PhD Translation Programme

The Department of Modern Languages, Translation and Interpreting (MLTI) at Swansea University offers talented linguists with a good MA or equivalent professional experience the opportunity to embark on a PhD in Translation. You will be joining a vibrant, highly international community of academic researchers and postgraduate students in the School of Culture and Communication, working across a wide range of disciplines.

The School of Culture and Communication offers a rich, supportive environment for research students. It organises an interdisciplinary Postgraduate Conference each autumn at which all PhD students are encouraged to present papers on their research in a collegial atmosphere. Staff and students in Translation and Interpreting are members of the Language Research Centre (LRC), which offers a regular series of high-level research seminars, many led by external experts. Swansea Translation and Interpreting Group (STING) is a special-interest group affiliated to the LRC which also meets regularly to hear papers by staff and research students and to plan research and training events (currently an innovative series of workshops on Computer-Assisted Literary Translation).

MLTI staff include many published translators and practising interpreters who bring their academic and professional expertise to the supervision of PhD projects across many languages. We have excellent IT facilities, including PC labs equipped with the latest industry translation software, a new Televic conference interpreting suite, and access to the School’s state-of-the-art eye-tracker, as well as excellent print and online library resources.

We welcome PhD proposals across many areas of Translation and Interpreting Studies, including:

  • History and theory of Translation and Interpreting
  • Comparative Translation analysis, including visualisation
  • Translation and Interpreting tools and technologies
  • Specialised Translation and Interpreting
  • Corpus-based Translation and Interpreting Studies
  • Translation and Interpreting pedagogy and training
  • Terminology (standardisation, extraction, management)
  • Discourse and Translation
  • Audio-visual Translation, including accessibility 

Examples of ongoing and completed PhD projects in the Department.

We are happy to supervise projects relating to the following languages in addition to English, and we may be able to cover others not on this list (so please ask):

  • Arabic
  • Catalan
  • Chinese (Mandarin)
  • French
  • German
  • Italian
  • Spanish
  • Welsh

Constructing your PhD