Nida School of Translation Studies

The Nida School of Translation Studies (NSTS), an annual two-week seminar, brings together experts from translation studies, religious discourse translation, and other cognate disciplines in a fully transdisciplinary working environment.  Each seminar critically explores translation theory, linguistics, semiotics and cultural studies as they pertain to a well-defined topic or problem. Lectures, guided readings, participant-led discussions, and tutorials provide the pedagogical tools for this exploration.  The defining character of these seminars lies in their transdisciplinary nature which allows theorists and practitioners from many fields to cross disciplinary and methodological boundaries and in so doing to develop new ways of thinking not only about the general topic of translation but also about their own fields of research.

NSTS attracts faculty and associates from around the world and contributes materially to the advancement of translation studies. Original research, often presented for the first time at the NSTS, finds its outlet in publications, in the enhanced quality of translations, and in upgraded professional skills.

History of NSTS

The tumultuous world of international affairs, borderless commerce, and glo-cal religion has pushed the translating and interpreting industry onto a center stage like none it has ever occupied. 

One branch of this industry, the one connected to religious discourses such as the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, is organizing its research and training around new centers of interest. These centers include ideology, ethics, post-colonialism, and subalternism along with competing models of theory and practice, mounting costs, market forces, and multiple standards for acceptability, accountability, and adequacy. 

Here’s how the Nida School of Translation Studies is training professionals for this daunting new world.    

Since the mid-1990s, the ABS forerunners of the Nida Institute, and from 2001 onwards, the Institute itself, joined other researchers worldwide to study critically, and to provide training for the new world of translating and interpreting.  From 2001-2006 the Institute facilitated this work by inviting colleagues from its staff and from the United Bible Societies to attend the renowned CETRA summer school for translation studies. In 2007 the Institute launched the Nida School of Translation Studies. Its purpose was to provide a program for integrating the world of sacred text translation more fully into the world of translation studies. In 2011 the Nida School formally became a program of the San Pellegrino University Foundation of which the Nida Institute is a founding member.

Modeling its own program on CETRA , the Nida School recruits each year two Nida Professors who bring the most up-to-date research and pedagogy to the School in a series of six lectures, augmented with individual tutorials, directed readings, and informal discussions. Nida Professors to date have included Kent Richards and Peeter Torop (2007); Edwin Gentzler and David Tuggy (2008); Theo Hermans and Tan Zaixi (2009); Maria Tymoczko (2010); and Martha Cheung and Vicente Rafael (2011).

Since 2007, an international cohort of over 80 associates from translation studies and religious discourse translation have completed the School.  These associates come from every continent and bring to the School a formidable linguistic and cultural diversity. 

Philip H. Towner (Dean of the Nida Institute) and Stefano Arduini (Professor of Linguistics, Urbino) serve as co-directors of the annual School which meets on the campus of the San Pellegrino University Foundation, Misano Adriatico (Rimini), Italy, each spring for two weeks.

Go to Nida School Website