in alphabetical order

Keynote Speech Title:
Third culture and leverage points: translations as agents of change

Abstract:
The situation of polycrisis in which humanity is involved calls for new ways of understanding and reshaping some of our dominant paradigms (Mautner, 2010). Ecolinguistics (Stibbe, 2021) offers a powerful framework to find new ways of meaning by analysing language with an approach derived from critical discourse analysis and positive discourse analysis. It identifies beneficial, ambivalent and destructive discourse based on our Ecosophies. This presentation delves into the role of translation as an agent of change, capable of opening new pathways, providing alternative paradigms, and fostering novel worldviews.

Our languages, at least the Standard Average European languages, are characterised by anthropocentrism and growthism (Halliday 1990-2001). They construct linear causalities to explain systems that are much more complex and often beyond our understanding (Meadows, 1999). They often contribute to our human hypocognition of the climate crisis (Lakoff, 2010), its root causes and the possible ways of responding to it. When looking for ideology in translation, we often want to explore the role of the translator and see whether they have introduced, removed or changed ideological elements of the source text. I argue that the process of translation itself, notwithstanding individual translators, is a deeper agent of change and, more in general, of the shaping and reshaping of discourses.

In some contexts, it is hardly possible to establish which was the source and which the target, nor the translators themselves are accessible for interviews about their choices, which in any case were not necessarily conscious or deliberate. Observing the translation process by identifying ideological discrepancies, leaving aside the direction between source and target, can enlighten various aspects. In some cases, ideologies embedded in one language can be revealed in the other language, and persuasive strategies can be deconstructed because the target language does not offer the same persuasive tools. The translation process thus becomes the agent that foregrounds what was backgrounded and concealed in the source text. The different ideological effects that the two texts convey shape subtly different worldviews (Caimotto and Raus, 2023).
My perspective is about the encounter of languages and, at the same time, the encounter of cultural discrepancies and alternative discourses. It is thus enriched by an interdisciplinary perspective inspired by Systems Thinking (Meadows 2008), studies on third culture children (Pollock and Van Reken, 2017) and various alternative perspectives that help us envisage realities that we (think we) know under a different light, such as the notion of Mobility Justice (Sheller, 2018). Intralingual, interlingual and intersemiotic translation (Jakobson, 1959) are all together the agents that allow us to see the cracks, to reveal where our dominant paradigms do not hold and where we can find the leverage points to intervene in a system (Meadows, 1999) which is increasingly showing urgent need for change. 

Caimotto, M. C., & Raus, R. (2022). Lifestyle Politics in Translation: The Shaping and Re-Shaping of Ideological Discourse. Routledge.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1990-2001). New ways of meaning: The challenge to applied linguistics. In F. Alwin & P. Mühlhäusler (Eds.), The Ecolinguistics Reader: Language, Ecology and Environment (pp. 175-202). Continuum.
Jakobson, R. (1959). On linguistic aspects of translation. In R. Brower (Ed.), On Translation (pp. 232-239). Harvard University Press.
Lakoff, G. (2010). Why it matters how we frame the environment. Environmental Communication, 4(1), 70-81.
Mautner, G. (2010). Language and the Market Society: Critical Reflections on Discourse and Dominance. Routledge.
Meadows, D. H. (1999). Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System. The Sustainability Institute.
Meadows, D. H. (2008). Thinking in Systems: A Primer (D. Wright, Ed.). Earthscan.
Pollock, D. C., & Van Reken, R. E. (2017). Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds (3rd ed.). Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
Sheller, M. (2018). Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes. Verso Books.
Stibbe, A. (2021). Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and the Stories We Live By. Routledge.

About the Speaker:
M. Cristina Caimotto is Associate Professor of English Linguistics and Translation at the University of Torino, department of Culture, Politics and Society. Her research interests include political discourse and environmental discourse. She is the author of Discourses of Cycling, Road Users and Sustainability: An Ecolinguistic Investigation (2020) and, together with Rachele Raus, she has published Lifestyle Politics in Translation. The Shaping and Re-shaping of Ideological Discourse (2023). She is involved in various projects of public engagement focusing on issues related to the climate crisis and the promotion of active mobility, including Lessico e Nuvole (2020), the Horizon Europe project JUST STREETS and the project Bici e Società (Bike and Society) of the Institute for Research on Population and Social Policies - Italian National Research Council (CNR- IRPPS). She is also a cycling advocate.

Keynote Speech Title:
Document vs. Data: how low-tech digital translation devices can foster sustainable development

Abstract:
At a time when numerous digital translation services are being developed, the choice of translation technology concerns different epistemological options (such as machine translation, CAT tools, post-editing, and collaboration), and also involves economic considerations (such as productivity, cost, and output) and even legal norms (data protection, licensing). In an age of climate vulnerability, the question of these devices’ ecological footprint also plays a crucial role. Indeed, this environmental question may well become the main one.

What are the impacts of today’s translation technologies on the environment? Can they be measured? What are the energy prospects for the future? As opposed to the most polluting trends, are there more sustainable alternatives? Might these enable the introduction of new principles such as efficiency? In considering environmental effects, can we also take into account different symbolic ecosystems, and therefore linguistic diversity, and in particular minority languages? In this case, the question of sustainable development of a translation economy would involve both a consideration of the carbon footprint of different practices, and of the preservation capacity of various idioms. In other words, in the context of unsustainable growth, how can we move from a high-tech model to a low-tech model? Is there a movement in favor of “slow” translation, as there is one in favor of “slow food”?

I will discuss these points through the prism of the experiments conducted in a collaborative and multilingual digital translation environment TraduXio (https://traduxio.org), including its recent upgrade based on the Hyperglosae protocol (https://github.com/Hypertopic/HyperGlosae). What difference does it make when one switches from calculating datato interpreting documents? The vast majority of software is developed using the notion of data, implying a certain conception of technology (automation) and division of labor within the digital humanities (engineering commands; humanities obey). However, there can exist other translation devices, inspired by the ancient tradition of libraries that are based on the notion of the document: this implies a different vision of technology (complex human-machine relation) that begins from the user’s end (design), instead of considering it a mere application of science. Consequently, in such a perspective, the digital humanities follow the traditional technical gestures of the intellect (comparison, concordance) and turn them digitally through the invention of a new computer science, instead of having an already-set computer science that imposes the supposedly relevant intellectual gestures on the humanities and social and human sciences. For instance, the old idea of glose can be digitally recycled in order to allow for better hyperlinks (forward, reverse, side-by-side), inspired by Ted Nelson’s reflection on the subject, thus fostering renewed possibilities of commentary for the humanities and social and human sciences.

This epistemological change clearly has huge environmental consequences in terms of energy consumption: no data crawling, mining, and storaging; no deep learning, prompting, or fine-tuning; no post-editing. Translators are not considered an excessive cost to be necessarily cut, substituted by machines; rather, their collaborative intelligence is empowered and developed with the assistance of digital devices. In the end, the combination of these three aspects: (document (not data), assistance (non-automatic) technology and low-tech) offers illuminating insights into a truly sustainable digital future for translation.

 About the Speaker:
Trained in France and across Europe, Philippe Lacour is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department of the University of Brasilia, Brazil. He teaches theoretical (Epistemology, Philosophy of Science) and general Philosophy (introduction, methodology). His research focuses in particular on the Epistemology of Social and Human sciences, including their normative aspects, philosophy of language and translation technology (TraduXio project, https://traduxio.org). He was Program Director at the Collège International de Philosophie, Paris, investigating the notion of “clinical knowledge.” He is also responsible for various research projects about Artificial Intelligence, its challenge, limits and criticism.

Keynote Speech Title:
Translation, sustainability, and the triple bottom line

Abstract:
The theme of sustainability for this IATIS conference is timely. Resource extraction and processing are driving global climate change far beyond agreed targets and causing biodiversity loss (Bruyninckx et al. 2024). The monthly average concentration of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, hit record levels in March of 2024 (Milman 2024). These developments are exacerbated by sociotechnical change, with translation, as Cronin (2019) writes, “inevitably implicated in any discussion of what happens to technology in an age of accelerated climate change”. As the remit of natural language processing has expanded to produce generative AI, using large-scale, energy-intensive computing infrastructure, the implications for language technology have become even more apparent (Brevini 2022). Data extractivism and dispossession fuel systems that can produce impressive output but still make naïve errors. Yet despite the environmental and economic costs behind generative AI, many businesses, governments, and international organisations have pinned their hopes on it to spur economic growth, despite warnings of widespread job displacement (Ouyang et al. 2022).

Efforts to foreground sustainability at local, national, and international levels are ongoing, engaging with ideas such as degrowth, promoting a circular economy, and decoupling resource use from economic activity and well-being. One suggestion from Elkington (1997) was the triple bottom line (TBL) of people, planet, and profit to sustainably reorient business targets. In 2024, some colleagues and I proposed an application of the TBL to technology evaluation in translation, looking at people, planet, and performance (Moorkens et al. 2024). Our intention was to rebalance evaluation to consider sustainability, translation workers – companies and organisations have scrambled to offer AI-enhanced services, the focus is often on reducing labour costs, particularly within digital translation platforms (Fırat et al. 2024) – and society as a whole. In this talk, I revisit our proposal and some (reasonable) criticisms of our approach. I also consider some organisations in translation who have embraced the original TBL, taking ethics and sustainability to heart in their lives and work.

The impact of translation, as a small part of global activities, is not huge, but taking a relational approach to our societies and the networks in which we are embedded, there is an aggregate effect on our activities and decisions. As educators and researchers, it is increasingly clear that our choices are ethical and political. Do we train our students or carry out research using large, extractivist commercial AI tools, beta testing for a corporation within a global petri dish, or can we take an alternative approach, cognisant of the TBL and responsibility towards the common good? Do we support organisations who strive for a broader notion of prosperity than shareholder enrichment? Our individual decisions, conversations, and contributions alone may appear little – Floridi (2020) likens them to a grain of sand on the beach: “one counts for nothing, two are still nothing, but millions of grains can make a significant difference, if only because, without them, the beach would not exist”.

About the Speaker:
Joss Moorkens is an Associate Professor at the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies in Dublin City University (DCU), Science Lead at the ADAPT Centre, and member of DCU’s Institute of Ethics and Centre for Translation and Textual Studies. He has published over 60 articles, chapters and papers on the topics of translation technology interaction and evaluation, translator precarity, and translation ethics. He is General Coeditor of the journal Translation Spaces, coeditor of a number of books and journal special issues, and coauthor of the textbooks Translation Tools and Technologies (Routledge 2023) and Automating Translation (Routledge 2025). 

Keynote Speech Title:
Changing the ‘Cenes’: Translation and Ethnography in the World-Ecological Crisis

Abstract:
“Why be concerned about ecology?”, asked Herbert Marcuse in 1972, as early environmentalism in the US was already being coopted and at a time when the masses of young people at the heart of empire were organizing against the Vietnam war. His response was unequivocal, it is because “genocide and ecocide… are the capitalist response to the attempt at revolutionary ecological liberation”. Today, his words ring truer than ever. They alert us of the need for a political ecological consciousness that allows us to understand the interdependence of class, race, and gender at the origins of the current climate crisis, a crisis of the capitalist world-ecology.

Translation Studies has recently engaged with this matter in such work as ecofeminist translation, translation in climate crisis discourse, and environmental impacts of MT, among others. Frameworks like those of sustainability, development, and the Anthropocene have been dominant. The latter concept has become a meta-narrative, going beyond its geological realm to being adopted across disciplines, major institutions of global environmental governance, and even public discourse. These concepts can easily be naturalized and drained of their socio-political context of emergence.

Therefore, this is a proposal to change our scene/cene: from the narrative of “human-induced” climate change represented by the Anthropocene, to one of capital-induced crisis and capitalogenic climate change, where naming the system is at the center of our debates. As scholars and practitioners who have long been exploring the intrinsic relationship between language, power, and conflict, it is more crucial than ever for us to discuss the implications of the knowledges we (re)create and circulate about the climate crisis and to explore what openings it offers beyond major institutional spaces and mainstream NGOs.

Given the epistemic marginalization and under/non-translation of alternatives to capitalist sustainability and development, this presentation will bring critical perspectives articulated not only by intellectual traditions of the Global South but significantly by the everyday praxes of resistance and creation that communities around the world are building together, including in the many Souths that the North contains.

This is not a call for exclusively “going local”, as translation workers and precarious researchers do not always have the privilege of choice. Instead, the author will share her own practice in militant translation and ethnographic research for the past eight years in the context of socio-environmental struggles in the Argentine Patagonia to think together how we can generate and circulate “people’s knowledge” for and with those in affected territories, building potential alliances. For perhaps before calling for a de-centering of “the human” in times of climate crisis, we must ask together which humans have been at the center.

About the Speaker:
Nancy Piñeiro is a technical-scientific translator from Argentina (IESLVJRF). She has been involved in militant research and translation related to socio-environmental issues since 2016. After two years of graduate coursework in Latin American Studies at UNSAM (Argentina), she joined the Sociology doctoral program at SUNY Binghamton (USA). Part of her work looks at the role of translation in socio-environmental conflicts, with a focus on fracking in the Argentine Patagonia. She has published in academic and non-academic spaces and has translated several books. She is the cofounder of the women translators collective Territorio de Ideas, and a member of the journals New Voices in Translation Studies and Encounters in Translation.