International Conference
Protest and Dissent in Translation and Culture
organized by
Department of Anglophone Cultures and Literatures
University of Social Sciences and Humanities (SWPS)
Warsaw, 11-13 May 2017
CALL FOR PAPERS
Though dissent and protest seem to be strongly linked with politics and with political actions, the range of their senses and uses is much broader and, as Amit Chaudhuri has noticed, dissent is inscribed in the very idea of the literary which, "in its resistance to interpretation, is a peculiar species of dissent." The common ground of protest and dissent is, very generally, a disagreement with what is, and an expression of the necessity of some change which seems to be standing behind the very gestures of dissension or protestation. This expression may take various forms and make use of various modalities coming from different cultures, states and places. Protest and dissent may sometimes be individual gestures, as seems to be the case with Melville's Bartleby's famous "I would prefer not to", though the outdoor reading of "Bartleby, the Scrivener" organized by Occupy Wall Street supporters at Zuccotti Park in New York in November 2011 was an event which renarrated the story as "resonating quite well with the mission of the OWS protest" because it not only questioned the assumed hierarchy and expressed the strength of passive resistance, but also because it was set on Wall Street. Dominance and resistance seem to be inevitably speaking through various narratives and stories we live by, the stories which are narrated and renarrated, framed and reframed in different social, political and language communities and realities, through different media and means, and translated into different contexts and languages. The notion of framing, Mona Baker claims in "Reframing Conflict in Translation", allows us "to see translational choices not merely as local linguistic challenges but as contributing directly to the narratives that shape our social world". The ways in which we name, rename, or label events, groups of people, even places have implications in the real world and may help us realize that the world is not made up of universally accepted norms, but that we also partake in negotiating its construction, its changing meanings and senses. Protest and dissent do not necessarily have to be an incentive to a revolutionary change, to a shift of the dominant, but may testify to there being what Edward Said called simply "something beyond the reach of dominating systems", something which limits power and "hobbles" it also through translatological resistance to finality.
We invite papers looking at protest and dissent from different theoretical and methodological perspectives (Translation Studies, Literary Criticism, Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Discourse Analysis, Feminist and Gender Studies, Queer Theory, Philosophy, Sociology, History of Ideas, Colonial and Postcolonial Studies), papers not only theorizing protest and dissent but also papers engaged in broadly understood disagreement, disapproval, critique or resistance, potentials of conflict management and/or the educational and pedagogical dimensions of dissent. We also invite papers showing how narratives of dissent and protest (novels, poems, stories, histories, films, news, press articles, protest songs ...) are renarrated/translated in different social and political contexts and the ways in which translators' choices may be oriented or disoriented. If Jacques Rancière is right saying that "the essence of politics is the manifestation of dissensus as the presence of two worlds in one", then translation, as an inevitably divided activity, may be a kind of discourse which reveals that oneness may be one of those ideas which harbour consensual dominance and the end of politics, the end of dissensual plurality and the beginning of the police which, in different disguises, finds these days its way to the streets of numerous places of the world.
We suggest the following, broad, thematic areas as issues for disputes and highly probable clashes of ideas:
Rhetoric(s) of protest and dissent
Narrating/renarrating protest and dissent
Dissent and protest in intercultural contexts
Dissent and protest in the culture of global/local politics
Translating protest
Translating dissent
Translation-power-resistance
Empowerment and translation
Resisting power/power of resistance
Discourses of dissent and protest
Discursive strategies of protest and dissent
Discursive analyses of protest and dissent
Pedagogy/ies of dissent
Manipulating protest and dissent
Protest and persuasion
Conflict/protest/dissent
Translating conflict
Literature(s) of protest
Protest/dissent and media
Protest/attack/defense
Protesters/dissenters as friends
Protester/dissenters as enemies
Good guys and bad guys
Protest and activism
Activating/de-activating protest and dissent
Global dissents and/in translation
Solidarity in translation
Translating collectives/collective translations
Keynote speakers:
Professor Mona Baker (University of Manchester)
Professor Ben Dorfman (Aalborg University)
Professor Hanna Komorowska (University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw)
Professor Tadeusz Rachwał (University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw)
Venue: University of Social Sciences and Humanities, ul. Chodakowska 19/31, Warsaw, Poland.
Proposals for 20-minute papers (ca 250 words) should be sent to dissent@swps.edu.pl by 20 February 2017. We also encourage panel proposals (comprised of 3 to 4 papers, and an additional 100-150 words explaining how they are interlinked in addressing the panel theme).
Notification of acceptance will be sent by 28 February 2017.
The deadline for registration and payment of the conference fee: 31 March 2017.
The conference fee is 550 PLN | 130 EUR | 140 USD for all participants.
Conference organizers: Dr. Agnieszka Pantuchowicz and Dr. Anna Warso.
Conference website: https://portal.swps.edu.pl/web/protest-and-dissent-in-translation-and-culture
The international conference Translation Beyond Human Languages and Cultures in Times of Ecological Crises welcomes abstract submissions for the event taking place on 12–13 November 2026 at Yıldız Technical University in Istanbul, Türkiye. Researchers are invited to submit their proposals to beyondhumanconf@gmail.com. SUBMISSIONSEach paper presentation will be allotted 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion.Submissions for individual presentations should include:- An abstract of no more than 300 words,- A short bionote including name, affiliation, and email address,- Up to five keywords indicating the subject, methodology, and theoretical framework(s).Submissions are open until 01 April 2026.WORKING LANGUAGESAll proposals must be submitted in French or English for peer review by the Scientific Committee. Interpreting between French and English may be offered depending on available resources. Questions and discussions during the conference may take place in both languages.KEYNOTE SPEAKERSMichael Cronin (Trinity College, Dublin) Kobus Marais (University of the Free State, Bloemfontein) Şebnem Susam-Saraeva (University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh)CONFERENCE FEESConference fees will be split into two categories: € 120 regular fee € 90 reduced fee for postgraduate studentsDetails regarding the conference will be shared in due course via the following link: https://avesis.yildiz.edu.tr/researchteamsite/biodemocraticpractices
The Department of Translation, Terminology and Interpreting Studies of the University of Malta, the Graduate Institute of Interpreting and Translation of Shanghai International Studies University and the Department of Theory of Translation and Comparative Linguistics of the National University of Uzbekistan are organizing an international conference in ‘Indirect Translation: A Two-Arched Bridge Between Cultures’ in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on 15-17 April 2026. For further information see the call for papers at https://www.um.edu.mt/media/um/docs/faculties/arts/translation/CallforPapersTashkent2026_FinalUM.pdf
Association of Programmes in Translation and Interpreting UK and IrelandWe are delighted to announce that the 2026 APTIS conference will take place in Wales for the first time, being jointly hosted by Cardiff University and Swansea University. The conference will take place from 15-17 April 2026 in Cardiff, with an optional ‘cultural’ day in Swansea on Saturday 18 April. We welcome abstract submissions for traditional papers, book launches, workshops, and students’ flash talks. Please note that the deadline for proposal is 15th December 2025. For more information and to submit an abstract proposal, please go to our website: https://www.aptis-translation-interpreting.com/aptis-2026
Guest editors:Anna Strowe (University of Manchester)Richard Mansell (University of Exeter)Helle V. Dam (Aarhus University)This special issue focuses on the normative expectations around translators, including norms around translator identity, as well as around hiring or selection processes and understandings of competence or expertise. By applying the concept of norms to the area of translators and translatorship, we hope to connect conversations about the multiple intersecting systems of values that underpin those norms, often silently, ranging from beliefs about education, language skill, and qualification, to understandings of professionalism, economics, and translation itself, while continuing to explore the dimensions and qualities of translator identity and presentation. The norms themselves are at the centre of the topic, along with the values from which they emerge and with which they engage, but as with investigation of other types of norms, they must be extrapolated from available forms of data, for example texts by and about translators, or trends in hiring or training.As scholarship in translation studies has broadened, first from linguistic approaches to cultural and sociological approaches, and then to a focus on the translator, we have increasingly come to understand that we must view translation as a socially-situated practice or set of practices, carried out by agents whose behaviour and choices are influenced by a variety of external as well as internal factors. A large part of the focus has been on using this perspective to better understand the choices that are made in translating – that is, the specific textual decisions made by translators – but interest has also grown significantly in questions that move beyond textual choices and comparative textual analysis. There are significant threads of scholarship for example on the cultural or structural aspects of non-professional translation and interpreting (e.g. Antonini et al. 2017; Pérez-González and Susam-Saraeva 2012), the relationships between translation and activism (e.g. Boéri 2024; Gould and Tahmasebian 2020; Tymoczko 2010), and the impact of emerging technologies and digital spaces on perceptions of translatorship (e.g. Zhang et al. 2024), among many others.Norms have long been a productive tool for translation studies, but existing articulations and uses have focused on the translational norms that we understand as governing micro- and macro-level translation choices. Meylaerts (2008) discusses individual translators and their identities and profiles in relation to the norms of translation and the profession, following Simeoni (1998) in connecting these to Bourdieu’s notion of habitus. However, behaviour around translator identities and characteristics, such as hiring or self-presentation, can also be examined in terms of norms. In a recent article, Strowe (2024) suggests considering translator selection as norm-driven could help us better recognize the values and decisions around translator recruitment and deconstruct assumptions around translator choice and identity.These norms are reflected in patterns in hiring trends, the translation industry, job advertisements, and translators’ websites or blogs, for example, but they also inform a variety of aspects of how translatorship is constructed. The self-image and presentation or representation of translators is informed by beliefs about what responsibilities, tasks, and capacities are involved in being a translator, areas that intersect both with culturally constructed notions of what constitutes and delimits translation itself (see Tymoczko 2007) and with what forms of social, cultural, and legal understandings we have about various agents’ forms of responsibility for texts (see Bantinaki 2020; Pym 2011).The special issue will collect both empirical studies that explore areas related to translator norms, and articles exploring either the theorization of translator norms or the methodological possibilities of this kind of work. Potential questions to explore include (but are not limited to) the following:How might we theorize norms around translator identity, self-presentation, hiring etc.?What kinds of translator norms can be identified within the LSP industry or in other contexts in which translation is done?What differences are there in translator norms across different contexts or domains, and how do these differences affect practices of translation?How can we understand projections of translator image as a form of representation of translator norm? • How are translator norms changing in the face of developments in digital technology?What kinds of research methods facilitate the exploration of translator norms?This is an open call, and the editors particularly welcome proposals from researchers whose workintersects with translator identity or self-presentation;looks at industry expectations around translators and hiring practices;seeks to describe and delimit the spaces of human agency and identity around translation amidst the growing presence of AI.Submission Abstracts of up to 300 words should be submitted by November 24 to Anna Strowe by email (anna.strowe@manchester.ac.uk). Once invited to do so by the editors, selected authors will be asked to submit an article of between 7000 and 8000 words, including references, through the journal’s online portal no later than May 30, 2026.A full schedule of dates plus the bibliography is available here: https://benjamins.com/series/ts/callforpapers.pdf
Life Writing and Translation Thursday 18 – Friday 19 June 2026 University of Geneva Abstract of no more than 250 words (bibliography excluded) in English or French are now invited and should be submitted to lifewritingtranslation@unige.ch by 16 November 2025. Notifications of acceptance will be distributed at the beginning of February 2026. Please find more information on abstracts on the Conference website: https://www.humanmovement.cam.ac.uk/events/translating-conflict-and-refuge-language-displacement-and-politics-representation
