Since the Machine Translation (MT) community became aware of the potential of Neural Machine Translation (NMT), an increasing number of MT providers and research groups have focused their energies and resources on developing NMT systems. More and more NMT systems continue to go into production, providing consumers of raw MT with output that shows a jump in fluency when compared with statistical MT (SMT; Bentivogli et al. 2017; Toral and Sánchez-Cartagena 2017). However, it is not yet clear how translators can best work with NMT output, whether there are advantages to using NMT as a productivity tool, or what specific challenges are involved in post-editing NMT output with respect to SMT. Studies (such as Castilho et al. 2017) showed minor improvements in productivity and technical effort, relative to the improved scores using automatic metrics and human fluency evaluation.
This special issue seeks to publish studies that investigate how users work with NMT output, in order to understand the repercussions of the large-scale move to NMT on translators and post-editors.
Areas of special interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
* Post-editing techniques and approaches specific to NMT output
* Usability studies
* Users and interactive NMT (see Peris and Casacuberta 2018)
* Controlled languages designed to optimise the result of NMT
* Error taxonomies to evaluate and improve NMT systems (Klubička et al., 2017)
* Studies of cognitive effort (possibly using eye-tracking or pause analysis)
* Studies of technical and temporal effort in MT interaction
* Hybrid forms of NMT (combined with rule-based or statistical approaches)
* Integrating user feedback in NMT systems (see Turchi et al. 2017)
* Controlling terminology in NMT systems
IMPORTANT DATES:
June 15, 2018: Paper submission due
July 30, 2018: Notification of acceptance
October 10, 2018: Camera ready paper due
Link for CFP: http://www.springer.com/computer/ai/journal/10590/PSE...
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Authors should follow the "Instructions for Authors" available on the journal website:
Go to https://link.springer.com/journal/10590
Click on ‘Instructions for authors’ on the right
Expand ‘Text’ and you will see a Latex template
Length of paper is determined by total of submissions received. We recommend around 15 pages.
Papers should be submitted online directly on the MT journal's submission website: http://www.editorialmanager.com/coat/default.asp and select this special issue
Call for PapersSpecial Issue of The Translator and Interpreter Trainer (2028)Theme: (Re)Conceptualising User Agency in Audiovisual Translation Education.Editors: Jorge Díaz-Cintas, Lisi Liang, Hui Wang and Serenella Massidda. Topics may include:the (re)conceptualisation of “user agency” in the context of non-professional and/or fanbased AVT training;online users’ motivations for exerting agency in AI-powered AVT and its impact on the theory and practice of AVT training;online users’ creativity in specific domains of AVT, such as danmu subtitling, fansubbing/fandubbing, game localisation, access services, and voice synthesis technologies for media localisation and its impact on the theory and practice of AVT training;empirical studies focusing on the activation of user agency through verbal and/or nonverbal channels in online and offline AVT training, supported by robust research methods and with high potential for innovation in AVT pedagogy;the negotiation of agency between AI platform developers, users and educators in AVT training;the extent to which the exercise of user agency bridges or extends the boundaries between professional and non-professional, human and AI translation in AVT training;pedagogical, technological, and ethical implications of user agency for AVT training;the impact of AI-based AVT paradigm and user agency on the established translation training paradigm in AVTSubmission informationSubmission of proposals: 1 July 2026 (title and abstract of approx. 500 words, references included)Acceptance of submitted abstracts: 1 August 2026.Submission of full manuscripts: 1 February 2027 (up to 8,000 words, including references and notes).Acceptance of papers: October 2027Publication: Late Autumn/Winter 2028.More details: https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issues/reconceptualising-user-agency-in-audiovisual-translation-education/
Call for Papers:Symposium: Translating Conflict: Language, Power, and the City.Location: Utrecht University — Languages in the City Series.Date: 22–23 April 2027Topics: Political and institutional translation: invisibility, neutrality, strategic mistranslation, asymmetrical communication.Conflict, post-conflict, humanitarian settings: diplomacy, peace negotiations, legal processes, ethics and positionality of translators, reconciliation.Resistance and public space: translation as activism, urban linguistic landscapes, social-media wars of meaning.Limits and exclusions: untranslatability, silencing, exclusion.Technology: AI-assisted translation in high-stakes settings.Exile and migration: translation, memory, and cultural continuity.Key dates:Submission deadline: 30/06/2026Notification: ~30/09/2026Symposium: 22–23 April 2027More details: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7451657930900361216-SP6Q?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAADAHFiwBi8jC4KbsaPPxHxBkCAx_UoukeoQ
Call for PapersEvent: the 16th International Symposium on Bilingualism.Place and date: University of Saskatchewan, Canada, June 14-18, 2027. Thems and topics:Bi-multilingual speech and communicationCognitive, neuro- and psycholinguisticsChild and adolescent bi-multilingual developmentAdult bi-multilingual developmentEducation and pedagogy HJHeritage, immigrant, regional and other minority languagesIndigenous languagesTranslation and InterpretingSociolinguistics and Sociology of languageSpeech-language pathology; Health CommunicationAbstract submission deadline: 1 October 2026. More details: https://conferences.usask.ca/isb16/
Call for Abstracts This is a call for an edited volume on 'Translators at Work in Periodicals: Agency, Mediation, and Cultural Power'. Edited by Ivana Hostová and Eva SpišiakováSuggested topics:• periodicals as infrastructures of literary, cultural, and intellectual mediation• translators, editors, reviewers, and other mediators shaping periodical cultures• translators’ multiple roles, including editing, curating, annotating, and framing• distributed, relational, or contested agency in periodical cultures• translator agency, editorial strategy, and activism• translation in peripheral, semi-peripheral, or politically unstable ecologies• periodicals as spaces of cultural resistance, ideological struggle, or symbolic negotiation• paratextual framing, editorial positioning, and the politics of selection• material and medial conditions of translation, including format, layout, page space, seriality, and multimodality• circulation of minoritized, marginalized, or non-canonical literatures• periodicals and the transfer of theory, philosophy, science, or political ideas• translation in periodicals and the making of national, regional, or transnational cultures• microhistorical or biographical studies of translators and editors• actor-network, social-network, bibliographic, or database-driven approaches• methodological reflections on blending close reading with large-scale or digitally assisted analysisDeadline for abstracts: 31 December 2026Deadline for full chapters: 31 July 2028Expected publication: 2029Full info: https://ktr.ff.ukf.sk/en/research/call-for-abstracts-translators-at-work-in-periodicals-agency-mediation-and-cultural-power/
Call for Papers:Conference: Global North and Global South Perspectives on Literature, Linguistics, and Translation.Organised by the Research Centre for Irish Studies (RCIS).Date: 7-8 June 2026. Main themes: Literature;Irish Studies;Linguistics;Translation, Power and Knowledge Circulation. Submission deadline: 30 April 2026More info: https://old.bue.edu.eg/global-north-and-global-south-perspectives-on-literature-linguistics-and-translation-conference-7-8-june-2026/
