Modern Languages with Translation BA

This module tackles myths about translation and interpreting and will also provide an insight into key issues in translation studies by allowing you to reflect on what translation and interpreting activities involve (accuracy, fluency, freedom, machine-translation, ethics). You’ll also be introduced to translation and interpreting issues in relation to different genres/topical matters, such as machine-translation, allowing the introduction of technological tools for translators and careers in translation and interpreting.  The module will involve different collaborative projects as a way of preparing you for work in the translation/interpreting industry. The module is year-long and you’ll spend two hours in lectures and seminars weekly.

The purpose of this module is to introduce you to issues which will give you a better understanding of the structure and the working principles of the language in general, as well as prepare you for the study of translation and interpreting. You will deal with the genetic relation between languages, focusing on the similarities and dissimilarities between language families, and introduces students to the basic notions of language structure. For this module there will be a one-hour lecture and a one-hour seminar weekly.

The module follows on from Exploring Language and Linguistics. The main goal of the module is to introduce students to the functional aspects of language. The module focusses primarily on the relationships between language and society and covers such areas as historical and stylistic change, social and regional diversity, and concepts drawn from semantics and linguistic pragmatics. For this module you will have a one-hour lecture as well as an hour-long seminar weekly.

A core module that introduces you to the main areas in which you can opt to specialise during the course of your degree and helps you develop key academic skills. The topics include: France and its languages, French identities, le monde francophone, gender issues, French thought, and visual culture. The module is year-long and you’ll spend two hours per week in lectures and seminars.

An introduction to French history since the late Middle Ages, you’ll study a series of historical figures, their lives and times, considering how their 'stories' are written and woven into the fabric of 'le roman de la nation'. The module focuses in particular on visual culture and representation. You’ll spend around two hours a week in lectures and workshops for this module. 

You’ll learn about the French economy, social class, gender and women's rights, spending around two hours per week in lectures and workshops. 

This year-long module provides an introduction to the study of German and is compulsory for most students of German. It covers the main fields of German Studies: literature, culture, history, linguistics, media and film. You will be introduced to the study skills required for academic study: critical and analytic skills, reading skills, presentation skills and writing skills. For this module you will have one one-hour lecture and one one-hour seminar each week working in small groups in addition to four hours of private study.

In this module you’ll analyse short literary and popular texts (including film) which reflect life in the metropolis and chosen because of their representative status of key phases in German historical and social development in the 20th Century (the 20s, the immediate postwar-period, post-unification Berlin). In exploring cultural representations of urban life the course will answer key questions such as: how do textual perceptions of the ‘big’ city reflect attitudes towards relationships conditioned by class, gender and race? For this module you’ll have one two-hour seminar each week.

This module introduces you to the development of Russian history and culture, starting with the reign of Peter the Great (1682-1725), following the development of Russia into a modern state through to the end of the 19th century, and ending with a survey of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet period (1917-1991). Alongside the history of Russia, you will study aspects of Russian culture relevant to different periods of its history (such as painting, architecture, music, folklore and religious beliefs).You will have three hours per week in lectures and seminars.  

This year-long module explores Russian literature of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries through study of texts by canonical writers such as Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Zamiatin, Bulgakov and Akhmatova, as well as by some exciting contemporary authors. Alongside insights into the changing culture of Russia over this dynamic period of history, the module equips students with skills for analysing and discussing prose, poetry and drama.

This module introduces you to the cultural history of South Slavs and the legacy of great empires such as the Ottomans, and the Habsburgs on the Balkan peninsula. By focusing on the visual cultures of the three key religious traditions – Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Islamic – the module explores the common features and differences in alphabet, architecture, sculpture and painting across the region. You will learn how living under empires informed the self-understanding of Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and other South Slav nations.

In this module you’ll study the evolution of Spanish and Portuguese history, politics and culture from 1898 to the present day. You’ll be encouraged to draw links between the Portuguese and Spanish experiences, and place both countries’ experience of the twentieth century within the broader context of European and wider global history in this period. Particular emphasis will be placed upon the development of both countries from a (perceived) position of ‘difference’ and ‘backwardness’ to relatively prosperous, economically developed and culturally diverse members of the European Union. You’ll spend around four hours in lectures each week.

You’ll read a series of key texts from the Peninsula and Spanish America. Its purpose is to impart an essential body of literary-historical and cultural knowledge relating to the main periods, genres and conventions of literature in Spanish from the Middle Ages to the modern period. You’ll spend two hours per week in lectures and seminars studying for this module. 

This module aims to develop your knowledge and understanding of the interfaces between literature and politics through the study of the way in which crucial social and political issues are articulated in contemporary Spanish cultural artefacts. You’ll have a weekly two-hour seminar to cover material in this module.

The module introduces you to the key concepts of translation theory, such as equivalence, text type, and skopos alongside relevant linguistic theories such as register and relevance, Key topics of translation studies, such as cultural issues in translation, the role of the translator, the influence of centre and periphery will also be covered. This module is taught over one semester, and you’ll spend three to four hours in lectures and seminars weekly for it.

In this module you will be required to build up a portfolio of translations of different text types, including technical/scientific, legal and journalistic texts. Through the practices of translation and editing, you’ll improve your language skills, gain a better understanding of the cultural and linguistic complexities of the translation process, and learn how to research terminology in specialist subject domains. Where possible, one or more of the assignments will be a real-life pro bono assignment or linked to an internship. You will have a two-hour introductory session for each part of the portfolio and will be supervised individually or in small groups for the remainder of the module.

This module explores a range of political and social issues relevant to contemporary sub-Saharan Francophone Africa through literature, film and popular culture. It also offers an overview of the history of the French language in Africa and introduces students to the range of varieties of French spoken there today. You’ll have an hour each of seminars and lectures weekly for this course.

This module explores the socio-cultural politics of equality through the study of three key texts by prominent French and Francophone thinkers. It considers the equality and inequality of class, gender and race through close readings of the texts within the wider context of twentieth-century French and Francophone history and culture as well as in relation to major philosophical and theoretical ideas and traditions such as semiotics, linguistics, Marxism, postcolonialism, existentialism, feminism and psychoanalysis. You’ll have a hour long seminar weekly plus a workshop to aide your understanding of the module content.

The module will focus on the interplay between language and politics in 21st-century French. It will address issues of ideology, identity, and power in French-speaking countries from a linguistic perspective. Students will examine the driving forces behind the invention and the preservation of standard French, the role of norms and variation in identity politics, and the role of language choices in current political debates in France. Students will apply the principles and methods of sociolinguistics and cognitive linguistics to a variety of recent textual and audiovisual documents, and digital data, such as TV programmes, news broadcasts, interviews, radio podcasts, corpora based on social media and online newspapers.

In this module we will study the role of radio and television in Germany. We will investigate the cultural and economic functions of those media in German society and analyse the relationship between public and commercial broadcasters. We will study a range of programming formats such as news, infotainment, soaps and quiz shows and discuss a variety of critical approaches to understanding modern media. Intercultural issues will be explored through comparisons with British television.

This module will explore key moments in the history of the fairy tale in German culture, from their 19th century appropriation to underpin notions of a national folk culture to critical reworkings of fairy tales. We will use a number of different approaches in analysing the tales and investigating their cultural significance, including Marxism, feminism and psychoanalysis. Primary material will include folk tales, literary fairy tales and fairy tale films such as the Brothers Grimm Kinder-und Hausmärchen collection, East German fairy tale films, Weimar proletarian tales, and Lotte Reiniger’s silhouette animations.

You’ll examine major literary movements in Serbia and Croatia during the 20th century, from Modernism to the socially engaged literature of the 1930s, Socialist Realism, literary politics under the Communists in Yugoslavia and the emergence of critical literature in the 1980s and 1990s. You’ll also undertake a textual analysis of representative works from 20th century literature; for example, works by Milos Crnjanski, Ivo Andrić, Miroslav Krleža, Danilo Kiš and Slobodan Selenić. You’ll spend around two hours per week studying in lectures and seminars.

This module provides you with an introduction to the themes of dissidence and exile, central notions in Russian literature, culture and thinking, using the examples of the life and work of four major Russian writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Bulgakov). You will learn the theory of different literary forms (verse narrative, novel, short story and drama).

You’ll gain an understanding of the growth and development of the cult of saints in the Eastern Christian world in the context of the history and culture of late antiquity and the middle ages. In particular, you’ll learn to interpret original written sources and icons and will master the basic tools for conducting research in the field, spending around three hours in lectures and seminars each week. 

This module brings together the histories and cultures of key regions of the world in which Portugal establishes varying degrees of colonial rule between the 16th and 20th centuries. In this module you will examine the historical background to the age of Discoveries against which Portugal emerged as a leader in maritime exploration and European Imperialism. You will also examine the historical and political events of Portuguese colonialism and imperialism in Africa and Brazil, with an emphasis on understanding the political and social significance of cultural production in developing countries. In this module you will have a combination of lectures and seminars totalling two hours per week.

This module explores a cultural period in the Hispanic world characterised by profound social change and the emergence of major world-figures of modern art (e.g. Picasso). It is structured around key literary and artistic movements from Spain and Spanish America from the early nineteenth century to the latter part of the twentieth, movements such as Romanticism, Realism, Symbolism-Decadence/Modernismo, the Avant-garde, and Modernism. You’ll spend two hours per week in classes.

This module examines the evolution of Spain, Portugal and their American colonies in the four centuries of Iberian colonialism between 1492 and the movements for independence in Latin America in the 19th century. 

This module will introduce you to different forms, modes, and models of interpreting as well as the issues that are often encountered by professional interpreters. It will offer opportunities to explore the different techniques/skills required for both simultaneous and consecutive interpretation. The module is seminar-led in order to maximise practice in class with two hours of both lectures and practicals weekly. The main difficulties of interpreting will be examined, along with strategies to deal with them.

This module focuses on the theory and practice of two modes of audio-visual translation: subtitling and dubbing. The linguistic, technical, and cultural theoretical underpinnings of subtitling and dubbing from French into English will be examined in detail, and students will be able to put the theory into practice using professional dedicated software. 

This optional module offers in-depth discussion of grammatical, lexical and idiomatic aspects of German and English as well as issues of translation, register and cultural difference. Regular practical work on translation from and into German in small groups of native speakers of both target languages will not only instigate an intellectual discussion of linguistic and translation issues but will also offer an opportunity to explore each language from at least two cultural perspectives. Nottingham students will work with exchange students from Germany and/or Austria in this module.

This module will introduce you to different forms, modes, and models of interpreting as well as the issues that are often encountered by professional interpreters. It will offer opportunities to explore the different techniques/skills required for both simultaneous and consecutive interpretation. The module is seminar-led in order to maximise practice in class with two hours of both lectures and practicals weekly. The main difficulties of interpreting will be examined, along with strategies to deal with them.

This year-long module will examine the range of social, political and philosophical questions raised by mass immigration to France in the post-war period. These questions will be tackled through historical analysis of patterns of migration and changing immigration policies, as well as through the study of relevant films, novels and theoretical texts which engage with questions of citizenship, identity and ethnicity. You’ll have an hour long lecture and an hour-long seminar weekly for this module.

From tourism to exploration, from exile to migration, from pilgrimage to business travel, we will question the tacit ideologies found in contemporary travel discourses. The importance of this field has been steadily growing in between disciplines that range from literary studies to ethnography. The module will use these cross-cultural influences to create an arena in which to develop connections between key disciplines and different forms of arts (literature, ethnography, films photography). You will spend two hours a week in seminars for this module.

The module is designed to introduce students to the study of various forms of artistic works in relation to the political and social background of the French Revolutionary decade (1789 - 1799). Consideration of this period will follow a set English-language based history. The course will then consider various case studies of a variety of works (theatre, opera, song, iconography, painting) taken from key moments in the period, studying the reflection of contemporary events in such works, the notion of politically "engaged" arts, and the questions of cultural administration. You’ll attend a lecture and a seminar every week for this module.

The Weimar Republic (1919-1933) was one of the most fascinating and culturally productive periods of German history, but it was equally ridden by crises and violent conflicts. This module aims to introduce central issues in the literary and social developments of Weimar Germany. You will study a wide range of materials such as literary texts, film, aesthetic and political programmes to analyse key features of the period. Topics will include the impact of the Great War, developments in the press and the cinema, political confrontations, cabaret, and unemployment. You will have one two-hour and one one-hour seminar per week in addition to four hours of private study.

Heimat, a political and psychological concept of rural rootedness, is at the core of German identity, and the Heimat genre has been ever-present in the German cinema since the days of the silent cinema. This module will explore the cultural and historical contexts of the concept of Heimat through the study of Heimat films from different historical moments. We will explore the artistically ambitious and politically controversial 1920s/30s mountain films; the immensely popular Heimat films of the 1950s; the aesthetically challenging and critical anti-Heimat films of the 1960s/70s; Edgar Reitz’s landmark historical saga of the 1980s; and post-1990s reinventions of the genre. We shall ask why film-makers in Germany and Austria keep returning to this genre. In addition we shall consider the question of the alien within the Heimat, the gendering of Heimat and the representation of nature and modernity in these films. 

Literature uses ancient mythology as a rich source to describe powerful emotions, cunning politics or psychological drama. This module will explore how selected German writers engage with the myth of Medea, the powerful wife of Jason who – according to the Classical myth - kills the sons she loves to hurt Jason. We will look at how the myth is used, changed and reinvented in texts written between 1926 and 1998. We will consider theoretical writings on mythology and also look at the Medea myth in paintings, film, theatre and music.

This module introduces you to the construction of national and collective memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Russian culture and society. You’ll focus on contemporary and subsequent artistic and social responses to the experience of war, but also look at individual acts of remembering (diaries, reports, letters) in the context of a wider cultural memory. The module is conducted in English and you’ll spend around three hours per week in lectures and seminars.

The module offers an in-depth study of the development of popular music in Russia in the 20th and 21st centuries. You will gain knowledge of the popular musical culture of the late tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet eras, and learn to analyse songs and performances using such concepts as authorship, performance, technology and ideology. You will have one lecture and one two-hour seminar per week on this module.

This module is a fast-track course of study for students in their final year who wish to acquire a new language. The module is based on the textbook Teach Yourself Serbian and will introduce you to everyday use of the language. Through three hours of practical classes each week, you’ll study different points of grammar (syntax and morphology) as well as vocabulary for everyday situations.

This module is a fast-track course of study for students in their final year who wish to acquire a new language. It develops aural comprehension and oral communication based on information acquired, and enables students to translate simple texts from and into Slovene. The module is taught by a native speaker and is based on a textbook, supported by additional materials. 

In this module you will focus on identities and identity formation, as represented or articulated in literary, cinematic and visual texts, as the basis of a chronological survey of the development of Lusophone societies and culture in the 20th century. You will focus on two particular areas: the political ramifications of contending conceptions of race, gender, and sexuality in the last century and the role of cultural indentity and ‘identity’ politics’ in nation-building and in the negotiation of, and recovery from, collective crises such as regime change and civil conflict. For this module you will have a two-hour seminar each week.

The monster figure is always a transgression: a moral, aesthetic or physical scandal. In a metaphorical way, the monster embodies ancient human fears while also capturing the most modern ones. This module introduces students to the study of monstrosity (teratology) in relation to fiction written in Spain during the second half of the 20th century. The topics covered include post-war monsters, revisions of the double, robots and cyborgs, the city as monster, contemporary retellings of fairy tales and monsters and parody.

In this module you will be introduced to the major currents in the 20th Century in the context of finisecular and early 20th century European and American literature and culture in order to situate the latter common preoccupations and formal experiments of writers of poetry and short fiction of various nationalities, languages and cultures. This module consists of two case studies split between the Autumn semester where you will focus on the comparative analysis of works by poets such as Rubén Darío and Mallarmé, Apollinaire and Alberti, and Fernando Pessoa among others. In the Spring semester you will you focus on the parallel developments in the evolution of the short story across a similar range of languages and cultures and include an analysis of short fictions from authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, João Guimarães Rosa, Carlos Fuentes among others. For this module you will have a two-hour seminar each week.