Audiovisual Translation and Localisation, MA

Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures, the United Kingdom

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Study options for this course

The award	How you will study	Study duration	Course start	Domestic course fees	International course fees
MA	Full-time, Part-time	12 - 24 months	September	GBP 12000 per total	GBP 25250 per total

About Audiovisual Translation and Localisation, MA - at Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures

The audiovisual market continues to grow as more platforms introduce streaming services to provide motion pictures and entertainment. Furthermore, videos are consistently supplementing or even replacing text in training, marketing content and websites.

Parallelly, the demand for localisation and accessibility also increases. This means that the audiovisual and localisation industry is in need of professionals capable of providing not just subtitling, dubbing, and voice over services in as many foreign languages as possible; but also subtitles for the deaf and the hard of hearing, audio descriptions for blind and partially-sighted people, and live subtitles for people with difficulties accessing the content of a speech.

Working in audiovisual translation and media localisation is an exciting career that requires excellent knowledge of foreign languages, but also a good understanding of intercultural communication, translation and localisation technology, terminology and project management, as well as an excellent knowledge of the industry.

The MA in Audiovisual Translation and Localisation at Leeds will prepare you in all these areas and in your language combination, increasing your confidence and career prospects.

Core modules will introduce you to essential concepts in translation theory, audiovisual translation, accessibility, localisation, project management, and computer-assisted translation. You'll also benefit from hands-on practice in our specialised IT labs throughout the year. You'll work with professionals, using industry-standard software whilst developing specialised skills through individual assignments and team projects with simulated real-life scenarios.

You'll also be able to study modules informed by research taking place at our Centre for Translation Studies on topics such as machine translation, multimodality, corpus linguistics, interpreting, genre analysis, and others.

As a proud member of the international association of translation and interpretation university institutes (CIUTI), the European Language Industry Association (ELIA), the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI), and the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA) the Centre for Translation Studies also maintains privileged collaboration with several UN and EU bodies, as well as national and international companies, institutions and NGOs.

You'll work between English and one or two other languages, including Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Specialist facilities

Our specialised translation and audiovisual translation laboratories support all our translation courses, complete with 60 high-spec PCs and a wide range of specialist software for translation, subtitling, respeaking, dubbing, audio-description, localisation, terminology management, and project management.

In addition to translation theory and specialised translation, this course focuses on providing you with training in the different facets of the language services industry. In this context, the core modules provide specialised training in an impressive range of software tools - online and offline - widely used by leading freelancers and translation and subtitling companies, such as Wincaps Q4, ZooSubs, ZooDubs, Spot, Trados Studio, Multiterm, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Sketch Engine and PerfectIt, among others. Note that access to certain pieces of software is subject to availability.

Learn more about Audiovisual Translation and Localisation, MA - at Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures

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Entry requirements

IELTS 6.5 overall, with no less than 6.0 in any components

Student reviews of Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures

Find out what students say about Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures

Caroline Mwape Phiri-Lubwika - MA Applied and Professional Ethics (Online Learning)

What made you want to apply to your course and to Leeds?

I chose to study my course because you can apply it across different careers. I believe that each and every person needs to step up in terms of being professional in their work and in their careers; it is something very close to my heart.

I am a journalist by profession, and ethics is at the core of the media industry. I train upcoming journalists in Botswana and I also do children’s reporting, so issues of ethics are very pertinent; not only to me personally but to the profession that I stand for.

How would you describe your experience of studying at Leeds?

Studying online gave me the rare opportunity to study and take care of my family at the same time. It was good that I could concentrate on raising my family while also continuing with my professional work, I must say I gained all round!

I have studied online before - I did distance learning with the University of South Africa, where I did my BA in Communications Science - but this was at another level. What kept me going were the group discussions, which gave me an opportunity to interact with students from across the world, and the tutors coming in to give their opinion.

I decided to come to Leeds in person for my graduation and I was so excited because my dreams have turned into reality. It was so friendly and lovely that I felt like I’d been there before, even though it was my first visit to the campus.

Aakriti Jain - MA Global Fashion Management

What made you want to apply to your course and to Leeds?

After working in fashion as a designer, I realised that I am more suited for the managerial side of this industry. I had all the knowledge and experience I needed to become a designer but I needed to learn more about how that organisation works. With that in mind I started looking for universities who were offering a fashion management course which will help me to gain and enhance the required skills. UK was always my first choice for pursuing my masters because of the successful and booming fashion industry here along with the cultural diversity. University of Leeds offers that exact course which I had been looking for. The combination of subjects that this course provides is extremely unique. It has the perfect blend of business and fashion studies. Other than the course that the University of Leeds offers, the city also has a very warm and welcoming atmosphere for students.

What aspects of the course do you enjoy the most?

Here is the best part of this course, it is so well integrated and connected to all the subjects and you need to apply the knowledge gained from one subject into the other. You can literally see the various parts that you study coming together as one. It pushes you to think differently yet practically.

Ting Zeng - MA Linguistics and English Language Teaching

What made you want to apply to your course and to Leeds?

During the process of learning English and French I found many similarities and differences between these languages and my native language, Chinese. This made me curious about the amazing world of linguistics. In addition to this, my own experience of learning English has shown me that learning a language is not just about memorising vocabulary and grammar rules; it involves a systematic process. One field of linguistics, language acquisition, deals with this process, which increased my interest in studying English language learning from the perspective of linguistics, instead of from the perspective of education. Leeds is one of the few universities in the UK to have a course that combines these two areas.

What aspects of the course do you enjoy the most?

My favourite part of my course is the way it gives you critical reading skills. The major difference between postgraduate and undergraduate study is that postgraduate courses require you to think deeply and broadly, so that you can design your own research project to investigate a new or old problem which hasn’t been solved.

Developing these skills not only helped me to gain a lot of ideas about my essay and dissertation, but also enables me to read clearly, carefully and critically in my everyday life. When I am reading newspapers and magazines, for example, criticality helps me to avoid being misled by the words and opinions of others.