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CHAIR'S ACTIVITIES

Establishment of the Chair

The UNESCO Chair for Translation Studies and Intercultural Communication was established in July 2002, under an agreement between Professor Franciszek  Ziejka, Vice-Chancellor of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, and Koichiro Matsuura, Director General of UNESCO, with Professor Elżbieta Tabakowska as the first Director of the Chair. In 2012 she was succeeded by Professor Marcela Świątkowska.

 In January 2019, the Chair changed its name to the Chair for Translation Studies. Its current Director, since October 2016, has been Professor Maria Piotrowska.

The Chair pursues its scholarly and didactic objectives within the framework of an integrated programme at the local, national and international levels. The general objective is the integration and expansion of the translator and interpreter training programmes run in Poland, in accordance with the political, economic and cultural needs related to Poland’s membership in the EU.

We are members of the EMT network (European Master's in Translation).

Teaching provision

The Chair offers MA and PhD programmes as well as a number of postgraduate and lifelong learning courses.

We invite BA graduates with knowledge of foreign languages to study at our MA programmes: Translation Studies.

In the Chair we teach translation from and into English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian, and Italian. Our main goal is to offer practical courses in translation and interpretation combined with courses in  translation theory.

Details to be found in the link below: http://www.przeklad.filg.uj.edu.pl/dydaktyka

An important part of the Chair’s activity is research focused on translation and interpreting, audiovisual translation, audiodescription, and intercultural communication.

Research

The research activity of the Chair is focused on enhancing the translator training process, that has not long teaching tradition in Poland yet. The stress is put on innovative Internet-based learning and teaching methods and on the development of terminological databases.

The PICT Project - Promoting Intercultural Competence in Translators

The goals of the PICT Project (Promoting Intercultural Competence in Translators) are to evaluate the current state of teaching intercultural communications at MA programmes in Europe and to investigate future expectations as regards this field. Further, we aim at creating tools available to all universities in the EU, which will make it easier to include teaching intercultural competence in translation studies programmes. To learn more, visit: www.pictllp.eu

The OPTIMALE Project: Optimising Professional Translator Training in a Multilingual Europe

On 15-16 February 2013, the UNESCO Chair for Translation Studies and Intercultural Communication organized international workshops for translation teachers. This event was part of the OPTIMALE Project: Optimizing Professional Translator Training in a Multilingual Europe, funded by the European Union. The workshops were opened by the Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Philology for didactics Professor Władysław Witalisz, Professor Elżbieta Tabakowska, and Professor Maria Piotrowska. The workshop sessions were conducted by Professor Elisabeth Lavault-Olléon from the University of Grenoble, Dr. Marcel Thelen from the University of Zuyd in Maastricht and Dr. Daniel Linder from the University of Salamanca. The plenary discussion was led by Dariusz Hanusiak, MA, and Krzysztof Łoboda, MA, from the Chair. The workshops were attended by 25 guests from the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Greece, Spain, the Netherlands, Iceland, Germany, Slovakia, Ukraine as well as academic teachers from the University of Silesia, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and the University of Gdańsk.

Exchange

The Chair cooperates with a number of national and foreign institutions and organisations through staff, students and expertise exchange, publication of curricula and teaching materials, organising workshops and seminars, and other activities.

Partners

We would like to thank Memsource for granting us free access to their platform through the Memsource Academic Edition