 I think some people are still still connecting, but let me let me say hello to those of you who can hear me already. Thank you very much for coming to this online open day. What we are what we are and someone else in the waiting room, I'll let them in. What we're going to, oh hello Nisha, nice to see you. What we're going to talk to you about today is master's programs in linguistics and translation. My name is Chris Lucas and I'm a convener for the MA linguistics and MA linguistics and intensive language and I'm going to start by telling you about those two programs and then I'm going to hand over to my colleague Satana to talk about the MA in translation and I think we'll both tell you about our respective programs for about 15-20 minutes, leaving a good amount of time at the end for questions and you can ask your questions verbally, if you like, but you can also type them into the chat if you want and of course you can type things into the chat at any time. Let me share my screen first of all. Okay can you see that okay? All right great. So I imagine one or two people are probably still we're probably still waiting for them to arrive but I think I'll slowly make a start because we have quite a lot to get through and we've just got this very tight slot. We have to finish just before 2 p.m. So okay well welcome again everybody. In case you didn't catch it my name is Chris Lucas and I'm going to be talking to you about our master's programs in linguistics and these happen within the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics within SOAS. So first of all what is the wider context at SOAS that you will be studying linguistics in if you choose to do that and we hope you will. SOAS is the place to come if you have a particular interest in Africa, Asia or the Middle East. This is SOAS's specialism and expertise in these regions as opposed to the global North and Europe is well known. What is perhaps not quite so well known is that when it comes to linguistics SOAS also has an extremely venerable tradition and in fact we have the oldest and the first linguistics department in the UK nearly a hundred years old now. Also SOAS's library is really unique and its particular riches in our areas of interest are so great that it's designated as National Research Library and received special funding for that reason and of course part of what makes a big part of what makes that library so unique is all the material on languages of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Now as I'm sure you you're already aware SOAS is an extremely diverse place in terms of its the backgrounds of its students and its staff and what you'll find if you come here is that the staff are world experts when it comes to researching and teaching languages, literatures, film and cultures both classical and contemporary of Africa, Asia and the Middle East. So that is that is the context of SOAS and the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics that you'll be coming into if you choose to do your masters in linguistics here. Now what about the specific offerings? So as I said we also have a masters in translation which Satona is going to tell you about in a little while and these are the two linguistics programs we offer. In terms of the linguistics content they the two programs are the same. The difference is MA linguistics is a one-year linguistics only masters that's if you do it full-time you do have the option to do it part-time in two or more years and MA linguistics and intensive language combines the same linguistics program with intensive study of a language and that degree program full-time takes two years. Basically you do half half half the linguistics you would do in the straight MA linguistics in the first year and the other half in the second year. Now something which I will come back to in a minute or two is many of our staff here at SOAS who specialize in linguistics are particularly interested in the area of language documentation and description and in our MA linguistics we have a pathway that you can choose you don't have to if you too are interested in language documentation and description and most likely that will also be available via the MA linguistics and intensive language but that's not yet fully confirmed so I just need to make that distinction clear. Okay so what do we what do we what are we interested in here at in the Department of Linguistics when it comes to linguistic research? Well a wide range of topics and you see them there on the screen and I have ordered them sort of roughly speaking from least applied most theoretical to most applied most having a connection with real people in the real world. So the point is whether you are someone whose specialism is or whose interests lie more in the sort of abstract structures of language or you're someone who's much more interested in language and society we we can cater to your interests. So we have specialists in formal semantics and syntax and that is at the most abstract structural end then we have several colleagues interested in language typology so how the the structural features of language languages worldwide what is common in languages worldwide what is less common historical linguistics how how language changes over time and language contact and these these are somewhat more applied than abstract semantics and syntax and and it's those things that I myself are most interested in and then getting down towards the most applied end of the spectrum we have colleagues who are very interested in language documentation and description social linguistics so language and society and also the very practical and pressing matter of how to revitalize an endangered language so if if you're interested in the bottom half of of this list you're going to want to choose the pathway language documentation and description if you're more interested in the top half of the list then you will just go with the default linguistics pathway. Now if you're interested in combining linguistics with an intensive study of a language these are your options you can combine linguistics with any of these languages Arabic Japanese Korean Persian Southeast Asian languages could be either Indonesian or Vietnamese but I believe we can't always guarantee that you could choose either of them it might have to be one or the other in a particular year Swahili or Turkish. Okay so how are our programs structured in detail there well any master's program that you would choose to do at Syas it's going to consist of three things there'll be compulsory modules there'll be optional modules and there will be a dissertation a master's dissertation. Now optional modules come in two varieties the first would be module linguistics modules that we that we in the Department of Linguistics run and there's there's two sub types of those and I'll tell you more about that in a minute but then another really nice special thing about Syas is that almost all programs that we offer and certainly the two linguistics programs give you the opportunity if you want to take it up you don't have to of doing one or two optional modules from any department at Syas and so the choice is completely yours what you what you would like to study and it and it's this counts towards the credit for your linguistics masters okay so that is that that's that's quite a nice feature that we offer to any of you who have sort of broader interests and would like to learn a little bit more about something outside linguistics as part of your degree. Now as I've said we do offer this pathway in language documentation and description and it's it basically has the same structure as the default MA linguistics program but it has some extras features so first of all we have a module introduction to language documentation and description which you can take as an optional module even if you do not do this pathway but you it's compulsory if you do do this pathway and then in addition there are three three special language documentation and description optional modules which you would have to choose at least two of so in more detail then this is how it's going to look first of all please note that our master's linguistics programs are suitable either for people who have no prior training in linguistics or people with a BA in linguistics or or similar people with BA in linguistics we would probably recommend that they go for the language documentation and description pathway as that is likely to contain more modules that will be completely new to you but if you are if you don't have a background in in linguistics then what you will have to do is you'll have to do this full year module introduction to the study of language which is going to give you that foundation and another module which is obligatory for absolutely everyone is research methods in linguistics one and that runs just in the first term then those are your compulsory modules and then you have the the you must choose a number of modules from from a list where you don't have to do all of them you select the ones you're most interested in and some of them can be these open option modules that I mentioned from other departments so I'm not going to go through all of these in detail but what you see is that there's a large range of modules to choose from and typically in total per term if you're if you're studying full-time including these compulsory modules you would do four of these four of these modules per term so you see there's quite quite a wide range to choose from in in term one and term two and these these ones I've marked blue these are special language documentation and description options so teaching is in terms one and two and term three is devoted to examinations if you have them in the modules that you're taking not all modules are assessed by an end of year exam some are just assessed by essays and then of course you'll be working on your dissertation which is submitted in early December and you know you you will start working on start thinking about the dissertation ideally from the beginning but your main focus will be on your your talk modules up until the end of the end of the first year December and then you'll start more intensively thinking about your dissertation until you are going to end up focusing on that full time in in the spring and summer okay so that that is the bulk of what I wanted to convey to you as I said at the beginning for those of you who missed it what we're going to do I'll speak for another minute or two and then I'll hand over to Satana to talk to you about our translation program and if you will have a sort of joint Q&A at the end all right and if you have questions you can either type them in the chat or you can ask them verbally when we when we get to the Q&A session and and we'll answer all questions at the end so the last thing I I wanted to say is that these two MA linguistics programs are jointly run convened by me Chris Lucas and my colleagues Julia Salabank and Yan Zhang and if ever you have any questions please feel very free to to drop us an email how can you find our email well I highly recommend you go to the staff page on on the SARS webpage so if I click that you can see everyone we have in the department and all the emails are listed there so feel free to contact us or any any of our staff where you can also find us on on Twitter and YouTube we have regular departmental seminars and linguistics which these days are online and anyone can anyone can watch those and participate in those and we have a lively research culture with regular SARS working papers and linguistics which you can which you can also freely access whenever you like and okay I think I will at that point leave it there and hand over to Satona so that we have a good amount of time for questions at the end thank you very much okay so I'm gonna share screen so maybe Chris can stop sharing oh I can just share then maybe then that will yeah sorry I can't immediately see how to oh stop share yeah all right don't worry it's okay okay can you see the screen yeah yeah okay so hi my name is Satona Suzuki the co-convener of the MA translation studies lovely to see you guys all I'm gonna explain what this program entails and take some questions afterwards as Chris explained we offer a variety of exciting and very practical modules which cover different regions and languages so as a student of as a student of MA translation studies you have to take 180 credits all together and this includes dissertation I think Chris just explained the structure and it's pretty much the same sorry and their compulsory and optional modules and they're like and these are the two compulsory modules everyone must take these two so if methodology and theory you can also do it as a part time so if you do it as a part time you have to do theory first in your first year and methodology in your second and also a dissertation in your second year and then and as it's as it's the same as linguistics it's at least a modules and these b modules and these are at least a modules and you have to take 60 credits from here as you can see a lot of practical translation in your streams of other languages and vice versa and translating cultures technology and also subtitling things like that other languages include Arabic Chinese Japanese Persian Turkish Swahili and Korean so you can take either one or two for those modules and then this b consists of more sort of diverse modules and you have to take sorry this is yeah sorry sorry I'm just thinking sorry this b modules yes that's right sorry more diverse stuff and sort of consists of things like so ldd as well here and linguistics you can take those and also a lot of literature and film studies as well and you have to take 30 and then you have to write dissertation 10 000 word and the I think the deadline is early September same as linguistics and you have two choices for emotional translation studies one is the translation project and the other one is research project so for the translation project you have to choose the language and the source text of the language of your choice so meaning translating from one language to one language so for example Chinese to English or English to Arabic so you have to make a decision so for your source text you can choose whatever genre you'd like you know for example manga literature subtitles and blocks and things as long as it hasn't been translated before it's a bit hard I guess nowadays because everything anyone can publish anything on website but at the same time it's easy to find it on on the web so it's both difficult and easy I guess but yes but you you have to choose something that hasn't been translated before and then this project sort of consists of 60 translation and 40 commentary so commentary meaning describing your translation process and also justifying and explaining why and how you translated the source text as you did and also you you are expected to apply theories and methodologies which you have learned from your compulsory modules but essentially it's about translation if that makes sense so if you wish to become a translator you will recommend it to do the translation project and the research project on the other hand is more theory based so if you like to pursue an academic career you know you want to do a PhD and you want to become academic you should choose this one because you need to be familiar with the writings of theoretical papers and things so after choosing what you want to do you know which language and which region or which type you'd be assigned with a supervisor around late January maybe something like that and then you start supervision from February onwards and as Chris I explained you'll be writing it in time three and you can of course start writing it with your other modules doing your other modules but yeah you have to kind of time on each of these things like that okay yeah I'm just going quite fast it's not going to be as long as Chris explained all for us that's great and as students of MA translation studies you have a great opportunity to work as translators both paid and unpaid including voluntary and charity works so languages offered for this enterprise include also arabic, chinese, kikuyu, korean, japanese, perjand, swahili, and turkish and organizations we have worked with or for includes pvc world, nhs, guardian, if it's a japanese one, nhk enterprises and other big organizations and you have to be a member of a center of translation studies to be involved with this enterprise center for translation studies so you can see here that's Nana the other convener of MA translation studies he's she's also the head of department for linguistics and languages and cultures department so she she runs this center the center also organizes seminars conferences summer schools and workshops and we are very active and also on social media as well so like facebook so you can check it out it's all on the source website as well and also at the moment the center of translation studies we are conducting a uk rly funded project so it's just one of the examples which is about how COVID-19 has affected london's diverse ethnic and minority communities and how these communities actually translate interpret and react to the pandemic and i'm involved in this project as a researcher for japanese communities and sort of conducting those interviews to london residents and it's been really really fruitful and meaningful so i can i can't emphasize enough that language and translation skills that you learn in this program can actually help and contribute to society because you sort of learn and improve your abilities and skills to mediate both culturally and linguistically and so that you can sort of communicate people on the sort of more authentic and deeper level so i'm sorry i just went through it really quickly and that's pretty much it for our program just gonna stop sharing so yeah sorry it was really quick wasn't it but because christie you explained quite thoroughly i think it's good so so we've got plenty of time for questions if anybody has any they would like to ask including if if you want either of us to just go into more detail about anything that we spoke about briefly then that's that's of course fine and like i say if you want if you prefer to write it down that's fine if you prefer to um speak it that's also okay and there's there's no rush as well i mean we don't we don't have to uh we don't have to hurry you up if you want to take time to think about it you know we're we're here and we're available so um have a think and um and we can we can just wait till uh till you have anything that occurs to you that you would like to know or you can probably ask students our prospective students what they're interested in as well maybe you put it in the chat what you're interested in what what program which program maybe you can put it in the chat and that's like um core system i could create a call or something but maybe i don't have to or something or nisha's asking a question am i in linguistics in arabic i've already spoken to dr lucas so i don't really have any questions at this point maybe nisha you can explain what sort of questions you had so that other people might have similar questions if you don't mind if you don't mind yeah no um hello everyone uh my name is nisha uh i did um contact dr lucas uh several weeks ago and we spoke and i um i just really had questions about sort of the things that you covered today about the structure of the course and you know how um how good of an idea people had prior to coming in about what um what topics they might want to uh address in their dissertations um and um you know i told dr lucas a little bit more like specifically about my interests probably more focused on the theoretical side um rather than the applied side um and uh you know i just wanted to know things like will classes be in person and uh you know things like that really so it was it was very helpful thank you nisha yeah um i mean uh that that i think there's a couple of things that is helpful probably to say there in response thank you so much nisha for repeating those those questions that i think that is really helpful for everyone so um yeah so on the will will classes be in person question i mean uh you know i think anyone who's tried to predict uh what covid is going to do next has usually failed um but uh uh i can say that um you know covid is very much here in the uk now um but yeah it's certainly hasn't left yet so not at all uh but so the so the point is um we can't know that um i think it's reasonable to think that next year when you would be studying here uh covid couldn't possibly be worse than it is now and um what what it is now is the way it affects us now is that basically we have lectures um online uh but uh starting starting in january in fact um everyone is all students at so as are required to be present in london and um um uh everyone will have some face-to-face teaching for the tutorials so um we have this distinction between lectures and tutorials so everyone taking a class will together attend a lecture and then if if that's a large number of students then um they will split up into smaller groups um which we call tutorials uh where you do more more sort of hands-on learning um so those i think you can be absolutely as certain as you can be of anything in this in these days that you will have uh small group teaching in person at least and if we go back to how things were before covid lectures of course would be um uh in person as well um that's that that's what i could say about that um now that the other point about the dissertation and like um uh do you do you need to know before you start exactly what you want to write your dissertation on uh the answer to that question is is no so um really uh people vary quite a lot you you often get students who um they have a specific idea before they start of what they want to work on and um that's that's great that's that's absolutely fine but that that's no better uh actually from our point of view it's no worse but it's no better than not really knowing what you want to research for your dissertation um we're we're we're happy either way i mean if you have a if you have a fixed i or a sort of detailed idea before you start um then i would say it's very important to discuss that with um you know one of your program conveners uh as early as possible because um it may well be that i'm sure it'll be a good idea but whether it'll be an idea that you can get good supervision for this is not certain right um so um that that's the one caveat i would i would uh i would make there but um yeah if you if you just know that you're interested in linguistics or translation and um you just want and you you just want to learn about it and you've got no idea what you would be writing your dissertation on that that's that's absolutely fine um like i said um it's only so basically the the current cohort um we're going to be meeting you know so far they've really been focusing on their on their coursework on their on their taught modules and we're going to be meeting them in early december to start the process of them thinking about um uh what what to do their dissertation on in the most general terms and which member of staff would be best to supervise them and once you've chosen a supervisor like like satana said um you know you would start meeting with them early in the new year and then together you would flesh out your your ideas um they would you know some people need need more direction in coming up with an initial um an initial topic and that's fine other people you know through through doing their modules in the first term they have a clear idea of the area that they would like to do their dissertation in but you know then your supervisor would would help you um develop for example specific research questions to it to address in your dissertation and give you advice about how to go about doing the research uh that would lead to your dissertation um so yes um really really we we like i said we cater to both both types of student the the ones that come with detailed ideas and and the ones that i did both are absolutely fine and students sometimes change their mind too that's of course of course you know the more you do certain modules you might be interested in something else and that's totally fine and for MA translation studies we run um training sessions uh couple of training training sessions i think we've done one already so um okay and thank you Anisha uh for your questions repeating your questions and the yuna says uh so you're interested in MA translation program wondering for the practical translation modules would korean be available each year if they're on which path you choose then so for korean is a little bit a korean and japanese from japanese korean to english um it was sorry i'm just gonna share screen again it's probably easier to see it visually here so practical translation english to other languages and korean to english and japanese to english a translation listed separately because uh these two um belong to or taught by uh people in east Asian languages and cultures department uh but what we do is basically exactly the same as other languages uh but at the moment um from english to korean uh we we don't offer we only offer korean to english uh simply because of resources at the moment uh we don't know whether it's going to change next year but this year is i think that is the case so um i'm just going to stop sharing again so we're going to have to see you have to kind of check if that makes sense you know is that does that answer your question we can maybe do some sample raise hand or something it's okay put it in the chat okay i i see another question see another question here let me have a look yeah so currently my final year of BA in japanese i'm interested in MA in linguistics and sense of language my question is japanese okay am i required to have attained a certain level of japanese to accept this course my second version is of course my choice will my degree be MA okay japanese right yeah okay yeah first and two yeah but i think i think actually these all these questions are on sort of on the japanese side i mean i think i could i think i can give an initial answer but yeah okay you correct me if i'm wrong so uh i are you you're involved are you involved with the teaching i'm not involved in the teaching but okay i do know that for intensive i think you have to be pretty much beginners you can't be fast ah that's what i know okay yeah okay for MA translation studies your japanese has to be somewhere between n2 if if you have to do so i'm sorry japanese do english then your japanese has you have to have jlp t and two and if you your dissertation will be japanese to english then n3 if that makes sense but for MA linguistics and intensive i think you have to be beginner or kind of near beginner because don't think you offer advanced language or just i'm just looking uh is yeah i see i the web i'm looking at the website for for intensive japanese all right and um it seems that in theory there was a there has been a post beginner as in non non beginner track but not but it hasn't been offered it wasn't offered this year i yeah so i think that that's a question to take up in more detail with um the people the the convener of the intensive japanese MA program yeah do you know who that is it looks like Barbara Kitsukonia yes Barbara BP3 at solarstopacity.uk yeah so but but so um that's japanese right i mean i know your question is about japanese but for anyone else who may be interested in other languages um that's not a the case across the board so i know i know that for arabic um you don't have to be a beginner you you can um you can have previously studied arabic so um sorry maybe i said it wrongly no no no no no it's not that you have to be a beginner but it's like somewhere between beginner and intermediate i think right yeah yeah i but but with with with arabic let me make absolutely certain but i believe that you can um i believe you can be sort of uh you can have done a ba in arabic and just be working at a fairly advanced level let me double check this if you give me one second so i think segnik i don't know whether i'm pronouncing your name correctly but you'll do final year ba in japanese um your japanese might be advanced i'm not sure but you can you can check it with i'm not going to put it in a bit Barbara Kitsukonia she used to come be enough all the time so yeah yeah so i when i i don't know if anyone here is i mean i know nisha is interested in arabic but i think you haven't studied it previously i i i forget but in any case for arabic uh at least you can be beginner intermediate or advanced it's you have the have the choice okay so so that's an issue you have not so that's fine uh and i think you know depending on what language you're interested in um as i said you can um you can do arabic japanese korean persian south east asian languages uh swahili and turkish um you'll you'll have to check there'll be a a page on the saras website dedicated to the ma intensive language uh for each of those languages and that'll show you um uh whether you have to be a beginner or or or whether you can also be more advanced um that would be oh and then and then you had a second question didn't you so uh if you graduate in the course of your choice will your degree be your degree if if if you do the ma ma linguistics and intensive japanese you you will graduate with a degree in linguistics and japanese i think i think your degree certificate will say ma linguistics and intensive language in brackets japanese but also of course you'll have your so so it will you know you will have a joint degree at any sort of employer can see that you've studied both things from the name of your degree uh but also you'll you'll get a transcript of all the modules that you've done which will show that you've done both linguistics and japanese so i just put it in the chat so you're going to get ma linguistics and intensive language i forget arabic yes that's what we get that's your ma for japanese chinese or turkish pretty good isn't it okay any other questions guys at all i think one thing i want to mention is for intensive language you do get the summer abroad opportunities that you can study to one of our partner university in the that native speaking country and then language so you can practice more about the language um i may have one question because i had this question before that student asked me in the recumbent fair about linguistic um i may course so if they study this course do they have to choose a specific language to focus on or just like general linguistic system yeah no no the answer to that is no um we really um when when you study linguistics we encourage you or we make you in fact consider data from a from a wide range of languages um of course if you have a particular interest in one specific language then we're very happy if you if you want to you know for your assignments you'll often have quite for your dissertation of course but also for your assignments for different modules you'll often have quite a lot of freedom in how you want to approach your answer to a particular question and if you have a language that you have a particular interest then you'll have a lot of opportunity to focus your answers to different assignments on on the language of your choice um but if you're not like that i mean so i i am i can't remember if i if i said my my title is senior lecturer in arabic and linguistics so i specialize in arabic um and i have a particular interest in arabic but um i'm also interested in in in principle in all languages um so you it's not that you're supposed to have a language specialism some people some linguists do some don't either way is fine thank you uh satana i think you're still muted i think you're answering the question right sorry yes i was just reading out you know's question cts to work as a translator if they wish to i think yeah i i think you do use you have to participate in cts to work as a translator if they wish to i think yes um the program can be sorry the module can be you can ask the module combina um this year i think it's butchine um christina butchins email address just a second it's a theory or methodology i think it's virgin is teaching it just a second so you have to ask the it's better to ask the combina so just a second i'm just looking oh thank you christ thank you you beat me to it yeah so yes you know if you can ask uh buddha jinn then yeah you'd be able to answer any other questions there's any other questions maybe you can wrap it up christ yeah um so there's still time if anyone wants to ask more questions but if not then we'll probably um um say thank you and goodbye and of course uh if you think of a question later then um uh you you can you can write to us i'm just typing my email in the chat right now um and miles like yeah there you go so you've got both our emails so please do feel free to ask us anything at all by email um you know including if you have any questions about the application process and so on um and yes uh thank you very much for for joining this session today and for your interest in sas and uh hopefully we'll see some all of you uh next next year yes all right we do have another session for student and alumni panel just add to so just seven minutes later if you're interested do come along to that uh panel so you can hear from our students and previous alumni and their experiences so thank you everyone thank you very much everyone okay thank you everyone next year goodbye bye