Call for Abstracts: Multilingualism, Lingua Franca or What?

 CULTUS 10 : Multilingualism, Lingua Franca or What? (2^nd call)

Call for Abstracts: 20 December, 2016

Call for papers: 1 April, 2017

Submission info at: www.cultusjournal.com

Cultus 10 will begin with a conversation with renowned linguist, comparative literature and translation theorist Professor Susan Bassnett. The issue will focus on multilingual situations, and how the language issue is resolved. How tenable is the solution and what are the consequences? This brings politics and power into the question, as well as the short and long term costs of the choices made. 

Indeed, as we send out this call for papers, so we begin to take in the consequences of Britain’s decision to leave the EU. Almost immediately the following headline appeared, “English could be banned as an official language of the EU (Daily Telegraph, 28/06/2016). This Cultus issue, then, focusses on the realities concerning use of language(s) to communicate, wherever it be: in the institutions, the workplace, the university (with a strong focus outside of the UK on internationalization of its teaching) or the social services. 

One solution, discussed in previous Cultus issues is the use of machine translation and interpretation to reduce costs. It was noted, for example, that the Australian Department of Health has started to use Google Translate to convey health information in a range of languages "an un-nuanced and unsophisticated view of human communication that devalues not only the work of professional interpreters and translators, but also the texts being communicated and the audience receiving them” (Liddicoat and Hale, 2015). What evidence is there that this is not only true but will actually increase costs?

With regard to language service provision for immigrants, other cost-cutting measures are fraught with similarly worrying consequences, such as the UK’s disastrous outsourcing of interpreter resources in the UK and the Dutch government’s decision to review, if not end, funding of healthcare interpreting in the Netherlands. What language rights should or do non-native speakers have, and what are the consequences?  

We welcome papers that address issues related to the following themes with a focus on translation:

-       Multilingualism power and empowerment

-       Politics and power in language

-       Use of a lingua franca in professional encounters

-       Professional practice, discourse and the new media

-       The role of machine translation in professional practice

Contributions must be sent to: submission@cultusjournal.com

Cultus: The journal of intercultural of communication and mediation:

double-blind review, MLA/IATIS/TSB indexed ; “A” quality rated by ANVUR

EDITORS: David Katan (University of Salento, Italy) Cinzia Spinzi (University of Palermo, Italy)