Guest editors:
Deborah Giustini & María Jiménez-Andrés
Language rights encompass the right to choose and use one’s language in various spheres, including legal, educational, and media contexts (De Varennes 2007). Globally, minority language speakers and their associated language rights face threats from factors like national language dominance, assimilation, and colonialism, leading to declining usage (Romaine 2007). In particular, the rapid advancements in information and communication technology (ICT) and artificial intelligence (AI) are significantly impacting language rights and multilingual societies.
Language policy and planning increasingly attend to the role of technology in the revitalization of endangered languages and more widely, in the governmental promotion of multilingualism and social justice (Gazzola et al. 2023). International organizations such as at the EU level are often at the forefront of preserving language rights as fundamental rights of people and essential components of their cultural heritage. Initiatives like the Digital Language Equality and European Language Equality projects aim to support languages for them to prosper in the digital age (Gaspari et al. 2023). International organizations, NGOs, and humanitarian groups as well prioritize managing communication and preserving linguistic diversity through technologies to enhance information dissemination in crisis settings (Tesseur 2018; O’Brien et al. 2018; Federici & O’Brien 2019; Jiménez-Andrés & Orero 2022).
However, digital services remain unevenly accessible to vulnerable communities like migrants and refugees, reliant on supporting organizations (Jiménez-Andrés & Orero 2022), and facing obstacles related to digital literacy, potentially exacerbating social exclusion. Additionally, NGOs and humanitarian aid groups encounter limited adoption of translation and interpreting technologies (Rico 2019). Machine translation is often reserved for donor and official publications (Hunt et al. 2019), with limited support for minority languages since it is primarily designed for commercial and organizational use (Nurminen & Koponen 2020). Although many organizations endorse video remote interpreting (VRI) as a cost-effective solution, technical infrastructure limitations constrain use in humanitarian settings (James et al. 2022). Furthermore, technology use in organizations raises ethical and quality concerns, notably seen in the increasing reliance on AI-powered translations in asylum and immigration systems (Giustini 2024a, 2024b).
Recent developments in the field of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and large language models (LLMs) could aggravate the already disadvantaged situation of certain languages. LLMs often perform badly in non-standard languages, yet they play a growing role in life-altering decision-making settings, such as justice, asylum, and healthcare. Trained on human language, LLMs perpetuate racial and gender biases (Wang, Rubinstein & Cohn 2022), impacting accountability and necessary corrective measures as machine-made mistakes remain opaque.
This issue relates closely to tech companies’ role in language rights. Current LLMs are mostly property of a few tech giants (most of them from the Global North), raising ethical concerns about AI resource concentration, transparency, and open science criteria (van Dis et al. 2023). Developers prioritize LLM applications for languages with more reliable performance, perpetuating lower model performativity and exacerbating under-representation of languages and social groups from digital spaces (Weidinger et al. 2021; Rozado 2023). While LLMs can level language barriers, they may be exploited by high-income countries and privileged groups. In the Global South, tech firms based in the Global North are leveraging economic disparities to create products that further entrench Western hegemonic dominance in AI, and thus digital colonialism (Healy 2023, 4). Unequal internet access and hardware requirements also mean that LLM benefits are seldom accessible to all (Sambasivan & Holbrook 2018).
Finally, technological advancements in remote interpreting (Fantinuoli 2018; Giustini 2022), computer-assisted interpreting (Fantinuoli 2023), gig translation/interpreting models (Fırat 2021; Giustini forthcoming), AI/LLM training (Healy 2013), and machine translation (Rothwell et al. 2023) have raised questions about fair employment rights in the language industry. These changes also led to a re-evaluation of working conditions, roles, and identities, enhancing efficiency and flexibility but requiring professionals to adapt to machine integration, with implications for skills, labor pricing, and job satisfaction.
Against this backdrop, the special issue illuminates the critical need to address concerns at the intersection of language rights and technology, especially as we delve into the complex challenges faced by vulnerable communities across various contexts. Furthermore, it emphasizes the call for increased research to unravel the intricate societal, political, humanitarian, and organizational factors that amplify language-related power imbalances, specifically in the context of technology’s evolving landscape.
Just. Journal of Language Rights and Minorities, Revista de Drets Lingüístics i Minories is seeking submissions for a special issue on the topic of language rights and technology. The special issue aims to propel a debate on the dynamics and challenges surrounding the intersection of language rights and technology, exploring how advancements in (but not limited to) artificial intelligence, machine translation, machine interpreting, and digital communication impact linguistic diversity and accessibility, as well as language communities and policies, in our increasingly interconnected world.
Researchers are invited to submit articles in English, Spanish, or Catalan. Articles are expected to represent research across a wide range of disciplines, as well as inter- and transdisciplinary studies. The special issue aims to foster more interdisciplinary discussion among scholars from translation and interpreting studies, social sciences, political sciences, development studies, human-computer interaction, and science and technology studies, among other fields. We welcome any article that contributes to our understanding of the crossroads between language rights and technology. In preparing their submission, authors may wish to consider and address the following guiding questions:
Organizations, technologies, and vulnerable communities:
Ethical and quality concerns in technology use:
Tech companies and language rights:
Impact on language professionals:
Language, human rights, and technologies:
AI and linguistic communities:
Digital linguistic landscapes:
Just. Journal of Language Rights & Minorities, Revista de Drets Lingüístics i Minories is a journal dedicated to disseminating scholarship on the protection, enforcement, and promotion of the rights of linguistic minorities as well as related themes arising from the confluence of language, the social dynamics of dominance and oppression, and the law. Interested authors are invited to send 500- to 700-word proposals (excluding references) and inquiries directly to the guest editors: Deborah Giustini (dgiustini@hbku.edu.qa) and María Jiménez-Andrés (mandres@hbku.edu.qa) by May 1st, 2024. Please include a brief 150-word bionote about the authors, their affiliations and contact details in a separate file. All abstracts and manuscripts should use the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) for both citation (https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-2.html) and drafting. A summary of the drafting CMS guidelines is available in Just’s author guidelines (https://ojs.uv.es/index.php/JUST/about/submissions). Authors of abstracts that are accepted for consideration will be invited to submit a full manuscript that is between 6,000 and 8,000 words in length (exclusive of abstract and references but including footnotes). Every manuscript will be submitted to a double-blind peer review that includes at least two referees.
For more information, click here.
APTIS25 Online Conference at the UCL Centre for Translation Studies (3–4 November 2025) “Better together: how can industry and academia collaborate to empower future language professionals?” The UCL Centre for Translation Studies (CenTraS) is looking forward to hosting the APTIS25 online conference. The APTIS25 conference (“Better together: how can industry and academia collaborate to empower future language professionals?”) will take place on 3–4 November 2025 via Zoom Webinar. We encourage submissions from both academic and industry speakers. Please see our Call for Contributions as well as the Types of Contributions section to know more about the contributions that APTIS25 will be welcoming. If you would like to contribute to APTIS25 by presenting a talk or a roundtable, please visit the Submit a Proposal section, where you will find the link to send your abstract. Please kindly refer to the Key Dates to know more about submission and registration deadlines. https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/aptis25ucl
APTIS25 Online Conference at the UCL Centre for Translation Studies (3–4 November 2025)“Better together: how can industry and academia collaborate to empower future language professionals?”The UCL Centre for Translation Studies (CenTraS) is looking forward to hosting the APTIS25 online conference. The APTIS25 conference (“Better together: how can industry and academia collaborate to empower future language professionals?”) will take place on 3–4 November 2025 via Zoom Webinar.We encourage submissions from both academic and industry speakers. Please see our Call for Contributions as well as the Types of Contributions section to know more about the contributions that APTIS25 will be welcoming. If you would like to contribute to APTIS25 by presenting a talk or a roundtable, please visit the Submit a Proposal section, where you will find the link to send your abstract.Please kindly refer to the Key Dates to know more about submission and registration deadlines.https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/aptis25ucl
Hieronymus is the first Croatian journal dedicated exclusively to publishing research and professional articles in the field of translation studies and terminology. The journal has the following key goals: (1) to promote translation studies and terminology in Croatia and the broader region, where these two disciplines are not always recognized; and (2) to enhance local researchers’ visibility in the international translation studies community. For the Research Section of the journal, we welcome empirical studies with clear goals and well-defined methodology in any area of translation studies or terminology. In addition, papers presenting and discussing any area of professional translation or terminological practice are invited for the Professional section. Contributions by early career researchers (pre-Ph.D. or recently obtaining a Ph.D.) as well as young professionals are gladly accepted. In both sections of the journal, contributors from Croatia and the broader region are particularly welcome, in line with the journal’s mission outlined above. The preferred languages are English and Croatian. We accept submissions throughout the year, but for consideration in issue 12 (to be published in December 2025), submissions need to be sent by 30 March 2025 at the latest. Submissions will first be considered by the Editorial Team and, if they pass this initial screening, they will be forwarded for a double-blind peer review. Authors whose papers are accepted for publication must certify that their work has not been previously published. All papers are published in Open Access under the Creative Commons 4.0 open license. For information on citation style and formatting, please consult our Contributors page and Submission Guidelines. Please send your contributions to the following addresses: knikoli@ffzg.unizg.hr sveselic@ffzg.unizg.hr If you have any queries regarding this call, please do not hesitate to contact us
Call for Contributions: " Translation as a means of resistance, resilience and activism, the case of Palestine and the broader Arab region” Activism and Translation are at the core of recent research. For example, Shwaikh (2020) published a chapter on Gaza Strip highlighting the importance of speaking a different language in a war-zone country and emphasising the power of witness and of translating the voices of the oppressed. Mona Baker pioneered the movement of translators’ activism in the Arabic-speaking region through her seminal publications (2006a, 2006b, 2010, 2016a, 2016b, 2018, 2020). Other scholars followed in her wake such as, inter alia, Doerr (2018), Evans and Fernández (2018) Fernández (2020a), Valdeón and Calafat (2020), and Tesseur (2022). Similarly, other scholars highlighted the social and political weight translation can exert on shaping and reshaping the worldviews in an activist spirit such as in the works of Juli Boéri (2010, 2019, 2020). Hence, the expression the ‘activist turn’ of translation studies was coined, driving scholarly interest to an understudied, yet monumental, area of research (Wolf, 2012). Indeed, activist translators and interpreters amplify oppressed voices and make them audible for all stakeholders through language and translation (Baker, 2013). Translators, with their voice-giving ability, are vested with the power of influencing political and social change by introducing new knowledge and ideologies through their translations. This translator’s visibility, manifested via the deliberate inclusion of personal worldviews and politics in translations, can breed change at any societal level, challenge dominant narratives and mobilise translation receptors (Tymoczko, 2010). In the global era of Web 2.0/Translation 2.0 and the rise of social media, translation has shifted into a more social activity bringing about new community or crowdsourcing-based concepts into the realm of translation such as online translation, concurrent translation, collaborative translation, volunteer translation, fansubbing and fandubbing, and many other forms of amateur and professional web-based translation (O'Hagan, 2009; O'brien, 2011a; O'Hagan, 2011; Brabham, 2013; Jiménez-Crespo, 2017; Krimat, 2021, to name a few). By the same token, web 2.0 technologies have revolutionised activist translation through amplifying voices and facilitating real-time online collaboration that are enabled via the easy and hard-to-monitor content access, creation and dissemination. The Arab Spring is a prime example where the impact of language and translation, magnified by Web 2.0 and its social mobilisation, had a significant contribution to ideation and shaping the Arab Spring’s narratives (Baker, 2016; Morgner & Aldreabi, 2020). This has also brought about a qualitative change in the Arabic language itself as a result of globalization, creating and framing, therefore, the concept of “e-Arabic.” (Daoudi, 2011a; Daoudi, 2011b; Daoudi & Federici, 2011; Daoudi, 2017). With the semantic web or Web 3.0 gaining momentum with the ubiquity of AI technologies, activism, in its broader sense, is very likely to reach a new dimension with AI generative capabilities. Activist translation will be no exception though this area remains scholarly uncharted and holds considerable prospects and novel research pathways. Against this rich background, we are pleased to announce a call for contributions to an upcoming edited volume on the theme of “Translation as a means of resistance, resilience and activism, the case of Palestine and the broader Arab region.” This book aims to delve, synchronically or diachronically, into the multifaceted role of translation, including volunteer translation, in empowering activist movements, fostering resilience, and resisting oppression in the Arab region while focusing on Palestinian struggle for justice and survival. Scope and Themes This volume seeks to explore how translation acts as a versatile tool for resistance and resilience, enabling the dissemination of narratives, fighting propaganda, fostering intercultural understanding, counteracting dehumanization and demonization campaigns such as in the case of Palestinians, and challenging dominant biased discourses. We invite scholars, translators, activists, and practitioners to submit proposals on topics including, but not limited to: Feminist translation in the midst of resistance: the role of feminist translation in highlighting the suffering of Arab women in wars and commending the efforts and endeavours pertaining to political activism concerned with defending women and upholding their legitimate rights, especially Palestinian women who are suffering the atrocities of war. The role of translation in acting as witness to atrocities, shaping resistance and supporting resilience: examining how translation has been used to amplify oppressed voices and support resistance movements. Case studies of translation projects that have supported activism related to the Arab region: specific examples of successful translation initiatives that have furthered Palestinian, and broader Arab, causes. Volunteer translation and its impact on activism and community engagement: analysing the contributions of volunteer translators in activist movements and their impact on local and global communities. Translation strategies for conveying local oppressed voices and narratives to global audiences: effective methods and strategies for translating the texts of the oppressed to reach a wider audience. Ethical considerations and challenges in translating politically sensitive texts: navigating the ethical dilemmas and challenges faced by translators working with politically charged materials. The impact of translation on international solidarity with just causes, particularly, the Palestinian cause: exploring how translation fosters international support and solidarity with just struggles such as the Palestinian struggle for justice and freedom. Historical perspectives on translation, resistance, and resilience in the Palestinian context: Historical analysis of translation efforts in the context of Palestinian resistance. The intersection of translation, media, and activism in the narratives of struggle: examining how translation intersects with media and activism to shape the narratives of struggle. Challenges faced by volunteer translators in conflict zones: discussing the unique challenges and risks volunteer translators encounter when working in politically sensitive and conflict-ridden areas. Translation as a form of cultural resistance and preservation for the oppressed: exploring how translation helps preserve oppressed culture and resist cultural erasure. Crowdsourced and volunteer translation networks and their role in social and political activism: detailed studies on the structure, functioning, and impact of volunteer translation networks dedicated to activism under different forms such audio-visual translation and fandubbing. The use of translation in the digital age to mobilize support for just causes: examining the role of digital platforms and social media in translating and spreading oppressed facts and repressed narratives. Web 2.0 and activist translation: exploring the use of Web 2.0 technologies such as social media, blogs, wikis, and collaborative platforms in activist translation efforts. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine translation in activism: exploring the current and/or prospective role and impact of AI-driven translation tools in activism, including both benefits and challenges. The working languages are Arabic, French and English. Submission Guidelines We welcome contributions from various disciplines, including Translation Studies, Cultural Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Political Science, Media Studies, and related fields. Both theoretical and empirical studies are encouraged. Submissions should be original and not previously published. Proposal Submission Please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words outlining the scope and main arguments of your proposed chapter, along with a brief bio (100-150 words) to n.krimat@univ-boumerdes.dz By the 30th /09/24. Timeline Abstract Submission Deadline: 30th /09/24 Notification of Acceptance: 30th /10/24 Full Chapter Submission: 30th /04/25 Expected Publication Date: 31st /12/25 Contact Information For any queries or further information, please contact the editors at [email address]. We look forward to receiving your proposals and to the opportunity to collaboratively explore the powerful intersection of translation, resistance, resilience, activism, and volunteerism in the context of Palestine and the broader Arab region. Sincerely, Co-editors Dr. Anissa Daoudi University of Birmingham, UK a.daoudi@bham.ac.uk Dr. Noureddine Krimat University of Boumerdes, Algeria n.krimat@univ-boumerdes.dz
Contributions are welcome on topics such as the translation policy of the GDR as a state as well as of individual organizations in the GDR, examining the extent to which the political situation during the GDR’s existence led to an increase in translation activities; the motives behind the translation policies to be observed are just as crucial as the effects on a translation culture. Following on from this is the question of relations between the GDR and other countries or institutions that were established and maintained through translation. This does not only include bilateral relations with the FRG, for example, but also institutional networks such as the involvement in (inter)national professional associations and organizations. Furthermore, we encourage an examination of the actual practice of translation, as it forms a significant part of translational culture and can be understood within diverse networks.We invite you to submit contributions on these topics or related issues:Translation policy of the GDR and/or institutions in the GDR: What was translated? Who were the individuals involved in the translation process? What were the motives behind the translation policies? What effects did these policies have on the institutions and professional practice? To what extent were they influenced by the political situation?Translational relations and networks of the GDR and/or institutions in the GDR: What translational relations existed with other states and/or institutions on a national and international level? How did these relationships develop? What roles did these relations and networks play?Translation practice: What were the working conditions of translators and interpreters and how were they influenced? What role did professional organizations play in shaping professional practices?Investigating translation cultures always also includes insights derived from case studies, especially in the sense that they serve as a starting point for further questions and ultimately contribute to the abstraction of findings, enabling researchers to make more general statements about the respective translation culture.Please send your abstracts of no more than 300 words to hanna.blum@uni-graz.at by 31 July. The abstracts can be written in English or German. There is no conference fee for presenters. The conference will be held on site. Please note that the details are subject to change without notice.
