The Postgraduate Programme in Translation Studies (Tradusp) is a stricto sensu post-graduate program and has a single area of concentration: Translation Studies. The Program was approved by the Brazilian Ministry of Education department which specialises in the training of university teachers — Capes — for the qualification of researchers at the M.A. and Ph.D. levels with the grade 4.0 (four) at the end of 2011, and began its activities in August 2012 with three lines of research — Translation and Corpora, Translation and Reception, Translation and Poetics — to which eighteen research projects are linked (click here to see the description of the research lines and projects).
Admission to the the Programme is by an annual selection process in the second semestre of each academic year (click here for information on the selection process).
This Programme, which was the result of a natural evolution of studies in the area of translation at the University of São Paulo, was a pioneer in proposing to the Department of Modern Letters of the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH) of the University of São Paulo (USP) an epistemological approach that is different from the geopolitical division that defines the other programmes of the Department. Its vocation from the beginning was to bring together academics in the five departments of the Faculty of Letters of FFLCH-USP in order to give national and international visibility to the academic production of recognised specialists in the field of Translation Studies. The importance of a specific Programme for Translation Studies at USP has been proven not only by the number of applicants for the Programme, which has exceeded expectations, but also by the growing demand for postdoctoral studies.
The academic staff who take part in the Programme are all Ph.D.s, many with postdoctoral studies, as well as livre docentes and titular professors. In addition to the excellence of their qualification, several of the teachers, along with a number of students, have been awarded important prizes in the area of translation in Brazil: the Jabuti Translation Award, the APCA (São Paulo Art Critics) Award, and the Monteiro Lobato Award by the National Foundation for Children’s and Young People’s Books. In addition, a number of the members of the Programme have wide experience in the area of Interpreting Studies, in both research and the practice of court and conference interpreting. Thus the faculty combine specific training and academic production in these areas with the experience of translating and interpreting.
The diversification of the specialties of the teaching staff in the various branches of Translation Studies covers many of the areas of this rich disciplinary field. Among them are: General Theories of Translation, Linguistic Approaches, Functional Approaches, Cognitive Approaches, Descriptive Translation Studies, History and Historiography of Translation, History of Translation in Brazil, History of Translation in the Roman World, Sociology of Translation, Poetics of Translation, Ethics and Translation, Translation and Psychoanalysis, Translation and Culture, Refractions, Adaptation Studies, Interpreting Studies, Corpus Linguistics and Translation, Translation and Terminology, Commented Translations, Translation Evaluation and Criticism, Translator Training, Translation Tools (Dictionaries), Literary Translation (poetic, theatrical, narrative, children's literature), Technical Translation, Legal Translation, Multimodal Translation (cinema, comics, songs). This broad scope can also be seen in the number of foreign languages with which the teaching staff work: Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Latin, Spanish, and Tupi (nheengatu).
And this breadth is also seen in M.A. and Ph. D. projects the students are working on (click here to see students’ research projects: M.A. and Ph. D.).
Right from its beginnings the diverse academic production of the Programme has gone beyond what is expected from a Programme with the CAPES 4.0 grade. There is also a balance between the distribution of projects linked to the three research lines. A number of M.A.s and Ph.D.s have already been completed, and certain students have taken up positions in public universities. The majority of the Proap (Postgraduation Support Programme) funds have been used to encourage academic production from students.
Shortly after the students official presentation of the dissertation or thesis, the students’ completed works are made available on the Internet for free public consultation, through the USP Digital Theses and Dissertations Library (click here for the complete list of dissertations and theses already defended in Tradusp).
In addition, information the many events and lectures promoted by the Programme, often together with both private and public institutions, inside and outside Brazil, are distributed to the community of researchers, students and translators through electronic media.
Thus, in order to live up to the integration proposal that gave rise to its creation, the Program considers visibility and transparency the guidelines that, by excellence, have guided its policies. It can thus be seen that the Programme is fulfilling the concept of integration which was behind its creation and has been demonstrating the necessary visibility and transparency.