MA Translation Studies (Distance Learning)

Translation, as a trade and an art, plays an important part in bringing nations together and facilitating dialogue, understanding, and cooperation.

The Global Language Services industry is growing at an impressive rate; two of the top five providers, SDL and RWS, are based in the United Kingdom, and there are many large- and medium-sized providers headquartered in the US, Europe, and Asia. Wherever you are based, there is no better time to enter the industry and our innovative MA is ideal for those looking to embark on or develop, careers as professional translators.

Our program is designed to cover most of the list of competencies required by professional translators published in 2022 by the European Master's in Translation network. We work closely with translation agencies, freelancers, and other stakeholders to ensure that our syllabus prepares you for professional employment in the growing translator industry. You will have the option to take Professional Development and Project Management modules which have been designed to enable you to develop the skills to stand out as you embark upon a career in translation. As part of our links with industry, we also offer talks from professionals and mentoring, as well as advertising internship opportunities.

Translation practice is at the heart of the program, and you will undertake extensive practical and specialized translation in your chosen language pair(s). We also offer training in state-of-the-art translation technology. The MA also provides excellent preparation for further study at PhD level.

The program is available to students who are proficient in English and one of the following languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. The industry standard is for translators to work in their mother tongue. We also have an ‘open’ route through the program for students who wish to work in a different language pairing. For the ‘open’ route, your assessments, while still often very practical in nature, will not involve translation, and we cannot guarantee that you will be allocated a tutor who is a specialist in your language pairing.

We are a member of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) and of the Association of Programmes in Translation and Interpreting Studies, UK and Ireland. We are also part of the SDL University Partner Program, which allows us to allocate SDL Studio Freelance licenses to our students for the duration of their studies and to award a free license to the top two students studying translation technology each academic year for use after they graduate. Finally, we are also a member of the Association of Translation Companies, which enables us to work closely together with a number of translation companies to support the new generation of language services industry professionals.

The University of Birmingham offers flexible routes of study for this program:

Accelerated Route* (program code 011D): Complete your studies in 18 months (Complete a module every 2 months and your final project over 6 months). October start only.
Standard Route (program code 8914): Complete your studies in 30 months (Complete a module every 4 months and your final project over 6 months). October, February, or April start available.
*Only students following the accelerated route are eligible for Government loans

All MA students will need to complete 6 modules, followed by a final project. Unsure if you want to commit to a full MA? Complete 3 modules successfully for a Postgraduate Certificate, or 6 modules for a Postgraduate Diploma.

This MA is also available as a campus-based program, full-time over one year or part-time over two years – for more information, see Translation Studies MA.

Why Study this Course?

• Flexibility - this program offers multiple start dates throughout the year so it gives you the option of choosing when to commence your studies with us – in this case February, April, or October (only October if you want the accelerated route). You can study at home, in your own time and at your own pace, so you can combine achieving a qualification with work or family commitments.
• Access to specialist software - a number of our modules incorporate training in a variety of tools and software such as translation memory tools, corpus and text analysis tools, and post-editing tools, for example, SDL Trados: Memsource (We would like to thank Memsource for granting us free access to their platform through the Memsource Academic Edition); Wordfast (courtesy of Wordfast LLC and Yves Champollion); and the Sketch Engine corpus manager and text analysis.
• Career changing - a qualification from the University of Birmingham can be the springboard to promotion with your current employer, the platform from which to launch a new career, or simply a way to become more effective in your current role. Studying by distance learning has the benefit of allowing you to develop your career without having to leave employment. It also means that you can apply new knowledge and insights to your working life while you are still studying.
• Excellent reputation - the University of Birmingham is ranked as one of the world's top 150 institutions to study Modern Languages in the 2023 QS World University Rankings.
• Employability - our graduates pursue careers as in-house translators or project managers, set up their own translation companies as freelancers, and specialize in a variety of domains, from legal to literary translation. Recent students have secured competitive internships at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, the European Union Directorate-General for Translation in Brussels, and SDL Trados in the UK.
• Support - although self-study is central to doing a program distance learning support is always available from experienced tutors. The virtual learning environment also provides a focal point and helps provide a structure for your learning.