Research Degrees & Students
We host a lively and diverse group of research students. They are sometimes co-supervised by colleagues from other departments of the School of Modern Languages and Cultures or from other Schools of the university, notably Computing, Education and English.
The ethos of research at CTS@Leeds is to ground it in data from the daily practice of translators, subtitlers and interpreters of both spoken languages and British Sign Language (BSL). This data-driven approach to research in interpreting and translation supports a wide range of projects covering an equally wide range of languages.
Research students are encouraged to attend appropriate research-led modules together with students on the taught MA programmes. In addition, training in research methodology is provided by the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, the Faculty and the University.
Research students thrive in this resource-rich intellectual environment, with 100% completion of PhDs in under four years. CTS postgraduates have an excellent record of conference presentations and publications prior to submission of their thesis. Some financial support for conference participation is available from the Centre or the School.
Apply for postgraduate Study
Applicants for research degrees should have at least a good Honours degree. Candidates with alternative relevant experience/qualifications may be considered. All eligible applicants whose interests match our supervisory expertise will be interviewed, either in person or by telephone or on Skype. Further requirements may also be stipulated in individual cases.
For advice on the fit of your topic with the research expertise of CTS@Leeds email an outline (4-6 pages) of your proposed research to Professor Tony Hartley (a.hartley@leeds.ac.uk). This outline should describe: the general area of your research and an overview of prior work; evidence of a need for further investigation; more specific research questions that you intend to address; the data and methodology that you plan to use; the expected outcomes and their anticipated impact on the field and possible beneficiaries.
Current Student Projects
- Subtitling Training
- Computer-Assisted Language Learning
- Linguistically-Informed Kansei Engineering
- Corpus-based analysis of names
| Name & Email | Degree | Topic | Supervisor |
| Alina Secară a.secara@leeds.ac.uk |
PhD Year 2 Base: CTS |
R u ready 2 exploR? Introducing creative spellings in subtitling training The paucity of didactic studies regarding the acquisition of translation skills and the benefits that a community-centred teaching environment might have, attracted little attention until now from the audiovisual translation community. My research sets out to describe a novel approach to subtitling teaching and translation skills acquisition having at its very centre techniques used by amateur translators and creative linguistic practices that emerged in online socially focussed contexts. Such an approach will not only benefit from a community framework which was proven to be beneficial especially in communities where technological advancements are used, but will investigate novel and creative linguistic cues that can be used to facilitate the work of translator apprentices. The use of creative spelling within social groups similar to those existing in the fansubbing communities, will not only allow a certain liberation from formal audiovisual translation limitations (e.g. maximum number of words), but will also provide a more relaxed and easy way to identify with communication situations. This study suggests a new approach to subtitling that would have beneficial effects not only for acquiring and mastering subtitling skills, but also transferable skills relevant to professional translation activities. |
| Name & Email | Degree | Topic | Supervisor |
| Svitlana Kurella smlsku@leeds.ac.uk |
PhD Year 1 Base: CTS |
Methodology for computer-assisted acquisition of reading abilities in L3 The lack of foreign-language skills, particularly reading abilities, is handicapping UK research, especially with the enlargement of the EU. Pedagogic methodologies are falling behind: they address general conversational skills, and fail to capitalise on advances in the semi-automatic analysis of large corpora. My research focuses on the foreign-language reading competence needed by researchers and translators. The project aims at developing an effective corpus-based methodology for acquiring reading abilities in a third language (L3, here Polish and Ukrainian) based on the knowledge of a second language (L2, here Russian) by English (L1) native speakers, incorporating recent achievements in field of data-driven learning. The project focuses on models of text comprehension based on cohesive cues and purposeful reading strategies. |
| Name & Email | Degree | Topic | Supervisor |
| Russell Wilson smlrw@leeds.ac.uk |
PhD Year 3 Base: CTS |
Towards a Linguistically Informed Kansei Engineering My research aims to contribute to the understanding of the networks of concepts underlying descriptions of products and product components and assess the ways in which people actually vocalise their evaluations. Kansei engineering is a research tool for measuring people's feelings towards products and this is one possible beneficiary of the research. It has been established for 20-30 years and is centred around the use of word lists that describe a product. Little research has been carried out on the linguistic validity of these lists and so this is partly the aim of my research. |
Judy Delin; Sally Johnson |
| Name & Email | Degree | Topic | Supervisor |
| Laura Cantora | PhD - part-time | A Corpus-based Comparative Analysis of Proper Names in English and their Translations into Spanish and Italian. In my PhD I am exploring solutions for the problem of translating culture-bound references, as well as the usability of novel corpus tools for the study of translated literary texts. Proper names have traditionally been considered as single elements, independently from the rest of the text. However, this study shows that in the context in which a proper name occurs it offers a set of information to the source language reader that goes beyond the text, reaching into the culture of origin and the inside knowledge of the reader. This research considers the role that external elements and the translator play when it comes to transmitting the connotations hidden behind a proper name into a new target language. The analysis is undertaken using tools and a methodology derived from Corpus Linguistics. |
Recent Student Projects
- Multilingual Multimodal Annotation
- Machine Translation Evaluation
- Computer-Assisted Language Learning
- Peer Feedback for Conference Interpreter Training
- ST Information Restructuring for Translator Training
- IE Technology in Machine Translation
| Name & Email | Degree | Topic | Supervisor |
| Martin Thomas m.thomas@leeds.ac.uk |
PhD, awarded 2009 Base: CTS |
Localising Pack Messages This work makes two types of original contribution. Firstly, it provides an in-depth study of localization in an under-researched genre, pack messages. The challenges of localization are approached by developing an account of cross-locale variation. This account is based on the analysis of existing comparable texts from two locales, Taiwan and the UK, as well as consideration of the factors that constrain pack design and consultation with people involved in the design process. It is hoped that the findings based on this rather extreme case will have relevance also for people working with other languages and domains. Secondly, building on previous empirical research on multimodal discourse analysis, it develops and refines existing theoretical approaches, extends these to cross-cultural contrastive analysis and implements a suite of software tools to support the capture, annotation and analysis of data from static artefacts. It is the first corpus-based study of its kind. Novel accounts of multimodal texture and genre are presented. The role of typography in expressing language in graphic mode is central to both of these. This suggests a need for a fuller treatment of what might be called contrastive typography. |
| Name & Email | Degree | Topic | Supervisor |
| Debbie Elliott debe@comp.leeds.ac.uk |
PhD, awarded 12/2006 Base: Computing |
Corpus-based machine translation evaluation via automated error detection in output texts My PhD focuses on the exploration of new automated methods for evaluating MT output. These methods need to be validated by finding correlations between human evaluation scores and those from new automated methods. Consequently, my research involves three main phases:
|
| Name & Email | Degree | Topic | Supervisor |
| Dragoş Ciobanu d.i.ciobanu@leeds.ac.uk |
PhD, awarded 06/2006 |
Acquiring Reading Skills in a Foreign Language in a Multilingual, Corpus-Based Environment Due to a severe shortage of online resources for improving the acquisition of reading skills in several foreign languages at the same time, I intend to combine a wide range of resources into a new and effective environment suitable for teaching, as well as individual study. |
| Name & Email | Degree | Topic | Supervisor |
| Gracie Peng k.peng@leeds.ac.uk |
PhD, awarded 04/2006 Base: CTS |
The Development of Coherence and Quality of Performance in Conference Interpreter Training Peer-Feedback for Conference Interpreter Training aims to explore how an interpreter trainee becomes a reflective practitioner, to explore and report the value of peer feedback for conference interpreting trainees and to organise the practicing criteria systematically in a user-friendly environment to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of peer-feedback for conference interpreter training. |
| Name & Email | Degree | Topic | Supervisor |
| Alina Secară a.secara@leeds.ac.uk |
MA by Research, awarded 12/2005 Base: CTS |
Restructuring the Source Text Information for Translation Training The main focus of my study is that of manipulating information in the process of translation. I am referring to legitimate cases of information deletion and restructuring that occur because of different target audiences and publishing media. |
| Name & Email | Degree | Topic | Supervisor |
| Bogdan Babych b.babych@leeds.ac.uk |
PhD awarded 03/2005 Base: CTS |
Information Extraction Technology in Machine Translation The goal of my project is to investigate the use of IE annotation for improving and evaluating the quality of MT, for ranking information relevance, explicating facts, motivating translation transformations and revealing the properties of legitimate variation in translation. |