The Postgraduate Dissertation is written during the 4th semester of studies. Postgraduate students cannot begin to write their postgraduate dissertation without having successfully completed all modules of the previous semesters. Τhe dissertation may also comprise an annotated translation or terminology research.
In order to write their Postgraduate Dissertation, candidates must submit an application to S.I.C., with a proposal regarding the title of the postgraduate dissertation and the supervisor, along with an abstract of the paper. The S.I.C. will then appoint the supervisor and form a 3-member Examination Committee to approve the paper, that will include the supervising professor. The P.D. is graded by the 3-member Examination Committee. Its members must have the same or a similar scientific specialisation to the subject area of the J.P.P.S. The final grade, which is the average of the three grades submitted by the committee members, is then submitted to the J.P.P.S. Administration Office. The P.D. must be written in Greek and must be accompanied by a lengthy abstract in one of the languages supported by the Programme.
The presentation of the Postgraduate Dissertation takes place before the 3-member Examination Committee on a date and at a place defined by the S.I.C., which, upon approval by the Committee, is posted on the website of the relevant School. After the corrections indicated by the graders have been made to the postgraduate dissertation, it is obligatory to submit one (1) copy to the Central Library in electronic form (CD or DVD) in order to be awarded a postgraduate diploma. The Library of the School of English Language and Literature must also submit a form of no-obligations to the AUTH System of Libraries. Instructions on submitting the dissertation can be found at http://www.lib.auth.gr/node/147/. All postgraduate students must also submit a printed copy of their P.D. to the J.P.P.S. Administration Office.
In exceptional cases of an objective inability or significant cause (resignation, retirement, health problem), a supervisor or member of the Examination Committee may be replaced, following a decision of the S.I.C. Assembly.
Τhe dissertation may also comprise an annotated translation or terminology research.
For the course in Translation, the length of the dissertation must be 15,000 words (plus footnotes and annexes); it is submitted in three copies and in electronic form (CD) to the J.P.P.S. Administration Office.
The dissertation must involve original research into a topic from the field of translation studies, which is directly linked to the course and contents of the Programme.
Annotated translation involves the production of a functional and semantically correct translation that could potentially be published as an end product in a document similar to that of the source language. To this aim, postgraduate students are invited to use the most appropriate, based on the subject, documentation of the terminology and phraseology, both in the source and target language. The length of the original document must be approximately 2,500 words. If it is part of a larger text, then the selected part must maintain its own semantic integrity. The text must NOT have already been translated into Greek. This is usually ensured when working with texts that have only been published recently. The original text must have been written by a native speaker of the language. The text may come from the daily press or a magazine, the Internet, specialist press or a scientific journal. The text is selected in consultation with the supervising professor of annotated translation; it is recommended that postgraduate students propose more than one potential texts. The dissertation must include the following parts:
- Contents
- Introduction
- Side-by-side translation
- A glossary of the terms in the text
- Documentation of the terms and reference to sources
- Presentation of the terminology research and documentation
- Analysis of certain characteristic difficulties related to the translation/terminology
- Detailed bibliography
- Annex
The introduction must include a brief presentation of the text and the communication conditions that relate to its production.
In the side-by-side translation, the original and its translation must be placed on opposite pages in full correspondence. The first time a term is introduced, an indicator must be used linking it to the 5th part, i.e. the documentation of the terms.
The glossary must include all terms indexed in the text in alphabetical order based on the source language.
In the documentation of the terms and citations, the terms are recorded in the order they appear in the text and the numbering of the indicators is used. Each term must be documented in both the source and the target language with a definition or otherwise with a defining context. The source used must be noted below the definition, with a reference to its title and URL (if the source comes from the Internet).
When presenting the terminology research and documentation, postgraduate students must provide a more extensive presentation of the text they have selected, compared to the introduction, the field it belongs to and the main terms involved. At this point, they must also record in detail the stages of their research, the key-words used, the tools for collecting material, the search engines, the bibliographical sources, who they obtained information from, how they created the ad hoc text corpus on which they based their translation. More specifically, as regards the text corpus they will use in order to document their translation choices, it can include both specialized as well as popular texts. More specifically, the texts must be representative and reliable based on specific criteria (e.g. author, recipient, publishing medium, time of publishing, visibility of the article etc.) that will be analysed by the postgraduate students in this unit.
In the unit on the analysis of the difficulties related to the translation or terminology, students must present certain difficulties they came across during the translation. They must mainly be related to morphological, syntactic, semantic, pragmatological, terminological etc., difficulties and be directly linked to the characteristics of the text analysed in the previous unit.
The detailed bibliography must state all sources used (dictionaries, encyclopaedias) during the translation process.
The Annex must include a small sample of the ad hoc corpus, which documents the terminology and phraseology choices made for the said translation.
The terminology research must include the following:
- 50 terms from a specific field (and corresponding ones in the target language), in an excel file.
- Required fields: Term, Definition, Definition Source, Context, Context Source, reliability, relation of the term to the rest
- The terms must be selected from a specific subfield
A written text must also be submitted at the same time with the following:
- Introduction (aim of the paper, general description)
- Presentation of the field/subfield
- Reference works, dictionaries, in the specific subfield (in the two languages)
- Basic terms of the field
- Relations between the terms
- Graphical representation (optional)
- Presentation of the research process
- Presentation of any identified differences
- Conclusion
- Bibliographical sources
- Annex Ι: sample of text corpus
- Annex ΙΙ: Excel sheets
Examiners can indicate corrections that students must incorporate in their dissertation, and the supervisor then certifies the completion of the correction process.
The topic of the dissertation can be changed following an application by the student and the approval of the S.I.C.
The dissertation is written in Greek. It may be written in another language only following a relevant recommendation of the supervisor and the approval of the S.I.C.
Dissertation Grade
The grade of the Postgraduate Diploma (P.D.) is the result of the weighted average of the J.P.P.S. modules and of the Postgraduate Dissertation (the weighting is based on the credits for each module and for the dissertation) and is calculated to two decimal places, in the following way:
The grade of each module and of the Postgraduate Dissertation (where required), is multiplied by the relevant number of credits (ECTS) and the sum of the products is divided by the minimum number of credits required to obtain the P.D.
Dissertation Grade = (sum of products (grade per module x relevant ECTS per module) + (grade of dissertation x ECTS)) / (ECTS total)