Special issue of Languages: "New Trends, Challenges and Discoveries in the Translation of Multilingualism in Fiction", edited by Prof. Dr. Patrick Zabalbeascoa

The past decade has seen a substantial rise in research publications focused more and more on the issue of translation tasks and projects having to tackle with texts that are not limited to a single language, dialect, or sociolect (Beseghi 2017, Ranzato and Zanotti 2018, Pérez and de Higes 2019, Rebane and Junkerjürgen 2019, to mention but a few). In other words, they display, and play with, the inclusion of words or phrases that do not belong to the standard language norm of the main language the text is composed in. The decade(s) before that required that such studies be introduced by a justification of the importance or relevance of language variation within texts (e.g., Sternberg 1981, Delabastita and Grutman 2005, Bleichenbacher 2008, Corrius and Zabalbeascoa 2011). This is no longer necessary nor is it accurate to claim that there is a woeful lack of studies on this topic. So, the question now is how far have we come exactly in our progress towards including this kind of sensitivity in the mainstream of translation studies, both theoretically and in the applied domain of professional practice and academic training?

How is (yet another) dichotomy—of foreign vs. non-foreign—called into question by multilingual phenomena, such as creoles and code-switching, which are not necessarily based on the same factors as national borders, especially if we take into account multilingual communities and co-official languages within a given country? 

This Special Issue aims to address this question by accepting submissions that deal with it from different angles such as the ones suggested here but not limited to them:

• Are translators proficient in all the languages of a multilingual fictional text (e.g., a novel or television series), and do they need to be?
• How is multilingualism in fiction an element of an author’s style and how is multilingualism dealt with accordingly?
• What strategies are used by translators in rendering scripted multilingualism and how they are affected by the habitual strategies involved in translation practices?
• How have stereotypes (of character portrayal, conversational patterns or topics, or situations or events) developed and changed regarding the strategic use of foreign languages, dialects and non-native use of languages?
• What are the practices and trends of using and rendering invented languages (e.g., as spoken by aliens from other planets or fantasy worlds)?
• Are translations becoming more multilingual or linguistically diverse and, if so, by what means?
• What genres and text-types are more affected by multilingualism, more problematic or innovative in translation?
• In what aspects can / must we revise traditional theoretical approaches in the light of discoveries made in the area of multilingual translation? What about less traditional approaches, such as taking LGBTiQ+ studies/factors into account, or racial discourse, etc.?
• To what extent is lingua franca a factor, and directionality, as in the distinction between from English vs. into English, for instance, or between languages that are not widespread on a global level?
• Are there significant differences depending on whether the texts are written or audiovisual, i.e., mode and multimodality?
• What are the relations between translation, multilingualism, pseudotranslations, creoles, code-switching, slang, non-native speech and other manifestations of sociolinguistic variation?
• What historical periods can be meaningfully sketched both in the use of multilingualism in film, television, and video on demand, and the way they were and have been translated? What are the key characteristics of each period and the key factors of change from one period to another?
• How have the researchers’ interests in the field of translation studies been sparked, what is the focus of their research and how has it evolved? What other aspects of translation has multilingualism been related to?
• How is multilingualism tackled in machine translation, artificial intelligence, templates for translators, and post-editing practices?

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 12 October 2022

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