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JUNE/JULY 2017 The Linguist 13
FEATURES
Students in Leeds and Metz learnt more than they bargained
for during a translation assignment, reports Adam Dewhirst
I
n November, eight of my fellow MA students and I
were recruited as project managers for the second of
three very exciting international translation projects
that have taken place in the Centre for Translation
Studies at the University of Leeds this year. These
projects, which involved more than 10 language pairs,
have given us the opportunity to gain valuable
translation and project management experience while
we are studying, and to familiarise ourselves with a
wide range of computer-assisted translation (CAT)
tools. When we volunteered for the role of project
manager, I'm not sure any of us were aware of just
how challenging and rewarding the next two weeks
would be.
Our first task was to recruit 70 student translators for
the project. Many were our colleagues on the MA in
A tale of
TWO CITIES
Applied Translation Studies at Leeds, but we were also
able to work with 22 translators from the Université de
Lorraine in Metz. This collaboration was possible thanks
to the European Master's in Translation (EMT) network,
a partnership between the European Commission and
more than 60 universities providing high-quality
postgraduate courses in translation.
1
Collaborating with our French colleagues was one of
the highlights of the experience for me: it added to the
project's international and multilingual dimension, and
allowed us to get to know translation students from a
different university and country. A number of guest
speakers at Leeds have suggested that our fellow
translation students are our first professional network,
and this project enabled us to start expanding that
network overseas while we are still studying.
We had
given
ourselves a
very short
turnaround
time for
delivery to
the clients
IMAGES
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