UoP - French Intro to Translation

Updated: Oct 11

This page collects resources for the University of Portsmouth's SELL French General Language Class 2023-24.

A shortened link to this page is rebrand.ly/uopfrit23

It is a page to gather links to all valuable content for me to have everything to hand.

Students will be able to access most of this directly in Moodle.

Blogs work best when the newest material is at the top, so the oldest is at the bottom.

Module Overview

Teaching Block 1 (only)

Wednesday, 13th December

Today, we will look at Translation Commentary writing. You will need to write a translation commentary to go with the translation you are doing for your assessment due on Friday, 19th January 2024. JEPPT

This is from the University of Warwick for their Masters in Translation about commentary writing.

A new book, 'Writing a Translation Commentary', came out on December 5th, 2023. It is most likely of use for you and is an ebook. CH4 PPT

Some thoughts on writing a commentary to accompany a poetry translation for a competition.

Wednesday, 29th November

Today, we will look at your translations of this article and go over journalistic text and translation techniques. Did you make a note of the issues you faced and how you dealt with them?

This is to prepare you to think about useful content in any future commentary writing.

Academic Journal in French about Journalistic Translation

Wednesday, 15th November

Today is the final day of advertising translation with me.

We will look at an advertising campaign for Uber in France, which they used five years after their launch there.

What reasons could there be for having translations of this campaign?

How could something like this work in the UK market? What sort of language would be needed?

Here is a video and here is the text (Moodle)

Uber advertisement.

Wednesday, 18th October

Today, in a change to the schedule, I am going to begin looking into advertising translations with you.

Last week, I suggested you might try to come up with advertising slogans using ideas gleaned from the net in order to sell your newly launched 'Poutine' products in both Portsmouth and Caen.

So we can look at those slogans first.

Some people's thoughts on advertising translations

Then, we can look at some choice adverts in French for you to come up with similar campaigns in English.

Advertising Handout (a copy of this is on Moodle) Publicités PPT Advertisements (FR)

Campagne VW Up! Nissan Micra Colle Cléopatra

What adverts can you find that are interesting? Find some English Language Examples that you could try to turn into French... Place those images into the Shared Folder

A set of ads shown on France 2 in February 2023

So choose one or two of these ads (things not currently available in the UK) and develop an English slogan that might sell the product in the UK that keeps the original idea of the original ad (now there's a challenge)...

What about the other way round? One or two of these UK products in France? What could you do to make this work in France?

Cheddar can already be found in France! Apparently, including this brand

You can find Digestives in France too now, known as Sablés Anglais

Marks and Spencer did have a few successful stores in France, but Brexit saw supply issues, leading to them all closing... However, in a parallel universe ...

These are rather culturally specific products here in the UK (which were initially supposed to be sold fresh and eaten on Good Friday!) Could they appeal to a French market, possibly as part of a promotion of the UK?

Wednesday, 11th October

Today, we will look at the translation of the Poutine recipe you have access to since CR's Seminar last week.

A real Quebecois is doing the recipe for authentic Poutine Quebec style sauce (he goes on to try various sorts of cheese that could be substituted for the curds ... (He does mention the seal cotton wool once so be warned!)