Christian [email protected] Apr 7, 2019:

In the US it's exactly the other way round. VERY interesting (and true). Learned something today.

neilmac (asker) Apr 5, 2019:

Thanks guys All your comments have been very useful for future reference, although this time I hedged my bets and just called it a project. The client is an IT company that works closely with the University and similar institutions in its recruitment drives.

neilmac (asker) Apr 5, 2019:

@John It's from the IT engineering Department of my local polytechnic. It was only a short text for a newsletter, so I just used "project" in the end, but the discussion here is interesting and useful for future reference.

Charles Davis Apr 5, 2019:

@enrfer I agree with you. In fact "trabajo de fin de máster" can refer precisely to the text. If you say "su trabajo de fin de máster puede consultarse en...", for example, you're obviously using "trabajo" to mean "written study", just as when you say "en este trabajo me propongo demostrar...", for example. "Trabajo" often needs to be translated as study or paper or article. But here TFM refers to an element of a programme of study, a requirement for obtaining a degree, and I personally would use something more formally precise like "final project" for that.

Enrique Bjarne Strand Ferrer Apr 5, 2019:

Charles, I guess there is a question on whether one would like to be very precise and use some kind of literal tranlation (TFM) or use an established term as thesis/dissertation. However, I am certain that nearly everybody in Spain considers TFM as the actual text (and the defence of it).

Charles Davis Apr 5, 2019:

@enrfer Provided you are using American English, that is approximately correct: approximately, in that the assessment of the TFM is generally based, to a greater or lesser extent, on more than the actual text of the thesis/dissertation itself.

Enrique Bjarne Strand Ferrer Apr 5, 2019:

Master's thesis I have allways considered the Trabajo Fin de Máster to be the Master's thesis. Thats at least the kind of paper I wrote....

Charles Davis Apr 5, 2019:

PS In the UK, the generic term FYPD (final-year projects and dissertations) exists, applied to bachelors and masters degrees, illustrating the British use of the word "dissertation".

Charles Davis Apr 5, 2019:

That's why, for example, the American expression for someone who's completed all the requirements for a PhD apart from writing the thesis (as we would call it) is ABD (all but dissertation), not ABT.

Charles Davis Apr 5, 2019:

With John But the thesis vs dissertation thing is simply a UK/US difference. In the UK, a dissertation is shorter than a thesis; it's always masters dissertation and PhD thesis. In the US it's exactly the other way round.

I also agree that although the TFM is basically a dissertation (in UK terms), or at least that's the main element of it, it would be better not to call it that, for the reasons John indicates.

John Druce Apr 5, 2019:

Thesis vs dissertation Also, again, from my experiences in academia, we don't tend to use thesis for masters-level work, as a thesis tend to be used to describe a bigger contribution to knowledge that takes 2-3 years to develop. So a "masters thesis" is overdoing it a bit. Technically, the thesis is the idea itself, so some would argue that even what we commonly refer to as a "PhD thesis" should be referred to as a dissertation, as the dissertation is the document discussing the central idea/thesis. Then you also nowadays have a PhD via a publication route (a collection of papers), which doesn't actually involve writing a dissertation, but the body of work along a single theme (the "thesis") is constituted by the publications in the literature.

So if you're talking about the long document the students have to write summarising their findings, I would go with "Masters Dissertation".

John Druce Apr 5, 2019:

A little more context Hi Neil,

What department is this in? If it is in the sciences, I would probably tend more towards "final research project", or something like that, as it covers more than just the written part. For something that doesn't involve so much practical / field work, such as in literature studies, then perhaps "dissertation" would work, as the main focus is how the ideas are organised and developed in the dissertation itself.

Another point that might make a difference is how it is actually assessed/graded (I don't know if you have that information in the source text). I used to work in university in a chemisty/materials science department, and when we ran research projects, the mark scheme covered the dissertation, an oral presentation of the results, and also marks for how the student went about the project (meetings with supervisor, etc). It would also start with a literature review before moving onto anything practical, which is also graded as part of the project. In this context, referring to it as a dissertation, paper, etc. alone, would miss out a lot of those elements, so again "project" might be more appropriate.