The International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies aims to promote international co-operation and scholarship in the fields of translation and intercultural studies through the organisation of regular international conferences.

The First IATIS Conference was held at Sookmyung Women's University in Seoul, Korea on 12-14 August 2004 to celebrate the launch of IATIS. Entitled Translation and the Construction of Identity this conference featured contributions from across the globe. 

The Second IATIS Conference, entitled Intervention in Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Encounters, will be held at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, on 12 - 14 July 2006. 

Translators, interpreters, and other intercultural communicators and commentators are indispensable mediators in processes involving the movement of people, ideas, technologies, and literatures between different places, cultures, languages, and even times. Their role can, however, also be described as one of intervention, which stresses a more-or-less self-conscious commitment to effecting change and determining outcomes in societal, cultural, economic and other encounters. This, the 2nd Conference of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS), aims to address issues of intervention in interlingual and intercultural encounters, asking, for example, how such intervention can be conceptualised and enacted? And if, following Hermans (2001), such encounters require the speaking subject to position itself in relation to, and at a critical distance from, a source text, does intervention grow as we take up positions that are in direct opposition to source texts? Or does maintaining the status quo not itself sometimes imply complicity with a position that may change the future for others?

Following the success of its inaugural conference in Seoul in 2004, the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies now invites proposals for papers and panels addressing the theme of Intervention in Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Encounters. The Conference will welcome contributions in areas where the ethical and ideological dimensions of translation, interpreting and other intercultural practices have traditionally been a focus, as well as in areas where these dimensions have been addressed less explicitly, although they are always present. Contributions in the following areas are thus particularly encouraged:

• Interpreting cultural interfaces

• Translator and interpreter training

• Language survival and nation-building/nationalism/transformation

• Post-colonial acculturation and hybridity

• The translation of literature (adult and children's) as intervention

• Oral literary traditions and folklore as intervention

• Globalisation and localisation in the developed/ing world

• Interpreting and the authentic voice

• Interpreting silences

• Corpus translation/interpreting studies

• Forensic linguistics

• Translation technology

• The crisis of representation in Western theory

Contributions may be approached from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds including, but not restricted to: anthropology, corpus-based studies, cultural studies, gender studies, intercultural studies, interpreting studies, linguistics, literary theory, localisation, media studies, pedagogy, postcolonial studies, pragmatics, sociology, translation technology.

The conference will be held at the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa and will be truly international in its outlook, while at the same time drawing on South Africa's recent and rich experience of cultural and political transformation.

Welcome to Cape Town! It is indeed an honour for the University of the Western Cape to host the 2nd International Conference of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies. Organizing this conference at our university has been an exciting challenge, but thanks to our excellent international and local organizing committees, as well as the conference advisory panel, we have managed to put together a conference programme that represents the best in our field and which is led by distinguished plenary speakers. We are also grateful to Fairfield Corporate Ventures for their coordination of the conference and to the executive and administrative staff of our university for their support and assistance with the funding and logistics of the conference. We trust that you will have a memorable time in Cape Town, and that you will take time out from the academic programme to enjoy the sights and sounds of our beautiful city and province.