"G. d'Annunzio"
Level B2 (Common European Framework of Reference)
The educational objectives of the annual course are the development of specific skills in accordance with the particular needs of the courses of studies. Particular emphasis will be placed on textual and translatological skills (post-editing) intended as an awareness of the syntactical, lexical, semantic, pragmatic and cultural aspects of a text.The learners can reuse the structures and vocabulary they already possess and achieve further structures of the German language in order to consolidate the written skills and develop a methodology to deal with the post editing process of machine-translated texts of different types.
From a linguistic point of view, the course aims to provide the necessary tools to reach level C1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: learners can understand a long speech even if it is not clearly structured and have no difficulty in understanding any kind of spoken language, both live and transmitted. They manage to understand specialized articles and reports on topical issues and to understand a contemporary narrative text. They also manage to express themselves in a spontaneous way and to use language in a flexible and effective way in social and professional relations. They manage to formulate ideas and opinions in a precise way and to cleverly link their interventions with those of other interlocutors. Furthermore they succeed in writing clear and well-structured texts, analytically developing their point of view, highlighting the points they consider to be salient and are able to choose a suitable style.
The course has a dual purpose: in Module I, the course is aimed at consolidating and deepening the German language skills in terms of correct comprehension, interpretation and written and oral production of authentic journalistic texts. In Module II, the emphasis will be placed on post-editing of literary and sectorial texts translated by a machine engine.
Development of linguistic capascities by reading newspaper articles, presenting oral reports, and post-editing work on texts of high specificity. The program is based on a wide range of texts providing students with the fundamental tools of correct and appropriate written German as well as of appropriate stylistic level. The topics that will be covered will be as follows:
Module I "Der journalistische Stil in Deutschland" Actuality German and EU-Politics The German Economy Society Culture Science
Module II
Processes and Application of Machine Translation Post-Editing for pointing out the fundamental structures of the German language in order to refine writing skills and to consolidate a methodology for dealing with the translation of literary and sectional texts.
Since this annual course is closely linked to social, political and economic circumstances, more teaching material will be provided from week to week during lessons. Non-attending students have the possibility to retrieve the didactic material during the hours of reception.
Recommended Reading:
- O'Brien Sharon, Winther Balling Laura, Carl Michael, Simard Michel, Specia Lucia, Post-editing of Machine Translation. Processes and Applications, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014.
Within the annual course the following teaching methods are provided: - teacher-centred-teaching - groupwork - tutorial during the lessons (reading comprehension and text analysis) - homework (post editing) - preparation and oral presentation of scientific topics (Referat) - lektorship (CEL)
- written exams: Textual work on the basis of a German newspaper article with awareness of its syntactic, lexical, semantic, pragmatic and cultural aspects (Herausarbeiten der typischen Eigenschaften des journalistischen Stils, Zusammenfassung, Übersetzung, Wortschatzarbeit). The duration of the written test is 240 minutes.
The final exam is an oral exam and is based on post-editing theory and a presentation of your own post-editing work.
The examination dates and times are published to the web. The results of the written exam will be considered.
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