Call for Papers for book on 'Using Technologies for Creative-Text Translation'

Edited by: James Hadley, Kristiina Taivalkoski-Shilov, Carlos S. C. Teixeira, and Antonio Toral

Many of the translation tools in use today were initially designed to cater for technical, repetitive texts. This is still their main niche 25 years after the first versions of these tools appeared. Computer-aided translation (CAT) and Machine translation (MT) were long regarded as unsuitable for the translation of creative texts, claimed to be the last bastion of human translation. Creative-text translation in this context refers to the translation of texts from one language to another where the texts themselves pivot broadly on the human creativity employed in their production. They rely heavily on aesthetics for their existence, more than texts that aim to bring about an outcome directly, as in the case of technical texts. Such creative texts include, but are not limited to:

fictional works, such as novels, short stories, poems, plays, and comics;

non-fictional texts, such as philosophical works, didactic books, and self-help books;

performative works, such as songs, speeches, films, TV shows, and computer games; and

promotional texts, such as commercials, advertisements, and propaganda. The end of the second decade of the twenty-first century appears pivotal to a shift in machine-assisted literary translation. MT has experienced a sea change over the last five years, thanks to the adoption of methods based on deep neural networks, to the point that there are now even claims of some MT systems reaching parity with human translators. In turn, human translators,including translators of creative texts, have benefited from advances in technology, through which internet search engines and online dictionaries and encyclopedias have made information mining significantly easier than in previous decades and centuries. While many translators of creative texts continue to shun translation technology or assume it is not relevant to them, others already make heavy use of CAT tools. These positive consequences of the technologization of translation in general are paving the way for a spread and development of technologies to support the translation of creative texts in particular. This book will embody the state of the art of translation technologies in the field of creative-text translation. At the same time, it will reflect on literary translators’ attitudes towards translation technology, and ethical aspects, as well as recent trends and technical developments in the field.

The book invites chapters of no more than 8,000 words (all inclusive) addressing key questions,that include, but are not limited to:

To what extent are translators of creative texts already making use of technology intheir work?

What are the specific issues pertaining to literature and other types of creative textsthat prove difficult for MT systems today?

What challenges do translators face when using technology for translating creativetexts?

What are the attitudes of translators to the use of technology in the translation ofcreative texts?

How do readers respond to literary works translated using machines?

Apart from MT, what other kinds of computer-based tools could be used by literarytranslators?

What are the ecological and ethical implications of increasing literary translators’

reliance on technology in their work?

How should copyright issues be taken into account in the use of MT in literarytranslation?

In the first instance, abstracts are sought from parties interested in contributing to the book.

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 1 June 2020

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