally, having always loved writing, I made the decision to study an MA in translation.
When meeting colleagues in person, we invariably talk shop within seconds. Obviously that’s hardly surprising, yet I am often taken aback by just how quickly mention of Linguee can crop up in the conversation. For many it seems to be the first port of call when a term in their translation has them stumped. For me, however, even though my Google searches often return a number of Linguee hits, it’s a site I now largely ignore (and judging by a conversation I had on Twitter yesterday, I’m not alone). Perhaps Linguee is better for some language combinations than others (mine is Spanish to English), but since I discovered Reverso, I haven’t really looked back.
I graduated from Leeds’ Centre for Translation Studies in 2012, having taken the MAATS (MA in Applied Translation Studies) Masters.
I was somewhat atypical in my cohort as I had already completed a year working as an intern translator in a small (or pocket-sized) agency in Castres, Southern France. As such I was already well accustomed to translating huge amounts of text, translating to deadlines, and working on my own as well as with editors and proofreaders. I continued to work freelance as a translator for my former employer throughout my Masters, which did help me to keep some perspective on my studies.
Since graduating with my MA in hand, I have gone on to work at Google, more freelancing, and am currently an Account Manager at Wordbank, a London-based marketing translation agency. I think the fact of having a Masters helped me win these roles (and keep them!) for sure. But has what I learned at Leeds made any difference? Here are some great things about the MAATS course at Leeds (they also offer interpreting, audiovisual translation, and PGDips which I am not able to comment on, really).
This is a guest post by Gwenydd Jones.
This article will give you an idea of what getting the CIOL Diploma in Translation (DipTrans) from the Chartered Institute of Linguists cost me and the return I’ve enjoyed on my investment. It’ll help you anticipate what your own costs and returns might be if you sign up for the DipTrans exam in January to get this postgraduate qualification (the sign-up deadline is 30 September, with extension to 7 October).
The METS is a unique MA programme offering a distinct set of professionalization modules in different fields of specialization. Students spend two semesters abroad at two different partner universities of the METS consortium.
When I applied for this Master, I had analysed the different modules each school offered and I chose KU Leuven (Antwerp) because it was specialized in Translation Technologies and ISIT (Paris) for its Communication module.
My master’s journey kicked off with an interview day at the University of Bath. First up were two interviews with a tutor, one for each language pair, which involved performing a sight translation – something I managed to embellish with a grand total of 19 “erms” according to one of my interviewers. The afternoon consisted of a short written translation exam. Despite my verbal sluggishness that morning, the experience was relatively relaxed and the only downside was the mammoth train journey from Durham to Bath. For anyone in a similar position, the university is able to offer accommodation on campus at reduced rates.
Welcome to the second half of our guest post on Nikki’s blog, My Words for a Change! For those of you who didn’t read last week, Nikki kindly invited the Deep End bloggers (Claire Harmer, Katharine Mears, Felicity Pearce, Paula Pitkethly and Sandra Young) to write a guest blog post on our experiences at Westminster University. Please read on to find out more, and take a look at last week’s post!
Nikki kindly invited Claire Harmer, Katharine Mears, Felicity Pearce, Paula Pitkethly and Sandra Young to write a guest blog post on our experiences at Westminster University. Since we studied there in 2010-2011, in this post we have tried to indicate any major changes that have taken place on the course, but if you would like further information about the current programmes on offer, please visit the Westminster University website or contact Alexa Alfer, the university’s Translation Studies Programme Director (A.Alfer01@westminster.ac.uk).
Each of us have taken a specific aspect of the course to expand on, hoping to give anyone thinking about taking the plunge into the world of translation and interpreting an insight into the programme and the lecturers, to see if Westminster offers the right course for them.
Tranix Translation & Editing Services 