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 PapersThis is a Call for papers to be submitted to the transLogos Translation Studies Journal, Vo. 9, Issue 1 (June 2026).This issue addresses a wide range of topics, including Translation Theory, Translation Criticism, History of Translation and Translation Studies, Applied Translation, Machine Translation, Computer Technologies in Translation, Translator Training, Technical Writing, as well as interdisciplinary issues in Translation Studies.You can submit your articles to translogos@diye.com.tr. Submission deadline: April 20, 2026.More details: https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/translogos/page/6185
Call for Papers:This is a Call to submit abstracts to a Special Issue of the Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts journal on Making Multilingualism Visible: Visual Methods in Translanguaging and Translation Pedagogies.Editors: Vander Tavares, Ge Song, Liang Cao, and Angel M. Y. Lin.Topics:Visual and multimodal research methodsArts-based and participatory approachesMultilingual identities and repertoiresMultimodal and creative pedagogiesVisual ethnography and digital storytellingMethodological and ethical reflectionsSubmission deadline: May 15, 2026. More details: https://benjamins.com/series/ttmc/callforpapers.pdf
Call for Papers: This is a Call for a conference on 'Who is Responsible for the Archives? An Interdisciplinary Approach to Ethics in a Digital Age'Aston University in Birmingham, UK (and online).Friday 26 June 2026.Themes:Ethics as resilience and environmental sustainabilityEthics as a moral and philosophical issueEthics as a form of social justiceSubmission deadline: 13 April 2026 to AUACConference2026@aston.ac.ukMore information: https://padlet.com/dturner2_23/aston-university-archives-centre-auac-ugu5rgn68k5u52av/wish/Ae2Ravo86dYYQnz4
Call for Papers:This is a Call to submit papers to the 2nd International Conference on Field Research on Translation and Interpreting 2027 (FIRE-T1 2).Tampere University, 3–5 March 2027.Themes and topics:workplace communication, social and socio-technical interaction, coordination, and collaborationmultimodality in T&I practices, processes, and productsthe role of the body, (cognitive) artifacts, and cultural practices in T&I(changing) dynamics of contemporary workplaces; hybridisation of practices and tasks in workplace environments; paraprofessional T&I practicesempirical and conceptual contributions grounded in situated cognitive perspectives such as distributed, extended, embodied, enacted, embedded, and affective cognitionempirical and conceptual contributions grounded in sociological perspectives, e.g., affect and emotions in T&I, practice theory, professional roles and (self-)images, professionals’ agencyapplications and discussions of (micro-)ethnographic and/or ethnomethodological approaches (such as conversation/multimodal interaction analysis) in field research on T&Iinnovative and/or synergetic theoretical and methodological approaches and frameworksthe use of (new) technologies in T&I practicesSubmission deadline: 31 August 2026.More details: https://events.tuni.fi/fireti2027/call-for-papers/
Call for Papers:This is a Call for submitting papers to the 2nd EATPA Symposium on East Asian Translation Pedagogy.Venue and date: University of Toronto, 18-19 June 2027Themes: AI technology and translation pedagogy (navigating across the human-tech divide)Fiction and non-fiction texts in translator training (satisfying industry needs?)Inter-institutional collaboration in translation pedagogy (e.g.: COIL)Language proficiencies for translation classrooms (e.g. are minimum levels required?)Translation feedback & evaluation criteria (e.g. how do we and how should we grade?)Multilingual translation classrooms (a boon for collaborative translation practice?)Multimodal texts and translating beyond words (e.g.: art-spaces and heritage sites)Political ideology and translation pedagogy (e.g. polarisation in cross-linguistic settings)Theory and practice in translator training (e.g. how to effectively connect the two)Abstract submission deadline: 30 September 2026More details: https://easiantpa.leeds.ac.uk/2nd-eatpa-symposium-on-east-asian-translation-pedagogy/
