Calls for papers

The transformation of women's sense of self - individually and collectively - is one of the most significant socio-cultural events of the past 50 years to have occurred around the globe. The focus of this Conference is on translocal, transcultural and translingual connections between texts and their authors. We adopt a broad understanding of 'text', which includes both published and unpublished work, recorded and unrecorded words, and can range from literary fiction to oral testimony and activist pamphlets. Feminism, too, is defined here in very broad terms - including any action aimed at subverting the gender status quo and foregrounding female agency. Finally, we understand translation as a process of cultural transfer across languages, but also within the lexicons and registers of single languages. While the prime focus of the Network has been on the period since 1945, papers incorporating longer-term perspectives and earlier periods are very welcome. Panels and themes will include: *Intersectional approaches in translation · *Feminist vocabularies and dictionaries · *LGBTQ+ translation · *Narrating feminism in translation · *Feminist magazines and translation · *Self-translation/intimate translation · *Intergenerational translation · *Pedagogies of feminist translation · *Sexism in/and language · *Feminism and specialized translation (e.g., medical or legal translation) · *Feminism, translation and international institutions · *Men and feminism · *Multilingual spaces of negotiation (e.g., book fairs) · *Social media · *Translation and diaspora communities · *Translating the reproductive body Please note the Conference will also feature a strand on 'Feminist Translating: Activists and Professionals', organized in collaboration with Glasgow's Centre for Gender History, and involving roundtable discussions and workshops with activist-translator communities and publishers working with a feminist ethos. If you would like to be part of this strand (or have other questions) please contact the conference organisers: Dr. Emily Ryder, Dr. Maud Bracke and Dr. Penelope Morris, University of Glasgow at: translatingfeminism@gmail.com Leverhulme International Network: 'Translating Feminism: Transfer, Transgression, Transformation (ca. 1960-1990)' https://translatingfeminism.org/

PACTE (Process of Acquisition of Translation Competence and Evaluation) is organising the Fourth International Conference on Research into the Didactics of Translation (didTRAD), which will be held at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 20-22 June, 2018. This conference aims to provide a forum for researchers in the field of translator training.   Conference Topics Teaching translation: introduction to translation; legal translation; scientific-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. Cross-cutting aspects of curriculum design: tutorials, final-year dissertations, placements, etc.   Deadline: January 14, 2018. Follow this link for more information on how to submit your abstract: http://grupsderecerca.uab.cat/pacte/en/content/abstract-submission Notification of acceptance: March 14, 2018.   Further information: http://grupsderecerca.uab.cat/pacte/en/secondcircular2018

This year, Voyages in Translation Studies will explore the role of translation in shaping languages and challenge the notion of “living languages” in political, social and cultural spheres. We are honoured to welcome Myriam Suchet, professor of French language and literature at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle—Paris 3, and Director of Paris 3’s Centre d’études québécoises, as our keynote speaker. Language, according to Russian semiotician Mikhail Bakhtin ([1975] 1981), “is not an abstract system of normative forms but rather a concrete heteroglot conception of the world.” Yet, as Suchet (2016) notes, being immersed in one language on a daily basis may lead us to define language boundaries where none exist. Languages interact and overlap, and in examining their history and the role of translation in that history, it is clear that the strategy of portraying languages as unitary entities has been repeatedly used to assist in the construction of national identities. Works by France Daigle, Ahmadou Kourouma, Juan Goytisolo and Paul Celan challenge dominant narratives by revealing how language boundaries have been historically established. According to Rainier Grutman (1997), heterolingual texts are characterized by their use of multiple languages, idioms or varieties; for Suchet (2014), they also conjure up alternative representations that redefine one’s relationship with the Other. Suchet has called for translation to be studied from the perspective of heterolingual writing, which would involve questioning prevalent linguistic assumptions and examining how heterolingual texts transgress such assumptions. Indigenous storytellers have long been aware of how reciprocal relations in translation are closely associated to the vitality of a language, and they have made use of heterolingual techniques to create bonds within and outside of their communities. Authors such as Tomson Highway, Marilyn Dumont and Joséphine Bacon often contribute to the tremendous efforts undertaken in their communities to revitalize Indigenous languages, leading to various questions about the function of these voices in translation and whether concepts such as “dormant languages” can dispel myths of extinction. Such work presents new ways of envisioning our relationship with language itself, and as Niigaanwewidam Sinclair (2014) has stated, “It is not to assume that we own language. It is to know that we are only a participant in its energy, a relation, a cousin that visits and shares tea, drinking in its power.” In Eco-Translation (2017), Michael Cronin builds on this idea in a more environmental sphere, calling into question the anthropocentrism of translation theory and describing the alarming state of the planet on which we speak and translate. Cronin invites us to reflect on the role translation studies research could play in restructuring the boundaries of communication that we have built in order to account for interactions with other living species and our environment. The “living” component of languages can also be studied through a more biological lens. Maria Tymoczko (2005) has suggested that in the near future, neuroscientists and translation studies scholars will join forces, “radically [changing] the way translation is thought about and approached.” Such joint efforts could lead to new insights into how brain processes such as perception, memory and brain plasticity contribute to the translation process (Tymoczko 2012). The following is a non-exhaustive list of other topics that relate to the conference theme: —The history of languages and the impact of (re)translation on a language’s development —The impact of intercultural contact and migration on languages —The evolution and translation of Indigenous languages, oral histories and narratives —The role of linguistics and translation in the revitalization of endangered languages and cultural heritage (the notion of “living” and “dead” languages, the revival of Hebrew, invented languages, etc.) —Political resistance of languages in colonial and postcolonial contexts —Translation and terminology issues in the life sciences —User-centered translation —Gender-related language issues We welcome proposals for oral presentations (20 minutes in length, followed by a 10-minute question period) and poster presentations on these and other topics related to the conference theme. Proposals may be written in English or French. They must include a title and a 300-word abstract accompanied by the following information: name, email address, university and program of study, as well as a brief bio-bibliography (100 words). Please indicate whether you have a preference for an oral presentation or a poster presentation. Given the limited number of oral presentation slots, the Organizing Committee may suggest that you prepare a poster instead of an oral presentation. Proposals must be sent to tragrad1@gmail.com by December 22, 2017.   https://docs.google.com/document/d/11oLwS0jNiSIyUJJEQR7S-ukZjMo609nSER8lyPatbfA/edit

The Cologne Conference on Specialised Translation was founded in 2010 at the Institute of Translation and Multilingual Communication at the TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences, Cologne. The aim was to host intermittent conferences to provide a forum for focusing on state of the art research in the various areas of translation and interpreting. The second Cologne Conference on Translation, Interpreting and Technical Documentation will take place from 29-30 November 2018 at the TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences, Cologne. We will continue to focus on the significant fields of translation and interpreting, while extending the remit to include technical communication. Given the fact that all three areas are highly interrelated and new developments are continuing apace, the overarching theme of the conference will be “Interdependence and Innovation”. The goals of the conference are to reflect on recent theoretical and methodological approaches in the various strands of translation, interpreting and technical communication, to explore potential forms of interdependence and synergies resulting from these, and to thus contribute to the current state of the art in research in these areas, with a view to preparing the ground for future developments. We especially welcome papers which reflect the diversity of current research in Translation and Interpreting Studies and Technical Communication and invite submission of abstracts for papers in the following areas: - Translation and Interpreting in Specialised Contexts - Processes and Products of Technical Communication - Language and Translation Technology - Terminology and Knowledge Representation - Social Impact of Translation and Interpreting - Process Research in Translation and Interpreting - Translation and Interpreting Didactics - Corpora in Translation and Interpreting Studies and Practice - Crowd Translation - Games/Website Localization   Abstracts on further topics related to the overarching conference theme are also expressly encouraged. Abstracts of up to 200 words excluding references should be submitted by 28 February 2018 to CGN18-ITMK@f03.th-koeln.de. Notification of acceptance will be communicated by 1 June 2018. Current information on the conference can be found at the conference website: xl8.link/CGN18en

  The publication will cover issues related to a broadly conceived thematic field of translation science, including: Cultural and social aspects of translation (literary translation, legal translation, technical translation); Translation and creativity; Theoretical and practical issues in translation and interpreting; Localization and audiovisual translation (software/video game localization); Translation in the age of New Media; The translation process as an intercultural dialogue; Interpreter/translator as a cultural mediator; The role of an interpreter/a translator in society (community interpreting); Contextual aspects of translation; Translation as/at the crossroads of culture; Translation and globalization processes; Aspects of teaching and training translation.   An abstract of the manuscript (150-300 words long) should be sent to translatologica[at]uwr[dot]edu[dot]pl by 26 December 2017. Contributors will receive notification of acceptance within 1-3 weeks of submission. The deadline for manuscript submission is 24 April 2018. All submitted papers must be clearly written in academic English and contain only original work, which has not been published by or is currently under review for any other journal. Papers must not exceed 25 pages (5000-7500 words) including figures, tables, and references. All manuscripts must be submitted on the journal template, which can be downloaded through the Submission Guidelines tab. The publication date of the 2018 issue is September 2018 If you face problems with paper submission, please feel free to contact the editor at translatologica[at]uwr[dot]edu[dot]pl

The Centre for Translation & Interpreting Studies in Scotland (CTISS) at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh is delighted to announce an international conference on Translation and interpreting in an era of demographic and technological change, to be held in Edinburgh on 30 and 31 May 2018. Open to all, the conference immediately follows the members-only General Assembly of CIUTI (Conférence Internationale Permanente d'Instituts Universitaires de Traducteurs et Interprètes www.ciuti.org ) and is intended to create a common space for reflection on translation and interpreting issues. The conference language is English. Key dates• Abstract submission deadline: 31 January 2018• Notification of acceptance: 28 February 2018• Registation open: 28 February 2018• Early-bird registration available until: 31 March 2018 Aim and scopeThe digital era, characterized by technology which increases the speed and breadth of knowledge turnover within the economy and society, now embraces every aspect of our lives. The impact of new technologies is changing the very nature of language and communication, causing adjustment in every aspect of who says what, to whom, how, why, and with what effect. These developments interact in increasingly complex, pivotal and pervasive ways with demographic shifts, caused by war, economic globalisation, changing social structures and patterns of mobility, environmental crises, and other factors. Translators and interpreters attempt to keep up with these shifts. This conference is designed to reflect upon the innovations in research, practice and training that are associated with this turbulent landscape. TopicsWe invite papers related but not limited to the following translation and interpreting (T&I) areas:• T&I in the digital economy• T&I and new technologies• Accessibility issues in T&I (e.g. data sharing, maintenance, copyright)• New methodologies in T&I• Multimodality in T&I• T&I and the media• T&I and literature• T&I in the public sector• T&I in politics and law• Ethics, equality and diversity in T&I• T&I in education Submissions are invited for 20-minute presentations. Abstracts should be no more than 400 words (excluding references) and clearly state research questions, approach, method, data and (expected) results. Please submit your abstract as a file attachment including the title of the paper, author name, affiliation and e-mail address to CIUTIconference2018@hw.ac.uk. The subject header of the submission email should read: Abstract CIUTI. Further details will be available via http://www.ctiss.hw.ac.uk/research/ciuti-2018-call-for-papers.html

UCCTS is a biennial international conference which was launched by Richard Xiao in 2008 to provide an international forum for the exploration of the theoretical and practical issues pertaining to the creation and use of corpora in contrastive and translation/interpreting studies. The 2018 edition will be dedicated to the memory of Richard, who initiated the conference series but sadly passed away in January 2016. After almost 30 years of intensive corpus use in contrastive linguistics and translation studies, the conference aims to take stock of the advances that have been made in methodology, theory, analysis and applications, and think up new ways of moving corpus-based contrastive and translation studies forward. UCCTS2018 is meant to bring together researchers who collect, annotate, analyze corpora and/or use them to inform contrastive linguistics and translation theory and/or develop corpus-informed tools (in foreign language teaching, language testing and quality assessment, translation pedagogy, computer-aided/machine translation or other related NLP domains).   We particularly welcome papers in corpus-based contrastive and translation/interpreting studies that address the following topics: Quantitative approaches in corpus-based contrastive and translation studies The comparative study of translated/interpreted language with other types of constrained and/or mediated language varieties (e.g. learner/non-native language, edited language) Triangulation: the combined use of corpora and other types of data Register/genre variation and other factors affecting cross-linguistic analyses The contribution of CBTS to translation theory New ways of approaching translation properties/features Bilingual corpus use in foreign language learning/teaching Corpus use in translator training Corpus use in translation quality assessment Corpus use in bilingual (e-)lexicography and terminology Design and analysis of new types of comparable and parallel corpora, including learner translation corpora   We also encourage the submission of papers that genuinely straddle the fields of corpus-based contrastive linguistics and translation studies. A selection of papers will be published in an edited volume and a special issue in a scientific journal.   Abstracts should be between 800 and 1,000 words and include a list of references (not included in the word count) (maximum number of words including references: 1,500). It should provide a clear outline of the aim of the paper including clearly articulated research question(s), some details about research approach and methods and (preliminary) results. Anonymised abstracts should be submitted on EasyChair by 15 January, 2018. They will be reviewed anonymously by the scientific committee. You will be notified of the outcome of the review process by 1 March, 2018. Key dates Deadline for submission of abstracts: 15 January, 2018Notification of acceptance/rejection: 1 March, 2018Conference: 12-14 September, 2018   Further details: https://uclouvain.be/en/research-institutes/ilc/cecl/uccts2018.html

Call for Papers Translation and interpreting in an era of demographic and technological changeInnovations in research, practice and training The Centre for Translation & Interpreting Studies in Scotland (CTISS) at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh is delighted to announce an international conference on Translation and interpreting in an era of demographic and technological change, to be held in Edinburgh on 30 and 31 May 2018. Open to all, the conference immediately follows the members-only General Assembly of CIUTI (Conférence Internationale Permanente d’Instituts Universitaires de Traducteurs et Interprètes http://www.ciuti.org/ ) and is intended to create a common space for reflection on translation and interpreting issues. The conference language is English. Key dates• Abstract submission deadline: 31 January 2018• Notification of acceptance: 28 February 2018• Registration open: 28 February 2018• Early-bird registration available until: 31 March 2018 Aim and scopeThe digital era, characterized by technology which increases the speed and breadth of knowledge turnover within the economy and society, now embraces every aspect of our lives. The impact of new technologies is changing the very nature of language and communication, causing adjustment in every aspect of who says what, to whom, how, why, and with what effect. These developments interact in increasingly complex, pivotal and pervasive ways with demographic shifts, caused by war, economic globalisation, changing social structures and patterns of mobility, environmental crises, and other factors. Translators and interpreters attempt to keep up with these shifts. This conference is designed to reflect upon the innovations in research, practice and training that are associated with this turbulent landscape. TopicsWe invite papers related but not limited to the following translation and interpreting (T&I) areas:• T&I in the digital economy• T&I and new technologies• Accessibility issues in T&I (e.g. data sharing, maintenance, copyright)• New methodologies in T&I• Multimodality in T&I• T&I and the media• T&I and literature• T&I in the public sector• T&I in politics and law• Ethics, equality and diversity in T&I• T&I in education Submissions are invited for 20-minute presentations. Abstracts should be no more than 400 words (excluding references) and clearly state research questions, approach, method, data and (expected) results. Please submit your abstract as a file attachment including the title of the paper, author name, affiliation and e-mail address to CIUTIconference2018@hw.ac.uk. The subject header of the submission email should read: Abstract CIUTI. Further details will soon be available via http://www.ctiss.hw.ac.uk/research/conferences1.html. Location: Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the home of the Scottish Parliament and well served by international communication and transport links. The University was established in 1821 as the world's first mechanics' institute, with its Royal Charter granted in 1966). It is ranked among the World's top 500 and the UK’s top 30 universities. The Centre for Translation & Interpreting Studies in Scotland (CTISS) is internationally renowned for the calibre of its research which has been developed over more than 40 years. Bringing together research expertise across disciplines in translation studies, interpreting and applied language studies, the Centre’s work – building a diverse and coherent body of knowledge which seeks to address socially-relevant issues – informs the thinking of government, industry and public bodies around the world.

The Society for the Study of Translation and Interpretation (SSTI) is the non-profit educational and research foundation of NAJIT, the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators. One of its goals is to foster connections between empirical research and the actual practice of judiciary interpreting and legal translation. During the NAJIT 2017 Annual Conference SSTI sponsored a panel on Building bridges between theory and practice: Evidence-based research in legal interpreting and translation, which raised so much interest among NAJIT members that SSTI decided to sponsor its first conference along the same lines. Given widespread consensus among educators and practitioners alike about the highly under-researched nature of evidence-driven standards of training and education, SSTI is calling for research papers that address current gaps in these standards for judiciary interpreters. SSTI is particularly interested in how empirical evidence is linked to standards of practice in the United States and elsewhere as well as to training and how it is correlated with credentialing practices. Justifiably, Claudia Angelelli has described the US’s approach to interpreter training and testing as “putting the cart before the horse,[1]” resulting in accreditation mechanisms that lack the underpinnings which usually precede certification. In the US, novice interpreters have access to testing and accreditation but not to education with research-driven curricula. In order to explore how research advances judiciary interpreters’ education and, therefore, performance, SSTI invites both conceptual and empirical contributions on issues including but not limited to: · International models and standards for research-driven judiciary interpreter education · Judiciary interpreter education in vocational, professional and university settings · Relationships between standards of training and interpreter certification exams · Methodologies to derive valid and reliable standards for training and education · Professional entry-level minimal educational thresholds · Current gaps between readiness-to-work and readiness-to-credential after completion of training or education programs · Buy-in from end-users of interpreting services and the (perceived) market value of judiciary interpreter training and education · Service learning and standards for training and education · Training and education standards for continuing education · Self-instruction for judiciary interpreter certification purposes The SSTI Board will consider proposals from individual presenters as well as panel proposals (3-4 papers). Panel proposals should be submitted as a single document, with the title of the panel and a brief rationale that ties all the papers under a single theme, followed by abstracts for the individual papers and a bio sketch for each presenter. SSTI intends to publish selected papers in a peer-reviewed edited volume. Presenters will be contacted after the conference with specific instructions regarding submission of their papers and detailed information about the peer-review and publication process Please send proposals or informal inquiries regarding the SSTI conference to ssti.projects@gmail.com

This proposed special issue posits the blended concept of ‘translaboration’ as an experimental category and “generic space” (Fauconnier and Turner 1998) in which translation and collaboration can be brought into open conceptual play with one another. ‘Translaboration,’ originally coined by a group of transdisciplinary researchers at the University of Westminster, London, in 2015 (cf. Alfer 2015, Alfer, in press), allows scholars both within and outside of Translation Studies to explore, articulate, and put to the test connections, comparisons, and contact zones between translation and collaboration, and to reveal the potential inherent in aligning these two notions in both theory and practice. As a new investigative space, the ‘translab’ thus functions as a transdisciplinary site where a number of core components of (col)laboration, of which process, structure, purpose, interpersonal communication and trust are among the most salient (Gray 1989; Wood and Gray 1991), can not only be shown to have a bearing on our conceptualisations of translation but also reveal themselves as inherently translational. This special issue is based on the successful one-day workshop organised by the Translab group from the University of Westminster in September 2016 and will explore the concept of translaboration both from within the discipline of Translation Studies and from outside of it. We welcome proposals for conceptual papers as well as case studies and empirical research contributions that address some of the following questions or aspects of translaboration (though please note that this is not intended as an exhaustive list of possible topics): Translation as collaboration o How can translation be considered, conceptualised, and described as a collaborative activity? o What role do new technologies play in both facilitating and potentially hampering collaborative translation processes and what is their impact on power differentials and questions of ownership of translational processes? o What impact do intermediaries, contractual constraints, and/or highly regulated work processes have on translation as a collaborative practice? o What questions do collaborative translation practices raise in relation to translation quality and/or translational ethics? Collaboration as translation o How can collaboration be considered, conceptualised, and described as a translational activity? o What is the role of language(s) in the creation and structuration of collaborative communities of practice? o How can core components of collaboration, such as process, structure, purpose, interpersonal communication and trust, be shown to have a bearing on both the concept and the practices of interlingual translation? o How can concepts and practices of interlingual translation enrich (our understanding of) collaborative knowledge-generation, knowledge-transfer, and/or decision-making processes? Translaboration as a mode(l) of inter-/transdisciplinary research o What kinds of collaborations are or should be taking place between Translation Studies and other disciplines or fields of research, and what conceptual coordinates are necessary to bring such collaborations to fruition? o How can the investigative category of ‘translaboration’ contribute to lifting applications of the ‘translation’ concept in other disciplines beyond a merely metaphorical plane? o How can a translaborative framework articulate a more systematic and active acknowledgement of the history of Translation Studies’ own many intersections with other disciplines?   To propose a paper, please send your abstract (700-800 words excluding references) to both editors of the Special Issue: Alexa Alfer (A.Alfer01@westminster.ac.uk) Cornelia Zwischenberger (cornelia.zwischenberger@univie.ac.at)   For further details, please visit: https://www.benjamins.com/series/target/cfp_target_32.pdf

Call for Papers Google Translate & Modern Languages Education Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural StudiesUniversity of Nottingham Google Translate (GT) has become an institution in machine translation that has been claimed by its provider to be developing at great pace to achieve ever higher degrees of accuracy (Wu et al 2016) and to be able to handle an ever-widening network of language pairings through the introduction of Google’s Neural Machine Translation System (Wong 2016). Because GT is freely available on the internet and has its own app on computers, tablets and smartphones, it is accessible anywhere the Internet and Google services are available, and it easily enables users to render stretches of one language into another with outcomes of varying quality and comprehensibility (cf Van Rensburg, Snyman & Lotz 2012; Groves & Mundt 2015).Because this technology is so readily available and user-friendly, it can be quite safely assumed that people will use it when they encounter unfamiliar languages or languages they are in the process of acquiring or that they need for the purpose of their own ongoing education. As such, GT has, perhaps inadvertently, become a player in education at all levels. For instance, it would allow a beginning learner of French to translate a reading exercise into their first language to potentially facilitate comprehension. Equally, a native speaker of German studying at a British university might prefer writing their assignments, or parts thereof, in their first language and then rendering them into English with the aid of this technology.Given the wide range of potential uses (to positive or adverse effect) GT needs to be considered in context of education from angles such as its actual current abilities, pedagogical implications, ethics, institutional policies and also from the perspective of teachers and students.In this light, this conference is seeking papers that address the usefulness and the use of GT in the context of education. It aims to comprise a range of topics, possibly from, but not limited to the following areas: The benefits and drawbacks of GT for second language acquisition GT’s role in independent language learning GT in the classroom GT and assessed coursework assignments GT and cheating in assessed work GT as research facilitator and related issues (e.g. rigor, ethics) Google Pixel Buds and the future for human interpreters GT and careers options for modern languages students GT’s translation quality/reliability Each contribution will consist of a 20-minute presentation and a 10-minute Q&A session. We seek contributions from all relevant areas (e.g. vocational, secondary, tertiary, adult education, lifelong learning, professional and non-professional translators) by educators, students, researchers and professionals alike. Please submit abstracts of up to 250 words along with a short bio (up to 50 words) to: klaus.mundt@nottingham.ac.uk Submission deadline: 31 January 2018Date of the event: 29 June 2018 References:Groves, M., Mundt, K. (2015) ‘Friend or foe? Google Translate in language for academic purposes.’ English for Specific Purposes 37: 112-121.van Rensburg, A., Snyman, C., Lotz, S. (2012) ‘Applying Google Translate in a higher education environment: Translation products assessed.’ Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 30 (4): 511-524.Wong, S. (2016) ‘Google Translate AI invents its own language to translate with.’ New Scientist [online] 30/11/2016 https://www.newscientist.com/article/2114748-google-translate-ai-invents-its-own-language-to-translate-with/ [7/10/2017]Wu, Y., Schuster, M. Chen, Z., Le, Q.V., Norouzi, M., Macherey, W., Krikun, M., Cao, Y., Gao, Q., Macherey, K., Klingner, J., Shah, A., Johnson, M., Liu, X., Kaiser, Ł., Gouws, S., Kato, Y., Kudo, T., Kazawa, H., Stevens, K., Kurian, G., Patil, N., Wang, W.,Young, C., Smith, J., Riesa, J., Rudnick, A., Vinyals, O., Corrado, G., Hughes, M., Dean, J. (2016) ‘Google’s Neural Machine Translation System: Bridging the Gap between Human and Machine Translation.’ eprint arXiv:1609.08144 <https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.08144v2>[7/10/2017]

This conference suggests that the discipline of Translation Studies might provide a variety of helpful analytic tools in approaching a variety of contemporary issues. In particular, it would attempt to locate the peculiarities of Translation Studies in the contemporary Indian context, where it has become increasingly important to rethink notions such as the nation, culture, identity and language. With the growth of social media, digital technologies and new modes of production, Indian society is going through a number of important transitions. One consequence of this is that the channels of communication and processing information are being altered to a large extent. Against the contemporary backdrop of developmental politics and shifts in the public sphere, questions of regional languages, marginal identities, subaltern groups and ethnic minorities have become all the more critical. At this juncture, it might be fruitful to consider how the discipline of Translation Studies engages with, and deliberates upon these complex emergent issues in the larger global and local context. Admittedly, it might be impossible to cover all these aspects, but this conference aims to provide a platform to explore as many facets as possible through the lens of translation. For further details and a full list of topics to be addressed, visit http://www.unipune.ac.in/dept/fine_arts/english/english-conference/default.htm