Imperial’s TSU moves to UCL

On Wednesday 2 September, Imperial and University College London officially announced that the Translation Studies Unit (TSU) at Imperial will be moving to UCL. The TSU will be moving to UCL’s School of European Languages, Culture and Society, within the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. The school is well known internationally and it encourages interaction and exchange amongst specialists across the Arts and Humanities. A spokesperson from Imperial said the move of the unit will “capitalise on its existing long-term collaboration with translation experts from [UCL], allowing it greater scope to develop its research and education activities in the future”. Earlier in February of this year, the College declared that the activities undertaken by the unit would be reviewed, as they were thought not to be “integral to the delivery of Imperial’s academic strategy”. Therefore the TSU has dodged the worst case scenario of closure. The TSU was founded in 2001 and primarily deals with science translation and has over 50 MSc students and 25 PhD students. The Head of the TSU, Dr Jorge Díaz-Cintas commented: “We are very excited about the opportunities that this move to another world-class institution like UCL will bring for us. UCL has a great track record in translation and we have been collaborating with them for many years. We are really looking forward to working with our new colleagues to make sure that translation continues to be as highly successful in our new home as it has been at Imperial during the last 12 years.” The Dean of UCL’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Professor Jonathan Wolff, stated: “I’m delighted to welcome the Translation Studies Unit to UCL. We have been long-standing admirers of their work, and believe that together we will provide world leading expertise in audiovisual, technical and literary translation.” Professor Debra Humphris, Pro Rector (Education) here at Imperial responded with: “This move draws the TSU into a greater critical mass of translation expertise and enables it to go from strength to strength in the future. We wish all of the Unit’s members the very best in their future work.” At the time of writing the Union had yet to release an official response. However in a meeting on the twelfth of February students from the TSU presented a paper to the Union Council detailing their concerns about the way the decisions were bring carried out and the impact College’s actions would have on current TSU students. This lead to the Union Council officially supporting the student run campaign against the proceedings.