The course aims to familiarise students with the political systems of the UK and Greece and introduce them to the specific characteristics of political discourse and the translation of political texts. It focuses on analysing the characteristics of the manifestos of various UK parties using relevant corpora.

Upon completion of the course, students will be able to:

• understand the main similarities and differences of the political systems of Greece and the UK.
• identify, analyse and describe the challenges that arise when translating political texts and the various strategies available to address them.
• become familiar with professional practices and available online resources and tools.

Week 1: Introduction. Course structure, objectives, and method of evaluation.

  A brief introduction to the political history of the UK. Milestones and legislative power.

Week 2: The legislative power in the UK. 
Characteristics of political discourse (stylistic, factual, etc.). 1st assignment: Translation of a political speech.

Week 3: The metalanguage of political speech. Discussion of the 1st assignment. 

Week 4: Executive power in the UK. 2nd assignment: Translation of an Informative text. 

Week 5:  Executive power in the UK. Discussion of the 2nd assignment.  

Week 6:  The elections in the UK. 3rd assignment: Translation of a part of a political party manifesto..

Week 7: Discussion of the 3rd assignment. Summary writing techniques. 4th assignment: Summary of political articles.

Week 8: Discussion of the 4th assignment and revision.  

Week 9: Brief introduction to Corpus Linguistics and its applications in the translation process. 

Week 10: Brief introduction to Corpus Linguistics and its applications in the translation process (continued). Presentation of relevant CL softwares.  

Week 11: Presentation of CL softwares. 5th assignment: Compiling and basic analysis of a sample corpus.  

Week 12: Discussion of the 5th assignment. 

Week 13: Course summary and final questions. Discussion on the exams and evaluation of the course.

Φραγκουδάκη, Ά. (1999). Γλώσσα και ιδεολογία: κοινωνιολογική προσέγγιση της ελληνικής γλώσσας. Odysséas.

Fairclough, I., & Fairclough, N. (2013). Political discourse analysis: A method for advanced students. Routledge.

Heywood, A. (2014). Εισαγωγή στην πολιτική. ΠΟΛΙΣ.

Kampf, Z. (2015). Political discourse analysis. International encyclopedia of language and social interaction, 1-17.

Machin, D., & Mayr, A. (2012). How To Do Critical Discourse Analysis. A Multimodal Introduction. Sage.

Obeng, S. G., & Hartford, B. (2008). Political discourse analysis. Nova Publishers.

Tannen, D., Hamilton, H. E., & Schiffrin, D. (2015). The handbook of discourse analysis. John Wiley & Sons.

Trosborg, A. (1997). Translating hybrid political texts. Benjamins Translation Library 26, σσ. 145-158.

Van Dijk, T. A. (1997). What is political discourse analysis. Belgian journal of linguistics, 11(1), 11-52.

Wilson, J. (2015). Political discourse. The handbook of discourse analysis, 775-794.

The course is structured as a lecture-workshop. It is based on the active dialogue with students, their participation and feedback. The similarities and differences of the political systems of Greece and the UK are discussed and translation practice in various political texts is conducted.  Moreover, there is extensive reference to Corpus Linguistics and its applications in the analysis and translation of political discourse.

Evaluation is based on a final written examination, i.e. the translation from English to Greek of a 300-word political text and commentary on specific translation problems. The use of monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual dictionaries, as well as specialised and general dictionaries is permitted. Notes are not allowed.

Participation in class and completion of assigned exercises contribute to the final score.