Students perform introductory translation assignments from Spanish to English and vice versa. They develop an understanding of translation theory through reading and class discussion and come to understand communicative translation and compare it to a direct, word-for-word approach. Problematic grammatical, discursive, and pragmatic issues are analyzed and the grammar of Spanish is reviewed in detail.
In the beginning of the semester we clarified the different kinds of translations and the common mistakes that are done when translating, for example: doing a literal translation or using false cognates. We had to turn in a total of 10 homeworks that were based on the topics for the week, we usually had about a week to turn in the homework. Some of the works we translated were formal letters and car advertisements, and the range of these translations were to practice translating different works. For a lot of the transactions we had to do we also had the explain the translation techniques that we used for example: equivalence, préstamo, reduction, etc. For our final we had a fun project in which we were put into groups and given a few pages of "The Cat in the Hat" to translate and maintain the rhyme within the story. It sounds like it would be fairly easy but in reality it was one of the most challenging things we translated in the class.