Saint-Louis University - Bruxelles
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Key learning outcomes

At the end of the Programme students will have acquired:

I. A broad range of practical interdisciplinary, cultural & intercultural skills.

• The programme sets great store by intercultural awareness as a prerequisite to effective understanding, analysis and contextualisation in translation work.

Students will acquire:

  • Expertise across a broad range of subjects and the curiosity to continuously learn;
  • A thorough understanding of the cultures (national and foreign) of their chosen languages in all their aspects : historical, geopolitical, economic, legal, social and artistic;
  • The ability to detect the socio-cultural components of an oral or written text;
  • The ability to detect the allusions, the stereotypes and the intertextuality in an oral or written text.

II. The skill sets that are specific to the field:

Students learn to exploit a range of resources in relation to:

  • Specialist fields, their jargons, social dialects and their specific terminology, in language A (mother tongue);
  • Identifying information and documentary resource needs for a given field/piece of work;
  • Developing expertise in the tools and techniques used in documentary and terminological research;
  • Developing criteria for evaluating the reliability of sources;
  • The effective use of electronic research tools (search engines);
  • Archiving their own documents.

III. Academic skills : the ability to use of the scientific method:

• Students will learn to implement the theoretical and practical skills that are specific to translation and interpretation. In particular, the programme places emphasis on the following :

  • Developing critical skills; adopting an attitude of detachment, or ‘stepping back’ in order to resolve problems in a source text;
  • Understanding the techniques for transposition based on theoretical insights ;
  • Being able to analyse a complex or general text using appropriate analytical  methods and the ability to synthesise information (distinguish between the essential and the accessory);
  • Understanding, storing and reusing information efficiently
  • The ability to concentrate, persevere and respect deadlines.

IV. A command of mother tongue and foreign languages in both oral and written forms.

Students will acquire a command of and be able to apply theoretical and practical linguistic knowledge in the field of translation. They will:

  • Acquire a perfect command of language A (mother tongue): use the language with a very high level of precision both orally and in writing, in order to convey its full range of nuance;
  • Learn two languages C (foreign) : attain a level of authenticity equivalent to a native speaker, both orally and in writing;
  • Learn the skills needed to put translation theory into practice;
  • Learn to manage their linguistic skills and knowledge and keep them up to date so as to be able to effectively use them in their translation work;
  • Acquire the ability to convey the message in the source text (oral or written) in a language other than that of the ST taking both the author’s and target public’s objectives into account.