Calls for papers

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

Guest editor: Prof. Federico M. Federici Interpreters and translators regularly work communicating hazards so that the recipients of information can take informed decisions on what risks they are prepared to take. Anthropological, cultural, and ethnographic studies have considered the influence of culture and ethnic backgrounds in the field of disaster risk reduction, but the impact of translation in all its modes and formats has been studied much less (see O’Brien and Federici 2019; Federici 2020). This is paradoxical as perception of risk is conditioned by emotive and cognitive responses (Ponari et al., 2015); humans avoid taking risks or engage with risks because of our evolutionary adaptive abilities (we adapt to the environment and adapt the environment to us). “People judge a risk not only by what they think about it but also by how they feel about it” (Slovic & Peters, 2006, p. 323), and we interact with risks in culture-specific ways (Appleby-Arnold et al. 2018; Cornia, Dressel, & Pfeil, 2014; Douglas & Wildavsky, 1983). Within social groups, humans frequently underestimate certain risks and over-estimate others. Communicating risks to people, properties, and places is an act that relates to security and safety. In fact, the distinction between risks and hazards is crucial for translation and interpreting research: “The potential to harm a target such as human health or the environment is normally defined as a hazard, whereas risk also encompasses the probability of exposure and the extent of damage” (Scheer et al. 2014). To secure the health of intercultural and multilingual populations, imminent risks, when hazards disrupt ordinary routines and a crisis erupts, must be communicated clearly. To ensure safety, information must also be trusted (Cadwell 2019). Additionally, the impact of any risk is closely linked to the vulnerability of the local populations, which is exacerbated by socio-economic and racial inequalities. Risk communication therefore is not only cultural, it is also a question of language clarity, language efficiency, and linguistic equality. Translating hazards inherently refers to ecosystems and pertains to the increasingly devastating effects of climate change as much as to risk communication. Natural hazards are ever-changing in connection with humans’ abuse of our planet, but the risks that politicians and people are willing to take quickly alter our social, economic, and cultural vulnerabilities to such hazards and their cascading effects. Understanding risks and communicating them efficiently is crucial during the response to a disaster in a multilingual setting where interpreters are called to incredible efforts, as much as in scientific translation of papers enlarging our understanding of new phenomena that reveal the effects of climate change (Kelman 2020). Recent publications have focused on aspects of language and culture mediation in emergency contexts (e.g. Alexander and Pescaroli 2019; Federici 2016; Federici and Declercq 2019; O’Brien and Federici 2019) and previously translation in conflict areas (e.g. Salama-Carr 2007; Tesseur 2019) and their narratives (Baker 2006). These works indicate that we have barely started investigating the relationships between risk perception and communication of hazards in superdiverse and linguistically complex societies. Interpreters and translators play significant roles that have remained under-researched. This special issue hopes to further the research agenda in connection with communicating risks and hazards and the centrality of culture, language, and society in individuals’ perception of them. The special issue invites contributions that explore translating, interpreting, and voicing risks and hazards in multimodal formats and with cross-disciplinary approaches. Themes and topics focusing on translation, interpreting, and cross-cultural communication in relation to hazards may include but are not limited to: Environmental hazards: climate change, changes to places, changes to populations, changes to cultures Technological hazards: from communicating cybersecurity and attacks to telecommunications to risk perception in remote interpreting Communicating health risks: local, cross-border, and global challenges Financial and economic risks Hazards and risks affecting professional translators and interpreters’ activities as well as those of ‘fixers’ Terminological challenges of translating ‘hazard’, ‘risk’, ‘security’, and ‘safety’ across distant and different legal and cultural systems Accessibility, language equality, linguistic diversity, and risks Infrastructural hazards and risks related to designing, devising, and deploying sophisticated translation technologies (e.g. server space, electrical consumption, HPC requirements) Deontology and ethics of communicating hazards to multilingual audiences Experimental research on risk perception in relation to first, second, third language and translation activity Policy implications of communicating risks and hazards in multilingual contexts Deadline for submission of abstracts: 30 October 2020 For more information, click here

Guest Editors: Andrea Ciribuco and Anne O’Connor  The coexistence of people in super-diverse spaces (Vertovec 2007) brings together not only different languages and cultures, but also objects: from food to clothing, from technology to books, from work tools to musical instruments. Wang (2016) notes that “the divide between people and things is perhaps the biggest ‘blind spot’ that prevents us from seeing the full picture and complexity of migration trajectories and pursuit”. Migrant objects, in fact, can take on meaning that goes well beyond their appearance and purpose: they have the power to link immediately to other parts of the world, becoming tangible proofs of the trajectories that bring people and goods around the globe. In this special issue, we intend to study the material dimension of migration, using the lens of translation to capture the role of objects in the relationship between migrants, refugees and the host community: as tools that make translation possible, as products of translation, or even as catalysts of translation.In recent years, linguists have increasingly focused on the interaction between languages and the material contexts of interaction: studies on the ‘linguistic landscape’ have flourished (Landry and Bourhis 1997; Gorter 2013), and a growing area of research asserts the need to consider language, objects, and spaces together as a “semiotic assemblage” (Pennycook 2017; Zhu, Otsuji, and Pennycook 2017). In translation studies, the topic has received less attention, even though Littau has sparked a discussion with her 2016 paper in Translation Studies that called for greater attention to the material forms of communication and translation. The availability of specific media can influence translators, and have a concrete impact on the creation, circulation and reception of translations (Littau 2016; O’Connor 2019, 2020). The material dimensions of translation are a compelling issue for the field of translation studies as it seeks to understand not just the interaction between ‘carrier’ and translation practice, but also the interaction between humans and objects such as translation devices. The importance of translation devices for migrants is especially significant (Mandair 2019; Baynham and Lee 2019), and a growing number of studies underlines the importance of the smartphone as a machine translation device for asylum seekers (Vollmer 2018; Ciribuco 2020). For this publication, we ask scholars to engage with the study of translation tools in migratory contexts; but we also encourage them to expand their scope and think of all possible objects that constitute the tangible traces of translation:- Tools for translation: from dictionaries to smartphones, what objects enable translation and help migrants or refugees negotiate the conditions of hospitality (see Inghilleri 2017)? How does the absence or unavailability of these tools hinder translation?- Catalysts for translation: some objects (clothes, foods, and other artefacts) that were unmarked everyday objects in the migrants’ countries of origin can become catalysts for translation in the host community, due to features that make them unfamiliar in the new context. How are objects translated in the language and practices of the host country? Does that help them find purpose and legitimacy in the new context?- Products of translation: this category includes not only translated books, magazines, and videos, but any object whose meaning has changed. In passing from one setting to another, the composition, purpose and functioning of an object may change, to adapt to new needs and possibly appeal to the host community. What is lost and what is gained in the process? Do objects retain their capability to mean the place where they come from?The boundaries between these categories are obviously not clear-cut, which is why we ask all authors to reflect creatively on how their objects of choice fall within the categories. The goal is to blur the distinction between the human and the non-human, analyzing translation as a force impacting the concrete worlds that migrants and refugees inhabit. In doing so, we aim for methodological innovation, and will give precedence to works that are innovative and transformative in combining the theoretical framework of translation and interpreting studies with other disciplines such as: material culture, social semiotics, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, intercultural communication, linguistic anthropology, visual arts, biosemiotics. Deadline for submission of abstracts: 1 December 2020 For more information, click here

Editors: Enza De Francisci, University of Glasgow & Cristina Marinetti, Cardiff University This special issue seeks to begin a discussion about the particular contexts, material conditions, and individuals that have enabled authors, texts, and performance traditions to travel through translation. Covering theatre, opera and song from a range of different languages and time periods, we aim to shed light on the contexts and networks of agents – actors, singers, singing/acting masters, censors, directors, critics, writers and translators – who have intervened in the circulation of translated texts in a range of performance cultures. While cross-cultural encounters and transnational exchanges have characterized theatre history from its inception, little attention has been paid to the agents mediating those encounters and to the multiple forms of translation they engendered. Engaging with the growing academic interest in theatre translation, this special issue aims to advance research by bringing this area into dialogue with broader discussions around world literature and the sociology of translation. Abstracts are invited for articles exploring the translation of plays, opera and song in different time periods and performance cultures. Contributions are invited on any of the following topics (but other issues and questions are also very welcome): Exploring the labour of the theatre translator and its relationship to its objects, environment and collaborators; Celebrity capital and the rewriting of theatre texts: actors, directors, singing/acting masters as agents of translation; Direct and indirect censorship: the role of censors and institutional gatekeepers on the selection, rewriting and circulation of foreign drama and song; Uncovering theatre translation networks around the world, shedding light on how they have contributed to the process of theatre making across time; The economics of drama translation: copyright, performance rights, and their impact on the translator’s visibility/invisibility; Theatre archives as an alternative source of knowledge for translation research Deadline for submissions: 21 December 2020 For more information, click here

The Covid 19 pandemic has brought several challenges for teachers and learners in general and language teachers and students in particular. The crisis generated by the pandemic has had strong effects on public health and serious effects on education as schools have closed and teachers, students, and other staff have had to work from home. As a consequence of the lockdown measures enforced by different governments to mitigate the effects of the virus, teachers in general, and language teachers in particular, have been forced to adapt their teaching from face-to-face to online environments overnight. This unplanned and rushed move has shown the many aspects that need to be addressed for efficient and productive language teaching. Issues such as connectivity, access to technology, and willingness to use technology, as well as aspects related to designing appropriate activities and technology training, have started to emerge as challenges for language instructors and learners. In this special issue, we seek to explore the different ways in which language teachers have overcome this challenge, what strategies they have implemented, what learning activities they are finding effective, what technological tools are being used and with what results. This special issue seeks to contribute to our understanding of how language teachers are successfully adapting their teaching practices to the online environment so the community of language teaching practitioners come out of the crisis generated by the pandemic, stronger and more informed. Authors are invited to submit research (empirical and case studies), theoretical, and methodological papers written in English or Spanish for this special issue. Suggested topics: The use of educational technology for language teaching in times of Covid. A research perspective Pre, while, and post effects of the Covid 19 pandemic on language teaching and learning. A look at tools, strategies, task design and assessment. Teachers skills and readiness to teach languages online or mediated by technology in the new times Changes required in teacher professional development to adapt to the new times. Connectivity and other language teaching challenges for different settings and populations in the new times Deadline for submission of abstracts: 1 December 2020 For more information, click here