CfP: INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
TRANSLATION AND THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES
University of Westminster, London
7-8 October 2016
Jointly organised by:
Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Westminster
School of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Nanjing Normal University
Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
As the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) refers to the ‘interface between creativity, culture, economics and technology in a contemporary world dominated by images, sounds, texts and symbols’, the creative industries are becoming increasingly central to policies intended to stimulate economic growth and foster cultural diversity.
The demand for the creative sector to fulfil this double function is growing, and so is the need to foster critical and productive thinking on the precepts, prerequisites and performance(s) of such duality. This conference aims to address this issue through the prism of translation, itself an activity often caught in a conceptual double-bind of creativity on the one hand and (re-)productivity on the other.
Translation, as a professional (and thus value-generating) mediation activity across linguistic, cultural, and conceptual boundaries (and indeed as a NACE-designated creative industry in its own right) not only plays a crucial role in contributing to and indeed shaping both global and local creative economies, but is also itself increasingly shaped by the emerging ‘creative economy’ paradigm.
We invite papers from both academics and industry practitioners that reflect on the relationship between the creative industries and translation in both theory and practice. Themes to be explored may include, but are not limited to:
Images, sounds, texts and symbols: translating the language(s) of the creative industries Translating values and the value(s) of translationCreativity and translational commerce Translation and cultural/social/economic transformationTranslation between globalization and localizationTranscreation – new kid on the block or the emperor’s new clothes?Technology, translation, and the (not so) new media
We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers in English on these and related topics.
Please send your 300-word abstract plus 50-word bio note to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by 14 June 2016.
