CFP: InVerbis Special Issue (2018) TRANSLATING THE MARGIN: LOST VOICES IN THE AESTHETIC DISCOURSE
Guest Editors: Alessandra Rizzo (University of Palermo) and Karen Seago (City, University of London) Copy-editor: Maila Enea (University of Roehampton)
With extensive work mobility, mass migration and globalisation, translation and interpretation in cultural institutions, digital contexts and open public spaces have assumed a pivotal role in the negotiation of a wide range of lingua-cultural transactions across a variety of media, genres and platforms. Cultural and linguistic fluidity has encouraged the growth of scenarios of multilingual and multicultural encounters, where translating and languaging practices in facilitating communication across cultures and languages have become central but they too often still occupy marginal positions. This is particularly the case when we go beyond the purely linguistic role of translation and we look at it as a communicative bridging device or a highly culturally- and linguistically-specific form of knowledge translation. This special issue aims at investigating and presenting concrete examples of translation as a linguistic and cultural expedient that reveals migrant and refugee experiences as counternarratives. The objective is to demonstrate, on the one hand, how translation is involved in the production and dissemination of counter-narratives aiming at the re-telling of experiences of displacement as a result of conflict, persecution, and famine. And, on the other hand, how the migrant presence in the receiving country acts as a stimulus to the creation of an international network of filmmakers, musicians, artists and activists who are capturing and responding to individual stories of struggle and success in the migrant and refugee communities. Migration and change are indissolubly linked, not only for the migrant but also at the point of arrival, generating changing contexts, the reshaping of cultural landscapes and artistic contacts in the visual and performing arts. Artistic interventions such as installations, museum exhibitions, video art, documentaries and theatrical performances engage and interrogate the experience and impact of migration. Maya Ramsay’s art exhibition Countless, Porto M in Lampedusa, Yasmin Fedda’s documentary Queens of Syria, Sue Clayton’s documentaries Hamedullah. The Road home and Calais children: A case to answer, Kevin McElvaney’s #RefugeeCamerasproject, Gabriele Del Grande et al.’s On the Bride’s Side, Francesco Rosi’s Fire at Sea, to list but a few, articulate counter-narratives to the dominant image of “the Migrant” constructed in the media. Most of these stories are narrated through the arts, including ink jet prints, sewn works of text on canvas (e.g. Odisseo Arriving Alone), multichannel sound installation of conversations (e.g. Nel Mezzo del Mezzo, Arte Contemporanea nel Mediterraneo), moments shared, and stories retold through English translations and interpretations (e.g. individual and collective experiences in refugee camps and centres in Calais, Lampedusa, Idomeni). In these environments of marginality and diversity, translation emerges as a force in the mediation of counter-narratives and extends its massive potential for intervention in the aesthetic and
cultural fields to the political sphere. Translation as the practice of language and culture transfer interprets migrant stories, renders labels and panels in migrant museums and art exhibitions, and subtitles the voice of migrants in documentaries and videos, where lost voices can speak from the edge, gain visibility and become “subjects of power”. The aim of this volume is to shed light on the role of translation in the depiction of the margin from a metaphorical viewpoint, but also from a practical perspective, in order to point out how marginal realities shift from liminal spaces into niche places of arrival. Contributions are invited to rethink translation as a form of interpretation, adaptation, de- and re-contextualization, transcreation and recreation of popular and artistic genres that give voice to underrepresented languages and cultures.
The principal areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following topics:
-Aesthetic forms in contexts of crisis (past and present) -Marginality and liminality, urban spaces, centres -Creative cultural industries vs. media discourse -Films, documentaries, TV programmes, web blogs, video art -Museum texts, installations, exhibitions -Popular genre-specific translation strategies and constraints -Translation as re-narration, re-creation, re-voicing -Translation as a social activity, difference and power - Translating regionalised voices, dialects, minority languages -Fansubbing, amateur translation, abusive translation, activism, creative subtitling -Prosumer, self-mediated translation vs. mass-mediated translation -Visual and verbal diversity in language variables -Linguistic and cultural issues in the interpretation of art texts.
Deadlines
15 September 2017 Submission of proposal (approximately 700 words excluding references) and short bio-bibliographical profile to:
Alessandra Rizzo (University of Palermo), alessandra.rizzo@unipa.it Karen Seago (City University London), karen.Seago1@city.ac.uk
30 September 2017 Notification of accepted / rejected proposals
1 December 2017 Submission of article to guest editors
2 March 2018 Feedback from peer review to authors/revision
31 March 2018 Submission of revised articles to guest editors
Final acceptance of articles is subject to double blind peer-review process.
June 2018 Publication
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
APTIS25 Online Conference at the UCL Centre for Translation Studies (3–4 November 2025) “Better together: how can industry and academia collaborate to empower future language professionals?” The UCL Centre for Translation Studies (CenTraS) is looking forward to hosting the APTIS25 online conference. The APTIS25 conference (“Better together: how can industry and academia collaborate to empower future language professionals?”) will take place on 3–4 November 2025 via Zoom Webinar. We encourage submissions from both academic and industry speakers. Please see our Call for Contributions as well as the Types of Contributions section to know more about the contributions that APTIS25 will be welcoming. If you would like to contribute to APTIS25 by presenting a talk or a roundtable, please visit the Submit a Proposal section, where you will find the link to send your abstract. Please kindly refer to the Key Dates to know more about submission and registration deadlines. https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/aptis25ucl
APTIS25 Online Conference at the UCL Centre for Translation Studies (3–4 November 2025)“Better together: how can industry and academia collaborate to empower future language professionals?”The UCL Centre for Translation Studies (CenTraS) is looking forward to hosting the APTIS25 online conference. The APTIS25 conference (“Better together: how can industry and academia collaborate to empower future language professionals?”) will take place on 3–4 November 2025 via Zoom Webinar.We encourage submissions from both academic and industry speakers. Please see our Call for Contributions as well as the Types of Contributions section to know more about the contributions that APTIS25 will be welcoming. If you would like to contribute to APTIS25 by presenting a talk or a roundtable, please visit the Submit a Proposal section, where you will find the link to send your abstract.Please kindly refer to the Key Dates to know more about submission and registration deadlines.https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/aptis25ucl
Hieronymus is the first Croatian journal dedicated exclusively to publishing research and professional articles in the field of translation studies and terminology. The journal has the following key goals: (1) to promote translation studies and terminology in Croatia and the broader region, where these two disciplines are not always recognized; and (2) to enhance local researchers’ visibility in the international translation studies community. For the Research Section of the journal, we welcome empirical studies with clear goals and well-defined methodology in any area of translation studies or terminology. In addition, papers presenting and discussing any area of professional translation or terminological practice are invited for the Professional section. Contributions by early career researchers (pre-Ph.D. or recently obtaining a Ph.D.) as well as young professionals are gladly accepted. In both sections of the journal, contributors from Croatia and the broader region are particularly welcome, in line with the journal’s mission outlined above. The preferred languages are English and Croatian. We accept submissions throughout the year, but for consideration in issue 12 (to be published in December 2025), submissions need to be sent by 30 March 2025 at the latest. Submissions will first be considered by the Editorial Team and, if they pass this initial screening, they will be forwarded for a double-blind peer review. Authors whose papers are accepted for publication must certify that their work has not been previously published. All papers are published in Open Access under the Creative Commons 4.0 open license. For information on citation style and formatting, please consult our Contributors page and Submission Guidelines. Please send your contributions to the following addresses: knikoli@ffzg.unizg.hr sveselic@ffzg.unizg.hr If you have any queries regarding this call, please do not hesitate to contact us
