TEACHING SPECIALIZED TRANSLATION: CURRICULUM DESIGN OF AN ONLINE MASTER COURSE IN LEGAL TRANSLATION

Abstract

In times of the Covid-19 pandemic, the use of online platforms for teaching purposes accelerated, and remote learning and teaching gained ground in the field of Translation & Interpreting Studies (TIS). In this paper, we discuss the curriculum design of JurDist, a master’s course in legal translation, which has been offered as an online course for the language combinations Norwegian – English/French/German/Spanish since 2013. We describe, in detail, today’s curriculum and discuss modifications to the teaching, implemented in the spring semester of 2021. The modifications aim at improving the students’ performance in accordance with current research in translation theory (i.e., translation competence development) and in line with current approaches to learning and teaching (e.g., taxonomies describing different levels and kinds of understanding). Consequently, the curriculum design and the modified approach to teaching aim at enhancing the students’ professional skills in the field of legal translation. Although this teaching approach is applicable to both online teaching and the physical classroom, we describe its implementation in an online teaching environment only. Online teaching in all its facets has come to stay, also within TIS. We contribute to this development with our experience in teaching specialized translation online since 2013, which predates the recent pandemic. Keywords: knowledge in the legal domain, legal genres, translation strategies, cultural awareness, linguistic competence, translation didactics