The (un)translatable translated: literary translation in Slovakia. Didactic implementation of a component literary translation in a curriculum Dutch Studies: Case study Bratislava

Abstract

The department of German, Dutch and Scandinavian studies at the Philosophical Faculty was in 2014 facing its last accreditation reforms. Certain key courses of the study programmes were therefore to be reevaluated and adjusted according to new demands created by the job market in the field of translation and interpreting. Although legal, professional and institutional translation has already been a vital aspect of our study curriculum, the accreditation reforms provided an opportunity to redesign the curriculum with more focus on literary translation.

As already mentioned in Bossaert (2015b, 2015c) the Dutch section of the department in Bratislava launched a number of projects constructed around literature and culture. The lecturers organised and supervides group-translation workshops for students and the outputs of the workshops were published. The aim of this contribution is to present the basic theoretical principles of the Dutch literature courses in the curriculum. After compelting the four-semester course of Dutch literature the students have an extensive knowledge of the subject matter and are ready to use it in practice. We propose to implement the Petra-E network and the European Framework of Literary translation in order to improve the capability of future literary translators. The Dutch language union and the ELV, The Expertise centre of literary translation, as well as other institutional support could provide us useful help in the near future to broaden the field of Dutch literary translation in Slovakia.