Fall 2007

FR 359 • LINGUISTIC APPROACHES TO TRANSLATION

Course Description

The course has a practical and a theoretical purpose. On the practical level, the purpose is to improve the students' mastery of French grammar and vocabulary at a relatively high level of competence via translation from English to French. Much emphasis will be put on learning how to effectively use bilingual and monolingual dictionaries. Another goal will be to understand and master certain grammatical problems of notorious difficulty for non-native speakers of French, such as the system of tense and aspect, the determiner system, the subjunctive, the use of relative clauses, subject-verb inversion, etc. On the theoretical level, the purpose of the course is to provide an informal introduction to the fundamentals of textual meaning (lexical vs. propositional semantics, pragmatics, rhetorics, style). No background in linguistics is required.

THIS COURSE WILL BE TAUGHT IN FRENCH

Grading Policy

Graded homework assignments (30%), three in-class exams (use of 2 dictionaries permitted, 60%), daily assignments for discussion in class (10%).

Texts

REQUIRED TEXTS: 1. Ballard, Michel. 1983. La traduction de l'anglais. Théorie et pratique. Exercices de morphosyntaxe. Manuel d'Enseignement Supérieur. Université de Lille (available from University Duplicating, GSB)
2. Marie-Hélène Corréard & Mary O'Neill (eds). 1995. Compact Oxford-Hachette French/English Dictionary. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
3. Roger Hawkins and Richard Towell, French Grammar and Usage. NTC Publishing Group, 1997. ISBN 0-8442-1632- Recommended for all Upper division French courses

STRONGLY RECOMMENDED TEXTS: 1. Beryl Atkins et al. (eds). 1993. Collins Robert, French-English English-French Dictionary. Third Edition. Unabridged. Glasgow: Harper Collins Publishers, Paris: Dictionnaires Le Robert.
2. Petit Robert. Dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue française. Paris: Dictionnaires Le Robert. (updated regularly).

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