CfP: Translaboration - Exploring Collaboration in Translation and Translation in Collaboration

This proposed special issue posits the blended concept of ‘translaboration’ as an experimental category and “generic space” (Fauconnier and Turner 1998) in which translation and collaboration can be brought into open conceptual play with one another. ‘Translaboration,’ originally coined by a group of transdisciplinary researchers at the University of Westminster, London, in 2015 (cf. Alfer 2015, Alfer, in press), allows scholars both within and outside of Translation Studies to explore, articulate, and put to the test connections, comparisons, and contact zones between translation and collaboration, and to reveal the potential inherent in aligning these two notions in both theory and practice.

As a new investigative space, the ‘translab’ thus functions as a transdisciplinary site where a number of core components of (col)laboration, of which process, structure, purpose, interpersonal communication and trust are among the most salient (Gray 1989; Wood and Gray 1991), can not only be shown to have a bearing on our conceptualisations of translation but also reveal themselves as inherently translational.

This special issue is based on the successful one-day workshop organised by the Translab group from the University of Westminster in September 2016 and will explore the concept of translaboration both from within the discipline of Translation Studies and from outside of it.

We welcome proposals for conceptual papers as well as case studies and empirical research contributions that address some of the following questions or aspects of translaboration (though please note that this is not intended as an exhaustive list of possible topics):

Translation as collaboration

o How can translation be considered, conceptualised, and described as a collaborative activity?

o What role do new technologies play in both facilitating and potentially hampering collaborative translation processes and what is their impact on power differentials and questions of ownership of translational processes?

o What impact do intermediaries, contractual constraints, and/or highly regulated work processes have on translation as a collaborative practice?

o What questions do collaborative translation practices raise in relation to translation quality and/or translational ethics?

Collaboration as translation

o How can collaboration be considered, conceptualised, and described as a translational activity?

o What is the role of language(s) in the creation and structuration of collaborative communities of practice?

o How can core components of collaboration, such as process, structure, purpose, interpersonal communication and trust, be shown to have a bearing on both the concept and the practices of interlingual translation?

o How can concepts and practices of interlingual translation enrich (our understanding of) collaborative knowledge-generation, knowledge-transfer, and/or decision-making processes?

Translaboration as a mode(l) of inter-/transdisciplinary research

o What kinds of collaborations are or should be taking place between Translation Studies and other disciplines or fields of research, and what conceptual coordinates are necessary to bring such collaborations to fruition?

o How can the investigative category of ‘translaboration’ contribute to lifting applications of the ‘translation’ concept in other disciplines beyond a merely metaphorical plane?

o How can a translaborative framework articulate a more systematic and active acknowledgement of the history of Translation Studies’ own many intersections with other disciplines?

To propose a paper, please send your abstract (700-800 words excluding references) to both editors of the Special Issue:

Alexa Alfer (A.Alfer01@westminster.ac.uk)

Cornelia Zwischenberger (cornelia.zwischenberger@univie.ac.at)

For further details, please visit: https://www.benjamins.com/series/target/cfp_target_32.pdf