Calls for papers

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: Emeritus Professor Clive Scott, FBA (UEA) Professor Kathryn Batchelor (UCL) Call for Papers While we hope to hold this conference as a face-to-face event , Breaking Down The Walls of Babel may need to be held virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic. We will keep you updated as developments take place. Translation Studies is a comparatively young scholarly discipline, often formally dated back to James Holmes 1972 essay “The Name and Nature of Translation Studies”, and the place and role of translation in the university, particularly in the English-speaking world, is a matter of ongoing debate and negotiation. Is translation part of the Modern Languages curriculum? Or does translation belong to Applied Linguistics or Literary Studies? Is it merely a vocational pathway or can it also be a mode of thought within the humanities? Why are so many departments sceptical towards it? The difficult position of translation in academia seems somehow related to its interdisciplinary nature. Translation theory and practice are in fact inherently concerned with different fields of enquiry (literature, linguistics, modern languages, politics, cultural studies, anthropology, philosophy). Not only is translation inherently multifaceted, it also seems to occupy a special position in relation to other fields. The humanities in general, the social sciences (including law and philosophy), media studies, and the natural sciences all necessarily engage with and communicate through translation, even if they do not always do this explicitly. Translation is also embedded in art and, in the context of globalization, increasingly encountered in everyday life. Interestingly, French translation theorist Antoine Berman wrote about the particular status of translation in relation to his own academic context at the Collège international de philosophie in Paris, but what he had to say is much more widely applicable: "Of all the programmes at the Collège international de philosophie, the ‘translation’ programme has a particular status. This particular status resides first of all in the fact that all of the other programmes […], irrespective of theme, are concerned with translation: wherever and whenever we look, our intellectual work encounters the ‘problem’ of the translation of certain texts. But the importance of translation for the Collège is more genuinely located in the fact that these various epistemologies or enquiries all encounter the question of translation (whether these are epistemologies that take an institutional form like philosophy, psychoanalysis, the sciences, law, literature and literary criticism, or the intersciences that exist only within the Collège)"[1] While the interdisciplinary nature of translation and its necessary importance in other fields may potentially lead to an enriching dialogue between different areas of study, lamentably there is often a lack of communication between different fields of enquiry. Scholars and practitioners engaged with translation are often isolated in and by their areas of research and communication is often hindered by institutional structures. The aim of this conference is to offer a space where translation can take centre stage, and to further a dialogue between disciplines that engage with translation which may lead to the reciprocal enrichment of Translation Studies and other fields. [1] Berman, Antoine. 2018. The Age of Translation: A Commentary on Walter Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator”. Translated by Chantal Wright. New York: Routledge, p. 19. Deadline for submissions: 8 January 2021 For more information, click here

Inviting chapter proposals for a volume entitled Instrumentalising Foreign LanguageDidactics in Translator and Interpreter Training: Methods, Goals and Perspectives. John Benjaminsseriously considers publishing the collection pending review. Welcoming contributions exploring the instrumentalisation of foreign language didactics intranslation and interpreting training from both a theoretical as well as practical approach (eitherfrom a language-specific or cross-linguistic perspective but, in any case, with respect to B2-level ofthe CEFRL and above). Read the full call for chapters here: https://bit.ly/3fism4O . 

Edited by Cornelia Zwischenberger (University of Vienna, Austria) and Alexa Alfer (University of Westminster, UK), contracted with Frank & Timme, Berlin Translaboration, as an essentially ‘blended concept” (Fauconnier & Turner 2002), responds to the confluence of ‘translation’ and ‘collaboration’ that is increasingly widespread not only in Translation Studies but also in a range of neighbouring disciplines. Translaboration’s central aim is to bring ‘translation’ and ‘collaboration’, as well as the often highly heterogeneous practices associated with these two notions, into dialogue with one another. This edited volume builds on exchanges first aired at our successful ‘Living Translation as Translaboration’ panel at the 2019 EST-conference at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa and will focus on the ‘translation as collaboration’ vector of the translaboration concept (cf. Alfer & Zwischenberger 2020; Zwischenberger 2020). Deadline for proposals: 15th of December 2020 For more information, click here

Translaboration, as an essentially ‘blended concept” (Fauconnier & Turner 2002), responds to the confluence of ‘translation’ and ‘collaboration’ that is increasingly widespread not only in Translation Studies but also in a range of neighbouring disciplines. Translaboration’s central aim is to bring ‘translation’ and ‘collaboration’, as well as the often highly heterogeneous practices associated with these two notions, into dialogue with one another. This edited volume builds on exchanges first aired at our successful ‘Living Translation as Translaboration’ panel at the 2019 EST-conference at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa and will focus on the ‘translation as collaboration’ vector of the translaboration concept (cf. Alfer & Zwischenberger 2020; Zwischenberger 2020). The deadline for submitting contributions is the 15th of December 2020. Read more here

2nd Call for Papers (Deadline for abstract submission extended to 15 December 2020)   The Second HKBU International Conference on Interpreting will now be held in mixed modes on 8-9 April 2021. It will take place on the campus of Hong Kong Baptist University and online via Zoom Webinar. Following on the great success of the conference on “History of Interpreting” in 2017, we will dedicate this second conference to the theme of “Cognitive Approaches” in interpreting. This broad theme will allow us to take stock of the multifaceted research conducted from this perspective, present the state of the art, and pave the way for future research adopting cognitive approaches. We also recognize the increasing convergence of research on both spoken language interpreting and signed language interpreting and will attempt to connect the two fields under the common theme of this conference. As keynote speakers for this year’s conference, we will have two of the most highly regarded scholars who study spoken language interpreting and signed language interpreting taking cognitive approaches. We welcome oral presentations and posters on both basic and applied research that fit the sub-themes of the conference or that are related to the conference theme in a broader sense. Sub-themes: bimodal and unimodal bilingualism and their implications in interpreting studies modality (bimodal or unimodal) effects in interpreting cognitive processes and constructs in different modalities and modes of interpreting neurological substrates of interpreting attention and memory in interpreting cognitive workload in different modes of interpreting cognitive considerations in machine-aided interpreting cognitive abilities as interpreting aptitude cognition-informed training of interpreters skill acquisition and attrition in interpreters interpreter’s cognition throughout the life span For more information, click here

In response to the rapidly changing translation training environment, New Voices in Translation Studies cordially invites research letters which explore the impact of COVID-19 on translation and interpreting training and offer innovative approaches and practices that are of interest to the translation and interpreting community. These letters will be published alongside the full-length articles already submitted to New Voices in Translation Studies earlier in the year for this Special Issue. With such contributions, the issue will represent the widest possible range of input from around the world on this rapidly changing environment, leading towards further research and debate. Different from full research papers, research letters are concise and focused, consisting of 2500-3000 words (excluding references). They do not need to include either detailed background information or a comprehensive evaluation. Instead, the focus is on quick and timely publication of preliminary results and key elements of a research study. Research letters for this issue should contain a short abstract (50-100 words), a very limited introduction or discussion of the literature and a focus on the method and results. The number of references should not exceed 15. We welcome submissions particularly from trainers, educators and researchers in the field of translation and interpreting. All submissions considered for publication will go through the peer review process. Formatting requirements are the same as full papers and can be found on our website (https://www.iatis.org/images/stories/publications/new-voices/NV_StyleSheet_01-2014.pdf). All submissions should be e-mailed to newvoices@iatis.org.

Kobus Marais, Reine Meylaerts and Maud Gonne are organisng a conference on ‘The Complexity of Social-Cultural Emergence: Biosemiotics, Semiotics and Translation Studies’, to be celebrated on 26-28 August 2021 at the KU Leuven. The call for papers can be found here Deadline for abstracts: 1 December 2020

Translation and interpreting have played and will continue to play important roles in various aspects of UK-China relations and people-to-people exchanges. In addition to the translation and interpreting activities in various forms linking bilateral relations and bridging peoples’ hearts and minds, the English/Chinese stream has been established and developed in dozens of translation and interpreting programmes in the UK and in over two hundred T&I programmes in China. Against this background the UK-China Symposium on Translation Studies is designed to be a biannual event co-organised by a UK university and a China university in order to promote exchanges among T&I scholars from both countries and to explore various aspects of Translation Studies with a focus on English/Chinese translation & interpreting and their education. The 1st UK-China Symposium on Translation Studies will be held on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Centre for Translation Studies in the University of Leeds. We welcome submission of abstracts on the following themes. Quality submissions might be considered for special issues tobe proposed for international journals. Themes: Translation and interpreting studies in China and UK: Unity and diversity Chinese discourse on translation and interpreting Studies on T&I master and doctoral education in China and UK Studies on language-pair specificity in English/Chinese translation and interpreting Digital humanities in translation and interpreting studies Corpus studies in translation and interpreting studies Cross-frontier translation and interpreting studies Deadline for submissions: 15 June 2021 For more information, click here

Guest Editors Dr Hannah SilvesterUniversity College Cork Dr Tiina TuominenYLE  In the past two decades, we have seen a huge growth in research on audiovisual translation and accessibility. However, the findings of these research projects are often published in academic journals and books that are not always easily accessible to practitioners, or are not designed to address the practical implications of the research. With this special issue, we would like to offer an opportunity for practitioners to benefit from the flourishing research in the field, and for researchers to make their cutting edge AVT and accessibility research available and accessible to practitioners. The open-access Journal of Audiovisual Translation presents the perfect forum for this exchange. As Jorge Díaz-Cintas (2020: 216) has pointed out, “Striking a happy balance between [the industry and academia] is of paramount importance to safeguard the well-being of the discipline and the profession.” Indeed, Díaz-Cintas (2020: 216-217) mentions that a great deal of AVT research is informed by the industry, but there has been less activity in the opposite direction. We propose to address that shortcoming in this special issue. We invite audiovisual translation and accessibility researchers to highlight the practical significance of their work by publishing pieces that seek to answer crucial questions related to the work of audiovisual translation and accessibility professionals. We envision this special issue to demonstrate how research is useful to practitioners, how it can improve working practices and stakeholders’ experiences in the industry, and what the academic community can do to better communicate their discoveries to the professional audience. Our goal is to facilitate a dialogue between researchers and practitioners that will enrich the industry and academia alike. Through this dialogue, we hope that further avenues for collaboration and community-building can be explored. Authors should consider AVT and accessibility practitioners as their primary audience when writing their article. This will be an academic, peer-reviewed publication, but we would like the texts to be accessible to non-academics and applicable to their professional experience. We welcome contributions from all areas of AVT and accessibility studies, including, but not limited to, interlingual translation (subtitling, dubbing, surtitling, interpreting, voice over, video game localisation) and media accessibility (SDH, audio description, respeaking). The range of potentially relevant themes is broad, and could include, for example: the reception and use/usability of audiovisual translations and access services.; translation and production processes; the potential value of other disciplines (e.g. media studies, psychology, sociology, ethnography) in AVT and accessibility; AVT and accessibility policy; technological tools, including machine translation; AVT and accessibility professionals’ workflow, working contexts and conditions; analyses of different textual, cultural, linguistic and communicative aspects of audiovisual translations and access services; collaborative practices; studies of norms and guidelines; quality in AVT and accessibility. Deadline for submission of abstracts: 16 November 2020 For more information, click here

The research group TRALIMA/ITZULIK GIC IT 1209-19 of the University of the Basque Country/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU) is pleased to organise the III International Symposium on Parallel Corpora, PaCor 2021. This conference will take place on 24-25 June 2021 at the Micaela Portilla Research Institute in Vitoria-Gasteiz (University’s Campus of Álava). PaCor 2021 aims to contribute to the scientific dissemination initiated by the research group SpatiAlEs, from the University of Santiago de Compostela, in 2016, later reinforced by the Instituto Universitario de Lenguas Modernas y Traductores (ULMYT), at the University Complutense of Madrid, in 2018. TRALIMA/ITZULIK together with the abovementioned research groups, and many others, take part in CORPUSNET. The goal of this network is the development of (parallel or comparable) corpus-based tools, applications and resources to satisfy needs in the realms of research, teaching and/or intercultural communication (http://corpusnet.unileon.es/). Parallel corpora creation and exploitation are possible thanks to the collaboration of linguists, (computational) engineers, statisticians and a variety of language users (researchers, learners, translators, among others). While the latter report their needs for language use, as well as, problems or challenges in cross-cultural communication, the former describe languages, at different levels, to observe what should be done to meet each ultimate purpose, thus defining a possible solution. It is the engineers and statisticians who give it shape by developing tools whose usefulness and usability be guaranteed. This interdisciplinary collaboration is as necessary as complex and fraught with challenges. This is indeed the case given the increasing range of language applications, not only among various languages but also in a variety of domains. Originally, the aim of PaCor is twofold: first, to identify challenges, from a variety of perspectives including contrastive linguistics and translation, to name a few, with the intention of extending applications to solve them; and 2) to provide a platform for presentation of projects on parallel corpora where Spanish is the pivot language. We hope this third edition adds on to the knowledge gained in previous editions, not only by giving awaiting answers but also by raising new questions that, altogether, enhance corpus linguistics in general and parallel corpora in particular. To this end, we would like PaCor 2021 to pay special attention to parallel corpora that feature, at least, one minority language. Deadline for abstracts: 15 January 2021 For more information, click here

The call is now open for the international conference on Picturebooks and graphic narratives in education and translation: Mediation and multimodality, to be held at Nova University of Lisbon on 24 - 25 June 2021. Full details can be found at: https://picbookseducation.wordpress.com/

Guest Editors: Dr Hannah Silvester, University College Cork & Dr Tiina Tuominen, YLE. In the past two decades, we have seen a huge growth in research on audiovisual translation and accessibility. However, the findings of these research projects are often published in academic journals and books that are not always easily accessible to practitioners, or are not designed to address the practical implications of the research. With this special issue, we would like to offer an opportunity for practitioners to benefit from the flourishing research in the field, and for researchers to make their cutting edge AVT and accessibility research available and accessible to practitioners. The open-access Journal of Audiovisual Translation presents the perfect forum for this exchange. As Jorge Díaz-Cintas (2020: 216) has pointed out, “Striking a happy balance between [the industry and academia] is of paramount importance to safeguard the well-being of the discipline and the profession.” Indeed, Díaz-Cintas (2020: 216-217) mentions that a great deal of AVT research is informed by the industry, but there has been less activity in the opposite direction. We propose to address that shortcoming in this special issue. We invite audiovisual translation and accessibility researchers to highlight the practical significance of their work by publishing pieces that seek to answer crucial questions related to the work of audiovisual translation and accessibility professionals. We envision this special issue to demonstrate how research is useful to practitioners, how it can improve working practices and stakeholders’ experiences in the industry, and what the academic community can do to better communicate their discoveries to the professional audience. Our goal is to facilitate a dialogue between researchers and practitioners that will enrich the industry and academia alike. Through this dialogue, we hope that further avenues for collaboration and community-building can be explored. Authors should consider AVT and accessibility practitioners as their primary audience when writing their article. This will be an academic, peer-reviewed publication, but we would like the texts to be accessible to non-academics and applicable to their professional experience. We welcome contributions from all areas of AVT and accessibility studies, including, but not limited to, interlingual translation (subtitling, dubbing, surtitling, interpreting, voice over, video game localisation) and media accessibility (SDH, audio description, respeaking). The range of potentially relevant themes is broad, and could include, for example:  the reception and use/usability of audiovisual translations and access services.;  translation and production processes;  the potential value of other disciplines (e.g. media studies, psychology, sociology, ethnography) in AVT and accessibility;  AVT and accessibility policy;  technological tools, including machine translation;  AVT and accessibility professionals’ workflow, working contexts and conditions;  analyses of different textual, cultural, linguistic and communicative aspects of audiovisual translations and access services;  collaborative practices;  studies of norms and guidelines;  quality in AVT and accessibility. Deadline for abstracts: 16 November 2020 For more information, click here