Translation Studies: Focus on Spanish

Learning Outcomes

• On successful completion of this module students will have:
  
  
• Enhanced their ability to reflect critically on their own translation decisions and justify them using appropriate theoretical frameworks.
  
  
• Gained familiarity with professional practices in the field, including the use of glossaries, project planning techniques, and peer review methods.
  
  
• Developed an understanding of the ethical dimensions of translation, including issues of fidelity, visibility, cultural sensitivity, and the translator’s role as intercultural mediator.
  
  
• Achieved a critical awareness of the main issues and debates in Translation Studies, with a particular emphasis on their practical relevance for real-world translation tasks, enabling students to ground their decision-making in well-established theoretical frameworks.
  
  
• Developed advanced linguistic competence in Spanish and English, through the close analysis and translation of a diverse range of authentic contemporary materials, including literary, journalistic, legal, and promotional texts.
  
  
• Gained a nuanced understanding of grammatical structures in both source and target languages, with the ability to identify structural divergences and their implications for meaning, style, and register in translation.
  
  
• Acquired an in-depth awareness of typical translation challenges between English and Spanish, such as tense/aspect mismatches, lexical gaps, idiomatic expressions, or syntactic interference, and the ability to diagnose these problems in both directions (source to target and vice versa).
  
  
• Built the capacity to apply appropriate translation strategies based on informed linguistic and contextual analysis, selecting natural, idiomatic, and accurate target language solutions while maintaining coherence, purpose, and audience relevance.
  
  
• Developed a range of transferable skills, including effective time management, collaborative communication, critical and analytical thinking, and a deeper awareness of cultural and sociolinguistic variation—preparing them for professional roles in multilingual settings in Aotearoa New Zealand or further academic study in the T&I industry.

University Graduate Attributes

This course will provide students with an opportunity to develop the Graduate Attributes specified below:

	Critically competent in a core academic discipline of their award Students know and can critically evaluate and, where applicable, apply this knowledge to topics/issues within their majoring subject.
	Employable, innovative and enterprising Students will develop key skills and attributes sought by employers that can be used in a range of applications.
	Biculturally competent and confident Students will be aware of and understand the nature of biculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand, and its relevance to their area of study and/or their degree.
	Engaged with the community Students will have observed and understood a culture within a community by reflecting on their own performance and experiences within that community.
	Globally aware Students will comprehend the influence of global conditions on their discipline and will be competent in engaging with global and multi-cultural contexts.

Prerequisites

Recommended Preparation

For further information see Language, Social and Political Sciences .