Call for Papers – Translab4: Translation and Labour

Two-day symposium organized by Alexa Alfer and Cornelia Zwischenberger, held 6-7th July 2023 in London, UK

The symposium will be held at the University of Westminster, London, UK and is devoted to explorations of the concept of labour arising from Translab’s hallmark blending of ‘translation’ and ‘collaboration’.

To explore translation from the vantage point of labour and work, we invite paper proposals addressing the labour of translation and interpreting in both theory and practice, and in, among others, the following contexts, either separately or jointly where these overlap:

• Translation and interpreting as labour, work, and action
• flows of translational capital and value accumulation in professional and non-professional contexts
• translation and interpreting as digital labour
• translation and interpreting as (im)material labour
• translation and interpreting as fan labour
• translation and interpreting as affective labour and/or emotional labour
• narratives of translational labour/work and their effect(s) on the interests and status of translators and other stakeholders.

The submission deadline is the 3rd of April.

Further information: https://transcultcom.univie.ac.at/news-and-events/news-detail/news/call-for-papers-translab4-translation-and-labour/?tx_news_pi1%5Bcontroller%5D=News&tx_news_pi1%5Baction%5D=detail&cHash=2490ce868d3759425a248d669c0879cd

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Call for papers: International Conference – Semiosis in Communication

Semiosis in Communication: New Challenges of Multimodality in the Digital Age

Bucharest, Romania

22-24 June 2023

The fourth edition of the International Conference Semiosis in Communication: New Challenges of Multimodality in the Digital Age will be organized by the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania (SNSPA), through the Applied Semiotics and Communication Lab (ASCL) – affiliated to the Centre for Research in Communication (CRC) of the Communication and Public Relations Faculty, FCRP, SNSPA – in participation with:

SemioLab – Semiotics Laboratory affiliated with Aristotle University in Thessaloniki (Greece);
Southeast European Center for Semiotic Studies (SEECSS) at New Bulgarian University (NBU), Sofia (Bulgaria);
Semiotics and Visual Communication Research Lab at Cyprus University of Technology;
The Department of Communication and Public Relations from the Faculty of Philosophy and Social-Political Sciences at the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iaşi, Iaşi (RO);
Romanian Association of Semiotic Studies (ROASS) and under the auspices of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS-AIS).

This conference explores the role of semiosis in communication. Objects of interdisciplinary knowledge par excellence, semiotics, and communication are complementary ways of world mastery, of the big game, just like Solomon Marcus (2011) would say. The main objective of the International Conference Semiosis in Communication is to emphasize the importance of semiotic type queries in the communication sciences and to stimulate the exchange of ideas in these fields and areas of academic research. The main theme proposed for this fourth edition of the international conference Semiosis in Communication is New Challenges of Multimodality in the Digital Age and focuses on the new challenges of multimodality in communication, arising from the current digital ecosystem. Whether we look at multimodality as a transdisciplinary field of research concerned with the meaning-making potential, use, and development of different semiotic resources (Kress and Van Leeuwen; Djonov and Zhao 2018), as a field of application rather than a theory (Jewitt 2013), or as a way of characterizing communicative situations (considered very broadly) which rely upon combinations of different ‘forms’ of communication to be effective (Bateman, Wildfeuer, and Hiippala 2017), all these perspectives adopt a functional perspective on meaning making practices and contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics of the changes taking place in the field of communication in relation to the technological advancement.

The conference is organized in several panels, which will address specific topics, such as:
Multimodality and Intercultural Mediation; Multimodal Semiosis; Semiotics and Communication; Multimodal Interaction; Multimodality, Intermediality, & (Trans)Mediation; Multimodality and Identity; Multimodality and Media Literacy; Multimodal Learning; Multimodal Digital Humanities; Multimodality and Political Communication; Narrativity & Multimodal Communication; Social Semiotics Perspectives on Sustainability & Development; Mediation and Multimodal Meaning Making in Digital Environments; Theoretical, Methodological and Analytical Trends in Multimodal Research, etc.

In the tradition of previous Semiosis in Communication (SC) editions, keynote speakers will be some internationally recognized experts in their fields of activity.

Keynote Speakers confirmed:

Jean-Marie Klinkenberg – professor emeritus at the University of Liège (Belgium) – Jean-Marie Klinkenberg is Honorary Guest of the event – https://www.uliege.be/cms/c_9054334/en/directory?uid=u002156);
Paul Cobley, President of IASS-AIS, International Association for Semiotic Studies, Deputy Dean Research & Knowledge Exchange at Middlesex University (U.K.) – Paul Cobley is Honorary Guest of the event – https://www.mdx.ac.uk/about-us/ourpeople/staff-directory/profile/cobley-paul;
Kay O’Halloran – University of Liverpool(U.K.), Chair Professor and Head of Department of Communication and Media in the School of the Arts. She is also Visiting Distinguished Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China (2017-present) –
https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/communication-and-media/staff/kay-ohalloran/?;
David Machin – Professor of Linguistics at Zhejiang University China; Professor of Media and Communication at Örebro University, Sweden – http://infadm.shisu.edu.cn/corpusen/69/82/c12943a158082/page.psp;
Massimo Leone – Full Tenured Professor (“Professore Ordinario”) of Philosophy of Communication and Cultural Semiotics at the Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences, University of Turin, Italy, Permanent Part-Time Visiting Full Professor of
Semiotics in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, University of Shanghai, China, Associate Member of Cambridge Digital Humanities, Cambridge University, and Director of the Center for Religious Studies, “Bruno Kessler Foundation”, Trento, Italy – https://www.unito.it/persone/maleone;
Evangelos Kourdis – Professor in Translation Semiotics at the School of French Language and Literature, Faculty of Philosophy, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece – https://www.frl.auth.gr/admin/person.php?id=44&lang=_en&ilang=2; and
Kristian Bankov – Professor of Semiotics at New Bulgarian University and Department Chair of the Southeast European Center for Semiotic Studies; Secretary General of IASS-AIS, International Association for Semiotic Studies – https://semiotics.nbu.bg/en/academicstaff/prof-kristian-bankov-ph-d.

Important deadlines
Submissions open: December 22, 2022
Deadline for submission of Abstracts: March 10th, 2023 (you will receive an acknowledgment by email)
Notification of Acceptance: March 24th, 2023
Deadline for participation fee: April 14th, 2023

Paper submission: Applications for presentations consist in only one document:

• Title and abstract (max. 300 words followed by 3-5 keywords) with short and relevant bionote (do not exceed 150 words, please) in MS Word format (.doc, .docx). We highly appreciate short, schematic texts.
• Please use the abstract template available on the conference website. You can download the template of abstract directly from the conference website (Abstract_Template.doc – the same template as the 2021 edition).
• Co-authored papers are welcome.
• Papers are delivered in 30 minutes presentations (20 minutes talk followed by 10 minutes of debate).
• Please, submit your proposal to dragan.nicolaesorin@gmail.com, semiocomm@gmail.com or sorin.dragan@comunicare.ro within March 10th, 2023. Only one paper for each participant (as a first author) will be accepted.
• The official language of the conference is English, but there will also be sessions in which the papers can be presented in French.
• The authors will receive confirmation via e-mail.

Registration & Conference fee
Early bird registration – by April 14th, 2023:
Delegates should pay the conference fee – 100 Euro/participant – after the notification of abstract acceptance. For delegates only attending the conference (without presenting), the fee is 30 Euro/participant.

Late registration – after April14th, 2021:
Delegates should pay the conference fee – 120 Euro/participant – after the notification of abstract acceptance. Members of the IASS-AIS will pay 100 Euro/participant. For delegates only attending the conference (without presenting), the fee is 50 Euro/participant. The fee includes conference attendance, lunch, refreshments during coffee breaks, conference bag, publication in conference proceedings, Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations, Journal of Media Research or Technium Social Sciences Journal (selected papers only), as well as in other international academic journals with which we have partnerships, refreshments during coffee breaks and lunch.
After the payment delegates are required to send the payment confirmation to: dragan.nicolaesorin@gmail.com or semiocomm@gmail.com in order to register for the conference.

Conference venue
National University of Political and Administrative Studies, College of Communication and Public Relations, 30A Expozitiei Boulevard, Bucharest, Romania.

For questions and details concerning the conference Semiosis in Communication: Culture, Communication and Social Change, please write to Nicolae-Sorin Drăgan at: dragan.nicolaesorin@gmail.com; semiocomm@gmail.com or sorin.dragan@comunicare.ro.

Hong Kong Baptist University: New Technology Stream offering

Hong Kong Baptist University’s MA in Translation and Bilingual Communication has recently launched a new Technology Stream offering courses in translation technology, localization, corpus-based approaches to translation, audiovisual translation and digital publishing. 

The new stream is open to application from students who have no knowledge of Chinese. 

Deadline for applications: 31 March 2023.

The MATRAN programme, which was originally launched in 2008, is run by the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Studies.

Full details can be found at https://tiis.hkbu.edu.hk/en/taught_postgraduate/admissions/

Call for papers: AfroLab 2023 International Symposium

AfroLab 2023 International Symposium
Translation and Circulation
May 11th-12th

Deadline: 15 February 2023

The research project AfroLab – Building African Literatures. Institutions and consecrations inside and outside the Portuguese-language space 1960-2020 (PTDC/LLT-OUT/6210/2020) invites communication proposals for the AfroLab 2023 International Symposium “Translation and Circulation” (May 11th-12th).

Following our 2022 Symposium (November 10th-11th), centred mostly on the idea of literary institutions when applied to African literature in the Portuguese-speaking world, we now move on to focus specifically on the translation of these literatures outside the Lusosphere. The purpose of this encounter is to study phenomena about the circulation and the translation of these literatures. Translation, as we see it, is a multifold phenomenon, which can be approached from a number of perspectives. Our theoretical background is supported by different inputs, such as the Cultural Turn of Translation Studies (Lefevere, 1992; Venuti, 1995 and 1998; Bassnett and Lefevere, 1990 among others), in a wider landscape of world-literary circulation (Casanova, 1999; Moretti 2000 and 2003; Warwick Research Collective 2015), with a stress on the role played by institutions in the international circulation of literatures (Helgesson and Vermeulen 2016) and on symbolic capital’s accumulation by single literary works, authors or whole national/linguistic literary traditions (Bourdieu, 1992 and 2000; Heilbron, 2010; Sapiro 2014, 2015 and 2016).

Ongoing work in our project, the following conclusion by Ducournau (2017) has already encompassed a study of the role of Portuguese institutions (such as publishers, but also governmental agencies) in the internationalisation of these literatures (partial results can be found in Bucaioni, 2020 and 2022, for example): we encourage the academic community to continue this
productive dialogue on the international fame gained by African literatures in Portuguese, their place in the various target systems, the inequality of treatment among different foreign literary traditions in relevant target languages and the marginality of Portuguese-language literary outputs on the world-stage.

While African literatures in Portuguese have been largely studied as an epistemological and didactic unit in the Portuguese and Brazilian academia, their circulation in translation has been left largely unstudied. Considering, on the one hand, the marginality of African literary production on the world-literary stage, and, on the other, the particular position occupied by the Portuguese
language as a literary production language, we think that the study of the translation and circulation of these literary archives can produce a relevant reflection on a segment of the world-literary system, testing and challenging theoretical assumptions and formulations and contributing to a better understanding both of African literatures and Portuguese-language literatures’ position on
the world-literary stage.

Abstracts can be submitted in English and Portuguese.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• theoretical reflections spurred by the corpus of Portuguese-language African literatures in translation, bearing in mind their positioning in the world-literary system;
• cultural, epistemological, social and political aspects or implications of translations or the translation process;
• the study and/or critical analysis of translations;
• the study of the role of the translation agents involved;
• reflections on the role of translations in the reception of these literatures;
• contributions to a history of the translation of Portuguese-language African literatures.

Timetable:
February 15th, 2023: deadline for abstract proposal presentation, via online form at (https://forms.gle/CNd2uBZvkYFxCbQA7).
February, 28th, 2023: notification of acceptance/refusal by the colloquium organisation team.
May 11th-12th , 2023: symposium dates.
The event will be carried out in person at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Lisbon, even if we are prepared to include one or two panels that take place online, similar to what happened with the AfroLab 2022 Symposium.

Special issue call: Translation for Social Justice

Translation for Social Justice: Concepts, Policies and Practices across Modalities and Contexts 

Guest editors 

Julie Boéri, Hamad Bin Khalifa University (Qatar) 

Ting Guo, University of Liverpool (UK) 

LANS-TTS Issue 23, publication year 2024 

Linguistica Antverpiensa LANS-TTS is an international, open access journal in translation studies publishing yearly special issues.  

The transnational nature of contemporary movements, media and networks in our globalized and interconnected societies has placed translation at the heart of counter-hegemonic discourses and endeavours. In this context, translation has become a powerful prism through which to think and practice social justice. Although largely intellectualized in relation to Western, liberal welfare states, social justice is also a performative and interpersonal prism of social change (Sen, 2009), with roots historically spread across cultures, traditions and territories, and with ramifications in contemporary forms of resistance, including struggles for the rights of humans but also of animals and nature. Thus, while social justice has traditionally been understood as the fair distribution of means and resources and the recognition of people’s rights across status in a given society (Fraser & Honneth, 2003), the increased interconnection of struggles across the world has broadened social justice in ways that heighten the stakes of translation. The leverage and enactment of the multiple rights which social justice now encompasses is contingent upon the organization, the practice and the theorization of translation (Boéri, 2022) in all its modalities (translation, interpreting, bilingual facilitation, fixing, subtitling, dubbing) and across communication contexts of resistance (social movements, media networks, cultural institutions). 

Combining a translational focus on social justice and a social justice focus on translation can harness the political and ethical potentials of this area of enquiry and practice, emerging from the liminal space between activism and the service economy (Baker, 2013; Boéri, 2008, 2012; Boéri & Delgado Luchner, 2021; Piróth & Baker, 2020; Pérez-González, 2010, 2016), social justice and social movements (de Sousa Santos, 2005; Doerr, 2018; Fernández, 2021), social justice and public policy (García-Beyaert, 2017), social justice and art (Boéri, 2020), social justice and education (Bahadır, 2011; Boéri & Jerez, 2011; Gill & Guzmán, 2011), and social justice and gender equality ( Baldo et al., 2021; Guo, 2021; Spurlin, 2018). On the one hand, a translational approach to social justice invites scholars to account for the counter-hegemonic potential of cross-language communication, which tends to be overlooked in an all too often monolingual account of multilingual processes and spaces of resistance. On the other hand, a social justice focus on translation can yield powerful insights into the agency of the translation actors as dynamic/innovative agents in the performance of their duties, who may depart from and rethink deontological principles of impartiality and expertise. These two complementary and overlapping standpoints have the potential to renew our understanding of how social actors (including translators and interpreters) think and perform social justice beyond the monolingual and expert paradigms. 

Bringing together studies from across contexts, regions and territories of resistance, this special issue aims to advance knowledge of the challenges and the stakes of overcoming language barriers in social justice endeavours. We seek submissions across translation and interpreting studies, with particular interest in interdisciplinary perspectives which can cast a critical light onto the social justice stakes of translation across contexts and modalities. Topics of interest include but are not limited to: 

• The politics of organization of cross-language communication in past and contemporary social justice endeavours across contexts (movements, media, cultural institutions) 
• Framing and leveraging translation/interpreting for social justice: stakes, challenges and levers in and beyond liberal democracies 
• Enacting social justice in adversarial and collaborative cross-language encounters: positionality, ethics, constraints and agency 
• The translation labor of social justice: wages, volunteering, working conditions, expertise, skills, affect 
• Individual and collective trajectories of social justice actors: processes of collective identity formation among activists who translate and activist translators 
• Translation/Interpreting pedagogies of social justice: curriculum developments in ad hoc, community and formal training 
• Epistemologies of translational counter-hegemonic endeavors: revisiting and renewing concepts, methods, frameworks, models and paradigms for social justice 
  
  Selected papers will be submitted for a double-blind peer review as requested by LANS–TS.  
  
  Practical information and deadlines 
  
  Proposals: Please submit abstracts of approximately 500–1000 words in English, French, Spanish or German, including relevant references (not included in the word count), to both Dr Julie Boéri (jboeri@hbku.edu.qa) and Dr Ting Guo (ting.guo@liverpool.ac.uk) in the same email. 

• Abstract deadline: 1 April 2023 
• Acceptance of abstract proposals: 1 June 2023 
• Submission of papers: 1 November 2023 
• Acceptance of the papers: 1 March 2024 
• Submission of final versions of papers: 1 June 2024 
• Editorial work (proofreading and APA check): June to November 2024 
• Publication: December 2024 
  
  For all submissions (abstracts and full papers), authors have to use APA 7^th. 
  
  References (apa.org)
  APA Style Reference Guide for Journal Articles, Books, and Edited Book Chapters, APA Style 7th Edition
  APA Style Common Reference Examples Guide, APA Style 7th Edition 
  
  Julie Boéri is Associate Professor in Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. She holds a PhD in Translation and Intercultural Studies from the University of Manchester. She has interpreted and/or coordinated interpreting in many social justice initiatives in Europe and Latin America. Her work focuses on the translational nature of contemporary social movements and civil society, and on the ethics of translation, interpreting and mediation. She co-edited (with Carol Maier, Kent State University, USA) the bilingual English and Spanish book Compromiso Social y Traducción/Interpretación – Translation/Interpreting and Social Activism. She has published her work in varying outlets: The Translator (Taylor & Francis), Translation and Interpreting Studies (John Benjamins), Quaderns, Puentes, The Translator and Interpreter Trainer, Meta: journal des traducteurs, Hermès, Language and Communication, Revues des Sciences de l’Information et de la Communication, among others. She has regularly contributed to Routledge Handbooks and Encyclopedia (on citizen media, translation, interpreting, ethics). She is the Vice-President of IATIS (International Association of Translation and Intercultural Studies). 
  
  Ting Guo is a Senior Lecturer in Translation and Chinese studies at University of Liverpool. She holds a PhD in Translation Studies (Aston University, UK). Her research focuses on the pivotal role of translators in the reproduction and dissemination of knowledge as well as in cultural and social changes. She has coedited two special issues on the topic of queer translation, with Michela Baldo (University of Birmingham) and Jonathan Evans, of Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice (in press  2023) and Translation and Interpreting Studies (published 2021). Ting publishes widely in international journals such as Translation Studies and Literature Compass, and she is the author of Surviving Violent Conflict: Chinese Interpreters in the Second-Sino Japanese War (1931-45) (2016). She is the Associate Editor of Target, the International Journal of Translation Studies and member of the Advisory Board of Translation in Society as well as member of the Advisory Panel of New Voices in Translation Studies. 
  
  References 
  
  Bahadır, Ş. (2011). Interpreting enactments: a new path for interpreting pedagogy. In C. Kainz, E. Prunc, & R. Schögler (Eds.), Modelling the field of community interpreting: Questions of methodology in research and training (pp. 177–210). LIT Verlag. 
  
  Baker, M. (2013). Translation as an alternative space for political action. Social Movement Studies, 12(1), 23–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2012.685624 
  
  Baldo, M., Evans, J., & Guo, T. (2021). Introduction: translation and LGBT+/queer activism. Translation and Interpreting Studies, 16(2), 185–195. https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.00051.int 
  
  Boéri, J. (2008). A narrative account of the Babels vs. Naumann controversy. The Translator, 14(1), 21–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2008.10799248 
  
  Boéri, J. (2020). Diversity. In M. Baker, L. Pérez González, & B. B. Blaagaard (Eds.), Routledge encyclopedia of citizen media (pp. 140–145). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315619811 
  
  Boéri, J. (2022). Steering ethics towards social justice: A model for a meta-ethics of interpreting. Translation and Interpreting Studies: https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.20070.boe 
  
  Boéri, J., & Jerez, J. D. M. (2011). From training skilled conference interpreters to educating reflective citizens. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 5(1), 27–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2011.10798811 
  
  de Sousa Santos, B. (2005). The future of the world social forum: The work of translation. Development, 48(2), 15–22. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.development.1100131 
  
  Doerr, N. (2018). Political translation: How social movement democracies survive. Cambridge University Press. 
  
  Fraser, N., & Honneth, A. (2003). Redistribution or recognition? A political philosophical exchange. Verso. 
  
  García-Beyaert, S. (2017). Public concern, public policy and PSI: The public dimension of language interpreting. Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 75, 15–29. 
  
  Gill, Rosalind M. & Guzmán, M. C. (2011). Teaching translation for social awareness in Toronto. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer (ITT), 5(1), 93–108. https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2011.10798813 
  
  Guo, T. (2021). ‘Love is love’ and ‘Love is equal’: Translation and queer feminism in China. In M. Bracke, J. Bullock, P. Morris, & K. Schulz (Eds.) Translating feminism (pp. 199–226). Palgrave. 
  
  Pérez-González, L. (2010). ‘Ad-hocracies’ of translation activism in the blogosphere: A genealogical case study. In M. Baker, M. Olohan, & M. Calzada Pérez (Eds.), Text and context essays on translation and interpreting in honour of Ian Mason (pp. 259–287). St Jerome Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315759739 
  
  Pérez-González, L. (2016). The politics of affect in activist amateur subtitling: A biopolitical perspective. In M. Baker & B. Blaagaard (Eds.), Citizen media and public spaces: Diverse expressions of citizenship and dissent (pp. 118–135). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315726632 
  
  Piróth, A., & Baker, M. (2020). Volunteerism in translation: Translators without borders and the platform economy. In E. Bielsa & D. Kapsaskis (Eds.), The routledge handbook of translation and globalization (pp. 406–424). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003121848 
  
  Sen, A. (2009). The idea of justice. Harvard University Press. 
  
  Spurlin, W. (2018). Queering translation: Rethinking gender and sexual politics in the spaces between languages and culture. In B. J. Epstein and R. Gillett (Eds.), Queer in translation (pp. 172–183). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315603216 
  
   

Call for papers: international conference ‘Translation and the News’

On 26 and 27 June 2023, Universidade Católica Portuguesa will host the international conference “Translation and the News: state of the art, dialogues, reflections”.

The fundamental aim of the event is to enquire into the various intersections that can arise from putting journalism and translation studies in dialogue, thus contributing to the development of a subarea of both translation and journalism studies which has still room to explore. Journalistic translation opens up new research avenues concerning both news and translation. However, while translation studies’ scholars have initiated a discussion around translation practices in the news, journalism studies have not yet addressed the relevance of translation as a key practice in news writing.

Scholars from the two main fields, journalism and translation, are invited to contribute to the discussion.

Proposals should be sent to translationnews2023@gmail.com no later than 10 March 2023 (for further details, please consult the call for papers under “Learn More”).

All those interested in presenting a paper or just participating in the event should enroll via the webform, available at: https://fch.lisboa.ucp.pt/translation-and-the-news

Translation for Social Justice: Concepts, Policies and Practices across Modalities and Contexts

Call for abstracts & papers (in English, Spanish, French and German):

LANS-TTS Issue 23, publication year 2024

Guest editors

Dr Julie Boéri, Hamad Bin Khalifa University (Qatar)
Dr Ting Guo, University of Liverpool (UK)

Practical information and deadlines

Proposals: Please submit abstracts of approximately 500–1000 words in English, French, Spanish or German, including relevant references (not included in the word count), to both Dr Julie Boéri (jboeri@hbku.edu.qa) and Dr Ting Guo (ting.guo@liverpool.ac.uk) in the same email.

Abstract deadline: 1 April 2023
Acceptance of abstract proposals: 1 June 2023
Submission of papers: 1 November 2023
Acceptance of the papers: 1 March 2024
Submission of final versions of papers: 1 June 2024
Editorial work (proofreading and APA check): June to November 2024
Publication: December 2024