Deadline for applications: 31 May 2024

For more information, click here.

Translation and Interpreting (T&I) Studies has increasingly recognized the cognitive approaches to language mediation as key to understand its intricacies and challenges.  Influenced by technologies such as speech recognition, machine translation and generative AI, the evolving workplace of the T&I profession is revolutionising the way translators and interpreters work today. These changes in external working conditions, coupled with the individual and psychological factors that are now attracting increasing attention, can hardly be overlooked when we apply, update and develop cognitive constructs to understand the more integrated and complex processes of T&I. The move from Translation Process Research to Cognitive Translation and Interpreting Studies (CTIS) has opened research to readers and audiences, and problem solving is now just one among several research foci.

We are witnessing the increasing recognition of multimodality as central to all kinds of multilectal mediated communication tasks. Research projects are becoming more sophisticated, statistical analyses are becoming sounder, and there seems to be a trend to contrast several tasks (including those from neighboring domains, such as source-based writing) in within-informant approaches. Building upon theoretical views that study cognitive aspects as both the prerequisites and the outcomes of expertise in T&I, this issue will explore various constructs to refine the modelling of the T&I processes through various theoretical and methodological lenses. We will also examine how different indicators can be leveraged to attain a deeper understanding of the cognitive underpinnings of language processing.

Constructs such as cognitive load, effort, flexibility, efficiency, and control have long been at the heart of this research domain (e.g., Seeber 2013; Hvelplund 2016; Dong & Li 2020).  Meanwhile, recent progress in the use of indicators from different data collection methods, such as the visual world paradigm, eye/ear-voice span (EVS), ear-to-key span, respites (inter-keystroke intervals of mid length), galvanic skin response (GSR), and heart rate variability (HRV), have significantly enhanced our understanding of these processes, offering more elaborate examinations and nuanced measurements of such constructs (Zhou et al. 2021; Chmiel & Lijewska 2022; Muñoz & Apfelthaler 2022; Amos et al. 2022; Weng et al., 2022; Li et al. 2023).

The guest editors welcome interdisciplinary dialogue and encourage contributions applying diverse methodologies, from neuroimaging studies, through psycholinguistic experiments to ethnographic observation, and from behavioral analysis to computational modelling.  Our goal is to stimulate thorough and critical discussions that will enrich the development of CTIS as a robust, ever-growing, and evolving research strand. Additionally, we aim to contemplate the practical implications of CTIS research for training, assessment, and professional practice within the field.

Submissions are welcome on, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Theoretical discussions on cognitive constructs pertinent to T&I studies.
• Indicators of constructs such as cognitive load, effort, control, automaticity, flexibility and efficiency in T&I tasks.
• The dynamic interplay among diverse cognitive constructs during language processing in professional translators and interpreters.
• Methodological challenges and innovations in measuring cognitive processes in language mediation.
• How multiple methods can be combined or contrasted to yield a comprehensive understanding of the cognitive aspects of T&I.
• Behavioral and cognitive dynamics through the task.
• Contrasts in subtasks for different purposes (e.g., different kinds of writing, reading, information search).
• Cognitive profile of emerging tasks, such as live captioning, voice writing, remote public service interpreting, etc.
• Discussions on influencing factors of workflow, the use of new technological tools, and individual and psychological variables.

Deadline of submissions of full articles: 15 April 2025

For more information, click here.

Guest editors:

Gianluca Pontrandolfo (University of Trieste)
Carla Quinci (University of Padua)

Legal Translation and Automation

Many myths and deep concerns surround neural machine translation (NMT) and the role specialised translators play in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). The scary idea of ‘human parity’, i.e. the belief that NMT can achieve human quality, sparks off heated debates about the implications of the recent outstanding technological advancement for the translation profession. The alleged threats posed by the results achieved by AI in combination with the gaps in the academic literature about the functioning of (N)MT and its influence on the translation process and product have caused widespread scepticism and mistrust, when not an a priori rejection of NMT. Scholars worldwide have attempted to debunk these myths by studying the actual advantages and disadvantages of using automation. For instance, do Carmo (2023) recently proposed the term “artificial translation” – rather than “machine translation” – to stress that MT does not perform a complete translation process, which would take into account not just the meaning of the source and the target sentences but also extratextual elements e.g. the voice of the author, the intended readers, the purpose of the target texts, which are crucial in any (legal) translation brief (Scott 2019: 81-102).

These concerns are particularly serious in the legal field, where the legal and ethical risks (Canfora & Ottmann 2020, Kenny, Moorkens & do Carmo 2020, Moorkens 2022) related to privacy and confidentiality, together with low risk tolerance and liability, contribute to that feeling of scepticism and mistrust. Thus, legal translation has generally been considered unsuitable for automation (Sánchez-Gijón & Kenny 2022, 85-86), especially due to its inherent challenges. While other specialised fields tend towards conceptual universality and univocity, legal notions and procedures are largely system-bound and historically rooted, which naturally reflects on individual legal languages and culture-bound legal references (cf. Prieto Ramos 2022). This results in incongruities and asymmetries, which represent the typical challenges faced by legal translators (see Biel 2014, 2022, Pontrandolfo 2019, Prieto Ramos 2022). Another “distinctive feature of this specialisation is the high variability of the texts and legal conditions that determine the role of translation itself in each communicative situation, i.e. its communicative priorities between or within legal systems, according to the conventions of specific branches of law and legal genres at the national and international levels” (Prieto Ramos 2022; see also Cao 2007, Biel 2014, Biel et al. 2019). Legal translation involves negotiating not only between legal languages/discourses but also – and most importantly – between legal systems and legal genres (see Scott 2019: 31-55).

However, the evolution of AI and MT is changing the legal professional landscape, where the ‘triangle of MT’ (quality, price and speed) still plays a pivotal role. Legal translation service providers as well as law firms are increasingly betting on AI and NMT worldwide. Thanks to the growing quality of MT outputs and the development of custom engines (Martínez Domínguez et al. 2020), NMT and machine translation post-editing (MTPE) are now also used in the legal sector. The most recent version of the EMT Competence Framework “acknowledges that [it] represents a growing part of translation workflows, and that MT literacy and awareness of the possibilities and limitations of MT is an integral part of professional translation competence” (EMT Expert Group 2022, 7). Then, the question is not so much if machine translation and post-editing (PE) should be implemented in legal translator training but when, and how they are and will be used by professional translators (Quinci, forthcoming; Quinci & Pontrandolfo 2023).

Against this background, this Special Issue aims at mapping the new opportunities and risks related to fast technological advancement and the rapidly changing landscape of legal translation in training and professional settings by exploring a wide array of issues including, but not limited to, the following:
• Implications of translation modality (human translation, post-editing, etc.) on the translation process
• Quality evaluation of AI/MT/MTPE outputs in the legal field
• Effects of MT, MTPE and/or AI on the translation product from end-users’ perspective
• MT/AI performance across legal genres and languages
• Implementation and implications of AI and MT in legal translator training and/or the professional practice
• Impact of AI/MT/MTPE on legal translators’ creativity
• Training of MT engines for legal translation purposes
• Legal Machine Translationese and Post-editese
• Ethics & legal MT/AI

• Potential drawbacks, development, applications, and assessment of Large Language Models in legal translation
• Gender bias in legal MT/AI

Deadline for abstracts: 31 May 2024

For more information, click here.

Traditionally, translation (including interpreting) has been understood as an act of overcoming pre-existing linguistic and cultural differences. More recently, however, this understanding has been contested in Translation Studies. The idea that translation produces the differences it claims to overcome and that such differences can be regarded as effects of translation rather than conditions preceding it has been theoretically addressed with concepts like bordering (Sakai 2018, cf. Dizdar 2019, 2021). By producing differences and creating borders, translation is also effective in the construction of “collectivities” (Dizdar/Rozmyslowicz 2023) in the social world. When it marks a difference between languages, it simultaneously differentiates between individual speakers of a given language and between communities – which may differ in size and kind: national communities (e.g. Cronin 1996; Kothari 2007; Dizdar/Gipper/Schreiber 2015), gender identities (Simon 1996; Baer/Kaindl 2018; Robinson 2019), deaf and hearing communities (Young/Napier/Oram 2020), humans and machines (Rozmyslowicz 2023) – in short: between all sorts of collectivities (Dizdar/Rozmyslowicz 2023).

The conference addresses the question of how translation participates in the construction and undoing of differences in the social world and how it sorts people into categories. Which categories become relevant in which situation and field (politics, science, law, religion, art etc.)? And how do they interact? Moreover: which categories and distinctions are inscribed in concepts and theories of translation? Which ‘centrisms’ (e.g. eurocentrism, anthropocentrism) or ‘biases’ can be identified?

These and other related questions concerning translation’s power to construct difference can be discussed with reference to various empirical contexts or on a general theoretical level. The conference welcomes contributions on its main topic in the context of all research fields and perspectives. It aims to foster and intensify dialogue on translation by bringing together researchers from various backgrounds.

Deadline for abstracts: 30 June 2024

For more information, click here.

Location: Stirling Campus

The Post

The Faculty of Arts and Humanities is seeking to appoint a Lecturer in Spanish and/or Latin American Studies (Teaching and Scholarship) at Grade 7. This is a part-time 0.8 fte, fixed term post for 24 months.

The successful candidate will be able to coordinate and teach a range of modules in Spanish and Latin American Studies and supervise BA honours dissertations and study abroad projects.

Description of duties

• Contribute to the design, delivery, assessment and evaluation of a range of teaching and learning, supervision and assessment activities across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes including online/digital programmes, where required
• Contribute to the enhancement of the quality of teaching provision and programme development, drawing on leading practices from the HE sector
• Demonstrate a broad understanding of effective approaches to teaching and learning support as key contributions to high quality student learning
• Contribute to enhancement of the student experience and employability
• Engage in individual and collaborative pedagogical scholarly activity, which aligns to the strategic direction of the University

Essential criteria

• PhD in relevant discipline or close to successful completion or equivalent professional and/or teaching experience
• Experience or knowledge to design, deliver, assess and evaluate modules in the subject area
• Demonstrate an understanding of or provide evidence of developing effective approaches to teaching and learning, student support and guidance
• Experience or knowledge of approaches to enhance the student experience
• Clear plans for future scholarship activities

Deadline for applications: 6 June 2024

For more information, click here.

About the role

The Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies (PoLIS) is seeking to appoint a Lecturer in French. You will contribute primarily to the teaching of our French language programme for undergraduate students. This will involve the teaching of modules on the ab initio programme as well as advanced language classes and French language in the business context. 

You will be expected to participate fully in the life of the Department including engaging in personal tutoring and recruitment activities. 

PoLIS is a supportive and dynamic Department committed to teaching and research excellence. 

This role is offered on a full time (36.5 hours per week) permanent basis. 

For more information, click here.

Deadline for applications: 27 May 2024

About the Congress

The ever-changing landscape of the translation and interpreting industry and academic research has led in the past 10 years to translation taking place in different places, platforms and modalities.

It has also led to a shift in the profile of the modern translator and interpreter, who are now expected to work in different domains, with different tools, and according to different workflows.

Academic research in translation and interpreting studies has also taken on different faces with a multiplication of different areas, tools, methodologies.

This has strengthened our understanding of translation and interpreting phenomena in all their complexity, but this has also caused a proliferation of discourses about translation and interpreting that do not always coincide or align with those of the industry.

Theme

The ever-changing landscape of the translation and interpreting industry and academic research has led in the past 10 years to translation taking place in different places, platforms and modalities. It has also led to a shift in the profile of the modern translator and interpreter, who are now expected to work in different domains, with different tools, and according to different workflows. Academic research in translation and interpreting studies has also taken on different faces with a multiplication of different areas, tools, methodologies. This has strengthened our understanding of translation and interpreting phenomena in all their complexity, but this has also caused a proliferation of discourses about translation and interpreting that do not always coincide or align with those of the industry.

In this Congress we aim to take stock of these different faces and discourses by sharing different needs and expectations, contrasting conceptual understandings of what translation and interpreting are, and reflecting on potential roles and opportunities for collaboration. The Congress will offer a fruitful forum for dialogue and collaboration between academics from different areas as well as stakeholders from across the industry.

For more information, click here.

Deadline for abstracts: 26 July

Transcultural Encounters: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Language, History, and Culture in a Global Society

PGR Student-led Conference – Call for Papers

Thursday 6^th of June 2024, Cardiff University

Language, history, and culture are the markers that both bring together and divide people, societies, and the world. Following the success of last year’s event, we will be running another in-person, free-to-attend conference, hosted by Cardiff University’s School of Modern Languages and supported by the ESRC/Wales Doctoral Training Partnership. This conference aims to highlight and celebrate interdisciplinary research that explores how language, history, and culture define us, and how we define them, in an interconnected global society. Drawing from three research streams—history and heritage; translation and interpreting; and global language-based area studies—we are asking how postgraduate students from across the humanities and social sciences navigate these themes in their research. 

The conference aims to further establish a communication platform between PGR students from different fields. Like last year, it covers a wide range of areas in the humanities and social sciences and provides participants with opportunities for sharing results, collaborating on research, and gaining new knowledge. Participants will receive feedback on their papers from their peers and from experts in a variety of disciplines. They will attend talks by keynote speakers, engage in networking, and benefit from the highly popular methods workshops and surgeries on research-related topics. For early-stage PGR students, the conference will offer valuable insights and guidance on starting a career in research. 

We are looking for papers that cover (but are not limited to) the following subthemes:  

History and Heritage: 

Understanding how the past is represented and portrayed can reveal insights into our present. A multicultural, multilingual, and transnational approach to history, heritage, and culture—here in Wales, in the wider UK, and abroad—illustrates human connections made not just across space, but across time. Methodologies encompassing media sources—including photography, film, radio, and both literary and graphic novels—and investigating processes of musealisation and memorialisation, are testament to how everything from earth-shattering events to the mundane everyday all contribute to shaping contemporary understandings of the past. We welcome abstracts that examine the role of history and heritage in today’s increasingly globalised and interconnected world. Possible topics include: 

• How representations of the past reflect the present
• Multicultural, multilingual, and transnational approaches to history and heritage
• Antislavery, post-conflict, disaster, and memory
• Critical methodologies for documenting the past

Translation and Interpreting: 

The power of translation in connecting human beings can never be overstated, from political negotiations to daily conversations, from literary works to films and videogames, from preserving historical memories to pushing forward societal changes. Translation empowers and enables us to express ourselves, while demanding that we reflect in more depth on our relationship with “others”—be they other people, other cultures, or other ideologies. As professions and as subjects of research, however, translation and interpreting are in the midst of a paradigmatic shift, owing to evolving factors such as the prevalence of non-professional practices and the rise of generative AI technologies. Research exploring the challenges and opportunities presented by these contemporary changes is more valuable than ever. We welcome abstracts that examine the role of translation and interpreting in today’s increasingly globalised and interconnected world. Possible topics include: 

• Translation and interpreting theories, methods, and practice in various industries
• The impact of new technologies on translation and interpreting
• Specialised and non-professional translation and interpreting
• Interdisciplinary translation and interpreting, including language acquisition and evolution
• Research methodology in translation and interpreting

Global language-based area studies: 

We are interested in the politics, society, languages, and cultures of the connected world, placing an emphasis on transnational phenomena, creative and critical thinking, and social science- and humanities-led methodologies in addressing the crises of our times. We place particular emphasis on rethinking area studies, breaking disciplinary boundaries, and using innovative research methods and theoretical perspectives. We welcome abstracts that examine the role of global language-based studies in today’s increasingly globalised and interconnected world. Possible topics include:

• The politics, society, languages, and cultures of the connected world;
• Transnational phenomena, such as crisis and culture;
• How to rethink area studies and break disciplinary boundaries;
• Languages: multilingualism, language learning, and linguistics;
• Movements: socio-political, intellectual, ideological, industrial, and non-governmental

Individual and panel paper submissions are due by 5pm on the 9th of May 2024 and should include an abstract (maximum 250 words), three-five keywords, and a biographical note (maximum 150 words). Please submit a Word document to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. We will let you know the outcome of your submission by the 16th of May 2024. We can also advise on accommodation arrangements, if required.

Venue:

Glamorgan Building, Cardiff University

King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3WT

Local Organising Committee:

Dr Andrew Dowling                         Zoey Morgan                     Emily Bush                          This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.         This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.                                                This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.                     Chen Yang

If you have any questions, please get in touch with us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Special Issue Editor(s)

Şebnem Susam-Saraeva and Carolyn Shread

Intersections between gender, feminism and environmental issues have been explored in Western scholarship for more than fifty years now, catalyzed by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) and first named in French in Françoise d'Eaubonne’s neologism écoféminisme in Le Féminisme ou la mort (1974). Scholars have offered thought-provoking and thorough analyses of the intersectional connections between patriarchy, capitalism, racism, colonialism, imperialism, speciesism, and the environment (e.g. Gaard 2011). The last decade has seen a particular increase in the complexity of these discussions (e.g. Braidotti 2013 and 2021), in which matter and zoe have emerged as key components connecting all vegetal, animal and human-animal life and their theorization.

Given this background, and the extensive contribution of gender-conscious and feminist approaches to translation studies over the past three decades, the dearth of research in translation studies on the intersections of gender, feminism and the Earth is conspicuous. Feminist translation thinking has focused primarily on minoritized human groups, such as women, and queer and trans communities to the exclusion of all other life forms and ecosystems, which are also oppressed and ravaged by the same systems of power, e.g. colonialism and capitalism. Taking a broader perspective and acknowledging these injustices can strengthen feminist arguments and enhance their theoretical and practical applications. To rephrase the famous quote: none of us can be free, until all Earth is free.

In the ‘blinding light’ of the Anthropocene, this inaugural special issue of the journal Feminist Translation Studies summons scholars who work at the intersections of gender, feminism and eco-translation to bring their tools and perspectives to respond to the critical imperative that we learn to translate with the Earth. We have chosen this title carefully, as we do not look to a ‘heroic saviour’ position of ‘translating for the Earth’. Rather, the invitation is as much about listening - to the ice, rocks, plants, animals, rivers - as about translating their stories.

This inaugural issue thus seeks to decenter the trope of anthropos from translation goals and processes with an ear to new forms of feminist and epistemic justice. We are pragmatically oriented by the urgency to respond to climate crisis, calling for new modes of translation with the many forms of life conventionally silenced through the patriarchal presumptions of humans to rule and speak for the Earth. Our vision is a transcontinental conversation engaging indigenous epistemologies and eliciting the future via semiotic creativity, reimagining technology beyond anthropocentric, colonizing, extractivist and exclusionary modes of translation. To do so will be to abandon linguistic biases in favor of worldviews that are attentive to biosemiosis and posthumanism. We invite papers that bring substance and life to this vision, initiating trans-Earth comprehension.

Submissions on all related topics are welcome, with articles on the following themes particularly encouraged:

• What are the life forms and ecosystems also oppressed by the same systems of power that have not yet received critical attention in feminist translation studies; and why is it crucial that feminist translation studies offer a critical space for discussing them?
• How do the gendered care economies, and changes in relation to them, impact current translation practices, and what are the environmental costs of such changes?
• How can a focus on interspecies translation forge consensus for new epistemes and the well-being of the Earth beyond an anthropo-centric focus?
• How will meaning translate with matter in an expansion of feminist practices?
• How do somatic resonances of translating with the Earth manifest beyond gendered binaries?
• What skies, liquidities, and grounds do all life forms need and how can feminist thinking contribute sustainable paradigms for a thriving Earth?
• How do our material entanglements with the more-than-human world express the requirements for survival of all life and matter?
• How are feminist methodologies uniquely equipped to access and imagine these ecologically oriented reformulations of translation?
• What forms of feminist multimodal and intersemiotic translation are emerging in the face of climate crisis?

Deadline for abstracts: 15 May 2024

For more information, click here.

Editors

Adolfo M. García | Universidad de San Andrés / University of California / Universidad de Santiago de Chile

Edinson Muñoz | Universidad de Santiago de Chile

Néstor Singer | Universidad de Santiago de Chile

For more information, click here.