7th International Conference on Public Services Interpreting and Translation: The Human Factor in PSIT, 26 - 27 March 2020, University of Alcalá.

Proposals are encouraged to focus on PSIT and to specially apply to any of the following areas of study:

• PSIT and its relationship with the socio-political and economic environment

• Intercultural and interlinguistic mediation

• Multiculturalism and multilingualism

• Linguistic resources and migrant population in the European Union

• Technological advances in PSIT

• Curriculum design and training in PSIT in humanitarian settings

• T & I in/with indigenous language/lesser used languages

• Language policies in African communities

• PSIT as a tool/strategy/way to favor inclusion in society

Deadline for proposals: 17 December 2019

For more information, click here

Writing in a non-native language, essentially in English as a lingua franca, is a frequent and socially encouraged practice. The situation is different in the translation industry, where translation into L2 (i.e. the translator’s non-native language) is officially discouraged in some Western European countries. Despite this official standpoint, a European survey conducted in 2015 shows that over 50% of the respondents translate into their L2 (mainly English) on a regular basis. Because of its ambiguous status on the translation market, translation into L2, and more generally, the issue of translation directionality (similarities and differences between the L2 > L1 and L1 > L2 translation directions), has received relatively little attention in translation research to date. The aim of the present workshop is to make a contribution to filling this gap. To gain a comprehensive view of this complex issue, we adopt an interdisciplinary perspective. Assuming that translation creates a situation of bilingualism in which two languages are activated simultaneously, we will draw upon psycholinguistic experimental approaches to bilingualism to shed light on the processing of L1 and L2 as target languages. These insights will be compared with observations obtained in process- and product-oriented translation research as well as in research into L2 writing.

The workshop will take place on 12 December from 9am to 6pm.

Attendance is free but registration is compulsory by 1 November. To register, please write to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Covers all branches of computational linguistics and language engineering, wherever they incorporate a multilingual aspect. It features papers that cover the theoretical, descriptive or computational aspects of any of the following topics:

- compilation and use of bi- and multilingual corpora
- computer-aided language instruction and learning
- computational implications of non-Roman character sets
- connectionist approaches to translation
- contrastive linguistics
- corpus-based and statistical language modeling
- discourse phenomena and their treatment in (human or machine) translation
- history of machine translation
- human translation theory and practice
- knowledge engineering
- machine translation and machine-aided translation
- minority languages
- morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics
- multilingual dialogue systems
- multilingual information retrieval
- multilingual information society (sociological and legal as well as linguistic aspects)
- multilingual message understanding systems
- multilingual natural language interfaces
- multilingual text composition and generation
- multilingual word-processing
- phonetics, phonology
- software localization and internationalization
- speech processing, especially for speech translation

For more information, click here

Your article in Machine Translation?
Submit online via http://www.editorialmanager.com/coat/

The Department of Modern Languages and Literatures is seeking a well-rounded specialist who focuses on the theories, practice, and teaching of Translation & Interpreting Studies for a tenure-track position at the rank of Assistant Professor.

Performs teaching, research and student advising duties in Spanish/English translation and interpreting. Shares responsibility for departmental and College committee work and other duties as assigned by the chair.

Required qualifications: Ph.D. in Translation and Interpreting Studies in Spanish or in a related discipline, such as Applied Linguistics in Spanish with a focus in translation and interpreting, from a regionally accredited U.S. institution or an equivalent non-U.S. institution by date of appointment. Native or near-native fluency in Spanish and English.

Ability to successfully teach Spanish to English and English to Spanish translation and interpreting courses at all levels of undergraduate instruction. Demonstrated scholarship or research achievement. Responsibilities will include working collaboratively with colleagues, the department, and the College. The successful candidate may also be expected to teach Spanish language courses at all levels of instruction.

Teaching, service and publication are required. Teaching duties include a 3/3 course load (six courses per year) of undergraduate courses, but beginning tenure-track appointments receive a significant course reduction while working toward tenure. Candidates are expected to bring enthusiasm and demonstrated commitment to teaching and to develop and maintain an active research and publication agenda. Service duties include actively recruiting, advising and mentoring Spanish majors and Certificate students.

Review of resumes to begin November 10, 2019.
Posting closes on December 1, 2019.

For more information, click here

KäTu2020: Translation and Interpreting: Focusing on Quality

University of Helsinki, 17–18 April 2020

The annual KäTu symposia offer researchers, teachers and practitioners of translation and interpreting a forum where they can discuss the diverse phenomena of the field, their ongoing research projects, and the state and development of Translation Studies in general. Doctoral students, in particular, are an important KäTu target group. They are offered the opportunity to present their work in its different stages of development, and receive valuable feedback.

For seventeen years, the KäTu symposia have brought together a wide array of participants interested in the field and its research: audience members and speakers, translators and interpreters of spoken as well as sign languages, researchers and teachers of translation and interpreting. The KäTu symposia are organised as a collaborative effort between the Teachers’ and Researchers’ Section of the Finnish Association of Translators and Interpreters (SKTL), and the different Finnish universities which train future translators and interpreters. Hosting the symposium is rotated between these Finnish universities. The 2020 symposium will be held at the University of Helsinki, which is proud to be organising and hosting the event for the fourth time.

Proposals for workshops and thematic sessions should be submitted no later than Friday 15th November 2019. Suggestions for thematic sessions must include the titles of the presentations to be included as part of those sessions. Proposals for session presentations and posters must be submitted no later than Friday 17th January 2020.

For more information, click here

ATISA X: Translation, Interpreting and movement(s). Biennial Conference of the American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association University of California, Santa Barbara / April 24-26, 2020

Keynote Speakers: Moira Inghilleri (UMass - Amherst) and Douglas Robinson (Hong Kong Baptist University)

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

Call for papers deadline: 1 November 2019

For more information, click here

The Departments of French at the University of Ghana, Legon, Linguistics and Language Practice at the University of the Free State and Afrikaans and Dutch at the University of Stellenbosch, in cooperation with ATSA, are presenting the Sixth School for Translation Studies (STSA) in Africa from 8 to 12 June 2020. The hosts are the University of Ghana, Legon, in Accra, Ghana.

The School is presented for doctoral/master’s students and/or lecturers in translation/interpreting studies and intercultural communication from all over Africa with the aim of working towards an African research agenda for translation studies. The School features lectures, tutorials and conference presentations under the guidance of prominent scholars in translation studies and intercultural communication.

For 2020, Prof Mona Baker, Emerita Professor from the University of Manchester will be the keynote speaker, addressing participants on various aspect of translation in the community

The 2020 event will be preceded by the Second Conference of the Association for Translation Studies in Africa (ATSA) in Accra on 6-7 June 2020. Participants who register for the Conference can attend the School for free.

For detailed information and registration forms, visit the web page of the School here

Artists study the reality they are surrounded by, people they live among, themselves, their instruments of work and how these areas are interconnected. Their work addresses complex issues, establishing dynamic relationships to a whole variety of other disciplines, from philosophy to new technologies. Their creative activity generates knowledge that could not be gained otherwise. Artistic knowledge is acquired through sensory and emotional perception and is practice-based, practice-driven, ‘felt’, ‘embodied’. It crosses the borders of different countries, languages, cultures, disciplines. Many artistic research projects are genuinely multicultural and interdisciplinary. Yet artists still often have to justify the idea that their practice is research.

Academic research too has become increasingly inter- and multidisciplinary. Cultural Literacy [CL] is the ability to think in literary ways about any topic or question, using the key concepts of textuality, fictionality, rhetoricity and historicity (see http://cleurope.eu/about/key-concepts/). How can the creative arts and CL come together to think about the contemporary world?

This Symposium is designed to generate active discussion, focusing on thinking and talking rather than formal presentations. If your proposal is accepted, it will be included in a ‘book of presentations’ that all participants will be asked to read in advance of the Symposium. The contributions will be grouped together into parallel break-out sessions of 90 minutes during which each presenter will briefly summarise their points and the subsequent discussion will aim to explore the key theme of the panel.

Deadline for submissions: 29 November 2019

For further details, click here

Crossing Borders: translate – transpose – communicate

On the occasion of the 10 years anniversary of stimmen afrikas.

More than 33 contributors - authors, translators, academics and creative artists – from 19 countries in Africa and the African Diaspora will present their work and participate in readings, performances, workshops and discussions for four days in the heart of Cologne at Neumarkt. They will discuss topics such as multilingualism and literary & cultural translation with the audience, providing them with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the art of African poetry and storytelling. Among others, the festival hosts the Nigerian publisher and guest curator Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, as well as Boubacar Boris Diop (Senegal), Susan Kiguli (Uganda), Mukoma Wa Ngugi (Kenya), Zukiswa Wanner (Zambia), Ebisse Rouw (Ethiopia), Sarah Ladipo Manyika (Nigeria) and many more. Discover the world of African mother tongues, the art of translation and the beauty of the literary voices of Africa.

For more information on this event, click here

When: 23–24 January 2020

Where: Cardiff University (Wales, UK)

This two-day interdisciplinary conference will explore the mobility of comics and graphic novels along three axes: time, space, and media. Mobility is understood to include all processes of transformation undergone by comics in their jour­ney across history (time), cultural and linguistic bound­aries (space), and different forms of artistic expression (media).

These three axes of comics’ mobility are often inter­con­nected but have so far mostly been explored in isolation and from the perspective of a single dis­cipline or language. The opportunities and challenges of comics’ translation into different languages, and their adaptation especially from/into narrative prose and film, have received increasing attention in recent years. Comics’ travel through time has not been explored with the same frequency and analytical depth. Here, aspects such as the different textual and paratextual environments in antholo­gies and re-editions, changes to the artwork, and practices of re-drawing deserve closer attention.

Keynote speakers

Prof Jan Baetens (KU Leuven)

Prof Federico Zanettin (Università degli Studi di Perugia)

Panel 1: Transformation: Comics Mobility Across Time

Panel 2: Translation: Comics Mobility Across Space

Panel 3: Adaptation: Comics Mobility Across Artistic Media

We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers that explore any of the dimensions of comics’ mobility outlined above. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words long (excluding references).

Please send your abstracts (in English) to Dr Tilmann Altenberg at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by 30 November 2019. Notifications will be sent out no later than 13 December 2019.

The conference is supported by the Institute of Modern Languages Research (London).