Find Us on Facebook
Follow Us
Join Us

Cookies disabled

Please, enable third-party cookie to enjoy social media box

Edward Clay

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.

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

  1. Specialized translation
  2. Literary translation
  3. Audiovisual translation and media accessibility
  4. Interpreting
  5. Information and communication technologies in translation
  6. Translator and interpreter training
  7. History of translation and interpreting
  8. Interculturality, ideology and the sociology of translation and interpreting
  9. Textuality and translation
  10. Cognitive studies in translation and interpreting
  11. Professional aspects of translation and interpreting
  12. Empirical research in translation and interpreting

East Asian studies

  1. East Asian languages and literatures
  2. Politics and international relations in East Asia
  3. Culture, thought, and interculturality in East Asia
  4. Economy of East Asia

For more information, click here

Deadline for applications: 31 March 2023

In today’s globalized world, the socio-political and economic conditions in most societies are
closely linked to prevailing global trends. Within this context, neoliberalism – the idea of a free
market within a deregulated economy – has dominated the world through a combination of
willing acceptance and enforcement, bringing about many fundamental changes within
multiple contemporary societies, which have in turn given rise to a plethora of studies in
different fields.


In Applied Linguistics, Block, Gray and Holborow (2012) have made some initial attempts to
conceptualize the ways in which neoliberal ideology plays out in the areas of language teaching
and language teacher education. Since then, a growing number of researchers have further
explored interlinked concepts of neoliberalism, mainly within the English Language Teaching
industry, 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 of
English-language publications worldwide that are related to globalization in general, and
hardly any on neoliberalism and translation in particular. In his book Translation and
Globalization (2003/2013) Michael Cronin looks at the changing geography of translation
practice and offers new ways of understanding the role of translators in globalized societies
and economies. The author focuses on the part played by translation and translators in

safeguarding linguistic and cultural diversity. From a different standpoint, Bielsa (2005) makes
an attempt to understand the significance of translation in the global context, conceptualising
its analytical place in globalisation theory and its key role in articulating the global and the
local.


Language and translation have an essential function in the production, circulation and reception
of neoliberalist texts. Not only do the socio-political and economic policies adopted in different
contexts influence the choice of texts to be translated (Richner & Olesen, 2019), but translation
practices have an impact on the communication of the discourses and narratives of
neoliberalism (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 dubbed
versions of films, and other multimedia products have driven the transformation of values and
ways of thinking across linguistic and cultural borders (Tang & Gentzler, 2009). While this has
provided great opportunities for the translation market, employment conditions for translators
“have moved towards a model of freelance and contingent work, whereby they struggle with
speed and productivity demands, the unilateral imposition of technologies, and constant
downward pressure on price” (Moorkens, 2020, p.23).


To conclude, while translation studies is interdisciplinary in essence, the way in which the
political economy – and more specifically neoliberally socio-political and economically
informed factors – interact with translation has been downplayed. The aim of this volume is to
enhance our understanding of the evolving practices adopted by the translation industry and
the stakeholders in the neoliberal era and to exploit whatever concepts and methodologies can
be adopted for researching translation in the light of neoliberal tendencies existing in different
societies.

Recommended topics
Possible 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 School of Modern Languages and Cultures is seeking to appoint a Lectureship in Italian Studies at the University of Glasgow. Specialisation could include, but need not be limited to, a focus on Italian literary or film studies, language or linguistics, cultural studies, gender and sexuality, text and image, comparative literature and culture, translation, eco-criticism, and digital humanities. Also welcomed are high-quality applications that reflect the School’s ongoing work in relation to ‘cross-College’ collaboration (partnerships with researchers in social and health sciences, and STEM), global challenges, and pathways to Impact.

The postholder will undertake research of international excellence and contribute to learning and teaching on agreed programmes (including language teaching) and to knowledge exchange activities relative to the discipline. The postholder will undertake administration and service activities in line with the strategic objectives of the School and of the College.

This post is full time (35 hrs per week) and open ended.

For more information, click here

Deadline for applications: 3 April 2023

Ca’ Foscari is a research intensive institution committed to competing for international scientific excellence through the recruitment of the best academic talents worldwide. Talented young researchers and experienced senior professors make Ca’ Foscari a stimulating environment for career development and research freedom. Our university is committed to research excellence, funding promising researchers and developing international partnerships. As a leading research university, Ca’ Foscari explores cutting-edge research directions across disciplinary boundaries, setting a new agenda designed around six global challenges.

Ca’ Foscari is looking for a researcher of Language and translation - English with a cutting edge research profile. The researcher should also have a strong commitment to teaching new generations of students so that they can become game-changers in their own fields and make a difference in the world.

Teaching: the researcher will be charged of frontal teaching activities according to the academic discipline L-LIN/12 Language and Translation – English, in line with the needs defined by the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies. The teaching activities will deal with English language from a synchronic, diachronic and translational perspective.

In particular, the Researcher will teach in the following courses:

  • Tecnologie per la traduzione – lingua inglese
  • Traduzione inglese specialistica e per i media
  • Tecnologie per la traduzione e post-editing 

Research: The research activity will concern linguistic, discursive and translational aspects of English.

The position will be hosted in the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies. The Department has recently received a “Department of Excellence” Award by the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research. The Excellence Award has allowed the Department to Develop state of the art laboratory facilities to pursue the theoretical and empirical study of linguistic and cultural diversity.

The Department is unique in its multidisciplinary approach to language, literature and culture, with fertile exchanges between linguistic, literary, historical and political approaches and an international outlook essential to a critical understanding of global society.

The Department actively pursues internationalization, activating joint programmes, Erasmus exchange periods, internships abroad, encouraging publication in international journals and inviting many Visiting Scholars and Professors.

For more information, click here

Deadline for applications: 30 March 2023

Along with an emerging body of scholarly research on the role of translation in the Middle East, this conference
focuses on the intersections of Middle Eastern women, translation, and relational views on culture across regional
and global levels. The dialogic convergence of those disciplinary territories allows for an in-depth examination of
strategies of resistance by and/or representation of Middle Eastern women through the lens of translation, both as a
means 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 the
one hand, women in the Middle East fulfill their transformative roles as authors, translators, publishers, and/or
social (political) activists by means of translation, and on the other hand to reflect on the (mis)representation of
Middle 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 Women
and 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, and
ideological dynamics;
• Discuss how the production and circulation of meanings associated with translation can be approached as a
modality 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 been
represented in the work of female translators in the region. On the other hand, how Middle Eastern women
have 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 the
expansion of critical understandings of translating as representing “the other” and challenge the legacies of
hegemonic (mis) representation of Middle Eastern Women.

Deadline for submissions: 30 April

For more information, click here

KIMEP University College of Humanities and Education invites applications for faculty position in Translation Studies. The position is full-time academic appointment to begin on 15 August 2023 with possibility of extension. Responsibilities include teaching, research, scholarly activities, advising, and service. The new faculty will assist in the undergraduate and graduate programs offered by the department, particularly in our BA in Translation Studies. 

We seek talented instructors and innovative scholars who are actively engaged in research and who can teach the following courses: Introduction to Translation, Introduction to Interpreting, Technology for Translation, Commercial Translation, Legal Translation, Simultaneous Interpreting, Consequent Interpreting, Professional Internship, Academic Writing, and other courses. 

Deadline for applications: 2 May 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

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

Guest Editors
Lisha Xu (Beijing Jiaotong University) and David Johnston (Queen’s University Belfast)


This special edition of JoSTrans looks at the issues involved in translating plays for
performance on a contemporary stage where practitioners and audiences alike are
increasingly sensitised to the representation of race, identity, gender, and sexuality. The
Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements have, in particular, coalesced around wider
social justice movements that have further galvanised, and in many ways drawn together,
different sets of identitarian politics. At the heart of these politics, identity works in terms of
promoting the recognition of difference, both of opportunity and of participatory parity,
operating as a category of perception that acts as a heuristic springboard towards what
Linda Hamilton Krieger described over twenty-five years ago as “strategies for simplifying
the perceptual environment and acting on less-than-perfect information” (1995, 1161). For
some, this leads inevitably to the honing of critical theories of race and gender, and their
extension into the worldview of rapidly growing numbers of people. For others, we are
witnessing a maximalist politics which, in its tracing of its own history through different
sources of resistance across time and space, is increasingly impatient with any expression of
what are perceived as oppressive positions, irrespective of the timeframe in which such
positions were taken.


It is evident that we are living through a time of paradigm shift in terms of our relationships
both with each other as identity types and with the assumptions and dynamics of our past.
Whether we think of these shifts as undergirded by processes of recouping or erasure, they
enshrine attitudes and responses that have radically changed the terrain of the arts in
general, and of the representational arts in particular. Moreover, their impact on new
generations of trainee performers means that such changes in the specialised field of
theatre and performance are undoubtedly long-term.
This special issue asks what this might mean for contemporary translation for performance.
Translation for the stage is obviously a key concern here, but other modes and aspects of
preparing for and experiencing performance might also be considered – surtitling,
streaming, moving image, stand-up comedy, etc . We invite abstracts addressing either one
or more of the following questions, or picking up on any related concern:


• What are the implications for translators working with texts from different places
and, particularly, different times, where radically different conceptions of gender
and other perceived markers of identity are in operation?
• What is the relationship between translation for performance and re-historicising
practice?
• To what extent might translated plays or other dramatic forms be able – or still be
able - to offer a counter-current where mutually incompatible or contestatory
positions can be put forward simultaneously?
• What are the implications for the space in which translation takes place if we regard
the assumptions of the receiving context as hardened into critical positions?
• Is what we might think of as the more traditionally civic nature of the performance
event changing to accommodate a more critical environment, and if so what might
this mean in terms of the texts/performances we choose to translate?
• To what extent does the elimination of cultural appropriation fall to the translator?
Can such charges be obviated through solely production-based decisions, such as
blind casting etc?
• Can translations be used to challenge or confirm conceptions of what might be
thought of as the ‘politically correct’?
• Does the awareness of such political correctness on the part of the translator for
performance imply a necessary process of accommodation or can it drift into selfcensorship? Is there a readily discernible divide here?

 

Deadline for submission of proposals: 1 June 2023

For more information, click here

Page 11 of 49

© Copyright 2014 - All Rights Reserved

Icons by http://www.fatcow.com/free-icons