Note: To those unfamiliar with the journal, Interventions is a prestigious journal of postcolonial studies edited by Robert Young (a leading scholar of postcolonialism).
The dialogue between Asia and the rest of the world continues to be decisively shaped by various processes of translation, where imported knowledge interacts with local knowledge in a dynamic way in which both are transformed to varying degrees. However, more attention has been paid to the way Anglophone and European thinking and knowledge are imported and how they transformed Asia and have reshaped and reconstructed Asian philosophy, science and politics (Needham 1954-2004; Reardon-Anderson 1991; Wright 2000; Lackner et al. 2005; Levy 2006; Jin & Liu 2009; Kang 2017). This is in line with what Said has described as the relationship between power and knowledge and how Asia is generally un-/mis-represented in the journey of concepts from Asia to the former centres of power (Said 1985), and confirms that “the West remains the ‘standard’ from which difference is measured” (Wakabayashi 2017) and that independent decolonial thinking is in urgent need now (Mignolo 2010).
Although the travel of knowledge from Asia to the West has a long history and became more vigorous since the turn of this century extending from philosophy to pop culture, the way knowledge is contested and its contestation and impact on the receiving cultures have not been seriously studied to date. For example, the Confucius Institute, a non-profit public educational organisation affiliated with the Ministry of Education of China, first established in South Korea in 2004, has now built hundreds of branches around the globe, promoting Chinese culture and language. And yet, the extent to which the activities of these institutes have challenged and negotiated local knowledges, through textual and non-textual media,has largely been ignored. Similarly, Buddhist temples and Buddhism in the West have also mediated the expansion and infiltration of Asian philosophy and teaching in countries like US and UK. The Asian film, pop culture, and TV industry, though largely targeted at domestic audiences, has grown more international in recent years, and has become an increasingly visible site of transferring knowledge from Asia to the rest of the world. Although all of these would not have been possible without linguistic mediation, the role of translation in this process has seriously been underestimated. Without paying sufficient attention to the process of linguistic mediation through translation and interpreting that made this reverse pattern of influence possible, we can not explain the complexities of knowledge exchange between Asia and its many Others.
In terms of knowledge exchange within Asia, some studies have examined at how some key Asian concepts such as Yin and Yang (Kim 2001), Five Elements (Hicks et al. 2011), Confucianism (Rowbotham 1945; Creel 1960; Yang 1987; David & Ames 1987; Ames 2011) and Taoism (Csikszentmihalvi & Ivanhoe 1999; Gao 2014) have been received in other cultural traditions. Knowledge exchange between China and Japan (Shen, 1994; Wataru, 2000) and the interpretation and appropriation of Buddhist texts across India, China, Japan, and Korea (de Bary,1972; Liu and Shao,1992) has also been documented. However, most studies have focused on synchronic analyses, thus neglecting the potential for diachronic analysis, even as such mediation and exchange continue within the boundary of a single country across time. For example, some imported knowledge or philosophy once considered canonical was at times delegitimized or suppressed later in history, as evidenced in Buddhism in China in the early 1960s after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. The same phenomena can be seen in Japan in the Meiji era, and in Korea in the Chosun Dynasty when neo-Confucianism became dominant (e.g. Shim 1999).
Overall, most scholars have tended to provide purely historical and cultural analyses of patterns of exchange, ignoring the role of language as the prime mediator of culture, in spite of the fact that mediation and knowledge transfer occur across specific linguistic arena, perhaps more aggressively in this globalized era. In a similar vein, scant attention has been paid to the significant role of translation and that of translators as active agents in digital space. With the rise of digital technologies, the complex process of linguistic mediation in the movement of knowledge across cultural boundaries has not received much attention, although it has become fast-paced, more dynamic and complex, with multifaceted contributions from various agents and individuals online. In this ‘post-truth’ era, where emotion and personal belief have become more appealing than facts, this poses all types of ethical issues in relation to any activities involving knowledge transfer, including translation and interpreting.
This proposed special issue therefore attempts to explore the dissemination, contestation and transformation of knowledge and concepts as they travel within and beyond Asia, with particular emphasis on one aspect of this exchange: the flow of knowledge from Asia to the rest of the world through translation, and the way western primacy is sometimes asserted and challenged as Asian concepts enter other spaces through translation.
Potential themes of interest include but are not restricted to the following list. Articles that provide general discussions or discuss specific cases on one of the themes are both welcome.
1. The negotiation and transformation of key concepts in Asian classic texts such as The Analects, Book of Rites and Book of Changes as they travelled to the other parts of the world through translation
2. The negotiation and contestation of key concepts in Traditional Chinese Medicine, such as Yin and Yang, Five Elements and Primordial Qi, in translations into other languages
3. The impact of Asian traditional medicine on the Western medicine and the health care systems
4. The reconfiguration and redefinition of Asian key concepts by collective intelligence formed through various online/digital platforms, forums and social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Weibo, and Weixin within and beyond Asia
5. The extent to which Asian modernity has transformed and hybridised Western modernity
6. The role of Wikipedia in the mediation of knowledge between Asia and the rest of the world
7. The role of volunteer translation and collective intelligence in effecting a change in the direction of knowledge transfer between Asia and rest of the world
8. The extent to which the translation of Asian literature, e.g. Japanese Haiku, has challenged literary traditions in other parts of the world
Important Dates
2019/01/15 Deadline for submission of abstracts (300 words)
2019/03/15 Selected contributors notified of acceptance of abstracts
2019/07/30 Deadline for submission of papers
2019/10/31 Confirmation of acceptance of papers
2020/01/31 Deadline for submission of final versions of papers
2020 Publication date
Guest Editors
Dr Yifan Zhu (Jiao Tong Baker Centre for Translation and Intercultural studies, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, aliciazhu@sjtu.edu.cn)
Dr Kyung Hye Kim (Jiao Tong Baker Centre for Translation and Intercultural studies, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, kyunghye.kim@sjtu.edu.cn)
Abstracts of 300 words should be sent by email to the guest editors at aliciazhu@sjtu.edu.cn and kyunghye.kim@sjtu.edu.cn by 15 January 2019.
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
