Calls for papers

The History and Translation Network (HTN) was established in 2021 in response to the increasing significance of and interest in translation and interpreting history, both in translation and interpreting studies and historical studies (cf. “Manifesto”). The network has since connected a global community of scholars and practitioners from diverse disciplinary backgrounds who share the belief that acts of translation and interpreting are pivotal in the making of history and that considering their historical context is essential in comprehending said activities. One of its main objectives is to foster inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration and facilitate dialogue on the methodological and conceptual aspects of our research endeavors through conferences and other events. This vision was affirmed through the inaugural HTN conference held in Tallinn, Estonia, in May 2022 and the subsequent online follow-up event in May 2023, both of which highlighted the evident demand for such collaborative platforms. The HTN 2024 Graz sets out to continue the exchange started in these two events. Embracing the thematic focus of “History – Translation – Politics,” this conference foregrounds the understanding of translation and interpreting as historically and politically contextualized activities that can potentially bring about cultural and social transfer and transformation. It probes the influence of politics on these activities while also exploring how translation politics can act as a catalyst for change within specific settings. Building upon the premise that translation is not only an essential element of historical analysis but also a historically situated practice, we welcome submissions that delve into the roles of translators, interpreters, and other pertinent institutions as agents or subjects of transformation. Additionally, we invite contributions that investigate instances of translation and interpreting that both instigate modifications within prevailing economic, political, religious, or social power dynamics and face constraints imposed by them, as well as contributions discussing the methodological added value of translation/interpreting as a lens into history. Time and Place The conference will take place on 11-14 September 2024 at the University of Graz, Austria. Invited speakers: Carla Mereu Keating (University of Bristol) E. Natalie Rothman (University of Toronto Scarborough) Vicente Rafael (University of Washington) Submissions: We accept individual papers as well as panel proposals. Individual paper proposals should be approx. 300 words long. If you are interested in organising a thematic panel involving 3-4 papers, please submit a preliminary panel proposal with the topic of the panel and a brief description (ca 100 words). If the preliminary proposal is accepted, we will ask a full panel proposal with title, panel description (ca 200 words), panelists and their paper’s proposal (approx. 300 words each). Individual paper proposals and full panel proposals should be accompanied by short bios (ca 100 words) of the presenters. Please send all proposals to the email address HTN2024@uni-graz.at, with the keyword “HTN-abstract” or “HTN-panels” on the subject line. Deadlines: Preliminary panel proposals: 1 December 2023 Acceptance of preliminary panel proposal: 15 January 2024 Full panel proposal (incl. abstracts for all papers): 1 February 2024 Individual paper proposal: 1 February 2024 Acceptance of individual paper proposals and full panel proposals: 31 March 2024 Registration: 15 May – 15 July 2024 Organizers: The conference is organized by the History and Translation Network and the Department of Translation Studies of the University of Graz. Organizing committee: Scientific committee: Pekka Kujamäki Hanna Blum Nadja Grbic Gernot Hebenstreit Rafael Schögler Daniele Monticelli Christopher Rundle Anne Lange (Tallinn) Chris Rundle (Bologna) Daniele Monticelli (Tallinn) Hephzibah Israel (Edinburgh) Hilary Footitt (Reading) Ine Van linthout (Brussels) Iryna Odrekhivska (Lviv) Larisa Schippel (Vienna) Lieven D’hulst (Leuven) Magda Heydel (Kraków) Michael Schreiber (Mainz) Michele Troy (Hartford) Michele Sisto (Pescara) Outi Paloposki (Turku) Paul Cohen (Toronto) Pekka Kujamäki (Graz) Sanja Perovic (Kings College) Vicente Rafael (Washington)

Over the centuries, Slavic countries’ history and culture have been marked by countless attempts at revolution, rebellion, and transgression from the imposed norm, paired with a strong desire to adhere to forms of tradition, ideology, or even political regimes. Examples of such behaviour in the context of historical events are the various protests and riots that have spanned the last century in the Slavic area, beginning from the October Revolution in 1917, moving towards Color Revolutions in the early 2000s and the events surrounding Ukrainian Euromajdan in 2014 and Belarusian protest movements in 2020. As for artistic and literary environments, equally frequent have been attempts to deviate from the imposed norm to rework tradition or propose new aesthetic schemes, which have resulted, for instance, in numerous alternations between «archaists» and «innovators» (Yu. Tynyanov, 1929, Arkhaisty i novatory). At the same time, cultures belonging to the Slavic area have often engaged in dialogue with European tradition, which was perceived as more prestigious. Such dialogue with the close Western counterpart has been engaged either in the attempt to pursue integration with its consolidated aesthetic tradition or, at times, in the desire to differentiate themselves and assert their own specificity.  Suggesting a theoretical frame, one can observe similarities between the Slavic area’s cultural interactions and the semiosphere model theorised by Jurij Lotman (Yu. Lotman, 1984, On the semiosphere). Slavic cultures would live, accordingly, in a dual «semiotic space»: an internal space and an external one, closer to European standards. As the semiosphere itself, these two spaces are heterogeneous and asymmetrical. Such asymmetry between the codified languages placed at the centre of the system, and the less structured ones placed at its periphery, makes possible a continuous flow of creation and destruction of ‘norms’, in which elements take on meaning as a result of previously developed and shared codes, subject to constant renewal. The adherence to which norms has marked the development of Slavic cultures? Which phenomena have given rise to processes of deviation and change? How have these opposing tendencies contributed to the development of literary tradition, to the normalisation of language, to the imposition or subversion of social and political order? The conference intends to discuss the various possible ways of approaching the topic. Proposals may explore - without being limited to - the following research areas related to  Slavic cultures: languages and linguistics; literature, art and cultural studies; cinema and theatre; language teaching; translatology and translation studies; historical, political and socio-cultural studies. Deadline for abstracts: 20 November 2023 For more information, click here.

Translation Studies scholars have shown a growing interest in the role affect and emotions play in the translation process. Research in this vein has explored links between affect and translation in various domains, including literature, business, governance, and translator/interpreter training (Kußmaul 1991, Jääskeläinen 1996, Ruokonen & Koskinen 2017, Shadman 2020). Various methodologies have been brought to bear, ranging from qualitative methods such as TAP (Jääskeläinen 1996), interviews (Risku & Meinx 2021), and narrative accounts (Ruokonen & Koskinen 2017). These tools have proven useful in identifying and investigating the parameters that affect translators’ and interpreters’ performance and how emotional intelligence informs the translation process (Shadman 2020, Hubscher-Davidson 2021, Rojo 2017). Despite the great interdisciplinary potential of interfacing insights from psychology and cognitive scienceswith Translation Studies, researchers have thus far primarily focused on emotions from a cognitive perspective only. One notable exception is Kaisa Koskinen’s Translation and Affect: Essays on Sticky Affects and Translational Affective (2020), which invites scholars to rethink the role of “affect” in translation by including cultural and sociological approaches that highlight the relevance of affect theory to Translation Studies. Building on Koskinen’s pioneering work, this volume seeks to advance our understanding of affect’s interplay in translational phenomena by contributing new methodological and conceptual insights and exploring new empirical domains. One indication of the need for conceptual elaboration is the profusion of different definitions of affect. Koskinen understands affect as a “body-mind complex that directs a person towards a desired state of affairs through a process of change” (13). Under this framework, affect is “bodily grounded. We can only be affected by what our sensory systems register, and this is constrained by both our bodily capacities and our material location” (179). Translation can thus be viewed as an activity in which affect plays an important role. Following Koskinen’s approach, we are interested in exploring the links between the individual and the social by highlighting emotional and physiological aspects involved in translation. Our volume hopes to build on this conceptualisation of affect that privileges human experience in times when technological advances often take centre stage, without forgetting that translation technologies also affect the translator and other translation actors both cognitively and socially (Pym, 2011). For instance, the use of increasingly high-performance digital tools and machine translation transforms the translator’s tasks and raises new questions regarding dialogue (Pym, 2011), agency, creativity, or individual voices, all of which arguably fall into the realm of affect (Koskinen, 2020: 155). Taking this into consideration, the goal of this volume is twofold. Firstly, it pursues a “sociocultural theorization of the roles of affect in translatorial activities” (6). Secondly, it aims to connect affect to the subfield of translator studies, which covers “sociology, culture and cognition” (Chesterman 2009: 13), in order to articulate the need for research focused on the agents and actors involved in translation rather than solely on the translated text. Agent- and process-oriented research allows for an in-depth examination of the translator’s agency and the influence of culture and society on their choices. Similarly, widely discussed questions such as translator training, ethics, and the translator’s (in)visibility need revisiting in light of affect theory. Since translation is a cultural rather than a solely linguistic act, and given that affect is embedded in culture and is context-dependent, the intersection of affect and translation is best studied not only from an interdisciplinary point of view, but also through an exploration of novel and combined methods that pertain to the realm of ethnographic, literary-artistic, philosophical, cultural studies. In line with the contributions of Goldfajn (2020) and Koskinen hailing from cultural studies, this volume seeks to highlight the centrality of affect and emotions in translation and to offer new avenues for exploring future directions in the discipline. We welcome diverse perspectives, methodologies, and case studies that explore the cultural and social nature of both affect and translation, such as – but not exclusive to – cognitive, gendered, embodied, postcolonial, psychological and historical approaches that address one or more of the following questions:  – What is the role of affect on and between the different agents/actors in the translation field?  – How does translation shape affect in specific contexts or in relation to certain social phenomena? This question could be linked to climate change narratives, heritage, politics, journalism, current events, science, literature, national/cultural identity, censorship, etc.  – How are translators and interpreters affected by technology (e.g., CAT tools, translation memories, AI)? What could be the possible impacts on the future development of the profession?  – To what extent do sociocultural and economic factors such as gender, education, linguistic policies, and cultural politics influence affect, particularly in translation situations? What can this teach us about translators and the translation process?  – How can a more explicit focus on affect advance the state of the art in other areas of interest in TS, such as self-translation, retranslation, and untranslatability?  Deadline for abstracts: 15 December 2023 For more information, click here.

We welcome proposals for conceptual papers as well as case studies and empirical research contributions that address the labour and work of translation and interpreting in both theory and practice. Please send your extended abstract (700-800 words, excluding references) to both editors Cornelia Zwischenberger (cornelia.zwischenberger@univie.ac.at) and Alexa Alfer (A.Alfer01@westminster.ac.uk) by 15 January 2023. Further Information: https://transcultcom.univie.ac.at/news-and-events/news-detail/news/call-for-papers-special-issue-of-traget/

Co-editors: Ashley RIGGS and Lucile DAVIERWe seek contributions for an edited volume on constructive news across cultures, to be published byRoutledge in 2025 as the IATIS (International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies)Yearbook. Deadline for abstracts: 19 November 2023 For more information, click here.

Following the resounding success of the 1st International Conference Translation and Cultural Sustainability, which took place in November 2018, the Department of Translation and Interpreting of the University of Salamanca, Spain, will hold the second edition from 17 to 19 April 2024. The aim of this second gathering is to discuss the numerous challenges, research and development avenues and new scenarios (physical, technological as well as social and cultural) that we face in the field of Translation and Interpreting, be they in professional, research, intercultural mediation or teaching-learning activities. Procedure In our call for papers, we invite researchers and practitioners from all over the world to submit their abstracts for research, development and innovation in the wide range of areas encompassed by Translation and Interpreting. To this end, there will be five parallel paper presentation sessions and a physical space in which we will encourage participants to discuss emerging research, which will be presented in the form of posters. Some sessions will be moderated by outstanding guest speakers, who will also present their research or editorial projects in those sessions. The three-day programme will include six keynote lectures and five roundtable discussions, in which prestigious experts in the discipline and profession will participate to help us reflect and debate on these new challenges, scenarios and research and development avenues. For more information, click here. Deadline for abstracts: 31 October 2023

The conference Legal Translation & Interpreting on the move is the closing event of the 2022-2023 edition of the 1st-Level Master programme in Legal Translation offered by the Department of Legal, Language, Interpreting and Translation Studies of the University of Trieste.The conference is also part of the events organised on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting (SSLMIT) as well as the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the University of Trieste.The conference aims to contribute to the discussion on the key role of legal translators and interpreters in a wide variety of areas, providing a forum in which academics and practitioners can benefit from the exchange of ideas based on research projects as well as professional experiences. With a view to exploring the new opportunities and threats related to the fast-paced technological advancement and the rapidly changing professional landscape, in terms of both job profiles and market developments, the conference intends to encourage reflection on the various themes listed below and will address issues including, but not limited to, the following topics:   - Law, language, translation & interpreting and Artificial Intelligence - Legal/community/court interpreting - Training the legal translators and interpreters of the future - Legal translation & interpreting competence: research and practice - Legal institutional translation & interpreting - Emerging demands and professional profiles - Law, literature and translation - Law on the screen: legal translation & audiovisual translation - Legal translation, clear writing and language simplification - Legal translation and transcreation - Legal translation and legal design - Legal translation & interpreting and crisis/risk communication - Legal translation & interpreting and migration - Legal translation & interpreting and human rights - Ideology in legal translation & interpreting research and practice - Gender, law, translation & interpreting Deadline for abstracts: 30 November 2023 For more information, click here.

This conference is organized by a collaboration between Stockholm University, Uppsala  University (Sweden), Heriot-Watt University (UK) and the Children In Translation Network at the University of Galway (Ireland) to promote the intersection between Children’s Literature and Translation Studies. We understand this intersection as a space that includes the translation of all forms of multimodal fiction and non-fiction for children and young adults or what Borodo (2007) refers to as “Child-centered Translation Studies” in desire to broaden the field of study to different media. The field of children’s literature has proved a fertile ground for research in translation in recent decades, but the time has come to take stock of past developments and innovations to forge new theoretical and practical paths for the future development of the discipline. Drawing from the first interdisciplinary conference organized in Belgium by KU Leuven and the University of Antwerp in 2017, our goal is to solidify what has been achieved so far and to provide a space for discussion on the future of children's literature in translation. This workspace will serve as a forum for practitioner and academic voices to work together to share new ideas and to further shape the arena for the discipline. Deadline for abstracts: 30 November 2023 For more information, click here

The International Conference on Intercultural Pragmatics and Communication (INPRA) is a biennial meeting, and this will be its 10th edition. The main aim of the INPRA conference is to bring together researchers from around the world who have diverse scientific backgrounds and share the same field of interest – pragmatics, being perceived as a cognitive, philosophical, social, and intercultural perspective on language and communication. The conference promotes connections between pragmatic theory and its application in practice. We welcome contributions on the following topics: Pragmatics theories: neo-Gricean approaches, relevance theory, theory of mind, meaning, role of context, semantics-pragmatics interface, explicature, implicature, grammaticalisation, speech act theory, presuppositions, im/politeness, experimental pragmatics, etc. Experimental pragmatics: models of language and meaning, experimental techniques, scalar implicatures, reference resolution, interpretation of figurative language, etc. Intercultural, cross-cultural and societal aspects of pragmatics: research involving more than one language and culture or varieties of one language, variational pragmatics, lingua franca, computer mediated communication (CMC), bilinguals’ and heritage speakers’ language use, intercultural misunderstandings, effect of dual language and multilingual systems on the development and use of pragmatic skills, language of aggression and conflict, etc. Applications: usage and corpus-based approaches, pragmatic competence, teachability and learnability of pragmatic skills, pragmatic variations within one language and across languages, developmental pragmatics, cyber pragmatics, etc. Abstracts must be in English, max. 300 words in length and should include no more than 5 references. Choose the most appropriate topic category for your proposal among those indicated in the conference description (e.g., Pragmatic theories). Abstracts should be anonymous and will be double-blind peer-reviewed. They should include sufficient details to allow reviewers to judge the scientific merits of the work. The file should not include any information identifying the author(s). Self-references that reveal the author’s identity, e.g., “We previously showed (Gordon, 1991) …”, should be avoided. Instead, use citations such as “Gordon previously showed (Gordon, 1991) …”. For more information, click here. Deadline for submissions: 15 November

To mark the 35th anniversary of the journal TTR, the conference “Redefining translation? Historical fluctuations, new practices, and epistemologies in the making” will bring together established and emerging scholars to address themes related to translation (including interpretation), terminology, and writing. Translation, together with terminology and professional writing, constitutes a complex set of practices, processes, and epistemologies that, no matter what they are called, (e.g., translation, adaptation, transfer, intertextuality, transformation), have always played a prominent role in civil society while also being used as tools of colonization and discrimination. Translation thus raises crucial ethical issues that call for serious reflection. Starting from the tripartite definitions of translation proposed by Roman Jakobson (1959) and Gideon Toury (1995), among others, this conference invites scholars to reflect on the (re)definitions of translation and interpretation and their ethical implications throughout history. The following questions can serve as points of departure: Does translation (along with interpretation) only involve transfer between languages, individuals, texts, communities or nation states? Or does it also concern any material, even biosemiotic, form of transfer that may or may not include interlingual exchange? Are translation and interpretation always synonymous with transfer? Can we move from a restricted to an enlarged view of translation while also ensuring that this field of knowledge retains its specificity and common foundations? If so, what would these be (see Nouss, 2012)? Is translation exclusive to human beings, that is to say, does it only take place between humans? What role does or should technology play in the translation process in light of the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and neural machine translation (NMT)? How do these changes affect human translation? What are the characteristics of the contemporary translating subject? To what extent can advances in AI and the ethical issues they raise enrich our analysis of the production of bilingual or multilingual content? Given the complex power dynamics that characterize the Anthropocene, what roles can translation and interpretation play in mediating and raising awareness of contemporary issues? Clearly, the mediating role that both translation and interpretation play, whether in community settings or times of crisis, is a pressing current issue. Insofar as translation can also be considered a cognitive act that precedes and facilitates communication despite differences, what cognitive theories can help us better understand translation and its practices? As an interpretative act, translation is a heuristic tool that has the potential to participate in the production and circulation of knowledge. How might this potential be achieved? This conference seeks to encourage dialogue on the important social role that translation plays in the formation and transformation of knowledge as well as in the movement and mediation of ideas. We welcome proposals focusing on historical fluctuations (e.g., definitions of translation), new practices (e.g., linguistic revitalization thanks to translation), and epistemologies (e.g., the science of translation, hermeneutics, the interpretive school, various sociologies of translation, and complexity theory) that have defined, still define, and will define translation in the broader sense going forward.  Deadline for submissions: 1 November 2023 For more information, click here  

Call for paper available here: https://old.linguistlist.org/issues/34/34-1920.html Deadline for submissions: 30 September

Conference at NOVA University of Lisbon, 12th to 14th December 2023. Extended deadline for proposals: 30th September