The IATIS Comp@ss :: Calls for Papers

Type of publication: Journal issue
Working title of issue/volume: Looking for meaning: methodological issues in translation studies
Editors: Sonia VANDEPITTE (University College of Ghent)
Publisher:
Hoger Instituut voor Vertalers en Tolken, Hogeschool Antwerpen

Description:
The key issue contributors are asked to address in this special issue of Linguistica Antverpiensia NS7 is the specific methods they use to discuss meaning aspects: how do they study meaning systematically when they aim to bring forward findings from which translation principles can be generalized?
More specific questions, revealing the optimal fields of applicability of the different methodological approaches, reflect the various stages of empirical research:
1. defining the concepts in research questions: in particular, what is the working definition for the notion of 'meaning' that researchers start from?
2. defining the data: in particular, which are the units of meaning from which they start? Can they illustrate this by means of examples?
3. analysing the data according to the best method available: how do they determine the meaning of a word, phrase, utterance, paragraph or text: which analytical methods are available to them? Do they work within particular strongly developed meaning frameworks (semantic? pragmatic? literary or stylistic? cognitive? lexicographical? )? What are the general principles and assumptions? Can this approach be called a meaning analysis model?
Do they distinguish between different types of meanings? Which types are they and which are the criteria that distinguish them from each other?
Which are the descriptive tools with which they refer to a particular meaning of a word, phrase, utterance, paragraph or text, and how do they decide which term to use to refer to a particular meaning aspect?
How can electronic tools recognize meaning? To what extent can findings on meanings be quantified? In which cases is quantification relevant?
4. discussing the method: does the mode of the languages involved have an impact on the method? Do the languages involved in the translation have an impact on the method? Does the directionality of a language pair involved in the translation have an impact on the method?
5. discussing the results: what exactly is it that their results contribute to TS? What are the advantages of their approach over that of others?
Particularly welcome are representatives from specific semantic/pragmatic approaches, for example:
Cognitive-communicative approaches (incl. relevance theory)
Cognitive semantics
Natural semantics
Componential analysis framework
Scenes-and-frames approaches
Terminological approaches
Example-based machine translation
Statistical machine translation

Submission deadline: 2007-09-01
Submission requirements:
Title and 15 line abstract should be submitted by 1 September 2007. The notification will be sent out by 25 September.
Contact:
Sonia Vandepitte
sonia.vandepitte@hogent.be
University College of Ghent
Translation Studies
Relevant links: