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Community and Engagement

 

The School of Languages has a thriving culture of Engagement

  • A tradition of engaging with business and the local community and contributing to regional development
  • A flair for international work, and a growing portfolio of international partnerships

One of the keys to our success is our diversity - more than 10 different languages, including English as a Foreign Language. We also provide professional training for translators, interpreters, and English Language teachers; consultancy; and services to business and industry.

 

Reaching out to the Community

Our Languages for All programme is open to the community and offers lunchtime and evening classes in a range of languages. It aims to provide an enjoyable and stimulating language learning experience, whether you are a beginner in Japanese, or perhaps want to work on your holiday Spanish.

We have well-established links with schools and colleges in the area and undertake various curriculum development activities with students there. The School has been a member of the Association of University Language Centres since its inception and we enjoy a longstanding relationship with the Association of Language Learning.

 

International Links

We have numerous links with foreign Universities through European schemes such as ERASMUS, which involve visits and exchanges of both students and staff. We have also recently set up exchange agreements with two Chinese Universities and developed links with Arabic institutions.

We are keen to extend the range and the nature of these links. In particular we are interested in the following:

  • Development of collaborative programmes in languages with European Higher Education institutions
  • Collaborative research in translation studies
  • Consultancy for institutions who wish to set up Language Centres or English language teaching (ELT) operations
  • Materials production and teacher training in ELT
  • European-funded preliminary visits and exchanges with institutions in the EU accession states

Undergraduate placements

The International Placement Year is a compulsory part of most of our undergraduate programmes, and typically involves students spending up to a year abroad during the third year of full-time study.

When looking for work our students benefit from our extensive, well established network of placement providers including large multinationals, such as:

  • Guinness
  • Deutsche Bank
  • Mercedes-Benz
  • Alcatel.

For students who wish to combine a work placement with a period of study abroad or indeed spend the year in a study placement, the School has links with universities across Europe, the Far East and the Arabic world, including institutions specialising in translation and interpreting.

Postgraduate placements

We offer our opportunities for translation placements to our postgraduate students in the context of the Graduate Apprenticeship scheme. Students can also benefit from carefully planned periods of up to three months’ work experience with host translation companies, building a portfolio of their experiences to stand alongside their degree qualification as a means of demonstrating to potential employers the practical, work-based learning they have completed.

Host companies have included:

  • Manchester City Council Translation Department
  • Lloyd International (Cheshire)
  • Linguaset (Macclesfield)
  • UN Vienna
  • Volkswagen AG (Germany)

 

Our Partners

The University of Salford, in collaboration with a number of other institutions, has been successful in securing funding for three bids submitted to the Higher Education Funding Council-run initiative, Routes into Languages:

  • National Network for Translation – Lead institution
    The National Network for Translation was set-up by the Universities of Salford, Aston, Bath, Heriot-Watt, Portsmouth and Westminster’s joint bid, under the Higher Education Funding Council-run initiative, Routes into Languages.
  • National Network for Interpreting – Partner institution
    The National Interpreting Network was set-up by The University of Salford, School of Languages together with the University of Leeds (Lead institution), the University of Westminster and the University of Bath to promote the interpreting profession through the Routes into Languages initiative.
  • 3. Routes into Languages North West Consortium – Partner institution
    Alongside our success in the national Translation and national Interpreting networks, we have also been successful in bidding for one of the Routes into Languages regional consortia. The Greater Manchester consortium is led by Manchester Metropolitan University and includes Salford, Manchester and Bolton universities alongside various other partners including Aimhigher and schools.

We also maintain close links with professional organisations such as PLUG (Professional Languages at Universities Group), CILT (The National Centre for Languages), the Chartered Institute of Linguists – where some of our staff are examiners - and the Institute of Translation and Interpreting.

We are a member of several professional bodies for English language teaching, including English UK, the British Association of Lecturers in English for Academic Purposes (BALEAP) and the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL). All of our English language teaching is accredited by the British Council under the Accreditation UK scheme.

The School is very active in community interpreting (for the courts, the NHS etc.) and has made a major contribution to the development of Diploma of Public Service Interpreting training in the region.

 

Services to Business

In 1986 the School of Languages created Service for Export & Languages (SEL), the University's commercial language company. The company was one of the first in the UK to be accredited to ISO9002 and is now established as a leading provider of business-to-business translation, language training, interpreting, country briefing, and voice-over services. The company has a client base of over 150 businesses, ranging from SMEs to multinationals, in the UK and Europe.