History
The Graduate Program in Translation Studies (PGET, its acronym in Portuguese) started its activities in 2003 with a CAPES evaluation concept 3. The proposal for its creation was based on the general development of the translation area, which has experienced remarkable growth in Brazil, as in other countries. The Program’s creation was also a result of students’ demand for a specialized qualification in translation. The first group of the Program began in March 2004. Thanks to the joint effort of a group of researchers, the Program grew and consolidated itself. PGET was constituted by a faculty composed of some teachers and researchers that were at the beginning of their careers and others that were experienced in research and active in other programs at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), namely: Literature, English, and Linguistics – programs in which there was a research line in translation.
Therefore, the creation of the Graduate Program in Translation Studies aimed to connect and reinforce the research in translation that already existed at UFSC and, until that moment, was segmented. The Program’s union aimed to bring together the efforts of those researchers who focused their attention on issues related to Translation Studies and, at the same time, favor the research training with a specific focus on translation.
The Program had increased and developed itself, resulting from its strategic planning and self-assessments, which increased the number of research, publications, and titles.
As a result of this joint effort, in the first CAPES evaluation, PGET had its merit recognized by receiving a grade of 4. It is important to clarify that CAPES is the acronym in Portuguese for the Brazilian Ministry of Education’s Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel, and its grades range from 01 to 07: grades 1 and 2 disqualify the graduate program; 3 is the equivalent to a regular qualification; 4 is considered a good qualification; 5 is a very good qualification; 6 and 7 indicate a high international standard. Immediately afterward, PGET approved the creation project of a doctoral course granted in 2008. Thanks to this approval, PGET started in March 2009, its first doctoral class.
Also, in 2009, PGET became part of the European Society for Translation Studies, a connection that has given the international program visibility. This visibility has also gained strength and dimension through the standard policy of having foreign visiting professors in the Program. In 2010, with the Libras (the acronym for the Brazilian Sign Language) research development, having UFSC as a reference, PGET included the Interpretation Studies as a research line. In 2010-2012 triennial, the PGET score on the CAPES assessment went from 4 to 5, which confirmed the work recognition it had been carrying out. In the next quadrennium, 2013-2016, the PGET rises again in the Capes assessment, going from 5 to 6.
Grade 6 was achieved thanks to: 1) a policy of monitoring teaching and student production; 2) the intensification of international relations, since in the quadrennium 2013-2016, for example, we had the presence of 06 foreign visiting professors from different countries with long-term (4 years) UFSC contracts, who worked in the program teaching classes, giving lectures, supervising thesis and dissertations, participating in examination committee, organizing and participating in national and international events); 3) permanent discussion about research lines and disciplines; 4) the balance in the number of professors and projects in the lines of research; 5) balance the number of students per supervisor; 6) national and international agreements (DINTER and PROCAD); 7) the strengthening of the Program’s journals, which were officially three Cadernos de Tradução, Scientia Traductionis, and In-Traduções. Nowadays, PGET has just Cadernos de Tradução (Qualis A1[CAPES]/SciELO/Scopus and Web of Science), that had incorporated the other two because it is the oldest one, is up-to-date, and has better qualifications; 8) accreditation of the Program’s council’s members based on the faculty’s academic production quality; 9) holding different events over the years with national and international guests; 10) the consolidation of the two annual events: Seminário de Pesquisas em Andamento (SPA-PGET, a current students research seminar) and Seminário de Egressos da PGET (SEPGET, a seminar with graduates), to contribute to the constant self-assessment of the Program; 11) the expansion and intensification of the Program internationalization; 12) participation in national and international public calls for proposals; 13) dialog and alignment with the Institutional Development Plan and Strategic Planning; 14) to internal assessment and self-evaluation seminars.
In the 2017-2020 quadrennium, we intensified and continued to follow the strategies described above, with particular attention to strengthening three axes: 1) Internationalization: the most prominent actions are the Capes/PrInt project “Translation, Tradition, Innovation”; the UNESCO Chair of Multilingualism; the School of Higher Studies; the intensification of international partnerships with joint events and publications; co-supervisions; publications in international journals. 2) Society impact: Translation and interpretation involving Libras, community interpretation projects in the legal, education, and health areas; acting in primary and secondary education, training young readers; important texts commented translations from different areas; participation in indigenous undergraduate teaching degree; consolidation of Cadernos de Tradução, which between 2019 and 2020 was accepted by international indexing databases such as Scopus and Web of Science. 3) Training and innovation: projects that bring together teachers, students, and graduates: Dictionary of Translators (DITRA); the Collection Palavra de Tradutor (Translator’s Word Collection); the Brazilian Sign Language Studies Series (Linguistics and Translation); Enquadrando o Tradutor, a series of translators interview on YouTube; the radio program entitled “Radio Translatio,” which proposes a dialogue between researchers from different areas to discuss their productions in the field of Translation Studies; the Program “Entre Quatro Paredes,” training programs for readers of translated/adapted works; Graduates Podcast, to socialize with the community, using accessible language, the research carried out; Annotated and commented translation projects into Portuguese of works by Baudelaire, Beckett, Borges, Joyce, Foscolo, Freud, Leopardi, Quevedo, texts by women from different countries, texts about the Amazon written by foreigners, texts by travelers, Irish Irish, Chinese texts on translation.
Due to their research and academic production, several faculty are regularly invited to give lectures and participate in national and international events. These initiatives aim the expansion, consolidation and public, national and international recognition of PGET, which, since its early years, had as policy: (i) the pursuit of academic excellence in all areas of its activity (teaching, research, extension); ii) encouraging the training of its faculty; (iii) the presence of PGET representatives at events in the field of translation and interpretation studies; (iv) the establishment of partnerships with different national institutions through the DINTER and PROCAD programs; collaboration with the Fundação Biblioteca Nacional and Casa Guilherme de Almeida, as well as others inter-university agreements; (iv) encouraging the publication of books, book chapters, articles and translations, in Brazil and abroad, by faculty and students connected to PGET; (v) internationalization, through the hiring of foreign visiting professors, through joint international events with the expansion of inter-institutional agreements, through a policy of attracting and integrating foreign students; (vi) the innovation is in different activities, as in the creation of the Palavra deTradutor Collection, dedicated to interviewing important translators in the country and abroad; video interviews, available online, with national and international translators and researchers, entitled “Enquadrando o Tradutor”; as well as podcasts with PGET alumni; online application process that increased the number of masters and doctoral students from other states and abroad; Libras inventory; Expansion of the portal of the Center for Research in Informatics and Literature (NUPPIL); Cadernos de Tradução: A1, SciELO, Web of Science and Scopus, which had more than seven hundred thousand visits in the 2017-2020 quadrennium; National Libras Inventory; project of the international research network EDI-RED; Digital Library of Brazilian Literature; Radio program entitled “Radio Translatio”; TILSJUR Program – Sign language translators and interpreters in the legal area of the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), whose main objective is to promote actions aimed to professionalize and training sign language translators and interpreters; Literalise Project: Children’s Literature and African Culture in Basic Schools and Integration of Portuguese-Speaking African Countries; Palavra de Tradutor Collection. (vii) inclusion (Deaf, Indigenous, Black, Quilombolas). (viii) encourage inter and trans-disciplinary initiatives (Project CAPES/PrInt, PROCAD/CAPES-Amazônia, UNESCO Chair in Multilingualism, School of Advanced Studies).
Over its eighteen years of existence (2004-2022), the Graduate Program in Translation Studies (PGET) has always been attentive to the articulation between the area and the lines of research, the projects in progress, the curricular structure, and the interrelation between the program mission and objectives.
PGET’s mission is to establish and maintain a highly qualified institutional center of national and international reference, bringing together research, teaching, and extension activities in Translation and Interpretation Studies in Brazil and abroad.
The Graduate Program in Translation Studies (PGET) at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) has as its general objective the training of high-level researchers committed to the improvement and production of knowledge, to work in research, teaching, and extension activities, in the field of Translation and Interpretation Studies, at Master’s and Doctorate’s level.
The specific objectives are: to provide continuity to the training process of undergraduate students in Vernacular Letters, Foreign Languages and Literature, related areas and other areas; to link undergraduate and graduate research through integrated projects (PIBIC-CNPq, Tutorial Education Programs, Study and Research Centers) that allow them to work together; to provide the necessary support for the development of cutting-edge research, by encouraging researchers, professors, students and other program participants; to promote the creation of new national and international research groups and forums for discussion and progress diffusion in the area; to intensify existing national (PROCAD, MINTER and DINTER) and international cooperation initiatives (through the calls for proposals from the Escola de Hautes Etudes/Capes, Fulbright/USA, Newton Foundation (UK), DAAD (Germany), FCT/Portugal, CNR/Italy , PVE/Capes, APV and PV/CNPq and others), as a mean of integrating research groups; to establish national and international cooperation agreements based on the demands and needs of each moment; to strengthen the initiatives of other existing research groups on the national and international scene, establishing a reference center at UFSC that can serve as support for the expansion and diffusion of specific knowledge in the area; encourage the plurality of languages studied, extending research to cultures not yet served; contribute to the improvement of the translator’s and interpreter’s work tools; to enable the elaboration of annotated and commented translations of essential texts from different areas of knowledge, and from different languages and cultures; to offer translation and interpretation models that may eventually encourage new translation practices among professionals in the field.
