Vasiliki Prestidge returns to lecturing for London Metropolitan University

February 14, 2022

Vasiliki Prestidge returns to lecturing for London Metropolitan University

Vasiliki Prestidge returns to lecturing at London Metropolitan University for the spring term. This academic year she will be teaching on and assisting with an increased number of modules across the Translation BA and MA degrees. After two years of remote lecturing, this year also marks the return to face-to-face teaching.

For the spring term, she is delivering lectures on Cultural Awareness, Proofreading Skills, Translation for the United Nations, Legal Translation and Culture and the Translator.

Aside from lecturing, she is now the Lead Lecturer for these modules and has official student visiting hours in her office.

Though COVID measures are still in place on campus and teaching is being provided in a hybrid format, it has been great to get back to the familiar routine of teaching and office hours after the Christmas holidays.

Examples of what some of the modules entail:

Cultural Awareness introduces students to the study of intercultural communication, its various aspects and their description. It also focuses on the importance and impact of cultural differences in intercultural exchanges. The module aims at providing a solid foundation in the understanding of cultural diversity. Interactive lectures, seminars and group discussions are designed to encourage student autonomy, enhance participation in class and develop the range of skills needed for effective study, self confidence and achievement. Included in these skills are oral and written communication, essay planning, summarising, note taking, referencing, researching, time management, revision, critical reading and other transferable skills.

The focus of the Proofreading Skills module is on translation as a product. Students are expected to use the research skills developed in Practical Resources for Translators (TR4054) to check the accuracy of the final product. In view of this, they will be trained to edit their own and others’ translations in terms of style, structure, content and accuracy.

The Translator and Culture practical module explores the relationship of the translator to culture. The module focuses on cultural concepts and culture bound language: specific aspects of culture are addressed, analysed and discussed as to what problems they might pose during the translation process into different languages. In typical areas of culture-bound language related to names, geographical references, political and educational institutions, legal systems etc., students are introduced to practical translation procedures which are used to translate such language, and the terminology relating to it. In their specific language pair sessions, students are introduced to aspects of practical translation by concentrating on those areas which are characterised by non-equivalence in relation to culture-bound items. Students are made familiar with culture-bound ‘translation problems’ as well as how to select and apply the most appropriate procedures in order to solve these problems.