Calls for papers

Editors:Kobus MaraisReine MeylaertsMaud Gonne 1. ConceptualizationSince the emergence of complexity thinking, scholars from the natural and social sciences as well as thehumanities are renewing efforts to construct a unified framework that would unite all scholarly activity.The work of Terrence Deacon (2013), at the interface of (at least) physics, chemistry, biology, neurology,cognitive science, semiotics, anthropology and philosophy, is a great, though not the only, example of thiskind of work. It is becoming clear that this paradigm of complex relational and process thinking means,among others, that the relationships between fields of study are more important than the differences betweenthem. Deacon’s contribution, for instance, lies not (only) in original findings in any of the fields in whichhe works but (also) in the ways in which he relates bodies of knowledge to one another. An example wouldbe his links between a theory of work (physics) and a theory of information (cybernetics) by means of atheory of meaning (semiotics).This line of thinking indeed situates semiotics and biosemiotics in the centre of the abovementioned debate(also see Hoffmeyer, 2008; Kauffman, 2012).In semiotics, Susan Petrilli’s (2003) thought-provoking collection covers a wide variety of chapters focusedon translation, which she conceptualizes as semiotic process. Her work made it possible to link biosemioticsand semiotics through the notion of “translation”, which is what we aim to explore further in this book.Michael Cronin’s work in translation studies links up with the above through his use of the notion of“ecology”. To apprehend interconnectedness and vulnerability in the age of the Anthropocene, his workchallenges text-oriented and linear approaches while engaging in eco-translational thinking. He callstradosphere all translation systems on the planet, all the ways in which information circulates betweenliving and non-living organisms and is translated into a language or a code that can be processed orunderstood by the receiving entity (Cronin, 2017, p. 71). The aptness of Cronin’s work on ecology finds apartner in that of Bruno Latour, whose development of a sociology of translation (2005) responds to theneed to reconnect the social and natural worlds and to account for the multiple connections that make whathe calls the ‘social’.In an effort further to work out the implications of this new way of thinking, Marais (2019, p. 120)conceptualized translation in terms of “negentropic semiotic work performed by the application ofconstraints on the semiotic process” (see also Kress 2013). Building on Peirce, namely that the meaning ofa sign is its translation into another sign, translation is defined as a process that entails semiotic work doneby constraining semiotic possibilities. This conceptualization allows for the study of all forms of meaningmaking, i.e. translation, under a single conceptual framework, but it also allows for a unified ecologicalview for both the sciences and the humanities. “The long standing distinction between the human and socialsciences and the natural and physical sciences is no longer tenable in a world where we cannot remainindifferent to the more than human” (Cronin, 2017, p. 3).These kind of approaches open ample possibilities for a dialogue between Translation Studies, Semioticsand Biosemiotics, exploring translation not only in linguistic and anthropocentric terms, but as a semioticprocess that can take place in and between all (living) organisms – human and non-human organic andinorganic, material and immaterial alike. Not only the translation of Hamlet into French, or of oral speechinto subtitles, but also communication between dolphins or between a dog and its master, or moving a statuefrom one place to another, or rewatching a film are translation processes. However, many of theimplications of this line of thinking still need to be explored, and if the references to Deacon, Petrilli andCronin holds, this should be done in an interdisciplinary way that tests, transgresses and transformsscholarly boundaries.Based on the conference that took place in August 2021, we call for papers for an edited volume in whichwe hope to draw together biosemioticians, semioticians and translation studies scholars to discuss theinterdisciplinary relations between these fields and the implications of these relations for the study of socialand cultural reality as emerging from both matter and mind. We invite colleagues who presented at theconference as well as those who did not to submit either theoretical or data-driven or mixed proposals,reflecting on the complexity of social-cultural emergence as a translation process. Some of the topics thatcolleagues could consider would be the following: • Is translation, as semiotic work and process, indeed able to link all of the biological world,including humans, with the non-living world in one ecology, and if so how?• What conceptual constructs in each of the three fields are relevant for the other fields, and how?• Could the fields learn methodological and epistemological lessons from one another? If so, whatwould these entail?• Could collaborative scholarship enhance an understanding of social-cultural emergence, and if so,what would this scholarship entail?• How, if at all, does entropy and negentropy play out differently in social-cultural systemscompared to biological and/or physical systems?• How does social-cultural emergence differ from biological and even physical emergence? Systemsthinking tends to ignore differences like the intentionality of biological agents in contrast tophysical agents. Thus, if one were to consider the possibility that intention has causal effect, howdoes one factor intention into thinking about complex adaptive systems? Please send abstracts of between 300 and 500 words to jmarais@ufs.ac.za Deadline for submission of abstracts: 1 April 2022

JRHE, the Journal of Research in Higher Education published by Babeș-Bolyai University, the QUALITAS Centre, invites submissions for the forthcoming special issue on the research, pedagogy and practice of translation and interpretation, due out in September 2022. JRHE is a peer-reviewed, open access journal http://jrehe.reviste.ubbcluj.ro/, that seeks to address and factor in the major challenges educators, researchers, trainers and trainers of trainers in the field  are faced with in these accelerated global times. As well as the changing professional communication patterns and policies manifesting themselves at this juncture in pandemic times, the volume sets out to engage the transformative forces impacting these academic subjects and the global language industry in the age of digital literacies and remote teaching. Fostering transdisciplinarity and multilingualism at the highest professional level in the language industry par excellence, the Department of Applied Modern Languages at BBU – a pioneering department in the country, marking its 30th anniversary in Higher Education in Romania–  commissions state-of-the art contributions that cover the terrain of translation and interpretation studies. Submission topics may include, but are not limited to: Advanced technology applications in the pedagogies of CI and TS; Multimodality in T & I (audiovisuality, video-gaming, subtitling et al); Remote interpreting, I&T teaching and re-speaking; The cultural and ‘geo’ turn in translation studies; Posthumanities and translation and interpretation practice; Translation and interpretation and their territorial politics/policies Deadline for abstracts: 30 June 2022 For more information, click here

Paper abstracts should be submitted to Sophia Melanson Ricciardone (smelan1@yorku.ca) and Margherita Zanoletti (margherita.zanoletti@unicatt.it) by March 31, 2022. The submission should include: • Name/Affiliation/e-mail of participant(s), • Paper Title,• Abstract (200-250 words) • and Keywords (up to 5). Please kindly note that the deadline to receive abstracts is 31 March 2022. The call can also be accessed at https://www.semioticsworld.com/submissions/ We look forward to hearing from you and receiving your submission, and to meeting up at this exciting conference.Please feel free to share this call among your research colleagues. Best wishes, Panel ConvenorsSusan Petrilli, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy susan.petrilli@gmail.com Meng Ji, The University of Sydney, New South Wales christine.ji@sydney.edu.au Sophia Melanson-Ricciardone, York University, Toronto, Canada smelan1@yorku.caMargherita Zanoletti, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy margherita.zanoletti@unicatt.it Emotions, Translation and Encountering the Other This panel invites participators to contribute with their reflections on the signs – verbal and nonverbal – of signifying, communicating and translating emotions in society today. In a global semiotic framework, we propose an interdisciplinary and intercultural approach to the question of the translation/translatability of the languages of the emotions, whether a question of intralingual, interlingual or intersemiotic translation. An ever more multicultural globalised world amplifies our understanding of the range, complexity and experience of human emotions, thus of their role in shaping knowledge, belief and values and in defining the politics of human behaviour and social practice. Understanding emotions of diverse peoples and communities represents an integral, increasingly important part of cultural literacy in our globalised world. Contributions are welcome from different fields and disciplines in dialogue – from the sign sciences to the life sciences –, as thematized by general semiotics on a theoretical level and developed by global semiotics on the practical. Contributions are welcome relating to such areas, among others, as Literary Studies and the Arts, The Task of Translators and Interpreters, Semiotics, Linguistics and Philosophy of Language, Gender Studies, Multiculturalism & Migration, Audio-Visual Design and Digital Culture, Media and Technology, Philosophy and History, Translation Training/Education, Legal studies and Ethics, Anthropology, sociology, psychology, Biosemiotics and the Health Sciences, Cognitive Sciences and Neurosemiotics. Keywords: translation, emotion, semiotic, human behaviour, social practice

The Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (UPC) is pleased to announce that the CIUTI International Conference will take place for the first time in Lima and Latin America in 2022. CIUTI gathers a group of universities distinguished for their outstanding quality in research and translation and interpreting training. National and regional processes designed to ensure access to information and public services leverage translation and interpreting (T&I) to promote citizens' rights. The state’s fight against marginalization and poverty and promotion of fundamental rights is continually buffeted by constant tension between both able-bodied and disabled citizens, and their economic activities as these citizens seek access to information, public services, and equality in all its forms. Language services are fundamental to the promotion of human rights in all of these scenarios, even though these services can also be a potential source of inequality. Deadline for submissions: 26 March 2022 For more information, click here

The European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT) invites everyone interested in machine translation and translation-related tools and resources ― developers, researchers, users, translation and localization professionals and managers ― to participate in this conference.Driven by the state of the art, the research community will demonstrate their cutting-edge research and results. Professional machine translation users will provide insight into successful MT implementation of machine translation (MT) in business scenarios as well as implementation scenarios involving large corporations, governments, or NGOs. Translation studies scholars and translation practitioners are also invited to share their first-hand MT experience, which will be addressed during a special track. Deadline for submissions: 25 March 2022 For more information, click here

The main aim of this hybrid Colloquium (in person and online) – which has shifted venue from edition to edition since 2016 – is to periodically offer an overview of the latest trends in the research on translation and gender around the world, with special emphasis on its cross-pollination with a number of disciplines, including but not limited to Translation Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Cultural and Media Studies, Sociology, Politics, Linguistics and Literary Criticism. Besides its overview of the growing diversity of research (both theoretical and practical) on translation and gender/sexuality/equality, the 5th edition of this Colloquium will have a thematic orientation focused on the role played by translation and interpreting as agents of resistance to and change of the dynamics between gender and power in society.   The alliance between feminism(s) and translation has fostered the development of studies centred around agency and performativity of the individual, the translator or the interpreter and their role in society. In the 21st century, both feminism(s) and translation have become privileged spaces of agency, activism and resistance, thus becoming central to the identification and analysis of the strategies of subordination used to exercise social, political and cultural power.   Starting from the work by Rebecca Ruth Gould and Kayvan Tahmasebian, The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism (2017), we intend to develop further the notion of the translator/interpreter as activist, namely as champion of political change, advocate of gender equality, promoter of gender diversity, voice-giver and helper of minorities, migrants and refugees, and agent of change capable of putting “into words the perspectives and experiences of oppressed and silenced peoples”. Our reflection also follows in the footsteps of Olga Castro and Emek Ergun’s research on Feminist Translation Studies. Local and Transnational Perspectives (2017) in order to widen the discussion on the interplay between feminist translation, agency and activism as academic fields of enquiry.  The Colloquium aims at making visible the important role of interpreters and translators in: 1) promoting and enabling social, political and cultural change around the world; 2) promoting equality; 3) fighting discrimination; 4) supporting gender diversity; 5) supporting human rights; 6) empowering minorities; 7) challenging authority and injustice not only across European countries but all over the world; 8) facilitating network-building activities among activists and agents of change and 8) teaching feminist translation as a pedagogical act in support of social and gender equality.  We are aware that translation is a powerful tool capable of producing social, political and cultural transformation. Thus, the Colloquium wants to open a forum of discussion and reflection on the contribution offered by practitioners, stakeholders and scholars to the study of translation as activism and agent of change.   Deadline for submissions: 15 April 2022 For more information, click here

CfP conference: 13-15 July 2022. Performative & Experiential Translation: Meaning-Making through Language, Art and Media, King’s College, London. Deadline for proposals: 21 April 2022

CfP. Special issue: Translation in and from the Middle Ages. Special issue of Translation Matters 5.2 (Autumn 2023) Deadline for submissions: 31st October 2022

Special Issue in The Translator, edited by Cornelia Zwischenberger and Leandra Sitte Several relatively new forms of translation have emerged following the advent of the participatory Web 2.0. These include solicited forms of translation such as translation crowdsourcing used by for-profit companies like Facebook or Twitter. There are also other forms of translation like machine translation or self-translation occurring on social media platforms, especially on newer representatives like Instagram or TikTok (Desjardins 2019). Translation crowdsourcing is also employed by non-profit organizations like TED or Kiva. While these companies or organizations recruit voluntary and unpaid translators, there are also several translation platforms such as Gengo or Unbabel which employ paid translation crowdsourcing at below market rates (Jiménez-Crespo 2021). Furthermore, these relatively new forms of translation also include a wide range of unsolicited and self-managed types of translation such as interlingual knowledge-sharing through Wikipedia (Jones 2017, 2019; McDonough Dolmaya 2015, 2017) or Yeeyan (Yang 2020) as well as the various types of online fan translations such as fansubbing, fandubbing, scanlations or translation hacking (Fabbretti 2019; Lee 2009; Orrego-Carmona 2019; Muñoz Sánchez 2007, 2009). Even though these more recent phenomena and the communities involved in the translation process have caught the attention of Translation Studies scholars and have been studied from multiple perspectives, two lacunae have been identified by Zwischenberger (2021). Firstly, there is no consensus as to what constitutes the most appropriate top-level concept for these translation phenomena. Several candidates are currently being used concomitantly, including online collaborative translation, voluntary translation, user-generated translation (UGT), and social online translation, to name but a few. Secondly, research into the ethical implications of these online translation practices is lacking in depth and number. Ethical issues are only rarely addressed directly in the relevant literature and if so they are addressed only in passing. The special issue will tackle these two lacunae, with the groundwork having already been laid by our one-day symposium Translation on and over the Web: Disentangling its conceptual uncertainties and ethical questions, held in November 2021. Deadline for submissions: 30 April 2022 For more information, click here

The European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT) invites everyone interested in machine translation and translation-related tools and resources ― developers, researchers, users, translation and localization professionals and managers ― to participate in this conference.Driven by the state of the art, the research community will demonstrate their cutting-edge research and results. Professional machine translation users will provide insight into successful MT implementation of machine translation (MT) in business scenarios as well as implementation scenarios involving large corporations, governments, or NGOs. Translation studies scholars and translation practitioners are also invited to share their first-hand MT experience, which will be addressed during a special track. Deadline for abstracts: 25 March 2022 For more information, click here

The conference participants will be addressed by keynote speakers followed by conference sections bringing together researchers in:  linguistics (various aspects in linguistics and translation),  terminology (with emphasis on specialized biology lexis and terminology),  language technology and  lexicography. Researchers on similar topics related to linguistic diversity, terminology, and statistics are also welcome to apply. Deadline for abstracts: 31 July 2022 For more information, click here 

Scholars from Translation Studies and other disciplines (such as Sociology or Communication Studies) are increasingly becoming more interested in the multi-faceted and thought-provoking topic of interpreting and translation provided by non-professionals of any age and background, with or without remuneration, under a variety of circumstances, and for a wide spectrum of reasons. Non-professional interpreting and translation (NPIT) are widespread enough to allow us to see translation and interpreting not only as recognized and established professions but also as a ubiquitous social practice of much-needed mediation. In this context, one might attempt to investigate NPIT not merely as an opposite, and perhaps problematic, or even renegade, pole to professional mediation, but as ‘unstated’ mediation. NPIT presents an acceptable practice, which, however, remains less visible and less appreciated not only by professionals and society in general but even by non-professional interpreters and translators themselves. Delving into the ethical aspects of NPIT would provide perhaps one of the most inclusive categories which can act as a generic framework for investigating the forms it can take and its repercussions for all ‘sides’ involved. More specifically, the NPIT6 Conference at the University of Cyprus in Nicosia will attempt to explore the ethical questions arising from the ‘unstated’ character of NPIT. In so doing, NPIT6 aims to align itself with contemporary research trends and continue the fruitful discussions of the previous NPIT conferences, from the ‘natal’ one at the University of Bologna/Forlì in 2012, through to NPIT2 in Mainz/Germersheim (2014), NPIT3 in Zurich (2016), NPIT4 in Stellenbosch (2018), and NPIT5 in Amsterdam & Utrecht (2021). In the 2023 conference, emphasis is placed on the status and conceptualization of NPIT, as well as on ethical questions regarding not only NPIT itself but also professional interpreting and translation, their role in society, and their possible impact on the very notions of mediation and professional identity. The 6th International Conference on Non-Professional Interpreting and Translation (NPIT6) Organizing Committee invites proposals for presentations on any theoretical, empirical, and/or methodological aspect of research related to the conference theme. For all proposals, the official conference language is English. Three categories of proposals will be considered: (i) individual presentations, (ii) panels, and (iii) posters. Topics may include, but are not limited to: Ethics and professional identity Mapping NPIT Ethical models of mediation Conceptualizations of ethical conduct by professional and non-professional mediators Human crises, conflict situations, and ad hoc translation and/or interpreting Adult/child language and cultural brokering / Family interpreting Non-professional vs professional community translation and interpreting settings (NGOs, asylum-seeking, health care, community and social care, courts, and police) Non-professional translation and/or interpreting within other professional contexts (teaching, journalism, business communication, etc.) Information technologies and machine translation Natural/native translation and interpreting Non-professional church/religious interpreting and/or translation Non-professional interpreting and/or translation for the media Non-professional sign language interpreting Stakeholder perspectives on non-professional interpreters and translators Training for non-professional interpreters and translators Integration of non-professional mediators into professional communities Deadline for proposals: 18 September 2022 For more information, click here