IATIS News

Informed by the anthropological research of Professor Donald E. Brown on human universals, this book compiles 10 articles exploring the representation of common human cultural practices and concerns in literature, cinema and language. The book as a whole demonstrates not only that Brown’s human universals are shared by different cultures, but most importantly that they have the potential to form a basis for inter- and intra-cultural communication and consolidation, bridging gaps of misinformation and miscommunication, both spatial and temporal. The contributors are Egyptian scholars who cross temporal and spatial boundaries and borders from Africa and the Middle East to Asia, Europe and the Americas, and dive deep into the heart of the shared human universals of myth, folklore and rituals, dreams, trauma, cultural beliefs, search for identity, language, translation and communication. They bring their own unique perspectives to the investigation of how shared human practices and concerns seep through the porous boundaries of different cultures and into a variety of creative and practical genres of fiction, drama, autobiography, cinema and media translation. Their research is interdisciplinary, informed by anthropological, social, psychological, linguistic and cultural theory, and thus offers a multi-faceted and multi-layered view of the human experience. For more information, click here

The goal of the book is to investigate mediating practices used in translation of children’s and young adults’ fiction, focusing on transfer of contents considered controversial or unsuitable for young audiences. It shows how the macabre and cruelty, swear words and bioethical issues have been affected in translation across cultures and times. Analysing selected key texts from Grimms’ tales and Hoffmann’s Struwwelpeter to Roald Dahl’s fiction, it shows that mediating approaches, sometimes infringing upon the integrity of source texts, are still part of contemporary translation practices. The volume includes contributions of renowned TS scholars and practitioners, working with a variety of approaches from descriptive translation studies and literary criticism to translation pedagogy and museum studies. "The angle of looking into the topics is fresh and acute and I whole-heartedly recommend the book for readers from scholars to parents and school-teachers, for all adults taking a special interest in and cherishing children and their literature". For more information, click here

This paper analyses the conceptual, social and ethical dimensions of online collaborative translation and particularly one of its major subtypes, translation crowdsourcing. Since online collaborative translation is still a rather young field of research there are still conceptual uncertainties, particularly surrounding the selection of the meta- or top-level concept for recent forms of online translation (such as translation crowdsourcing), unsolicited and self-managed forms of online translation (like Wikipedia translation), and the various forms of online fan translation. This paper argues for using online collaborative translation as the meta-concept, based on a painstaking analysis and justification of the concept against its competitors. The paper focuses on translation crowdsourcing for profit-oriented companies like Facebook and its social and ethical consequences. It concludes by investigating whether this kind of translation is exploitative despite the seemingly mutually beneficial transaction between the volunteer translators and the profit-oriented companies employing them, usually unpaid. For more information, click here

The President and Executive Board of IATIS have joined Red T and many other international translator and interpreter associations  advocating for translators and interpreters at risk. An Open Letter was sent to the Canadian Migration Minister which you can read in full:  

“Language is (not) a barrier”: Towards effective translation policies and practices for official communication with culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities in Melbourne This joint PhD project will be based at The University of Melbourne with a minimum 12 month stay at KU Leuven Metropolises like Brussels or Melbourne are sites of unprecedented cultural and linguistic diversity. This creates pressing challenges for multilingual official communication with culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities, as seen in the Covid-19 pandemic. Addressing those challenges will require change in translation policies and practices, with close attention to their real-world effects. Project descriptionThe doctoral project that is to be carried out with the University of Melbourne as the host institution will analyze the policies, practices and effects of official translations carried out for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities in Melbourne. It will ascertain the provision of translation in public services in terms of numbers of translations, types of translations, target languages and types of administrations involved. It will identify the levels at which translation policies, both overt and covert, are formulated and enacted, how translations reach the various language communities, and the role of volunteer translation practices from NGOs and grassroots citizens’ initiatives in public services, particularly with respect to the reworking, re-narration and interpreting of information. The candidate will select one or two language communities for detailed analysis of the reception processes, with particular attention to instances of trust and distrust in official behavior-change communication. The nature and topic of the communication will correspond to the issues of importance at the time of the study. The research should lead to an evaluation of the way translation policies are formulated and enacted, with an assessment of their success in achieving trust relationships and influencing changes in behavior. At each stage of the research, comparison will be made with the same policies and practices in the city of Brussels, with one year of the research being carried out at KU Leuven. For more information, click here

Children’s Literature in Translation: Texts and Contexts edited by Jan Van Coillie and Jack McMartin has been published open-access by Leuven University Press. Digital versions are available on OAPEN and JSTOR This volume focuses on the complex interplay that happens between text and context when works of children’s literature are translated. What contexts of production and reception account for how translated children’s books come to be made and read as they are? How are translated children’s books adapted to suit the context of a new culture? Spanning the disciplines of Children’s Literature Studies and Translation Studies, this book brings together established and emerging voices to provide an overview of the analytical, empirical and geographic richness of current research in this field and to identify and reflect on common insights, analytical perspectives and trajectories for future interdisciplinary research. This volume will appeal to an interdisciplinary audience of scholars and students in Translation Studies and Children’s Literature Studies and related disciplines. It has a broad geographic and cultural scope, with contributions dealing with translated children’s literature in the United Kingdom, the United States, Ireland, Spain, France, Brazil, Poland, Slovenia, Hungary, China, the former Yugoslavia, Sweden, Germany, and Belgium.

Edited by Veljka Ruzicka Kenfel and Juliane House This book comprises studies on death in Spanish, British/American and German children’s literature, cinema and audiovisual fiction; several translations from English and German into Spain are analysed. References to death were censored in Spain, as they were omitted or softened not to traumatise young readers. However, in the last twenty years, this taboo theme has been included to enable children and young adults to overcome the loss of a loved one as a necessary part of growing up. Contributions to this book show the historical development of this topic in different films and literary genres following, among others, a fantasy-mythological approach or a realist and objective one, helping children and young adults face death maturely and constructively. For more information, click here

By Leah Gerber and Lintao Qi This book delves into the Chinese literary translation landscape over the last century, spanning critical historical periods such as the Cultural Revolution in the greater China region.　 Contributors from all around the world approach this theme from various angles, providing an overview of translation phenomena at key historical moments, identifying the trends of translation and publication, uncovering the translation history of important works, elucidating the relationship between translators and other agents, articulating the interaction between texts and readers and disclosing the nature of literary migration from Chinese into English. This volume aims at benefiting both academics of translation studies from a dominantly Anglophone culture and researchers in the greater China region. Chinese scholars of translation studies will not only be able to cite this as a reference book, but will be able to discover contrasts, confluence and communication between academics across the globe, which will stimulate, inspire and transform discussions in this field. For more information, click here

This book sheds new light on translation competence and its development. After reviewing recent theoretical and empirical perspectives, the author presents the methodology and results of one of few comprehensive, longitudinal, combined process/product studies of translation competence acquisition, which has cognitive and pedagogical implications. Carried out among translation students with varying levels of foreign language proficiency before and after their first 7.5 months of translator education, the study investigates translation product quality, the strategicness of the translation process, the strategicness of external resource use, and translation principles. It also examines perceived translation difficulty and quality as well as the impact of directionality and foreign language proficiency. For more information, click here

Guest editors: Jie Zhang and Jia Li Multilingual crisis communication has emerged as a global challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic. Global public health communication is characterized by the large-scale exclusion of linguistic minorities from timely high-quality information. The severe limitations of multilingual crisis communication that the COVID-19 crisis has laid bare result from the dominance of English-centric global mass communication; the longstanding devaluation of minoritized languages; and the failure to consider the importance of multilingual repertoires for building trust and resilient communities. These challenges, along with possible solutions, are explored in greater detail by the articles brought together in this special issue, which present case studies from China and the global Chinese diaspora. As such, the special issue constitutes not only an exploration of the sociolinguistics of the COVID-19 crisis but also a concerted effort to open a space for intercultural dialogue within sociolinguistics. We close by contending that, in order to learn lessons from COVID-19 and to be better prepared for future crises, sociolinguistics needs to include local knowledges and grassroots practices not only as objects of investigation but in its epistemologies; needs to diversify its knowledge base and the academic voices producing that knowledge base; and needs to re-enter dialogue with policy makers and activists. For more information, click here

Edited by: Carmen Valero-Garcés. For more information, click here

Edited by: Roberto A. Valdeón and Youbin Zhao. For more information, click here