Dear Colleague,

QT LaunchPad ( www.qt21.eu/launchpad ) is a two-year project funded by the European Commission which focuses on quality translation. As part of the initial work for this project, the consortium is surveying the needs and expectations of relevant stakeholder groups, including translation studies scholars, academics, translation trainers and professional translators.

We would very much appreciate it if you could spend 5-10 minutes of your time to complete our questionnaire, which can be accessed from this webpage:

http://computing.dcu.ie/~fgaspari/qtlp/prof_all.htm

If you think that some of your colleagues might be interested in the survey, please feel free to pass on to them the link to the questionnaire.

The information provided as part of this survey will be treated in strict confidence and will be used by the QT LaunchPad project for statistical purposes only in aggregate form.

Please complete the survey by Monday November 19^th.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the survey.

Many thanks for your help, which is much appreciated. Best regards,

Federico Gaspari (on behalf of the QT LaunchPad Team)

-----------------------------

Dr Federico Gaspari

Postdoctoral researcher

Centre for Next Generation Localisation

School of Computing

Dublin City University

Glasnevin, Dublin 9

Ireland

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Web: http://www.computing.dcu.ie/~fgaspari/

Professor Miriam Shlesinger passed away on 10 November 2012. As the news of her untimely death is spreading, the extent of the loss is beginning to sink in.

Many alumni and staff members at CETRA have had the tremendous privilege of meeting her and working with her. Miriam was CETRA professor in 2007 and remained a supervisor since, showing unwavering loyalty to CETRA’s project of research training.

Her presence at the 2012 session was one of the things that made it into a memorable occasion, and it sums up so much of what Professor Shlesinger has come to stand for the Translation and Interpreting Studies community more generally. Miriam had been weakened by her illness and needed help to get about. We realized that this would be her CETRA last session. And yet, this knowledge was never more than a subtle subtext to her presence and active involvement in the programme. Hugs were exchanged at the end of the session, knowingly and gratefully, but without sentimentality. Tributes were made during the session, but with the delicate indirectness that poetry and humour afford. The most wonderful thing was to see how Miriam just kept going, making the trip to Leuven, giving the best of herself in many tutorials and leading a seminar on “Corpus-based Studies – What can they tell us about translation and interpreting?”. Her commitment, intellectual vigour, didactic lucidity and rhetorical verve were as strong as ever.

Professor Shlesinger was a very influential scholar. Posterity will remember her for her countless publications, as well as for her achievements as a top interpreter, human-rights campaigner and in other fields. Those who knew Miriam personally will remember the sparkle of her intelligence, her passion for research and justice, her belief in the power of communication, her generosity and deep humanity. Her star will continue to shine for us.

Reine Meylaerts (KU Leuven), Director of CETRA 
José Lambert (UFSC Florianόpolis & KU Leuven), Honorary President of CETRA
Elke Brems (Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel) 
Andrew Chesterman (University of Helsinki) 
Dirk Delabastita (FUNDP Namur)
Lieven D'hulst (KU Leuven)
Peter Flynn (Lessius University College, Antwerp)
Yves Gambier (University of Turku) 
Franz Pöchhacker (University of Vienna) 
Heidi Salaets (Lessius University College, Antwerp)
Christina Schaeffner (Aston University)
Luc van Doorslaer (Lessius University College, Antwerp)

Call for proposals

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

“Linguistics and Translation Theory: Stakes in a complex relationship”

18-19 October 2013 in Nancy, FRANCE

The relationship between linguistics and translation theory, whose problematic character was shown by G. Mounin in the days of structuralism, remains to this day a major epistemological issue. Whether this relationship is viewed as an association of disciplines in which one contributes its conceptual tools or its justification to the other (see M. Ballard & A. El Kaladi)[1] or as a process leading from one to the other (see T. Milliaressi, ed.)[2], there is still room for debate on most aspects. Indeed, the evolution of research under the growing influence of technical tools for the study of linguistic phenomena makes this debate all the more crucial today.

Though linguistics and translation theory are two distinct, autonomous disciplines, they are nevertheless clearly intrinsically connected. Whether one likes it or not, translation is a process that inevitably deals with language, and this process concerns linguists in several respects:

as an “apparatus for linguistic research purposes”[3] establishing the field of contrastive studies, as an utterance modality establishing translation relative to both the act of “uttering” and the “uttered”, as well as to a particular utterance situation, or as a praxis reaching beyond natural languages to question the faculty of language (“language as a praxis is not bound to natural languages, which probably determine it in their diversity, but do not limit it.”)[4].

4th International Symposium on Live Subtitling

Live Subtitling with Respeaking and Other Respeaking Applications

The Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona is pleased to announce the 4th International Symposium on Live Subtitling: Live subtitling with respeaking and other respeaking applications, to be held on 12 March 2013. This symposium is the fourth edition of a series of symposiums on live subtitling and respeaking technology held at Forli, Barcelona and Antwerp respectively. It aims at bringing together specialists from academia, software development, broadcasting and the service industry as well as consumers and anyone interested in recent developments in media accessibility.

Translation/Terminology Fellowship Programme for Graduate Students at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)

Special call for applications to the Terminology Fellowship Programme only

November 2012

Based in Geneva, Switzerland, the World Intellectual Property Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations with a mandate to promote the development and protection of intellectual property rights, notably in the form of copyright, trademarks, patents and industrial designs. One of its major activities is the registration of patent applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).

Call for Papers: Special Issue of Translation Studies: Orality and Translation

guest edited by Paul F. Bandia, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

For details see www.tandf.co.uk/journals/rtrs

There is a growing interest in orality as a concept underpinning research in many disciplines, including translation studies. Orality has featured prominently in studies related to pre-modernist traditions, modernist representations of the past, and postmodernist expressions of artistry such as in audiovisual media. Its conceptualization may vary according to the research objectives or preoccupations of particular disciplines. Anthropologists and historians conceptualize orality as the medium of expression and discourse of non-literate cultures, while colonialists and Christian missionaries explored orality as a means to understanding so-called primitive or heathen societies for purposes of proselytism and civilization. Modernists have shown an anaphoric interest in orality mainly as a sounding board for calibrating the privileges of modernity. In more recent times, postmodernist preoccupations with orality have explored issues related to the representation of otherness, the assertion of marginalized identities through a variety of art forms such as literature, cinema, music, painting and the spoken word. In these various disciplines or approaches translation or interpretation is indispensable as the conduit for the recording, textualization, representation or appraisal of orality. Thanks to the influential work of scholars like Albert Lord (The Singer of Tales, 1960), Jack Goody (The Domestication of the Savage Mind , 1977) and Walter Ong (Orality and Literacy: the Technologizing of the Word, 1982), orality has shed its negative image as primitive, unwritten, non-literate and exotic, and has grown into a major field of scientific interest and the focus of interdisciplinary research including translation studies.

Call for Papers for symposium to be held at The University of Salford on 6 March 2013

DRAMA TRANSLATION IN THE AGE OF GLOBALISATION: Paradoxes and Paradigms 

The reflexion on drama translation resonates with the theme of ‘Memory, Text and Place’ identified by the University of Salford as one of the strategic interdisciplinary themes. The proposed symposium is expected to be of particular interest to researchers and practitioners within the field of drama translation, translation studies, cultural studies, drama, performing arts and visual culture. We would especially welcome papers from drama translators of minority languages or cultures, and from researchers with insights into the way the discourse of translation and intercultural studies, in the age of globalisation, might impact on and shape the production of foreign plays in translation.

EUROPEAN SOCIETY FOR TRANSLATION STUDIES

7th EST CONGRESS – GERMERSHEIM 2013

29 – 31 August 2013

Translation Studies: Centres and Peripheries

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS:

Panel on Scientific and Technical Translation (Chairs: Monika Krein-Kühle and Myriam Salama-Carr).

Please submit your abstract (500 words) for this panel online via the following website:

http://www.fb06.uni-mainz.de/est/index.php by 1 November 2012. 

Interpreters have served with New Zealand troops in Afghanistan and deserve protection and if need be new homes in this country.