USM Edu Community

This is the only translating and interpreting major course offered in the world at the basic degree level, mostly translating course is offered as masters or Ph. D programs in overseas, according to my lecturers. In Malaysia, only Universiti Sains Malaysia offers translating as majors degrees. UM and UPM offers as minor or diploma courses.

Basically one of the aims of this course is to cultivate reliable and trustworthy translator and interpreter in our country. The differences between translating and interpreting is translating is more a process of changing a source language (written text) to a target language text. Interpreting is more to a verbal process of changing the source language to target language.

The first semester of the course introduced the basic theories of translation, ways to editing, English grammar, Bahasa Melayu Komunikasi, basic English (everyone must take in order to graduate from university). The theories part is a bit tricky, although translating process is the same, but different theories lead to different approaches and focus on different aspects of languages, e.g. some focus on translating the exact meaning, thus focus on singular/plural and tenses; some focus on bringing out the meaning that is easy to understand by the 'audience' (reader).

Translating is an interesting process, same theory can also lead to different translation, thus there is no exact same translation in the world for a same source sentence.

Most Malaysians think that they are capable of doing translation of their own, as most of them have learn at least two to three languages since primary schools. But to make translating trustworthy is a long way to go, and mostly translation works which done by layman will be have inconsistency and misinterpret is also a common mistake. Moreover, not everyone of us has perfect grammar in our work, so translator/interpreter is here to make your presentation right.

Those who love languages are encourage to apply for this course, this is a platform to show out your talent. You can also take foreign languages, such as Japanese, Korean, French, Spanish, Arabic etc. as minor course to get 'a new hand' and outshine your resume or CV.

 

Source: malaysia-students.com