Guest editors: Jeffrey Killman and Christopher D. Mellinger, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
The ubiquity of technology and its often-touted benefits are sources of potential friction in legal and regulatory environments where translation and interpreting activities are carried out. Concerns have surrounded its ability to influence, constrain, or alter the implementation and quality of T&I work, thereby resulting in somewhat slower adoption rates in the field. Yet despite technological advances, this trepidation may persist, given the ever-expanding range of technologies at the disposal of legal parties and translators and interpreters who enable plurilingual encounters. Additionally, socioeconomic and policy factors complicate what is currently possible, with increasing attention paid to not only which tools are used, but how, when, and why.
It is now more important than ever to investigate the impact that these technologies have in legal translation and interpreting contexts across a range of variables, including productivity and quality metrics, ergonomic and physiological measures, as well as other indicators related to language access and rights, language policy, technology adoption and use, and more. Here, we broadly consider technologies that not only have been developed specifically to aid translation and interpreting professionals (such as machine translation, translator workbenches, glossary/terminology management tools, remote interpreting platforms) but also tools that have been adapted for use in these specific contexts (such as video conferencing or telephonic technologies, tablet computers, document and data repositories, audio equipment, corpora). The performance of the technologies can and should also be the subject of investigation, to understand how they are used by legal translators and interpreters, how they might be improved, or how their implementation might differ depending on contextual variables of their use. These performance indicators are of particular importance with respect to less-resourced and minority languages, since these languages are often counted among those within the long-tail of localization and have been secondary to development efforts, while simultaneously representing an area of increasing need to facilitate language access. Conversely, more still needs to be known about how the use of technologies in legal contexts affects the communicative environment in which they are employed, including the influence on how and to what extent various parties interact and where and when multilingual communication is possible with certain technologies. Even the means by which technologies are evaluated within legal and regulatory areas require critical reflection and study, not only in relation to majoritarian languages, but also when working with less-resourced languages and their intersection with language policy and planning.
This special issue seeks to bring together a broad range of studies related to the use of technologies in legal translation and interpreting domains. Such a topic has received limited treatment to date and is relevant in a wide variety of legal domains such as legal institutions, law enforcement, corrections, private law practice, immigration, asylum, or quasi-legal settings that occur in any sector that interacts with the law, such as social services or education.
For this special issue of Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, we welcome contributions from a variety of perspectives and disciplines, including but not limited to, translation and interpreting studies, applied linguistics, information and communication technologies, legal studies, and technology studies. The issue comprises both theoretical and data-driven empirical work, or a combination thereof. While by no means exhaustive, the list of topics below would be of particular interest:
Deadline for abstracts: 1 January 2021
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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/
