Calls for papers

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

After a very successful online conference in 2021, we look forward to welcoming you back to Berlin from 7 – 9 November 2022 for the 14th edition of Languages & The Media, the International Conference and Exhibition on Language Transfer in Audiovisual Media. Languages & The Media 2022 will be held at Radisson Blu Hotel, which has been our home for the past decade. We are pleased to return to it and enjoy our traditional workshops, presentations, panels and networking with good old-fashioned face-to-face interaction with all of you. We have certainly ridden not one but multiple waves of discovery and discussion since we last met in person. The streaming revolution has continued strong and is still picking up pace, as original content is exploding, especially in languages other than English, with renewed attention paid to inclusion and diversity, as well as accessibility for all. Workflows and tools have moved entirely to the cloud, to enable more remote connections as home-working has become the new norm in the post-pandemic world, while automation is being applied at every step of the production chain. From online platforms that support better media and project management, to language technologies aimed at augmenting translators’ capabilities with more tools under their belt, to sound and VFX-type technologies used to recreate performances in any language one can imagine, new tech solutions for the media and entertainment sector keep springing up one after the other - with a strong influx of funding to boost their development.  2020 was the year that dubbing got disrupted and a host of new software applications and solutions appeared in the market, bringing this popular audiovisual translation practice closer to its cinephile cousin, subtitling. The perennial question of whether to dub or to sub was asked anew in 2021 and the answer was a resounding ‘both’, as viewers around the world got reacquainted with the art of media localization. As with other topics that make global headlines, be it a new vaccine or the quality of translation in a top grossing show, everyone has an opinion. If there was ever a time for the creative media localization experts to escape the invisibility of their profession and tell the world their story, it is now. Deadline for submissions: 14 February 2022 For more information, click here

The theme of the 2022 KäTu Symposium is Translator’s Image. With this theme, we wish to shed light on different images of translators/interpreters and translation/interpreting, whether viewed by ourselves or others. What does the work of translators and interpreters look like today? What did it look like in the past? What will it look like in the future? Who defines the image of translators and interpreters, and what kinds of factors affect it? How is translation perceived from outside the profession? The theme also encompasses the relationship between translation and visual elements, from accessibility to audio-visual translation and intersemiotic transfer. The theme may be approached from various perspectives, including the following: – The professional image and visibility of translators and interpreters (in real-world contexts and in fiction; in contemporary and historical contexts) – Future visions of translation/interpreting and translator/interpreter education: inspiration, innovation, threats – In-depth perspectives on and broad overviews of translation (everyday practices; perceptions, networks, theories) – The role of images and visual elements in translation (audio-visual translation, translation of children’s literature, instruction manuals etc.; accessibility of images) – Intersemiotic translation: from visual to verbal (including audio description) or from verbal to visual – Figurative language and metaphors in and of translation. In keeping with established KäTu tradition, presentations and posters on other topics related to translation and interpreting are also welcome. Deadline for submissions: 17 January 2022 For more information, click here

Call for Abstracts Questions to be addressed include, but are not limited to, the following: How are the concepts of ‘cultural translation’ and ‘cultural transfer’ reflected in museum practices? What are conceptual differences and common grounds? Which perspectives and research methods are useful to study the various transfer processes in the contemporary museum? What types of translation and transfer (interlingual, intralingual, intersemiotic, etc.) are present in museums? How do spatial, visual and textual resources interact multimodally? How do translation practices and policies differ according to the type of museum (memorial museums, migration museums, ethnographic museums, etc.)?  What is the role of different agents and stakeholders (curators, translators, local communities, visitors)? How do the various types of translation and transfer function as instruments of power? How are (national or foreign, dominant or minor) cultures, identities and memories (re)imagined in museums? In what ways do forms of translation and transfer facilitate the interchange and cross-fertilization of cultures in the contact zone? To what extent are museum concepts culturally defined? What are the indications of globalized museum practices nowadays? How can we assess the importance of the digital space and the hybrid exhibition model for meaning-making in museums? If you wish to present a paper, please send a brief abstract (300 words) and a short bio (50 words) to museumtranslation@ut.ee by midnight on 15 December 2021. If your abstract is selected, you will receive a notification of acceptance by 20 January 2022. Language Policy: the conference language is English. Venue: University of Tartu College of Foreign Languages and Cultures (J. Liivi street 4) At the moment, the conference is planned as an on-site event. However, depending on the development of the pandemic, we will consider the possibility of making some parts available online. This conference is organized in collaboration with the Cultural Transfer Research Group of the Enlight University Network. For more information please follow the link here. 

Pivot audiovisual translation: A burning issue for research and training. Guest-edited by Hanna Pięta, Susana Valdez, Rita Menezes and Stavroula Sokoli This special issue focuses on pivot audiovisual translation (AVT), understood as the process or product of translating an audiovisual content through an intermediate language or text. AVT research and training want to keep pace with the fast-evolving market, and this makes pivot AVT a burning issue for these two areas. To address this issue, we call for contributions engaging with key questions that include, but are not limited to: − how were pivot AVT produced and received in the past; how are they produced and received today? − what were/are the reasons and causes of translating audiovisual content from translation or with further translation in mind? − what are the attitudes, beliefs and expectations of audiovisual translators who create or work from pivot texts? In which modes or settings are they more/less tolerant towards this practice? How about other stakeholders? − how exactly are pivot AVT different from direct AVT, for example in terms of their linguistic make-up or translators’ and viewers’ expectations? − are there patterns related to indirectness that are common to various AVT modes (e.g. deaf relay interpreting; videogame localization; fansubbing)? − which models of analysis can help us classify different instances of indirectness within AVT? − what specific competences and technologies are needed to efficiently translate audiovisual content from translation or with a further translation in mind? − when, where and how exactly can we train translators to produce pivot AVT of the highest quality possible? Closing date for submissions: 22 December For more information, click here

 CFP for the first issue of the open-access journal, International Journal of Chinese and English Translation & Interpreting (IJCETI) to be published in June 2022.  The International Journal of Chinese and English Translation & Interpreting (IJCETI) is the first peer-reviewed international journal devoted to the T&I research, training and practice of Chinese and English language pair. It promotes a cross-fertilization among research, training and professional practice in Chinese/English T&I studies. The journal publishes high quality articles based on merit, rigour and integrity. It adopts the open-access policy to promote accessibility and academic impact. The journal publishes two issues per annum (June and December), plus one guest-edited special issue where there is an interest. The guideline for authors can be accessed here.  

This call for papers is for a two-day workshop on the theme Translators’ [In]visibilities focussing on the idea of ‘invisibility’ from multiple perspectives. Informed by scholarship in translation studies, in particular the work of Lawrence Venuti, especially The Translator’s Invisibility (3rd edition; Routledge 2018), we want to explore the ideas of visibility and invisibility across a range of approaches to studying, practicing and teaching translation. We welcome contributions which will address the theme in any way, including but not limited to:   development of translation practice across time and space historical practices of translation the contemporary practice of translation collaborative translation practices the role of translation in teaching.  Keynote addresses will be delivered by Professor Lawrence Venuti (Temple University) and Professor Chana Kronfeld (University of California, Berkeley).  Papers will be expected to be 15-20 minutes in length. Presenters will be invited to submit pieces based on their presentations for consideration afterwards for a publication emerging from this workshop. Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words and a brief biography of no more than 75 words to TranslationWG@gmail.com by December 31, 2021. The workshop will be held online due to COVID-19 considerations and so will be free and open for all to attend. However, should the local and international situation permit, the possibility of a hybrid event allowing both online and in-person participation will be considered. __________ This workshop is organized by the Translation Studies Working Group of the Calgary Institute for the Humanities at the University of Calgary, with the support of the Institute as well as of the Language Research Centre, the Classics & Religion Department and the Faculty of Arts at the University of Calgary.

El Área de Estudios Hispánicos de la Universidad María Curie-Skłodowska (Polonia) celebrará entre el 21 y el 22 de abril de 2022 el I Simposio Internacional de Traducción e Interpretación especializadas de manera virtual. Actualmente se encuentra abierto el plazo para el envío de propuestas de comunicaciones hasta el 15 de noviembre de 2021. Toda la información se encuentra en la web simtraesp.umcs.pl. Para cualquier duda, pueden contactar con el comité organizador a través del e-mail: simtraesp@mail.umcs.pl El simposio se desarrollará íntegramente en español.  Muchas gracias. 

CfP conference panel: 22-24 June 2022. EST22 Oslo Congress, Panel 24: Advancing TS through think-aloud: Showcasing a challenging but unique method. UiO & OsloMet, Oslo, Norway. Panel conveners: Claudine Borg and Brita Dorer Deadline for abstracts: October 15, 2021 https://www.hf.uio.no/.../list-description-panels.html

Media Paratexts and Translation This special issue seeks to open up new interdisciplinary perspectives on the translation, adaptation and localization of media paratexts. The global circulation of digital media products and the increased customization of the user experience have resulted in a proliferation of such paratexts, whether in the form of promotional material (trailers, posters), fan-made material, or curated or data-driven user interfaces. While the disciplines of Media Studies and Digital Studies have embraced – and arguably even been transformed by – the study of such paratextual elements, the fields of audiovisual translation or of translation in the digital age have yet to integrate them into their object of study. Engagement with the notion of the paratext within the field of news translation has been even more muted, being limited to just a handful of studies (Zhang 2013; Hong 2019). Premised on the idea that the combination of media paratexts and translation represents a rich and unexplored seam of research, this special issue invites interdisciplinary investigations of the ways in which media paratexts are linguistically and culturally mediated across different territories. It invites scholars to explore the impact that those mediations have on how media products are accessed, interpreted and perceived in the target cultures, thus widening the perspective from the media products themselves to the broader constellations of productions within which they circulate. Mediation is thus taken to include not only the processes and outputs of translating paratexts per se but also the strategic decisions about distribution that are made by media companies and localization teams in general. These include decisions concerning which paratexts will be used in a specific target culture/territory (either “as is” or in their translated versions) and which ones will have to be recreated from scratch in order to better adapt to target-culture sensibilities or conventions. We thus invite contributors to explore the far-reaching consequences of apparently peripheral or ephemeral decisions. For example, contributors might consider the way in which the channel, platform or output through which a particular media text is distributed in a target culture invites particular associations or attracts particular audience segments, thus affecting reception and interpretation of the text before the text itself has been encountered. Through this broad notion of mediation, we hope to draw attention to the way in which reception of media products is affected by the entire constellation of paratextual materials among which and through which the media text itself circulates, rather than limiting reflection to the media text itself. For example, in the case of the TV series Breaking Bad in Italy, as explored by Bucaria (2014), the decision not to distribute the humorous minisodes that formed part of the paratextual constellation in the USA is argued to have resulted in a perception of Breaking Bad in Italy that is less tonally nuanced. The definition of paratext that will be adopted for this volume will be broad, in line with approaches taken in Media Studies (e.g. Gray 2010). We thus invite consideration of meaning-making elements that have become essential to users’ selection and experience of audiovisual products and to the products’ commercial success; these might encompass interviews, viral marketing campaigns, TV and film trailers and teasers, summaries and descriptions, fan videos, and parodies, amongst others. We also invite explorations of elements intrinsic to the global presence of streaming and news platforms, such as the summaries, highlights, keywords and recommendations that appear in individual user interfaces, all of which need to be made accessible to users across the world through a process of localization. Where contributors are working to functional definitions of paratext (as commonly used in Digital and Media Studies), we invite consideration of material that serves commercial, navigational, community-building or world-building functions, amongst others, or that makes the text present in the world. (For a fuller list of paratextual functions, see Batchelor 2018, 160-161, based on Rockenberger [2014]). We also welcome theoretical discussions of the adequacy of existing definitions of paratext for translation-focused research. In particular, contributors may wish to explore the difficulties around preventing the collapse of ‘paratext’ into the vastness of ‘context’ (Rockenberger 2014) that inevitably arise once Genette’s (1997) emphasis on authorial intention is dismantled. Abstracts are invited from scholars in Translation Studies, Media Studies and Digital Studies. Proposed contributions should aim to explore the creation and use of linguistically and culturally adapted media paratexts from any of the following angles (with other aspects also welcome): > promotional campaigns for media products (e.g. films, TV content, video games);> customization of the user experience through paratexts;> localization of online TV apps;> paratextual elements in videogames;> paratextual elements in news translation;> theoretical perspectives on the conceptualization of media paratexts;> fan-made vs. promotional paratexts;> paratexts across different media.