Call for papers
The Translation in Transition series of conferences has established itself as a central meeting point for researchers in the field of empirical translation studies through previous editions in Copenhagen, Germersheim and Ghent. In its fourth instalment, held at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona on the 19th and 20th of September 2019, it once again wants to be a forum of discussion for empirical research that is based on any kind of empirical methodology and that advances our knowledge in the fields of translation and interpreting.
The Translation in Transition 4 conference wants to promote interdisciplinary research by putting a special focus on corpus-aided research in the wider context of translation studies. Corpus methods have advanced translation research in various areas by allowing empirical analyses of real language use. They have also enabled scholars to conduct interdisciplinary studies drawing on neighbouring disciplines, making translation studies a thriving field of research.
In translation for the publishing industry, recent research has used corpus-based approaches to shed light on the role of intervening agents that influence the translated text before its publication, especially editors and proofreaders. Assuming availability of such corpora, this research avenue has proven a fruitful way to improve our view of what translated language is like and of how norms previously thought to be translational tendencies are in fact enforced by intervening agents. More research on manuscript corpora and editing is needed to expand existing methods and propose new ones in this field of study.
Research in audiovisual translation is adopting empirical approaches both thematically by broadening the scope of topics to include a wider reality of communication situations, such as multilingualism and defective speech, as well as methodologically, by including corpus-based and reception approaches.
This conference also seeks to bridge the gap between corpus-based translation studies and discourse studies. Discourse studies have seen advances in using corpora to investigate evaluation and epistemicity, e.g., in political discourse. A current challenge is presented by how these issues that have seen increasing interest may be tackled by corpus approaches, which should include tagging and automatic analysis of relevant items.
These techniques may also enrich research into areas of specialised translation such as legal translation, given the growing availability of corpora of legal documents, and promotional discourse such as advertising in the social media. Related to this is the relevance of empirical research conducted in the field of community interpreting in the health care and legal contexts with the aim of improving quality through guidelines and resources for interpreters.
We especially invite papers that focus on any of the following research areas:
- Corpus-aided/based/driven research into translation studies
- Interdisciplinary projects combining discourse studies and translation studies
- Translation workflow studies and the role of editors in translation
- Empirical approaches to audiovisual translation studies
- Corpus approaches to cross-linguistic discourse studies
- Empirical research into professional translation (legal, promotional, business, etc.)
Abstract submission
Papers will be 20 minutes followed by 10 minutes of discussion. Please submit abstracts of 300 words (excluding references) via the conference website (eventum.upf.edu/go/tit4). Papers that describe work in progress are welcome, but in any case the abstract must demonstrate the empirical focus of the study. The submission deadline is 31 January 2019, and acceptance or rejection will be communicated by 31 March 2019.
