The Research Centre for Ambient Intelligence and Accessibility CAIAC at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona is pleased to announce the 4th International Symposium on Live Subtitling: Live subtitling with respeaking and other respeaking applications, to be held on March 12th 2013. This symposium will be the fourth in a series of symposiums on live subtitling and respeaking technology. Its predecessors were held at Forli, Barcelona and Antwerp respectively (see: www.respeaking.net). The symposium will bring together specialists from academia, software development, broadcasting and the service industry as well as consumers and others interested in cutting-edge developments in media accessibility.
Now consolidated as the preferred means of providing live subtitles on TV, respeaking is currently facing a number of challenges as European broadcasters struggle with new legislation and subtitling quotas as well as critical cuts in their budgets. These challenges will shape the future of this relatively young translation mode and test its aim to make audiovisual media accessible for viewers with hearing loss. In countries where respeaking has been used for over a decade and where the quantity of live subtitling is no longer a problem, the issue of quality has become increasingly important, as has the application of respeaking to other contexts such as public events and classrooms. In those countries where respeaking is not yet being used or not used consistently, the further development of speech recognition technology plays a fundamental role. Generally speaking, technological progress is bound to have a significant impact on the nature of respeaking in all contexts, not least with the potential introduction of speaker-independent speech recognition and automatic subtitling. Research in this area is more pertinent than ever. We therefore welcome contributions on the following topics as well as related issues:
- Accuracy and delay in respeaking
- Respeaking in contexts outside TV broadcasting
- Respeaker training
- Software development and training
- Speaker-independent speech recognition and automatic subtitling
- Reception research
- Other areas related to respeaking
Call for Papers:Symposium: Multilingual Archives, New Perspectives: China and the Sinophone World at the End of the Cold WarOrganiser: ALTER research groupLocation: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), BarcelonaDate: Mid-May 2027Abstract Submission Deadline: 30 June 2026Limited travel subsidies may be available, with priority given to early-career participants with limited access to funding.More info: https://blogs.uoc.edu/alter/symposium-multilingual-archives-new-perspectives/
Call for Papers:Conference: International Writing Workshops in Jordan for Translation StudiesAbout:The conference programme is designed for early-career scholars with a strong commitment to publishing high-quality research in translation and interpreting who feel that additional training and support would help them achieve this goal. The aim is for all participants to have an article draft ready for submission to an international journal by April 2028.What’s included?Travel, accommodation and subsistence costs to attend the workshops are fully coveredVisiting researcher status at Queen’s University Belfast, July 2026 – April 2028. This provides free access to online library resources.Mentoring (August 2026-April 2028). Participants will have three mentoring meetings with either Professor Baker, Professor Harding or Dr Sadler to give individualised support and feedback over the course of the programme.Workshop 1 – Research design and planning (February 2027). Topics will include: what international journals in translation studies are looking for and how they assess submissions; the publication process; key issues in research design and methodology; emerging areas of research in translation and interpreting researchWorkshop 2 – Refining your work for submission and wider academic skills development (August 2027). Topics will include: refining drafts from ‘nearly finished’ to ‘finished’; performing and responding to peer review; applying for research grants and collaborating internationallyOnline symposium (March 2028) – participants will be invited to share their work in an online symposium to enable final refinement before submission and receive feedback on presentation skills.You may apply by completing and submitting the following form at https://lnkd.in/e8zdeibq by 17:00 GMT Saturday 20 June 2026.More details: https://www.monabaker.org/2026/05/13/call-for-participants-international-writing-workshops-in-jordan-for-translation-studies/
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/
