Calls for papers

As recently announced, the IAPTI 6th International Conference will be held on November 11-12, 2023, in Timișoara, Romania. The Call for Papers is still open and we will continue with the proposals selection process until 15 May, 2023.  Please remember that abstracts should be a maximum of 200 words and be submitted to the Organising Committee at //romaniaconference@iapti.org/" style="color: #e64e4e; text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">romaniaconference@iapti.org. *Priority will be given to new topics not presented before at other conferences.*  Please include a title and description, a short bio (up to 100 words) and a profile photo with your proposal. Speakers will have 45-50 minutes for their presentations and 10 minutes for Q&A. The Organising Committee reserves the right to accept or reject proposals and will notify applicants accordingly. The conference fee is waived for speakers (1 per presentation) and no other monetary compensation or reimbursement is offered. For more information, please contact the Organising Committee at romaniaconference@iapti.org. Come and join us for another outstanding IAPTI event with us in the 2023 European Capital of Culture! For more information, click here

Edited by Francesca Raffi (University of Macerata), Emília Perez (Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra) and Matej Martinkovič (Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra) The concept of paratext was first analysed by Gérard Genette, who defines the term as “what enables a text to become a book and to be offered as such to its readers and, more generally, to the public” (Genette 1997: 1). According to the author, in fact, a literary work not only consists of the main text itself, but is also surrounded by other elements, such as the title, cover, preface and all those elements that help to present it to the public and that “ensure the text’s presence in the world, its ‘reception’ and consumption” (Genette 1997: 1). The paratexts of (re)translations are indeed elements that offer interesting insights from many perspectives, with retranslation intended as “the act of translating a work that has previously been translated into the same language, or the result of such an act, i.e. the retranslated text itself” (Gürçaglar 2009: 233). By framing the core text in a certain way, these added elements present a work to the audience with the potential to influence its reception. Paratexts are also a powerful tool through which translators may convey their vision and purpose, invite new interpretations, and claim their role. Paratexts, being flexible, versatile and transitory can thus be a tool for adapting a text to a dynamic and ever-changing target culture, while also offering a place for the (re)translator to claim their presence and visibility. Since the early 2000s, several studies have examined retranslations by taking into account their paratextual aspects to investigate issues related to the context and reception of a given literary (Gürçağlar 2008; Deane-Cox 2012, 2014; Badić 2020, among others) or, more recently, audiovisual (O’Sullivan 2018; Mével 2020; Raffi 2022; Bucaria and Batchelor forthcoming, among others) work. These studies have confirmed that paratextual aspects reflect the context in which a retranslation is produced, highlight the dominant ideologies and norms of a target culture, but may also act as a marketing tool and a catalyst for the (new) audience. The aim of this issue is to provide an opportunity for scholars in Translation Studies, Reception Studies, and Media Studies, among others, to present their findings, insights, and interdisciplinary perspectives on paratextual elements in the (re)translation of both literary and multimodal works. Following Genette (1997: 12), paratexts may be here intended as a very broad category of elements that are “fundamentally heteronomous, auxiliary, and dedicated to the service of something other than itself”. These may include prefaces, blurbs, notes, interviews, private communications (e.g., letters, diaries), promotional campaigns, fan-made materials, social media posts, endorsements, trailers, among others. The topics of interest may include but are not restricted to those listed below: paratextual elements in (re)translated literary works paratextual elements in (re)translated multimedia works (e.g. films, TV-series, videogames, operas, musicals, theatre plays) accessible paratexts and inclusive design the (in)visibility of the translator paratexts and the editor theoretical and methodological challenges of studying paratexts ideological discourse in (re)translation paratextuality and (re)translation across different media We welcome full-paper submissions reflecting the abovementioned issues. All articles must be written in English and should not exceed 7,000 words. We also welcome reviews of publications related to the main topic of this issue.  Deadline for submission: 15 October 2023 For more information, click here

This conference aims at shedding new light on the challenges and consequences of cultural misunderstanding. Following an interdisciplinary approach, the theme of the conference will be examined from a linguistic, legal and translational perspective. The intention of the event is to establish a link between theory and praxis. Presentations on different theories and disciplinary approaches are encouraged as well as accounts from the professional life of translators, lawyers and linguists. In the context of this event, we define intercultural misunderstandings both as misunderstandings between cultures of different countries, but also as misunderstandings within the same country due to cultural, regional, social or ethnic differences. Deadline for submissions: 15 May 2023 For more information, click here  

Postgraduate research is anything but linear. Instead, it is a process of continual untangling – of plucking at a single thread within the tapestry. Methods and methodologies are the tools we use to find and follow those threads, sometimes without really knowing where they might lead. The new and shifting world we live in presents a complex tapestry, and innovative as well as established methods are more necessary than ever. IPCITI 2023 hopes to provide a space for postgraduate researchers to share their ways of knowing, and to keep one another company on this entangled adventure.    The International Postgraduate Conference in Translation and Interpreting, or IPCITI, is a student-led conference that rotates between four universities with a strong focus on translation and interpreting: Dublin City University, Heriot-Watt University, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Manchester. IPCITI aims to provide an inviting, collaborative and stimulating space for PhD and early-career researchers in translation and interpreting studies to present their research.   The Heriot-Watt IPCITI team are pleased to announce that, after a 3-year hiatus due to COVID-19, IPCITI is back! After being unable to meet for so long, we are delighted to be welcoming participants back to the campus for this in-person conference, which will be held at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh on 23-24 November 2023. By holding the conference in person, we aim to build in time for informal discussions, meeting new colleagues and opportunities to discuss your own research while also learning about others’ work.  Abstracts are invited from postgraduate and early-career researchers on topics including, but not limited to:   Multimodal methods Interventionist approaches Ethical questions in TIS methodology TIS during the pandemic: research and practice  Ethnographic approaches  Corpus methodologies  Institutional factors in translation and interpreting Language brokering and non-professional interpreting Investigating identity in translation and interpreting Investigating gender in translation and interpreting Representation and diversity in translation and interpreting Deadline for submissions: 22 May 2023

Two-day symposium organized by Alexa Alfer and Cornelia Zwischenberger, held 6-7th July 2023 in London, UK This symposium will be devoted to explorations of the concept of labour arising from Translab’s hallmark blending of ‘translation’ and ‘collaboration’. It posits that the concept of labour, as distinct from ‘work’ (Arendt 1958/1998; Narotzky 2018), warrants more sustained engagement on the part of both Translation Studies and the translation profession. While digital labour (Fuchs 2020), playbor (Kücklich 2005), fan labour (De Kosnik 2012), affective labour (Hardt 1999; Koskinen 2020), emotional labour (Hochschild 1993), or (im)material labour (Negri & Hardt 2004) may present themselves as particularly topical sites for such exploration, both labour and work are also important yet largely underarticulated dimensions in discussions about translation in a professional context and in debates about the distinction between professional and non-professional translation. Last but not least, we are keen to extend consideration of the labour concept to translation as such, and to interrogate its relevance to current debates about the translation concept. While the concept of work is perhaps more readily associated with translation in professional discourses at least, translation as labour, i.e. as an activity structurally embedded in capitalist chains of surplus-value production (Zwischenberger and Alfer 2022), features far less prominently in current debates. However, foregrounding labour as a fundamental dimension of translation (and, for that matter, interpreting) allows both researchers and practitioners to investigate translation and interpreting more closely from a socioeconomic perspective. This should, in turn, help develop impactful alternatives to the prevalent ‘professionalisation’ discourses intended to raise the socio-economic status of translators, and critique the ways in which many of these discourses create idealised narratives of translation and interpreting that tend to foreground the processes of work while masking the labour involved in producing outputs whose value is, quietly or overtly, appropriated by those with a stake in the means of their production. Shining a spotlight on the surplus-value inherent in translation as the commodifiable expansion of a source text thus also uncovers the translation concept itself as the site of an unarticulated and unresolved tension between two competing and converging cultural narratives that pivot on conceptions of value as, on the one hand, inextricably bound to and, on the other, posited firmly “outside of a profit-motivated relationship” (Fayard 2021, 216). Papers are to be submitted by 18 April 2023.  For more information, click here.

In recent years, periodicals have increasingly drawn the attention of Translation Studies (Fólica et al. 2020); reciprocally, Periodical Studies have been moving towards a transnational turn (Ernst 2022; Van Remoortel 2022). These disciplinary moves are (amongst others) informed by the development of digital methods and techniques, as well as vast digitization efforts of the archive, that have gathered speed over the past two decades (Bode 2018) and which enable the extraction, processing and analysis of the enormous amounts of information contained in periodicals. Translations constitute a significant tranche of the information periodicals publish, permitting uniquely detailed and quantitatively grounded insight into the dynamic processes that subtended transnational traffic between literatures and cultures. Notwithstanding the clear promise of research at the intersection of translation and periodical studies, and the burgeoning scholarly work that has begun to explore this middle ground, there remains a significant hiatus: there is yet strikingly little material that offers theories, methods, or instructively representative cases. On an empirical level, well-established high-brow periodicals have been the main focus of research, whereas the more popular low and middle-brow periodicals are yet to receive proper place on the research agenda.  More concretely, serial publishing practices (so-called feuilletons) and the interactions between translated and non-translated content within periodicals demand much closer attention. The key question which this conference seeks to ponder is whether periodical translation can be argued to have particular qualities that differentiate the practice from other forms of translation, notably for print books, much as periodical writing can be distinguished from book writing. The discursive techniques of periodical translation, and its key role in the mediation of culture and the dynamic exploration of the present that has long been argued to be central to the specificity of the periodical, are likely to be key touchstones in responding to this question. The international conference ‘Translation and the Periodical’ aims to push forward decisively the developing conversations on cultural translation in periodicals. Its target is to bring scholars from various disciplines together and to activate and advance significantly on extant qualitative (cfr. Guzmán et al. 2019; Pym 2007) and quantitative work (cfr. Caristia 2020). The objective is to be a hub of knowledge and expertise in this field as it continues to grow, in particular in those periodicals that have so far largely remained out of the focus of scholarship. The organizing committee aims to cover a broad scope of subjects and a variety of methodological perspectives in order to reflect current work on translation in periodicals, and both to inform and enhance conversations and debates to come. Suggested topics for papers include (but are not limited to): theoretical contributions, defining translation in periodicals as a praxis and sharpening terminology methodological contributions, e.g. focusing on Digital Humanities tools for Translation Studies research quantifying approaches (distant reading) that establish the ratio of translated content vs. non-translated content transnational networks and periodicals the limits of the transnational paradigm translation as cultural mediation in periodicals visual analyses of translation in periodicals in/visibility of translation and translators in periodicals migrant/diaspora periodicals and their orientation towards the hosting culture vis-à-vis preserving their domestic heritage translation in children’s magazines comparative approaches to translation in newspapers and periodical journals archival examinations of editorial practices sociology of translation, identifying the translators and other actors involved in periodical publishing translators’ periodicals, and – in a wider frame – translation discourse in periodicals translational and localization practices of comics transnational periodicals and their role as furnishers of content for local or regional periodicals syndicated fiction readers’ responses to translation (readers’ letters etc.) Deadline for submissions: 20 April 2023 For more information, click here

Along with an emerging body of scholarly research on the role of translation in the Middle East, this conferencefocuses on the intersections of Middle Eastern women, translation, and relational views on culture across regionaland global levels. The dialogic convergence of those disciplinary territories allows for an in-depth examination ofstrategies of resistance by and/or representation of Middle Eastern women through the lens of translation, both as ameans of domination and as a space of dialogue or a trajectory for thinking and speaking ‘otherwise’.By taking a situated approach to translation, this conference will provide a scholarly forum to discuss how on theone hand, women in the Middle East fulfill their transformative roles as authors, translators, publishers, and/orsocial (political) activists by means of translation, and on the other hand to reflect on the (mis)representation ofMiddle Eastern women in Western media (i.e. news, literature, movies, etc.). Taking an interdisciplinary approach,this conference will challenge the victimized image of Middle Eastern women in Western media and spark a much needed lively discussion on their active role in the dialectics of the nation-states, identity formation,ideological/political power, and resistance through the lens of translation.The conference organizers invite contributions from wide range of disciplines working at the intersection of Womenand Translation in the Middle Eastern Context. The main topics includes but not limited to: • Locate translation (literally or metaphorically) by/of Middle Eastern women in a larger social, political, andideological dynamics;• Discuss how the production and circulation of meanings associated with translation can be approached as amodality of power, subject to generating multiple relations of domination and subordination;• Foreground the concept of ‘translation as representation’. On the one hand, how “the other” has beenrepresented in the work of female translators in the region. On the other hand, how Middle Eastern womenhave been portrayed and represented in the Western world;We hope the discussions bring regional and global scholars into dialogue and, in doing so, contribute to theexpansion of critical understandings of translating as representing “the other” and challenge the legacies ofhegemonic (mis) representation of Middle Eastern Women. Deadline for submissions: 30 April For more information, click here

In today’s globalized world, the socio-political and economic conditions in most societies areclosely linked to prevailing global trends. Within this context, neoliberalism – the idea of a freemarket within a deregulated economy – has dominated the world through a combination ofwilling acceptance and enforcement, bringing about many fundamental changes withinmultiple contemporary societies, which have in turn given rise to a plethora of studies indifferent fields. In Applied Linguistics, Block, Gray and Holborow (2012) have made some initial attempts toconceptualize the ways in which neoliberal ideology plays out in the areas of language teachingand language teacher education. Since then, a growing number of researchers have furtherexplored interlinked concepts of neoliberalism, mainly within the English Language Teachingindustry, including the discourse of neoliberalism in ELT textbooks (e.g., Copley, 2018),neoliberalism and teacher education (e.g., Furlong, 2013), linguistic imperialism (e.g., Phillipson, 2013) and the commodification of English language pedagogy (e.g., Soto & Pérez-Milans, 2018), to mention but a few. By contrast, the online Translation Studies Bibliography (TSB) records only a handful ofEnglish-language publications worldwide that are related to globalization in general, andhardly any on neoliberalism and translation in particular. In his book Translation andGlobalization (2003/2013) Michael Cronin looks at the changing geography of translationpractice and offers new ways of understanding the role of translators in globalized societiesand economies. The author focuses on the part played by translation and translators in safeguarding linguistic and cultural diversity. From a different standpoint, Bielsa (2005) makesan attempt to understand the significance of translation in the global context, conceptualisingits analytical place in globalisation theory and its key role in articulating the global and thelocal. Language and translation have an essential function in the production, circulation and receptionof neoliberalist texts. Not only do the socio-political and economic policies adopted in differentcontexts influence the choice of texts to be translated (Richner & Olesen, 2019), but translationpractices have an impact on the communication of the discourses and narratives ofneoliberalism (Ban, 2011). In response to the forces of globalization and also to ongoing technological advances,translations of technology, electronics, financial and economic texts, subtitled and dubbedversions of films, and other multimedia products have driven the transformation of values andways of thinking across linguistic and cultural borders (Tang & Gentzler, 2009). While this hasprovided great opportunities for the translation market, employment conditions for translators“have moved towards a model of freelance and contingent work, whereby they struggle withspeed and productivity demands, the unilateral imposition of technologies, and constantdownward pressure on price” (Moorkens, 2020, p.23). To conclude, while translation studies is interdisciplinary in essence, the way in which thepolitical economy – and more specifically neoliberally socio-political and economicallyinformed factors – interact with translation has been downplayed. The aim of this volume is toenhance our understanding of the evolving practices adopted by the translation industry andthe stakeholders in the neoliberal era and to exploit whatever concepts and methodologies canbe adopted for researching translation in the light of neoliberal tendencies existing in differentsocieties. Recommended topicsPossible topics include but are not limited to the following:• Neoliberalism and translation policies• Neoliberalism and translator training• Neoliberalism and translation quality• Neoliberal discourses and narratives in translation• Neoliberalism, technology and translation• Neoliberalism and the translation profession Translation of neoliberalism through history• Neoliberalism and machine translation• Neoliberalism and translation across time and space• Neoliberalism and translation in postcolonial contexts• Neoliberalism, translation and social inequality• Neoliberalism, translation and consumerism• Neoliberalism, translation and identity• Neoliberalism and the role of translators• Neoliberalism, translation and agency For more information, click here Deadline for applications: 30 April 2023

The Symposium is aimed at students who have recently begun their research as M.A. students, PhD students or those who have recently completed their PhD theses. The purpose of this symposium is to provide a scientific forum within which the next generation of researchers can exchange ideas and present their current research in the field of Translation, Interpreting, Intercultural Studies or East Asian Studies. We invite proposals for papers relating to the research interests of the Department of Translation and Interpreting & East Asian Studies (UAB), namely: Translation and interpreting Specialized translation Literary translation Audiovisual translation and media accessibility Interpreting Information and communication technologies in translation Translator and interpreter training History of translation and interpreting Interculturality, ideology and the sociology of translation and interpreting Textuality and translation Cognitive studies in translation and interpreting Professional aspects of translation and interpreting Empirical research in translation and interpreting East Asian studies East Asian languages and literatures Politics and international relations in East Asia Culture, thought, and interculturality in East Asia Economy of East Asia For more information, click here Deadline for applications: 31 March 2023

Two-day symposium organized by Alexa Alfer and Cornelia Zwischenberger, held 6-7th July 2023 in London, UK This symposium will be devoted to explorations of the concept of labour arising from Translab’s hallmark blending of ‘translation’ and ‘collaboration’. It posits that the concept of labour, as distinct from ‘work’ (Arendt 1958/1998; Narotzky 2018), warrants more sustained engagement on the part of both Translation Studies and the translation profession. While digital labour (Fuchs 2020), playbor (Kücklich 2005), fan labour (De Kosnik 2012), affective labour (Hardt 1999; Koskinen 2020), emotional labour (Hochschild 1993), or (im)material labour (Negri & Hardt 2004) may present themselves as particularly topical sites for such exploration, both labour and work are also important yet largely underarticulated dimensions in discussions about translation in a professional context and in debates about the distinction between professional and non-professional translation. Last but not least, we are keen to extend consideration of the labour concept to translation as such, and to interrogate its relevance to current debates about the translation concept. While the concept of work is perhaps more readily associated with translation in professional discourses at least, translation as labour, i.e. as an activity structurally embedded in capitalist chains of surplus-value production (Zwischenberger and Alfer 2022), features far less prominently in current debates. However, foregrounding labour as a fundamental dimension of translation (and, for that matter, interpreting) allows both researchers and practitioners to investigate translation and interpreting more closely from a socioeconomic perspective. This should, in turn, help develop impactful alternatives to the prevalent ‘professionalisation’ discourses intended to raise the socio-economic status of translators, and critique the ways in which many of these discourses create idealised narratives of translation and interpreting that tend to foreground the processes of work while masking the labour involved in producing outputs whose value is, quietly or overtly, appropriated by those with a stake in the means of their production. Shining a spotlight on the surplus-value inherent in translation as the commodifiable expansion of a source text thus also uncovers the translation concept itself as the site of an unarticulated and unresolved tension between two competing and converging cultural narratives that pivot on conceptions of value as, on the one hand, inextricably bound to and, on the other, posited firmly “outside of a profit-motivated relationship” (Fayard 2021, 216). For more information, click here Deadline for submissions: 3 April 2023

In recent years, there has been a surge in publications addressing the political impact of translation and interpreting across a variety of locations and settings (Baker, 2016a and 2016b; Doerr, 2018; Evans and Fernández, 2018; Fernández, 2020a; Valdeón and Calafat, 2020; Tesseur, 2022, to name a few). In this context, this special issue seeks to highlight the importance of translation and interpreting for the practice of solidarity. Although this is a powerful and frequently used concept, it is also conflicting and has generally remained undertheorised (as argued by Bayertz, 1999; Pensky, 2008; Featherstone, 2012). In this sense, this project will follow Featherstone (2012, pp. 5) in understanding solidarity as ‘a relation forged through political struggle which seeks to challenge forms of oppression’. Importantly, this also implies that solidarity is ‘transformative’, as it constructs ‘relations between places, activists, diverse social groups’, while creating ‘new ways of relating’ (ibid.). In other words, solidarity does not need to happen exclusively between groups that are similar and homogeneous; quite on the contrary, it can be innovative, developing unexpected links between previously unconnected realities. In this light, the practice of solidarity shows strong similarities with the work of translation and interpreting, as both seek to establish new connections between individuals and groups. In fact, translation can be the decisive factor in the construction of solidarity, as it brings to the fore an issue or conflict that would normally remain unnoticed due to linguistic and cultural barriers. Despite these affinities, solidarity has been rarely used as a frame of analysis in Translation Studies (some notable exceptions being Abou Rached, 2020; Baker, 2016b, 2016c and 2020; Mortada, 2016). This seems even more striking if we consider that solidarity could play a central role in understanding a variety of issues and practices that are already relevant within the discipline, such as the activity of volunteer translators —either individually (Guo, 2008; Cheung, 2010) or as part of communities (Baker, 2006a; Boéri, 2012; Pérez-González and Susam Saraeva, 2012)— and the involvement of interpreters in the protection and well-being of migrants (Aguilar-Solano, 2015; Taronna, 2016; Fathi, 2020). At the same time, solidarity can be also understood as a narrative (in the sense proposed by Baker, 2006b): citizens and activists who engage in the practice of solidarity frequently rely on a narrative, that is, a kind of shared story that guides their behaviour and legitimises their purposes and motivations, shaping the identities of those involved in the process and the elements that bring them together. While some narratives might be based on ‘universal’ values (e.g. justice, human rights, moral duty), others might depend on more concrete factors (i.e. supporting the same political values or belonging to the same creed). Furthermore, the mobilisation of a successful and convincing narrative is often a key factor for the expansion of a political cause (Baker, 2006b, pp. 21-22), particularly among those who are not familiar with it. Taking into account the great importance that narratives have played in recent research within Translation Studies (e.g. Boéri, 2008; Baker, 2010; Harding, 2012; Probirskaja, 2016; Jones, 2018; Fernández, 2020b) and beyond it (Engebretsen and Baker 2022), this special issue would also like to encourage the interaction between narratives and solidarity as a promising research path.   A list of potential research topics includes, but is not limited to, the following: -       Solidarity as a motivation for activist and volunteer translators and interpreters -       The emergence and development of solidarity campaigns thanks to translation -       Narratives of solidarity and translation: How is solidarity narrated? Which ‘frames of solidarity’ are constructed through translation? How are narratives of solidarity (e.g. in literature and the arts) translated? -       Conceptual and theoretical affinities between solidarity and translation -       Solidarity with/between migrants and the importance of translation/interpreting -       Solidarity, identity politics (e.g. LGBT+ groups, feminism, Black Lives Matter), and translation/interpreting -       Solidarity and translation projects for fundraising purposes -       Solidarity, translation, and interpreting in armed conflicts.   For more information, click here Deadline for abstracts: 1 March 2023

Note: due to popular request, we have changed the paper deadlines to give authors more time. The new date for paper submissions is 3 March 2023.  The European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT) invites everyone interested in machine translation and translation-related tools and resources ― developers, researchers, users, translation and localization professionals and managers ― to participate in this conference. Driven by the state of the art, the research community will demonstrate their cutting-edge research and results. Professional machine translation users will provide insight into successful MT implementation of machine translation (MT) in business scenarios as well as implementation scenarios involving large corporations, governments, or NGOs. Translation studies scholars and translation practitioners are also invited to share their first-hand MT experience, which will be addressed during a special track.Note that papers that have been archived in arXiv can be accepted for submission provided that they have not already been published elsewhere. For more information, click here