Translation Studies Network of Ireland Conference: University of Galway | 25-26 April 2024

We are delighted to host the 4th annual conference of the Translation Studies Network of Ireland at the University of Galway, on April 25-26, 2024. This year, the theme of the conference is “Translation and Creativity,” which mirrors our city’s proud tradition of combining grass roots creativity with the delivery of sophisticated arts and creative spectacles. 

The way in which translation has intersected with creativity ranges from the Romantic stereotype of the creator as individual genius to the ultimate frontier of deep learning and machine translation. In this conference we wish to explore linguistic, cultural, modal, disciplinary, multimedia and performative creativity as it translates between forms, languages, people, approaches and media.

If just before the turn of the millennium translation was seen as mainly dependent on the distance from the original, as well as on print as the medium of choice, it has steadily acquired a more dialogic and re-creational dimension, becoming an integral part of the creative writing process to the point to which it can even create new literature in computer-mediated environments. With more attention paid to re-writing processes and sociolinguistic factors, the “creative wave” in translation studies has encompassed processes such as self-translation, re-translation, multimodality, hybridity and artistic expression. Finally, and without exhausting the wealth of areas in which translators’ creativity plays a seminal role, migration in the 21^st century and other significant population displacements have increased our awareness of the importance of translation for new community building and have drastically reshaped the dynamics between norms and creativity.

In this conference we welcome any contributions introducing interdisciplinary approaches or mixed methods to study translation and creativity, and we also welcome presentations which showcase creative practice in translation. A non-exhaustive list of possible topics for presentations includes:

• Translation and/as creative writing
• Translation, creative media and multimodality
• Creativity in translation processes/workflows
• Machine translation and creativity
• Interdisciplinarity as creative approach
• Creativity and interpreting
• Translation as an art form
• Translation, creativity and environment
• Minority approaches to translation as creativity
• Beyond (in)visibility: claiming translators’ identity as creative individuals
• Playfulness in translation
• Translation, transcreation and adaptation in multimodal contexts
• Translation, adaptation and subversion across different art forms
• Creative approaches to translation research methodology
• Translation as creative approach in resilient community building
• Creativity in volunteer or professional settings
• Creativity and translation shift: novelty, acceptability, fluency and flexibility
• Socio-political agendas promoted or challenged by creative translational acts

Deadline for abstracts: 20 Jan 2024

For more information, click here.