Calls for papers

Editors: Evangelos Kourdis and Susan Petrilli It is our belief that the broadening of the notion of text has largely come about thanks to contributions from semiotic studies, according to a movement that has brought translation studies closer to semiotics. The relevancy of general sign studies to translation theory and practice has helped translation studies to move away from the verbo-centric dogmatism of the sixties and seventies when only systems ruled by double articulation were recognized the dignity of language (Eco, 1976). As Torop (2014) argues, “text is what we understand in culture and it is through the text that we understand something of culture”. Thanks to our primary modelling system or language (“language as modelling” which conditions communication and translation through the great multiplicity of different verbal and nonverbal “languages” with which human beings enter into contact with each other, signify, interpret, and respond to each other), understanding in culture occurs through texts of the semiotic order, verbal and nonverbal texts, multimodal texts, in the unending chain of responses among texts, engendered in the relation among speakers and listeners, readers and writers. Texts are created, interpreted and re-created in dialogic relations among participants in communication. Their sense and meaning is modeled, developed and amplified through the processes of transmutation ensuing from and at once promoting the cultural spaces of encounter. Torop (2014) argues that the text is located in a wide intersemiotic space, and that the analysis of a text demands investigation of its creation, construction, and reception: the text is a process in intersemiotic space. If we accept Marais’ (2018) argument that all socio-cultural phenomena have a translation dimension, it is difficult to disagree with Gentzler’s (2001) observation that translation theory can quickly enmesh the researcher in the entire intersemiotic network of language and culture, one touching on all disciplines and discourses. Nor could it be otherwise if we consider that the material of language and culture is sign material and that the sign as such is in translation. This means to say that to be this sign here the sign must be other, to be this text here the text must be other. The signifying specificity of a text develops in translational processes among signs and interpretants, utterers and listeners, writers and readers, across semiosic spheres and disciplines, across intersemiotic, or transemiotic spaces in the signifying universe, verbal and nonverbal. The notion of text has evolved significantly thanks to contributions not only from the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics but also from the French School, with important implications for the question of translatability, a fundamental property and specific characteristic of all semiotic systems – as stated, the “sign is in translation”. It ensues that translatability subtends the semantic process (Greimas & Courtés 1993), and with Charles Morris (1938) interpreted by Ferruccio Rossi-Landi (1954, 1975, 1992), we know that meaning not only concerns the semantic dimension of semiosis, but also the syntactical and the pragmatic dimensions. With reference to interlingual translation, as Petrilli (2003) claims, translatability indicates an open relation between a text in the original and its translation. In this volume of Punctum, we will investigate this open relation. Deadline for abstracts: 15 December 2019 For more information, click here

Dongguk University Translation Studies Research Institute is launching peer-reviewed journal TransLinguaTech which focuses on translation, language and relevant technologies.The rapid development of machine translation and other language technologies presents fundamental challenges to researchers and practitioners in translation, calling for reconsideration of various aspects of translation such as its definition, agent, object and method. However, there are few platforms dedicated to the issues brought about by the challenge. TransLinguaTech aims at providing a venue dedicated to such discussion, welcoming manuscripts on translation, language and relevant technologies. Deadline for submissions: 15 Jan 2020 For more information, click here

Current Trends in Translation Teaching and Learning E (CTTL E) is a double-blind refereed open access journal that explores a variety of issues related to translation teaching and learning. We seek qualitative and quantitative research articles that are relevant to this subject. The publication is indexed in the ESCI of the Web of Science and is available via EBSCO and is free online via our website. The length of papers should be around 2500 to 6000 words.  The deadline for submission of articles is March 1, 2020. For more information, click here

AUC/School of Continuing Education is proud to launch the 2nd Localization, Translation and Interpreting Conference under the theme: "Going Global: Business, Community and Education" to be held in AUC Tahrir Campus, April 1st and 2nd, 2020.  The topics of the conference this year are: Translation and Interpretation in global contexts Instruction and practice of Translation and Interpretation How can talents gear up for the market? How can businesses provide services globally? The conference invites contributions from professionals and academics to engage in discussions reflecting on market requirements, efficient professional training, and the role collaboration between business and academia could play to bring new solutions and address them. Deadline for submissions: December 31 2019 For more information, click here

The emerging area of field and workplace research in translation studies focuses on research on translation and interpreting in the very places where they occur, i.e. embedded in specific temporal, spatial and organisational environments. The International Conference on Field Research on Translation and Interpreting (FIRE-TI) seeks to bring together researchers who study translation and interpreting (T&I) practices, processes or networks in situ using a variety of different (inter)disciplinary approaches, e.g. from sociological, cognitive, anthropological or ergonomic perspectives. The primary objective of the conference is to create a common reflection space for T&I field and workplace research where experts can share insights into the diversity and complexity of translation and interpreting practices. In doing so, it also seeks to bring to the fore those particular aspects that are hard to reconstruct through product analyses or in a laboratory setting. The conference will provide a forum for researchers with an interest in the situational embeddedness of translation and interpreting processes to present and discuss their approaches, methods and insights. The contributions will discuss what kinds of concepts and theoretical approaches are needed to describe the investigated practices. What difference does the situatedness and embeddedness of translation and interpreting make for our descriptions of practices, processes and networks? What shapes the dynamics of the T&I fields and language industry today and how does this challenge the current conceptual boundaries in translation studies? How do new organisational forms influence practices and practitioners? How do working professionals and language industry stakeholders but also non-professional and amateur interpreters and translators perceive their situation and activities? Deadline for submissions: 12 July 2020 For more information, click here

The International Conference Translation, Inclusivity, and Educational Settings (TIES) will be held in Italy at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” on 27-28-29 February 2020. It aims to bring together academics, researchers, and scholars to exchange information and share experiences and research results about all aspects concerning translation, inclusivity, and educational settings in our contemporary world. The major goal of the TIES Conference is to connect and tie the world of translation to the multifaceted realities of today’s global and globalized uses of English. The contemporary relevance of English has turned it into the natural lingua franca in a vast range of contexts, both formal (e.g., business, education, science, politics, commerce, diplomacy) and informal (e.g., social networks, popular culture, blogs). It is through this lens in particular that we view the notion of inclusivity: it encompasses the multifarious realities and iterations of English(es) today. Translation and editing are implicated in these changes and demand proper investigations, and the TIES Conference intends to provide a platform for this line of research. Presenters are encouraged to identify those mediating, remediating, and intermediating connections among these key notions that allow users to comply, successfully and efficaciously, with translating needs for global communication today. Deadline for abstracts: 20 December 2019 For more information, click here

CLINA: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Communication. Translating and Interpreting between Chinese and Spanish in the Contemporary World. Research, Training, Professional Practice. Following in the footsteps of recent issues published by the Journal, which have focused on translation and interpreting contexts that have so far received less attention from academia, this special issue will be devoted to examining the ins and outs of translation and interpreting involving Chinese and Spanish. The aim is to offer new insights into the state-of-the-art in the threefold dimension of research, training and professional practice. Both Chinese and Spanish are undoubtedly amongst the most widely spoken languages in the world. According to the latest report by the Cervantes Institute (2019) on the role of Spanish at a global level, these languages occupy the first and second place, respectively, in the classification of languages as determined by the number of native speakers, and the second and third place, behind English, according to the total number of speakers. On the other hand, as the Elcano Report on Spain-China relations (2018) also highlights, concurrent with the significant development experienced in their national contexts, in recent decades there has been a remarkable intensification of bilateral relations between China, Spain and the rest of the Spanish-speaking countries, as well as an increasing interest in learning the Chinese language and discovering Chinese culture in Spanish-speaking contexts and vice versa. In spite of this, the volume of research devoted to studying translation between these languages in various specialised fields, to identifying the specific difficulties faced today by those who carry out translation and intercultural mediation tasks involving these languages in different professional contexts, and to reflecting on the challenges faced both by practising translators and by those who have the responsibility of training future professionals can still be described as scant. In this context, this special issue of the journal Clina aims to serve as a platform for disseminating studies that will deepen our knowledge of the realities and challenges of the practice and teaching of translation between these two intrinsically “poly-” or “pluricentric” languages (Quesada Pacheco 2008; Rovira Esteva 2010: 271; Amorós-Negre and Prieto de los Mozos 2017) which, from “super-central” positions, interact within a system whose “hyper-central” position is indisputably occupied by English (Moreno Fernández 2015: 5). For that purpose, the concepts and approaches offered by contemporary theories of translation and other related disciplines and developed by researchers located both in the vast geography of the Spanish-speaking world on both sides of the Atlantic and on the Asian continent will be particularly useful. In addition to broadening our perspectives regarding the complex linguistic dynamics of contemporary globalisation and the processes of identity construction that take place in intercultural exchanges between the Chinese and Hispanic cultural spheres, the volume will also aim to fine-tune, enrich and diversify the theoretical-methodological basis of Translation Studies. Indeed, as more and more critical voices have been raised against certain research biases, including Eurocentrism, which may limit the development of our discipline (Tymozcko 2009; van Doorslaer and Flynn 2013), the calls to broaden the understanding of the phenomenon of translation through a greater integration of the plurality of visions, conceptions and translatological traditions that coexist around the globe have also recently gained strength. Deadline for submissions: 1 March 2020 Expected date of publication: June 2020 For more information, click here

Our contemporary world is characterised by mobility and migration. People are on the move for various reasons: to flee war and persecution in their home countries, to get reunited with their families, to work and live abroad. Movement always involves a displacement of individual people who find themselves in a new socio-cultural context and a new linguistic environment. Overcoming linguistic and cultural borders and facilitating communication often requires some form of mediation, which is often practised in institutional sites of contested discourses. Translating and interpreting narratives of migration as told by migrants entail the (re)construction and transformation of these narratives, and affect the representations of ‘self’ and ‘other’ as well as policies of social inclusion and community cohesion. The proposed issue intends to explore the role of language, translation and interpreting in constructing narratives of migration. It invites contributions from the perspective of different research fields (translation and interpreting studies, linguistics, journalism studies, sociology, political science, etc.) on topics such as the following: Which policies and practices are in place to use (or reject) translation and interpreting for engaging with narratives of migration?What factors influence the construction of narratives in interpreter-mediated events (e.g. asylum hearings)?How are narratives (re/de)constructed and transformed in processes of translation and interpreting?What types of narratives are constructed and (re/de)constructed (narratives of difference, of belonging) and how do they influence the representations of ‘self’ and ‘other’?What are the implications of rendering narratives of migration for translators and interpreters in respect of professional ethics?Which approaches and models are suitable for investigating such questions? Call for abstracts: 16 December, 2019 Notification of acceptance: 23 December 2019 Call for papers: 16 March, 2020 For more information, click here

PACTE (Process of Acquisition of Translation Competence and Evaluation) is organising the Fifth International Conference on Research into the Didactics of Translation (didTRAD), which will be held at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 8-10 July, 2020. This conference aims to provide a forum for researchers in the field of translator training. Plenary Speaker: Don Kiraly, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz Conference Topics Teaching translation: introduction to translation, legal translation, scientific translation, technical translation, literary translation, audiovisual translation, localization, inverse translation, etc. Teaching interpreting: simultaneous interpreting, consecutive interpreting, community interpreting, etc. Teaching signed languages interpreting and translation. Teaching technologies for translators and interpreters. Teaching language for translators and interpreters (L1 and L2). Teaching professional aspects. Assessment in translation and interpreting teaching. Cross-cutting aspects of curriculum design: tutorials, final-year dissertations, placements, etc. Applications of empirical research in translation and interpreting teaching. Deadline for submissions: 19th January 2020 For more information, click here

The times and epochs have passed, but meaning in translation – elusive and fascinating, precise and pragmatically relevant – remains the main focus of translation studies. The issue of accurate representation of meaning across the languages has become particularly topical in the era of digitalization, proliferation of MT and CAT tools, evolution of neural machine translation networks, and the changes in the way information is generated, stored, processed and transmitted. This year, the main focus of the conference is “Translation Studies in the Era of Digital Humanities”.We hope that the conference will bring together researchers and translators, academia and students, practitioners in language services and technologies and language policy makers and will become a forum for promoting dynamic and constructive debate, networking and research cooperation. The fourth international scientific conference “Meaning in Translation: Illusion of Precision” is aimed at exploring themes from the theoretical and practical perspectives covering a wide scope of topics: Terminology standardization and harmonization; Pragmatic, semantic and grammatical aspects of meaning in translation; Translation of sacred, legal, poetic, promotional and scientific and technical texts. Deadline for submissions of abstracts: 31 January 2020 For more information, click here 

In a world that seems continuously to be stretching the line of what is acceptable to the inhabitants of specific linguistic and cultural contexts, this interdisciplinary conference acknowledges the importance of investigating taboos and their reinforcement/breaking in various areas of language, culture, literature and society, and across different cultures. We propose to explore the delicate balance and subtle boundaries between the need for inclusion and respect for different ethnic, religious, sexual backgrounds – which seem to be at the basis of modern multicultural societies – and a conscious (or unconscious) push towards the breaking of existing taboos, for example for shock value, as in the case of comedy and art. In such contexts, investigation of the linguistic, cultural, social, institutional and personal implications of taboo reinforcement/breaking appears of extreme value. For its 5th edition, the Taboo Conference series will specifically address the intricacies of taboo in language, culture, literature and communication in its various occurrences from the points of view of production, performance, and perception/reception. The subject of taboo in language, culture, literature and communication seems to have become especially relevant in the last few years, in which political correctness at both the institutional and individual level has been seen, on the one hand, as a crucial tool in protecting people from verbal abuse and in preventing the reinforcement of stereotypes and, on the other, as a set of measures and a way of thinking which significantly curtail free speech in many aspects of the public sphere. The 2020 conference seeks to explore the shifting boundaries of the acceptability of taboo in their various incarnations as produced and perceived in today’s multicultural society, from cinema and television, to news, videogames, literature and different kinds of online content. The study of taboo in the past, for example through the medium of literature, is also relevant to the conference. Possible areas of inquiry include, but are not limited to, political orientations and political satire, identity and gender politics, ethnic stereotypes, different kinds of non-normative behaviour, political correctness and the discourse surrounding it, and the debate between real and perceived offense through comedy. Deadline for submissions: 10th February 2020 For more information, click here

Gender and Transnational Reception. Mapping the Translation, Circulation and Recognition of Women's Writings in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU Organisers: Dr Alberica Bazzoni (University of Warwick) and Dr Caterina Paoli (University of Warwick) Abstract Proposal Deadline: 20 December 2019 Conference: 25-26 September 2020 Organised in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing (CCWW) and partially funded by the British Academy, this two-day conference aims at exploring the transnational reception of 20th- and 21st-century literary texts by women (where “woman” is understood beyond cis-normative categories). How are processes of literary reception and consecration gendered and transnationalised? How do transnational networks support the circulation of texts by women? What are the processes that intervene in the recognition or misrecognition of their artistic value, in their own country and abroad? Gender still plays a crucial role in the ways in which a work of art circulates and is received, as the construction and recognition of artistic value is deeply influenced by social structures and the hierarchies that permeates them. On the other hand, the transnational dimension of feminist struggles and thought fosters the circulation of works by women beyond their country of origin, so that they often meet popular success in other countries – the cases of Nicaraguan Gioconda Belli, Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Italian Elena Ferrante, for example, are paradigmatic in this sense. Furthermore, since the second half of the 19th century, feminist networks of translators, publishers and intellectuals have worked tirelessly to promote and enable the circulation of works by women. This conference aims at investigating the gendered promotion and reception of works by women on a transnational level. For more information, click here