PhD Interpreting Studies / Overview

The Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies (CTIS) offers training in consecutive and public service interpreting on the MA in Translation and Intercultural Studies, and launched a dedicated MA in Conference Interpreting in September 2011. CTIS has the largest concentration of translation and interpreting studies specialists in the country and attracts visiting scholars and postgraduate students from a wide range of countries and backgrounds. In the 2014 REF, Modern Languages and Linguistics at Manchester, the unit of assessment that includes Interpreting and Translation Studies, had more than 70% of research outputs rated at 4* (world leading)/3* (internationally excellent). These results place Modern Languages and Linguistics at Manchester at a highly impressive 3rd out of 57 submissions, nationally, based on research power (calculated by 4* and 3* times number of staff submitted).CTIS provides an excellent environment for research, organising regular scholarly events. These include a series of weekly seminars, which attract a large national audience of researchers, students and professional translators. The CTIS seminars form an important part of students' initiation into scholarly research, and offer students valuable opportunities for informal contact with leading academics. The Centre also organises two half-days of specialist research training for doctoral students every year. This training is often delivered by specialists in interpreting, such as Professor Robert Barsky of Vanderbilt University, USA, and Ebru Diriker of Bogazici University, Turkey or Michaela Wolf, University of Graz, Austria. Recent international conferences and symposia which CTIS has hosted and/or co-organized include Research Models in Translation Studies II (Manchester, 2011), Citizen Media: New Mediations of Civic Engagement (Manchester, 2013), New Perspectives on Translation: Insights into the Performative and Cognitive Work of Translators (Manchester, 2014), Researching Translation in the Context of Popular Culture: Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives (Manchester, 2015), `The Only Thing Worth Globalizing Is Dissent': Translation and the Many Languages of Resistance (Cairo, 2015 - AHRC-funded), The Cultural Politics of Translation International Conference (Cairo, 2015 - Supported by the British Academy).Past and current doctoral theses on interpreting supervised by CTIS staff include studies of volunteer conference interpreting for the World Social Forum, of official policies relating to interpreting in the UK asylum system, medical interpreters in Spanish hospitals, dialogue interpreting in educational settings, competence in community interpreting, and interpreting in government press conferences in China.