Calls for papers

7th International Conference on Public Services Interpreting and Translation: The Human Factor in PSIT, 26 - 27 March 2020, University of Alcalá. Proposals are encouraged to focus on PSIT and to specially apply to any of the following areas of study: • PSIT and its relationship with the socio-political and economic environment • Intercultural and interlinguistic mediation • Multiculturalism and multilingualism • Linguistic resources and migrant population in the European Union • Technological advances in PSIT • Curriculum design and training in PSIT in humanitarian settings • T & I in/with indigenous language/lesser used languages • Language policies in African communities • PSIT as a tool/strategy/way to favor inclusion in society   Deadline for proposals: 17 December 2019   For more information, click here  

The video game industry has become a worldwide phenomenon, generating millions in revenue every year. Video games are increasingly becoming more elaborate and sophisticated, with advanced graphics and intricate story lines, and developers and publishers need to reach the widest possible audience in order to maximise their return on investment. Translating games into other languages and designing games that can be played for a wide spectrum of players, regardless of their (dis)ability, are two obvious ways to contribute to increasing the audience for the game industry. In addition, games are increasingly being used for “serious” purposes beyond entertainment, such as education, and such games should also be designed inclusively, to facilitate access to them by all types of players. Research on game translation and localization and accessibility has been gaining momentum in recent years. In particular, and the number of studies analysing game translation and localisation from different perspectives has increased dramatically, while game accessibility remains a relatively unexplored topic. The Fun for All: 6th International Conference on Game Translation and Accessibility aims to bring together professionals, scholars, practitioners and other interested parties to explore game localisation and accessibility in theory and practice, to discuss the linguistic and cultural dimensions of game localisation, to investigate the relevance and application of translation theory for this very specific and rapidly expanding translational genre, and to analyse the challenges game accessibility poses to the industry and how to overcome them. The successful previous editions of the Fun for All: International Conference on Translation and Accessibility in Video Games, held at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018 have become a meeting point for academic and professionals working in the game industry and the game localisation industry, as well as students and translators interested in this field The sixth edition of the Fun for All Conference, in collaboration with the Researching Audio Description project, financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (PGC2018-096566-B-I00, MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE), aims to continue fostering the interdisciplinary debate in these fields, to consolidate them as academic areas of research and to contribute to the development of best practices. Deadline for submissions: 31 December 2019 For more information, click here

Bernard Shaw was perhaps the first playwright who truly became an international figure. His plays have been performed in every country imaginable; his works, translated to dozens of languages. In addition, his ideas have influenced the most disparate authors on a global scale. To this attests his correspondence with some of the leading luminaries of the continent as well as the media attention he received from Amsterdam to Zagreb. Bernard Shaw, the man and the persona, knew no borders, and nowhere is this more so than in Europe. Some of his plays premiered in German translation years before they could be staged in the West End. At the peak of his career, Saint Joan, to cite but one example, was translated and produced in every major European capital within a year of its publication. The International Shaw Conference—“Shaw in Europe” is intended as a forum for scholars who study Shaw’s reception in Europe and the ramifications of his works and ideas on the continent. The Organizing Committee welcomes papers on any of the following topics: • Shaw productions in European countries • Translations of Shaw plays and other works into European languages • The reception of Shaw’s works and ideas in Europe • Shaw’s influence on European authors • Shaw and his views on European history and politics • Shaw plays that have specific European connections: Bulgaria and Arms and the Man; France and Saint Joan; Spain and Man and Superman; Russia and Great Catherine / Annajanska; Ireland and John Bull’s Other Island, etc. Proposals for themed panels and roundtables are also welcome, especially those covering Shaw in specific countries and/or languages (in the case of translation). Deadline for proposals: 17 February 2020 For more information, click here

It is widely accepted that translators and interpreters do not work in isolation but “in a wider social context, interacting with other agents and with information technology” (Shih 2017: 50; See also Wang & Wang 2019). As in any effective social interaction, three components underpin translators and interpreters’ daily activities. They are: affect, behaviour and cognition (Spooner 1989). Cognition is defined as ‘the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses’ (Oxford Dictionary 2019). In translation and interpreting, this often refers to the mental procedure of how translators and interpreters acquire and store information, and consequently plan and execute translation and interpreting activities, often under the constraints of limited resources and situational contexts. With an accumulation of these ongoing mental processing throughout translators and interpreters’ experience and career, perception, schemata and understanding are gradually developed, which consequently guide their behaviours. Whist often overlooked, affect, which refers to translators’ and interpreters’ emotion and feeling, is tightly interwoven into the fabrics of translation and interpreters’ cognition and behaviour. To understand the entirety and complexity of translation and interpreting as social interaction, it is important to explore the interplay between translators’ and interpreters’ affect, behaviour and cognition, be it from the theoretical, empirical or methodological perspectives.This symposium welcomes contributions related to the following themes (although not limited to): Themes: - Interdisciplinary studies in translation and interpreting- Eye tracking in translation and interpreting studies- Human and computer interaction for translators and interpreters- Translation and the Web- Emotions in Translation and interpreting- Ideologies in translation and interpreting- Technology in translation and interpreting- Ecological approach to translation and interpreting- Ergonomical approach to translation and interpreting- Neurological approach to translation and interpreting- Pedagogy for translation and interpreting- Professional issues in translation and interpreting- Innovation in research methodologies Deadline for submissions: 31 March 2020 For more information, see here

The forthcoming International Conference ‘New Trends in Translation and Technology’ (NeTTT’2020) will take place on the island of Rhodes, Greece, 28-30 September 2020. The objective of the conference is to bring together academics in linguistics, translation studies, machine translation and natural language processing, as well as developers, practitioners, language service providers and vendors who work on or are interested in different aspects of technology for translation. The conference will be a distinctive and interdisciplinary event for discussing the latest developments and practices in translation technology. NeTTT’2020 invites all professionals who would like to learn about recent trends, present their latest work, and/or share their experiences in the field. The conference will also be an ideal place to establish business and research contacts, collaborations and new ventures. The conference will take the form of presentations (peer-reviewed research and user presentations, keynote speeches), demos (demos from sponsors) and posters; it will also feature panel discussions and tutorials/workshops. The presentations will be published as open-access conference e-proceedings. Deadline for submissions: 30 April 2020 For more information, click here

CALL FOR PAPERS: Special issue on Translation under DictatorshipsSubmissions are invited for a special issue of the electronic journal, Translation Matters, on the subject of Translation under Dictatorships, and seeks to attract specialists who will make a serious contribution to scholarship in the field.While it is expected that many of the submissions will be concerned with translation under the Portuguese Estado Novo, the Call is by no means restricted to this reality. We are also interested in general or theoretical reflections about translation under censorship conditions, as well as individual case studies from different geographical and temporal contexts.Articles, in English or in Portuguese, should be 6000-8000 words in length, including references and footnotes, and be formatted in accordance with the guidelines given on the journal’s website. Papers should be uploaded onto the site by 28th February 2020. http://ojs.letras.up.pt/index.php/tm/user.

The International Conference on Field Research on Translation and Interpreting: Practices, Processes, Networks (FIRE-TI) will be held at the Centre for Translation Studies in Vienna from 18 to 20 February 2021. The aim of the conference is 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 thereby 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, the conference also seeks to bring to the fore those particular aspects that are hard to reconstruct through product analyses or in a laboratory setting. Further information can be found on the conference website: https://fireti.univie.ac.at/  Call for Papers: https://fireti.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/k-fireti/Call_for_Papers_FIRE-TI_2021.pdf Submissions of papers by 12 July 2020

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. Contributions (case studies or theoretical articles) are welcome in one or more of the axes below: • intersemiotic translation, translation by illustration • adaptation, transposition, transduction, recreation • intericonicity in intersemiotic and in art studies • translation in auto-communication, cognition and perception • multimodal and intermedial translation • cultural translation, anthropological translation • (bio)semiotic approaches Prospective authors should submit an abstract of approximately 300 words by mail to the guest editors, Drs. Evangelos Kourdis (ekourdis@frl.auth.gr) and Susan Petrilli (susan.petrilli@gmail.com), including their affiliation and contact information. Acceptance of the abstract does not guarantee publication, given that all research articles will be subjected to the journal’s double peer review process. Timeline:Deadline for abstracts: December 15, 2019Notification of acceptance of the abstract: January 15, 2020Deadline for submission of full papers: April 30, 2020Reviewers’ report: June 15, 2020Final revised papers due: July 15, 2020Publication: Volume 6, Number 1 (July 2020)

Artists study the reality they are surrounded by, people they live among, themselves, their instruments of work and how these areas are interconnected. Their work addresses complex issues, establishing dynamic relationships to a whole variety of other disciplines, from philosophy to new technologies. Their creative activity generates knowledge that could not be gained otherwise. Artistic knowledge is acquired through sensory and emotional perception and is practice-based, practice-driven, ‘felt’, ‘embodied’. It crosses the borders of different countries, languages, cultures, disciplines. Many artistic research projects are genuinely multicultural and interdisciplinary. Yet artists still often have to justify the idea that their practice is research. Academic research too has become increasingly inter- and multidisciplinary. Cultural Literacy [CL] is the ability to think in literary ways about any topic or question, using the key concepts of textuality, fictionality, rhetoricity and historicity (see http://cleurope.eu/about/key-concepts/). How can the creative arts and CL come together to think about the contemporary world? This Symposium is designed to generate active discussion, focusing on thinking and talking rather than formal presentations. If your proposal is accepted, it will be included in a ‘book of presentations’ that all participants will be asked to read in advance of the Symposium. The contributions will be grouped together into parallel break-out sessions of 90 minutes during which each presenter will briefly summarise their points and the subsequent discussion will aim to explore the key theme of the panel. Deadline for submissions: 29 November 2019 For further details, click here

ATISA X: Translation, Interpreting and movement(s). Biennial Conference of the American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association University of California, Santa Barbara / April 24-26, 2020 Keynote Speakers: Moira Inghilleri (UMass - Amherst) and Douglas Robinson (Hong Kong Baptist University) The idea of movement is embedded in the very word translation. Acts of translation and interpreting involve ontological, physical, exegetical and epistemological movements that define both process and product. Translators and interpreters are themselves bodies in movement, travelling across languages and cultures and physically enacting the translation and interpreting process. And so, as we move further into the cyber era, what effect might this have on the translator’s body and the movement of translated texts? At the same time, the physical movement of peoples – in 2017 there were more displaced persons (refugees, asylum seekers and the internally displaced persons) than ever in history (UNHCR, 2018) – has produced a sharp increase in demand for translation and interpreting services. How is our understanding of the role and ethics of translation and interpreting affected by the conditions behind this unprecedented movement of peoples: migration, war and conflict, along with the rise of autocratic regimes and illiberal democracies? Also relevant here is the role and nature of translation and interpreting in various political and social movements. Moreover, the field of Translation and Interpreting Studies itself has been full of movements – shifts in perspectives, theories, space and place, and power. A field whose flux has often been presented as unproblematically linear and diachronic is now being challenged within more heterogeneous, transnational and rhizomatic paradigms. In addition, translation and interpreting, once banished from the language learning classroom, have been repositioning themselves as potentially effective language learning activities and as a way to teach learners about the nature of language. Call for papers deadline: 1 November 2019 For more information, click here

KäTu2020: Translation and Interpreting: Focusing on Quality University of Helsinki, 17–18 April 2020 The annual KäTu symposia offer researchers, teachers and practitioners of translation and interpreting a forum where they can discuss the diverse phenomena of the field, their ongoing research projects, and the state and development of Translation Studies in general. Doctoral students, in particular, are an important KäTu target group. They are offered the opportunity to present their work in its different stages of development, and receive valuable feedback. For seventeen years, the KäTu symposia have brought together a wide array of participants interested in the field and its research: audience members and speakers, translators and interpreters of spoken as well as sign languages, researchers and teachers of translation and interpreting. The KäTu symposia are organised as a collaborative effort between the Teachers’ and Researchers’ Section of the Finnish Association of Translators and Interpreters (SKTL), and the different Finnish universities which train future translators and interpreters. Hosting the symposium is rotated between these Finnish universities. The 2020 symposium will be held at the University of Helsinki, which is proud to be organising and hosting the event for the fourth time. Proposals for workshops and thematic sessions should be submitted no later than Friday 15th November 2019. Suggestions for thematic sessions must include the titles of the presentations to be included as part of those sessions. Proposals for session presentations and posters must be submitted no later than Friday 17th January 2020. For more information, click here

When: 23–24 January 2020 Where: Cardiff University (Wales, UK) This two-day interdisciplinary conference will explore the mobility of comics and graphic novels along three axes: time, space, and media. Mobility is understood to include all processes of transformation undergone by comics in their jour­ney across history (time), cultural and linguistic bound­aries (space), and different forms of artistic expression (media). These three axes of comics’ mobility are often inter­con­nected but have so far mostly been explored in isolation and from the perspective of a single dis­cipline or language. The opportunities and challenges of comics’ translation into different languages, and their adaptation especially from/into narrative prose and film, have received increasing attention in recent years. Comics’ travel through time has not been explored with the same frequency and analytical depth. Here, aspects such as the different textual and paratextual environments in antholo­gies and re-editions, changes to the artwork, and practices of re-drawing deserve closer attention. Keynote speakers Prof Jan Baetens (KU Leuven) Prof Federico Zanettin (Università degli Studi di Perugia) Panel 1: Transformation: Comics Mobility Across Time Panel 2: Translation: Comics Mobility Across Space Panel 3: Adaptation: Comics Mobility Across Artistic Media We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers that explore any of the dimensions of comics’ mobility outlined above. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words long (excluding references). Please send your abstracts (in English) to Dr Tilmann Altenberg at: AltenbergTG@cardiff.ac.uk by 30 November 2019. Notifications will be sent out no later than 13 December 2019. The conference is supported by the Institute of Modern Languages Research (London).