Older Projects

Witchcraft

Another project realised with the constructivist idea of learning took place in the winter semester of 1998/99 and in the summer semester of 1999.

The project was the translation of a book on psychoanalysis and witchcraft from German into English (British English). The author of the book is a professor of psychology, whose target team had considerable background knowledge in this field. The translation project was relatively difficult, not only because the text was written for specialists, but also because the majority of the team members were German native speakers who had to translate into English.

The book: Kiraly, Donald, et al., translator. Evelyn Heinemann. Witches: A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Killing of Women. London: Free Association Books, 2000. [Hexen und Hexenangst: Eine psychoanalytische Studie des Hexenwahns der frühen Neuzeit, 1989.]


ASMI (Andreas Schnepf Medical Informatics)

At the end of Don Kiraly's German-English translation course in the winter semester of 1999/2000, Ute Gerwert, Kertsin Hartmann, and Andrea Dannhäuser translated the ASMI web pages.

The ASMI company primarily installs computer systems in hospitals. This is a very specific field, that had never been dealt with in a general translation course before. By contacting the client via e-mail, they managed to solve some field-specific problems.

Before they accepted the job of translating the web pages, they had negotiated a fee with their client. After they had handed in the translation, the money was donated to "Zukunft für Kinder - Aldea Laura e.V." ("A Future for Children - Aldea Laura charity") to support their work in Central America.


Aldea Laura

Can real-life translation projects be combined with charity? According to students in Don Kiraly's translation course at the FASK (School of Applied Linguistics and Cultural Studies) in Germersheim, the question can be answered with a clear "yes." Not only do the students have to deal with tight deadlines, translate a large amount of text and produce a final product, they also experience the translator's reality by getting paid.

Some of the earnings were donated to "Aldea Laura", a foundation that has built and now runs a school in a rural area of Guatemala.

The class was organised like an authentic translation project. The students split up into groups, each of which translated a part of the whole project. After the translation was completed, the students proofread each other's work. The class was characterized by a high level of participation.