About the Programme

History

The Master of Arts in Translation and Interpretation (MTI) Programme is the first-of-its-kind, as well as the most historic, postgraduate degree programme focusing  on  English and Chinese in Singapore and Southeast Asia. Under the auspices of the Singapore Government,  NTU developed the current Master of Arts degree programme in 2015 by leveraging on its previously successful Graduate Diploma of Translation and Interpretation (GDTI) which was launched in 2005. One of our most distinguished alumni is the Senior Minister of State. The MTI Programme’s debut in January 2016 is testimony to NTU’s ongoing efforts spanning over a decade to successfully promote theoretical, practical, historical and technical knowledge of translation and interpreting studies.

Vision and mission

MTI@NTU is specifically designed to offer intellectually stimulating, high-standard professional training, with an industry-relevant translation and interpreting curriculum centered on English and Chinese. Our goal is to prepare our graduates to take a leading role in providing highly professional services in both public and private sectors and to promote excellent professional translation and interpreting standards in Singapore and the Asia-Pacific region.

Singapore is uniquely situated in Southeast Asia, linking East and West and bridging the Global North and Global South. Our programme is benchmarked against the best translation programmes in the world, and is structured with a strong academic emphasis capitalising on Singapore’s acknowledged expertise in bilingual teaching and research.

MTI is housed in the School of Humanities (SoH) within the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CoHASS) at the Nanyang Technological University, a research-intensive university, where we are proud of our excellent research capacity and teaching programmes in the Humanities. We specialise in teaching courses that combine knowledge of the University's well regarded academic specialties with instruction in translation and interpreting techniques. These include business, localisation and marketing, computer engineering, public policy, mass communication, and information studies. Building on SoH’s internationally renowned research excellence in translation studies, bilingualism, and multicultural studies, MTI fosters innovative, interdisciplinary, and industry-focused knowledge in new areas such as medical communication and interpreting,  AI-human collaborative (ChatGPT & NLP) and machine translation, and translation in heritage/museum studies. 

The curriculum also distinguishes itself by including an overseas immersion programme, which allows students to travel  to a Chinese or English-speaking country to receive intensive translation and interpreting training from seasoned diplomatic interpreters and field experts who work in high-profile international conferences and world summits such as UNESCO, the United Nations, the Olympic Games, among others. .

Through linguistic and cultural translation, we strive to deliver a comprehensive and all-encompassing education that will empower our students and social stakeholders to be agents of positive change, making our society, community, and world more inclusive, compassionate, and sustainable.