Andrew Chesterman
Humanist of the day

Andrew Chesterman

Andrew Chesterman came to Finland from London in 1968 and has been based there ever since. He has become a “Finnish Brit” or, in the words of a research seminar student, “meidän hovimamu” (‘our court immigrant’). He started as an English teacher in Savonlinna, and retired in 2010 from a professorship in Multilingual Communication at the University of Helsinki.

Andrew Chesterman

Andrew Peter Clement Chesterman
Born October 6th 1946, London.

Doctor of Philosophy (Linguistics), University of Reading 1988
Master of Letters (Applied Linguistics), University of Edinburgh 1973
Bachelor of Arts (Modern Languages), University of Cambridge 1968

Professor of Multilingual Communication 2002–2010, University of Helsinki

Associate Professor of Translation Theory 1996–2000, University of Helsinki
Lecturer in English 1973–1996, University of Helsinki

Research interests:
Applied linguistics, contrastive analysis, translation theory, research methodology, memes in translation theory.

Recent publications, projects and other scientific activities

CETRA Professor 1999 (Catholic University of Leuven)
Executive Board member, European Society for Translation Studies (EST) 1998–2004.
Scientific Advisory Board member, Center of Translation Studies, University of Vienna (2007–2010)

Prizes and Awards
Knight of the Order of the White Rose, First Class 2008
Member of the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters 2005–
International Teacher of the Year 2005, Helsinki University Student Union.
Honorary Doctorate 2001, Copenhagen Business School, 2001.
“Teacher of the year” 2000, Helsinki University Vantaa Institute for Continuing Education.

Written by Andrew Chesterman (ed. Tomas Sjöblom)
Image: Andrew Chesterman.

“Chair Theory”

Lecturing on translation theory, I quickly realized that the students had either a very negative concept of what a theory could be, or no concept at all. So I started by discussing the notion of theory itself: I asked them to imagine that the course was really about “Chair Theory”.

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My Dreams

My dream university would be one where the teacher-student ratio would be much better, i.e. more teachers per student, than the University of Helsinki has now.

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