Projects of the Rijeka School of Croatian Studies

Partner Institutions:

The main goal of the Rijeka School of Croatian Studies' Found in Translation project is to create German, Polish, and Italian subtitles for a selected Croatian film. An interdisciplinary approach plays an important role in educating translators and interpreters, which is reflected in translation research and practices. General and specific skills are connected to the knowledge of translation processes, with the aim of presenting a particular topic in a clear and comprehensible way. Film translation is a peculiar type of translation, the techniques of which can, with appropriate preparation, be successfully integrated into translation and language classes, placing film – as a teaching aid with all its advantages – into a broader context and fashioning it anew in a creative process of translation as linguistic conception. An interdisciplinary approach to the education of translators directly affects the development of translation research and the practice of translation. The Project is therefore aimed primarily at students of translation and interpreting, but also at students of Croatian Language and Literature at foreign universities who wish to learn more about the Croatian language and (film) culture. The Project is also open to students in Film and Culture Studies, as well as to students of Sociology who take Croatian as an additional degree course or an elective. The choice of partner institutions reflects the desire to create subtitles in one Germanic, one Slavic, and one Romance language, conduct research on the most frequent problems and errors encountered in the course of translation, and identify their causes as well as methods by means of which they can be avoided and/or used in foreign language learning. The project includes lectures on modern translation theories and methods, film translation, and the development of the modern Croatian film and film criticism; practical workshops dedicated to translation into the participants' first languages; screenings of selected Croatian films in the evenings preceded by preparatory workshops; discussions of the films; and writing film reviews. In addition to learning about film translation techniques and learning to use them in practice, the objectives of the Project include developing communicative, sociolinguistic, pragmatic and multicultural competence in Croatian. In the process of globalisation translation becomes a mirror that reflects the totality of a nation's culture, in particular its cultural identity and traits. The Project therefore also aims to promote Croatian language and culture, and to enable the distribution of the selected movie in three linguistic regions.