Transcultural Encounters: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Language, History, and Culture in a Global Society

PGR Student-led Conference – Call for Papers

Thursday 6^th of June 2024, Cardiff University

Language, history, and culture are the markers that both bring together and divide people, societies, and the world. Following the success of last year’s event, we will be running another in-person, free-to-attend conference, hosted by Cardiff University’s School of Modern Languages and supported by the ESRC/Wales Doctoral Training Partnership. This conference aims to highlight and celebrate interdisciplinary research that explores how language, history, and culture define us, and how we define them, in an interconnected global society. Drawing from three research streams—history and heritage; translation and interpreting; and global language-based area studies—we are asking how postgraduate students from across the humanities and social sciences navigate these themes in their research. 

The conference aims to further establish a communication platform between PGR students from different fields. Like last year, it covers a wide range of areas in the humanities and social sciences and provides participants with opportunities for sharing results, collaborating on research, and gaining new knowledge. Participants will receive feedback on their papers from their peers and from experts in a variety of disciplines. They will attend talks by keynote speakers, engage in networking, and benefit from the highly popular methods workshops and surgeries on research-related topics. For early-stage PGR students, the conference will offer valuable insights and guidance on starting a career in research. 

We are looking for papers that cover (but are not limited to) the following subthemes:  

History and Heritage: 

Understanding how the past is represented and portrayed can reveal insights into our present. A multicultural, multilingual, and transnational approach to history, heritage, and culture—here in Wales, in the wider UK, and abroad—illustrates human connections made not just across space, but across time. Methodologies encompassing media sources—including photography, film, radio, and both literary and graphic novels—and investigating processes of musealisation and memorialisation, are testament to how everything from earth-shattering events to the mundane everyday all contribute to shaping contemporary understandings of the past. We welcome abstracts that examine the role of history and heritage in today’s increasingly globalised and interconnected world. Possible topics include: 

• How representations of the past reflect the present
• Multicultural, multilingual, and transnational approaches to history and heritage
• Antislavery, post-conflict, disaster, and memory
• Critical methodologies for documenting the past

Translation and Interpreting: 

The power of translation in connecting human beings can never be overstated, from political negotiations to daily conversations, from literary works to films and videogames, from preserving historical memories to pushing forward societal changes. Translation empowers and enables us to express ourselves, while demanding that we reflect in more depth on our relationship with “others”—be they other people, other cultures, or other ideologies. As professions and as subjects of research, however, translation and interpreting are in the midst of a paradigmatic shift, owing to evolving factors such as the prevalence of non-professional practices and the rise of generative AI technologies. Research exploring the challenges and opportunities presented by these contemporary changes is more valuable than ever. We welcome abstracts that examine the role of translation and interpreting in today’s increasingly globalised and interconnected world. Possible topics include: 

• Translation and interpreting theories, methods, and practice in various industries
• The impact of new technologies on translation and interpreting
• Specialised and non-professional translation and interpreting
• Interdisciplinary translation and interpreting, including language acquisition and evolution
• Research methodology in translation and interpreting

Global language-based area studies: 

We are interested in the politics, society, languages, and cultures of the connected world, placing an emphasis on transnational phenomena, creative and critical thinking, and social science- and humanities-led methodologies in addressing the crises of our times. We place particular emphasis on rethinking area studies, breaking disciplinary boundaries, and using innovative research methods and theoretical perspectives. We welcome abstracts that examine the role of global language-based studies in today’s increasingly globalised and interconnected world. Possible topics include:

• The politics, society, languages, and cultures of the connected world;
• Transnational phenomena, such as crisis and culture;
• How to rethink area studies and break disciplinary boundaries;
• Languages: multilingualism, language learning, and linguistics;
• Movements: socio-political, intellectual, ideological, industrial, and non-governmental

Individual and panel paper submissions are due by 5pm on the 9th of May 2024 and should include an abstract (maximum 250 words), three-five keywords, and a biographical note (maximum 150 words). Please submit a Word document to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. We will let you know the outcome of your submission by the 16th of May 2024. We can also advise on accommodation arrangements, if required.

Venue:

Glamorgan Building, Cardiff University

King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3WT

Local Organising Committee:

Dr Andrew Dowling                         Zoey Morgan                     Emily Bush                          This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.         This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.                                                This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.                     Chen Yang

If you have any questions, please get in touch with us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Special Issue Editor(s)

Şebnem Susam-Saraeva and Carolyn Shread

Intersections between gender, feminism and environmental issues have been explored in Western scholarship for more than fifty years now, catalyzed by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) and first named in French in Françoise d'Eaubonne’s neologism écoféminisme in Le Féminisme ou la mort (1974). Scholars have offered thought-provoking and thorough analyses of the intersectional connections between patriarchy, capitalism, racism, colonialism, imperialism, speciesism, and the environment (e.g. Gaard 2011). The last decade has seen a particular increase in the complexity of these discussions (e.g. Braidotti 2013 and 2021), in which matter and zoe have emerged as key components connecting all vegetal, animal and human-animal life and their theorization.

Given this background, and the extensive contribution of gender-conscious and feminist approaches to translation studies over the past three decades, the dearth of research in translation studies on the intersections of gender, feminism and the Earth is conspicuous. Feminist translation thinking has focused primarily on minoritized human groups, such as women, and queer and trans communities to the exclusion of all other life forms and ecosystems, which are also oppressed and ravaged by the same systems of power, e.g. colonialism and capitalism. Taking a broader perspective and acknowledging these injustices can strengthen feminist arguments and enhance their theoretical and practical applications. To rephrase the famous quote: none of us can be free, until all Earth is free.

In the ‘blinding light’ of the Anthropocene, this inaugural special issue of the journal Feminist Translation Studies summons scholars who work at the intersections of gender, feminism and eco-translation to bring their tools and perspectives to respond to the critical imperative that we learn to translate with the Earth. We have chosen this title carefully, as we do not look to a ‘heroic saviour’ position of ‘translating for the Earth’. Rather, the invitation is as much about listening - to the ice, rocks, plants, animals, rivers - as about translating their stories.

This inaugural issue thus seeks to decenter the trope of anthropos from translation goals and processes with an ear to new forms of feminist and epistemic justice. We are pragmatically oriented by the urgency to respond to climate crisis, calling for new modes of translation with the many forms of life conventionally silenced through the patriarchal presumptions of humans to rule and speak for the Earth. Our vision is a transcontinental conversation engaging indigenous epistemologies and eliciting the future via semiotic creativity, reimagining technology beyond anthropocentric, colonizing, extractivist and exclusionary modes of translation. To do so will be to abandon linguistic biases in favor of worldviews that are attentive to biosemiosis and posthumanism. We invite papers that bring substance and life to this vision, initiating trans-Earth comprehension.

Submissions on all related topics are welcome, with articles on the following themes particularly encouraged:

• What are the life forms and ecosystems also oppressed by the same systems of power that have not yet received critical attention in feminist translation studies; and why is it crucial that feminist translation studies offer a critical space for discussing them?
• How do the gendered care economies, and changes in relation to them, impact current translation practices, and what are the environmental costs of such changes?
• How can a focus on interspecies translation forge consensus for new epistemes and the well-being of the Earth beyond an anthropo-centric focus?
• How will meaning translate with matter in an expansion of feminist practices?
• How do somatic resonances of translating with the Earth manifest beyond gendered binaries?
• What skies, liquidities, and grounds do all life forms need and how can feminist thinking contribute sustainable paradigms for a thriving Earth?
• How do our material entanglements with the more-than-human world express the requirements for survival of all life and matter?
• How are feminist methodologies uniquely equipped to access and imagine these ecologically oriented reformulations of translation?
• What forms of feminist multimodal and intersemiotic translation are emerging in the face of climate crisis?

Deadline for abstracts: 15 May 2024

For more information, click here.

Editors

Adolfo M. García | Universidad de San Andrés / University of California / Universidad de Santiago de Chile

Edinson Muñoz | Universidad de Santiago de Chile

Néstor Singer | Universidad de Santiago de Chile

For more information, click here.

Accessible communication comprises all measures employed to reduce communication barriers in various situations and fields of activity. Disabilities, illnesses, different educational opportunities and/or major life events can result in vastly different requirements in terms of how texts or messages must be prepared in order to meet the individual needs and access conditions of the recipients of accessible communication.

This handbook examines and critically reflects accessible communication in its interdisciplinary breadth. Current findings, proposed solutions and research desiderata are juxtaposed with reports from practitioners and users, who provide insights into how they deal with accessible communication and highlight current and future requirements and problems.

For more information, click here.

This innovative collection explores the points of contact between translation practice and ecological culture by focusing on the relationship between ecology and translation.

The volume’s point of departure is the idea that translations, like all human activities, have a relational basis. Since they depend on places and communities to which they are addressed as well as on the cultural environment which made them possible, they should be understood as situated cultural practices, governed by a particular political ecology. Through the analysis of phenomena that relate translation and ecological culture (such as the development of ecofeminism; the translation of texts on nature; translation in postcolonial contexts; the role of dialect and minority languages in literary translation and institutional language policies and the translation of texts on migration) the book offers interpretive models that contribute to the development of eco-translation. Th volume showcases a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to an emerging disciplinary field which has gained prominence at the start of the 21st century, and places special emphasis on the perspective of gender and linguistic diversity across a wide range of languages.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars in translation studies, linguistics, communication, cultural studies, and environmental humanities.

For more information, click here.

APTIS 2024 is breaking the mould and turning itself into an unconference! An unconference is a primarily discussion-based event that follows a bottom-up approach and allows attendees to engage in active conversations about topics that are pertinent to them.

We consider this format particularly pertinent for universities across APTIS and the sector. This new version of the APTIS Conference will be a space to reflect on and respond to present demands, challenges and opportunities in translator and interpreter training.

The unconference will centre on discussions about good practice, reflection on challenges and sharing strategies for seizing emerging opportunities. Activities will include engaging keynotes, dedicated poster sessions, rapid-fire presentations and a series of guided parallel discussion rooms. This combination of activities aims to maximise the opportunities for participatory engagement, sharing experiences and collaboration.

The 2024 APTIS (Un)conference will start with familiar conference-style sessions allowing participants to come together, connect and reflect on the current state of affairs. This will set the tone and stimulate attendees to respond to pressing challenges and questions in translator and interpreter training and education.

Deadline for submissions: 14 June 2024

For more information, click here.

We welcome submissions of abstracts for individual papers, posters, and panels on a broad range of topics within this year’s framework, including but not limited to:

• Technological advancements in translation and interpreting
• Culture and society in translation and interpreting
• Pedagogy and training in translation and interpreting
• Theoretical and methodological advancements in translation and interpreting
• Cognition in translation and interpreting
• Quality assessment in translation and interpreting
• Professionalisation, ethics and industry trends in translation and interpreting
• History, literature, and translation
• Audiovisual translation

Abstracts should be no more than 300 words (excluding references) and should be submitted by 20 April 2024. You can submit your abstract by email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. All abstracts will go through a blind peer-review process. Authors will be notified of acceptance by 30 April 2024. If your abstract is accepted, you will have 20 minutes for your presentation during the conference.

For more information, click here.

Guest-edited by Christophe Declercq and Gys-Walt van Egdom

The world of sports is vast, extending from grassroots events and local clubs over national venues to periodical continental or global happenings. Throughout, the gathering of people to take part in sports combines individual physical effort, the material needed to perform and – if relevant and/or needed – group acumen. Diverse practices are reflected in regulations, stipulations, practice routines, habits, training methods, coaching dynamics, competitive elements, event organisation, reporting mechanisms etc. Sports are closely linked to culture, reflecting societal values and identity. Performance in sports, at any level, becomes a platform reinforcing diverse cultural norms and forms of representation. The rules and rituals in sports embody shared beliefs, forming cultural constructs. The intersection of sports, culture, and shared beliefs, whether within disciplines, clubs, or broader events like the Commonwealth Games, African Games but also the Olympic Games, plays a crucial role in shaping collective identities and mirroring societal dynamics.

In the diverse landscape of sports, language takes on various forms, from universal and national over regional or group-based to individual and non-verbal expressions. Sports often embrace a shared lingua franca, which can be the silent language of the performance itself, the training and competition without commentary, the translanguaging sphere of code mixing and code switching, or using a shared language, which is not always English by default. The linguistic commonality is evident in the various degrees of language coexistence. Cross-language and intercultural exchanges in sports happen through translation, interpretation, mediation, journalism, and the growing use of language and translation technology.

With no real reference work for the domain of sports and translation, this special issue aims to establish exactly that. This special issue seeks to map out the cross-language processes in sport disciplines, including the interdependencies of the various roles involved, for the purpose of translating information, content and communication into a language that is not native to the respective individual athlete, the team or the discipline. The issue particularly seeks contributions that focus on translation but also acknowledges that practices from other forms of transfer – such as interpreting and mediation / liaison services – are possibly equally relevant.

This special issue therefore welcomes contributions from academic researchers, professional translators and other language professionals that cover key areas and topics regarding sports and translation including:

1. Sports terminology: the challenges and strategies involved in translating and managing sports-specific terminology and/or jargon (regulations, contracts, anti-doping…).
2. Translation in sports media: the role of translation in sports media, such as the translation of sports commentaries, interviews, press conferences, and sports news articles.
3. Translation in sports events and competitions: the translation, interpreting and mediation / liaison services provided during international sports events, but equally so less mediatised or more regional and local competition.
4. Sports-related audiovisual translation (AVT): the translation of sports broadcasts, documentaries, interviews, and other audiovisual content related to sports.
5. Translating sport-related humour and metaphor.
6. Analyses and practices of differences in gender bias, gender neutral language across languages.
7. The use of translation technologies in sports broadcasting and streaming platforms.
8. Accessibility – physical and/or linguistic – to translated sports-related information, including implications for accessibility and fan engagement across linguistic boundaries.
9. Sports literature translation: the translation of sports-related literary works, including biographies, autobiographies and novels.
10. Interdependencies and transediting: journalators reproducing and adapting content already available in other languages.
11. Transcultural aspects of sports translation: the linguistic and cultural hybridity of performance by a specific party in a setting that is linguistically and culturally different than their own.
12. Ethics and sports translation: the ethical considerations and challenges faced by translators, interpreters, mediators and liaisons in the sports domain. This can relate to accuracy, impartiality, privacy, confidentiality, and maintaining the integrity of sports events and/or athlete performances and/or specific discourse.
13. Sports localisation and marketing translation: the translation and adaptation of sports-related marketing materials, advertisements, websites, and social media content.
14. Gender and diversity in sports translation: the role of translation, interpreting and mediation/liaison in promoting gender equality and diversity in sports, i.e. the challenges and opportunities for translators in accurately representing and translating sports-related content that involves gender, LGBTQ+ issues, and cultural diversity.
15. Interdisciplinary approaches in sports translation: submissions that adopt interdisciplinary perspectives, incorporating fields such as sociology, cultural studies, linguistics, psychology, or media studies, to explore the multifaceted nature of sports translation.
16. Professionalism and non-professionalism: the role of professional or untrained translators, interpreters, mediators and/or liaisons, language professionals like editors even, who provide on-the-spot translation but also ad hoc interpreting services during press conferences, interviews, or during informal interactions involving athletes, coaches, and media representatives.
17. Blurring boundaries: the differences and overlaps between translation, interpreting and intercultural mediation in sports settings while bridging not only language barriers but also cultural gaps and facilitating understanding between athletes, media, and other stakeholders.
18. Optimal athletic performance: the role of translators and interpreters in facilitating effective communication across evidence-based approaches in sports science research.
19. Sports and social media: crossing linguistic boundaries in social media blog posts, online video contents (often fitness- or nutrition-related).
20. Translation challenges in anti-doping regulations: the translation challenges involved in rendering anti-doping regulations, policies, and guidelines into multiple languages. This also involves communication with athletes involved in anti-doping procedures and the respective anti-doping authorities.
21. Language and translation technology in sports communication: the use of translation memories, terminology databases, machine translation, artificial intelligence models and other language technologies, such speech-to-text tools, in sports communication. This also involves the benefits and limitations of these technologies in facilitating communication as well as their impact on accuracy and quality.
22. Multilingual sports websites and social media: the role of translation in creating and maintaining multilingual sports websites, social media platforms, and mobile applications.
23. Sports analytics and translation: the role of translation in sports analytics, data collection, and data-driven decision-making (such as match statistics, player profiles, and scouting reports).
24. Translation in sports historiography: the role of translation, interpreting and mediation/liaising in documenting and preserving the history of sports (archival materials, memoirs, interviews, and historical documents related to sports events, athletes, and iconic moments).
25. Translating sports as a facilitator: for promoting tourism, be it event-related or location-based, translation as the incentive for sport tourism destination.
26. Power distance: relating to how power relationships between athletes on the one hand and organisations and institutions on the other hand are realised in translated and interpreted communication. Other relationships of power are also possible.
27. Sports and agency: the active/activist role of translation and/or interpreting and/or mediation in advancing the agency of the athlete, the group or nation they represent, the discipline….
28. Sports and ergonomics: sports as an integral part of the ergonomics of a physical translator.

Deadline for abstracts: 8 June 2024

For more information, click here.

The Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities at Kaunas University of Technology together with the Lithuanian Museum of Education are organizing a scientific research conference that is aimed to discuss various aspects and issues about the rapid development of language industry and possibilities of artificial intelligence application that change the turn of scientific research, methodological approaches and, at the same time, increase the access of the society to information in native and foreign languages. 

We are cordially inviting specialists and researchers in the area of Philology, Educational Sciences, language and technologies or other to share their experience and insights and take part in resourceful discussions about the use of artificial intelligence in the research of the Lithuanian language, didactics, the impact of machine translation on language, its ethical use, postediting and other. Moreover, debating about the impact of artificial intelligence and global society on the status of the state language and its prestige is planned as well as how to increase the access to language resources of the native language and contribute to the development of information and knowledge society.   

A parallel section in the English language will be also held with interpreting into the Lithuanian language, thus, researchers from other countries are also invited to take part and share their insights about challenges of the artificial intelligence on their native languages, its impact on the global society and research results obtained. 

The conference is supported by the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language and the programme for the increase of the Lithuanian language prestige.  

The conference will take part on the 13–14th of June, 2024 at Kaunas University of Technology, the Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities (A. Mickevičiaus g. 37) and the Lithuanian Museum of Education (Vytauto pr. 52). 

Deadline for abstracts: 30 April 2024

For more information, click here.

International Journal of Chinese and English Translation & Interpreting (IJCETI) [ISSN: 2753-6149] is the first peer-reviewed international journal devoted to the T&I research, training and practice of Chinese and English language pair. It promotes a cross-fertilization among research, training and professional practice in Chinese/English T&I studies.

The journal adopts the open-access policy to promote accessibility and academic impact. It publishes two issues per annum (June and December), plus one guest-edited special issue where there is an interest. Special issue proposals are also welcome.

You are invited to submit:

• Research Article
• Reflections on Teaching Practice
• Reflections on Professional Practice
• Book Review

Submission deadline:

Full paper submission in the journal system: 30^th Apr 2024

For more information, click here.