The information below is being drafted and likely to change or be updated. Please contact italian@mmll.cam.ac.uk if you have any questions.
Paper B3 is made up of two distinct components: Translation into Italian and Italian through Audio-visual Media (MD). Together, the B3 Translation and MD elements will help you develop your linguistic skills and cultural competence in a range of areas.
The B3 paper is only available to Part IB (i.e., second-year students) who had an A-level or equivalent in the language when they arrived. In addition, if your other language is ab initio, you can choose not to do this paper in Italian and instead do an extra literature/linguistics paper from the schedule of IB papers. If, however, both your languages are post A-level, then this paper (both components) is compulsory.
If you attend all classes and carry out all the set work for the B3 Translation paper, by the end of the year you will be able to:
- Identify translation problems in passages taken from a range of sources (for example, literature, essay, newspaper articles).
- Develop and apply a set of strategies to tackle translation problems.
- Acquire and use with confidence a wide range of vocabulary and idiom in Italian.
- Develop your ability to compensate effectively and resourcefully for lexical gaps.
- Have a strong command of Italian grammar.
- Develop your awareness of register and tone in Italian.
- Hone your sensitivity to stylistic features in English texts.
- Enhance your understanding of contrastive grammar in English and Italian
If you follow the course (attending classes, supervisions, and lectures, as appropriate) and carry out all the set work for the MD paper, you will meet the following aims and objectives:
- Broaden your understanding of the culture of the Italian-speaking world.
- Consolidate and further develop your command of Italian, with a particular focus on oral skills and aural comprehension.
- Engage critically with content discussed in videos.
- Enhance your ability to write expository-argumentative texts in Italian.
- Develop your ability to discuss orally topics of cultural import concisely and effectively.
- Improve your research skills using authentic written and audio-visual sources in Italian
- Develop your presentation skills.
You will find a dedicated Moodle site for each component of this paper (one for B3 Translation into Italian and one for MD) with all the material for classroom use and for independent study, as well as numerous resources. You will be given access to the Moodle sites at the beginning of the academic year. The Language Centre Online also provides useful resources for self-study.
In the B3 Translation component you will practice translation into Italian in a fortnightly class. This class builds on your grammatical and lexical knowledge of the language through systematic practice and feedback, helping you develop the skills and the confidence to translate complex English structures and registers into Italian.
The Italian Through the Media (MD) component is taught in a fortnightly class during Michaelmas and Lent (no teaching in Easter), complemented by 8 supervisions (4 in Michaelmas and 4 in Lent). You may also be advised to attend lectures in the language or view equivalent recorded content. The MD paper offers you the opportunity to engage with authentic material/sources in Italian and to explore a number of cultural topics relevant to the Italian-speaking world while building up your vocabulary and your command of both spoken and written Italian.
For the ITB3 Moodle site, please see here, and for ITMD, here. The password can be collected from the paper coordinator.
The Translation component of the B3 paper is assessed in a two-hour examination. The exam consists of two passages in English (200 words each) which you are asked to translate into Italian. No dictionaries or other reference materials are allowed.
The Italian Through the Media component will be assessed via a 5-7 minute video recording to be submitted in week 4 of the Easter term. The topic of your video must be related to one of the four course topics. Content and language will be equally weighted. You will also need to submit a 150-word summary of your video which will not be assessed. You can find further details on this assessment here:
Dott. Claudia Domenici | |
Dr. Nicolò Morelli | |
Dott. Cristiana Brown |
