Class 1. Translation, they say (you know- "them" - the anonymous collective), is transferring "meaning" from SL to TL. But what is linguistic meaning? How is language connected with human thought (reasoning, memory, perception of the world around us and so on, in one word - "cognition")? Is there a connection at all? Can meaning ever be transferred? Here is the link to your first task: presentation/exercise form 1. Submit your answers before our next class.
Class 2. Last week we enjoyed a lecture by Lera Boroditsky, this week we will host an even more prominent and vocal lecturer - prof. Stephen Pinker, who will be summarizing the findings of his blockbuster book "Human Nature and the Blank Slate" - presentation/exercise form 2. Submit your answers by next Monday.
Class 3. We are continuing our traslatology quest to find "the meaning of meaning". After all - meaning is every translator's bread and butter, this is what we do. Boroditsky and Pinker, brilliant as they both are, are still considered a young , third generation of cognitive linguists. This week our class is based on "Metaphors We Live By" - a seminal book by the "founding fathers" of cognitive linguistics: George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. ; presentation/exercise form 3. Submit your answers by next Monday (Nov. 3rd).
Class 4. We will stay with the CMT (Conceptual Metaphor Theory) for a while but instead of the old rusty 1980's theory (Lakoff and Johnson) we will study its latest, brand new, cutting-edge application. I hope you'll enjoy it. Presentation/exercise form 4, submit your answers by Nov 17th (extended deadline - rector's day on Nov. 10th)
Class 5. Mark Turner, one of the founding fathers of cognitive linguistics (the most inspiring of them, I think) on the origin of Ideas. Presentation/exercise form 5. Submit your answers by Nov 24th.
Class 6. Metaphor as we already know is not just a figure of speech but a crucial cognitive operation and as such, it features prominently in the translation process. This is why we will stay for a while in the enchanted woods of "visual metaphor", guided by the leading authority on the subject, the absolutely brilliant Prof. Charles Forceville. Presentation/exercise form 6, submit by Dec 1st.
Class 7. This week we will study Forceville's taxonomy of pictorial metaphors; presentation/exercise form 7 - submit your answers by Dec. 8th.
Class 8. Pictorial and multimodal metaphors in commercials; presentation/exercise form 8 - submit your answers by Dec. 15th.
Class 9. Translators do not just translate texts - they translate cultures. Here's the link to presentation/exercise form 9 , which is based on a fantastic 30-min. lecture by prof. Milton Bennet, the famous creator of Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS). Submit by Jan. 12th
I will send you feedback for your exercises within a week from the submission deadline. Contact me with any questions at jacek.wozny@uwr.edu.pl Unabashedly yours, with kind regards, Jacek Woźny
Our end-of-semester test is planned for Monday, 26 January. It will be an online test based solely on the exercises above. You will have 24 hours to submit your answers. The test should take about 30 minutes, and you may complete it at any time between noon on Monday, 26 January, and noon on Tuesday, 27 January. If you do not pass (which is unlikely), the make-up test will take place on Monday, 2 February. The minimum passing score is 50 percent. Good luck!