TRANSLATOLOGIA is seeking original, previously unpublished papers to be included in the second issue of 2020. Contributors may want to focus on any creative industry in their discussion of the concepts of universal accessibility and translation issues.

UNESCO has defined the sector of the cultural and creative industries (CCI) as the field whose principal purpose is the production or reproduction, promotion and dissemination of goods, services and activities of “a cultural, artistic or heritage-related nature” (DCMS 2002; UNESCO 2017). Born in the UK, these industries rely on creativity, intellectual property and human skills and talent and span a variety of activities in at least 11 sectors: “advertising, books, gaming, architecture, music, movies, newspapers and magazines, performing arts, visual arts, radio, TV and design” (Interreg Europe 2017). Their vibrancy reflects in the growth of cities’ cultural activities, creative economy and acting environments, while, at the same time, being the engine of digital economies. CCI tend to encourage citizens’ participation and to boost cities’ attractiveness and urban development.

Drawing on theoretical frameworks from a range of academic fields (e.g. translation studies, museum studies, tourism studies, media studies), and on methodological models based on multimodality, systemic functional linguistics, and audiovisual translation, this special issue seeks to open up a collaborative and supportive space for the understanding of how and to what extent translation as an instrument of accessibility for all can mobilise and control cultural, cognitive, linguistic and political experiences. Studies on universal accessibility as an essential tool for facilitating access to knowledge have shed light on different strategies for the promotion of inclusion through translation within the CCI context (Jiménez Hurtado et al. 2012; Jiménez Hurtado & Soler Gallego 2015). Research on the quality of accessible products as well as on the classification of access services addressed to persons with sensory impairments has been conducted over the years (Díaz Cintas et al. 2007; Díaz Cintas et al. 2010; Di Giovanni & Gambier 2018; Romero Fresco 2019). Yet, there is still a need to explore the role of translation as a device which breaks social, ethnic and linguistic barriers, and to debate the concept of accessibility as a human right for all users (Greco 2016). From these perspectives, accessibility rests on the principle of universality and is based on the removal of cultural and social differences.

Against this backdrop, translation and accessibility, in tandem with new technological solutions, have rapidly gained ground in the creative industries as fundamental conduits for the transmission of information and knowledge for all. The symbiosis between the cultural creative industries and access services has been made possible thanks to audiovisual translation, which happens to be one of the fastest growing areas contributing to the dissemination of “acceptable”, “adaptable” and “available” cultural and artistic contents, both via mass media communication (i.e. broadcasting, cinema, publishing, streaming, etc.) and within public cultural contexts (i.e. museums, theatres, festivals, street art, etc.).

While proposing reflections on wider theoretical and methodological perspectives, this special issue fosters a discourse which not only advances new models of experimentation, analysis and application within the CCI sector, but which also touches on the seductiveness of multimodal productions. The ultimate aim is to evaluate the extent to which translation, as a form of accessibility that deals with phenomena of an intralingual, interlingual and intersemiotic nature, interrelates with CCI.

How can translation, as an instrument of accessibility for all, contribute to the spread of knowledge addressed to audiences with sensory impairments (i.e. the blind and partially sighted people, and the deaf and hard of hearing people), but also to a wider public made of adults, children, men and women, who may be interested in the transmission of cultural contents through the support of specific technological triggers?

Deadline for submissions: 20 September 2020

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Are you an expert in translation and its technologies with proven abilities to carry out profession-oriented teaching on these subjects, with a particular focus on Chinese translation? Are you passionate about delivering an exceptional student experience in a research-intensive Russell Group University? Are you passionate about leading and delivering quality teaching for the renowned MA programmes in translation at University of Leeds? 

The School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds, invites applications for an on-going full-time post at the level of Lecturer (Grade 7) starting in September 2020. The appointment is based in the Centre for Translation Studies in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies.

You will carry out teaching on our MA in Applied Translation Studies and MA in Audio-visual Translation Studies, with a particular focus on technologies and Chinese-English and English-Chinese translation. You will convene, teach and assess a number of taught postgraduate modules. You will be expected to take on administrative duties in the Centre for Translation Studies, which may include managing these programmes, and to undertake scholarship related to teaching. You may also contribute to the School’s activities, and to the teaching of School-wide undergraduate and postgraduate modules as appropriate.

Deadline for applications: 13 August 2020

For more information, click here

Start date/duration:

• from 01.10.2020
• to 30.09.2021, but only until the return of the jobholder

Administrative unit:

• Department of Translation Studies

Extent of employment:

• substitute employee - 40 Stunden/Woche

Job Description:

In this position you will carry out high level research and specialise in a particular field. You will hold your own lectures, tutor students and participate in administration.

Euraxess: https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/platforms/jobs/139/PHIL-KULT-11350

Job profile:

The description associated with this job duties and requirements can be found at:
https://www.uibk.ac.at/universitaet/profile-wiss-personal/post-doc.html

Deadline for application: 30 July 2020

For more information, click here

Are you an expert in the theory and practice of audiovisual translation with proven abilities to carry out profession-oriented teaching in the field? Are you passionate about delivering an exceptional student experience in a research-intensive Russell Group University? Are you passionate about leading and delivering quality teaching for the renowned MA programme in Audiovisual Translation at the University of Leeds?

The School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds, invites applications for the above post starting in September 2020. The appointment is based in the Centre for Translation Studies in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies. 

You will carry out teaching on our MA in Audiovisual Translation Studies, with a particular focus on its core modules Strategies and Tools in Audiovisual Translation (MODL5025M) and Subtitling and Respeaking for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Audiences (MODL5080M). You will also convene, teach and assess on a number of other modules on this and similar postgraduate programmes. You will be expected to take on administrative duties in the Centre for Translation Studies, such as liaising with external professional tutors. You will also contribute to other of the School’s activities, including the teaching of School-wide undergraduate modules, as appropriate.

You will have an MA degree in Audiovisual Translation or Applied Translation Studies, or a PGdip from a professional Audio-Visual Translation or Applied Translation Studies programme with Merit or above, and may have a PhD in this area. You will also have professional experience in Audiovisual Translation.

Deadline for application: 28 July 2020

For more information, click here

Deadline for abstracts: 30 August 2020

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Ewha Research Institute of Translation Studies (ERITS, erits.ewha.ac.kr) and Korea Legislation Research Institute (KLRI, klri.re.kr) are co-hosting 2020 ERITS-KLRI International Conference on Law and Language. The conference will take place at Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Republic of Korea on November 20, 2020. Under the theme of legal translation and interpreting as an interface between law and language, various issues relating to law and language, and legal translation and interpreting will be explored from research, professional practice and training perspectives. The conference will enable the participants from home and abroad to hold in-depth discussions on the role of translation and interpreting in legal settings.

Deadline for submissions: 10 July

For more information, click here

Since the emergence of complexity thinking, scholars from the natural and social sciences as well as the humanities are renewing efforts to construct a unified framework that would unite all scholarly activity. The work of Terrence Deacon (2013), at the interface of (at least) physics, chemistry, biology, neurology, cognitive science, semiotics, anthropology and philosophy, is a great, though not the only, example of this kind of work. It is becoming clear that this paradigm of complex relational and process thinking means, among others, that the relationships between fields of study are more important than the differences between them. Deacon’s contribution, for instance, lies not (only) in original findings in any of the fields in which he works but (also) in the ways in which he relates bodies of knowledge to one another. An example would be his links between a theory of work (physics) and a theory of information (cybernetics) by means of a theory of meaning (semiotics).

This line of thinking indeed situates semiotics and biosemiotics in the centre of the abovementioned debate (also see Hoffmeyer, 2008; Kauffman, 2012).

In semiotics, Susan Petrilli’s (2003) thought-provoking collection covers a wide variety of chapters focused on translation, which she conceptualizes as semiotic process. Her work made it possible to link biosemiotics and semiotics through the notion of “translation”, which is what we aim to explore further in this conference.

Michael Cronin’s work in translation studies links up with the above through his use of the notion of “ecology”. To apprehend interconnectedness and vulnerability in the age of the Anthropocene, his work challenges text-oriented and linear approaches while engaging in eco-translational thinking. He calls tradosphere all translation systems on the planet, all the ways in which information circulates between living and non-living organisms and is translated into a language or a code that can be processed or understood by the receiving entity (Cronin, 2017, p. 71).  The aptness of Cronin’s work on ecology finds a partner in that of Bruno Latour, whose development of a sociology of translation (2005) responds to the need to reconnect the social and natural worlds and to account for the multiple connections that make what he calls the ‘social’.

In an effort further to work out the implications of this new way of thinking, Marais (2019, p. 120) conceptualized translation in terms of “negentropic semiotic work performed by the application of constraints on the semiotic process” (see also Kress 2013). Building on Peirce, namely that the meaning of a sign is its translation into another sign, translation is defined as a process that entails semiotic work done by constraining semiotic possibilities. This conceptualization allows for the study of all forms of meaning-making, i.e. translation, under a single conceptual framework, but it also allows for a unified ecological view for both the sciences and the humanities. “The long standing distinction between the human and social sciences and the natural and physical sciences is no longer tenable in a world where we cannot remain indifferent to the more than human” (Cronin, 2017, p. 3).

These kind of approaches open ample possibilities for a dialogue between Translation Studies, Semiotics and Biosemiotics, exploring translation not only in linguistic and anthropocentric terms, but as a semiotic process that can take place in and between all (living) organisms – human and non-human organic and inorganic, material and immaterial alike. Not only the translation of Hamlet into French, or of oral speech into subtitles, but also communication between dolphins or between a dog and its master, or moving a statue from one place to another, or rewatching a film are translation processes. However, many of the implications of this line of thinking still need to be explored, and if the references to Deacon, Petrilli and Cronin holds, this should be done in an interdisciplinary way that tests, transgresses and transforms scholarly boundaries.

It is for this reason that we call for papers for a conference in which we hope to draw together biosemioticians, semioticians and translation studies scholars to discuss the interdisciplinary relations between these fields and the implications of these relations for the study of social and cultural reality as emerging from both matter and mind. We invite colleagues to submit either theoretical or data-driven or mixed proposals, reflecting on the complexity of social-cultural emergence as a translation process. Some of the topics that colleagues could consider would be the following:

• Is translation, as semiotic work and process, indeed able to link all of the biological world, including humans, with the non-living world in one ecology, and if so how?
• What conceptual constructs in each of the three fields are relevant for the other fields, and how?
• Could the fields learn methodological and epistemological lessons from one another? If so, what would these entail?
• Could collaborative scholarship enhance an understanding of social-cultural emergence, and if so, what would this scholarship entail?
• How, if at all, does entropy and negentropy play out differently in social-cultural systems compared to biological and/or physical systems?
• How does social-cultural emergence differ from biological and even physical emergence? Systems thinking tends to ignore differences like the intentionality of biological agents in contrast to physical agents. Thus, if one were to consider the possibility that intention has causal effect, how does one factor intention into thinking about complex adaptive systems?

We plan an interactive conference. Firstly, we invited three keynote speakers, one from each of the fields involved, to give their views on the relationships between these three fields. Secondly, apart from the normal responses to papers, we would like to end each day of the conference with a session (about one hour) in which the keynote speakers reflect, round-table style, on the papers of the day and in which participants have the opportunity to engage them and one another in open debate style.

Confirmed keynote speakers:

• Biosemiotics – Terrence Deacon (University of California, Berkeley)
• Semiotics – Frederik Stjernfelt (Aalborg University, Copenhagen)
• Translation studies – Michael Cronin (Trinity College Dublin)

Deadline for submissions: 1 December 2020

For more information, click here

Editors

Esther Monzó-Nebot | Universitat Jaume I

Melissa Wallace | University of Texas at San Antonio

For more information, click here

Since the global Covid-19 pandemic of March 2020, many universities have decided to transfer their face-to-face teaching provision to online platforms. Overnight, academics and students have seen their working environment change dramatically. Initial discussions among the academic community seem to indicate that the transition is not without a number of hurdles, despite prior experience in using virtual learning environments and/or incorporating a distance component to face-to-face teaching. While blended learning approaches have been widely encouraged and often applied in university contexts, the speed and wholesale nature of the recent transition has prompted many to rethink how they teach and to look for new pedagogical ideas.
Translation and Interpreting Studies (TIS) have also trialled blended learning approaches in the teaching of these subjects for a number of years. Recent efforts to administer TIS course content at a distance have led to a call for more research investigating the use synchronous and asynchronous media (Colina and Angelelli, 2016). Although currently underexplored in TIS research, Distance Learning represents a substantial area of research in other fields, such as Education. There are notorious difficulties that arise from moving face-to-face course content into virtual environments, from designing an online course to administering assessment and fostering collaboration, interaction, and engagement.
In this special issue, we are proposing to explore some of these difficulties in TIS. We will invite contributions covering the following key themes:
• Online pedagogy (latest trends)
• (a)synchronous teaching: challenges and opportunities in TIS
• TIS curriculum and module design for online delivery
• TIS technologies at a distance
• TIS online Assessment
• Fostering TIS (a)synchronous collaboration, interaction, and engagement
• Acquiring online translation/interpreting work experience
Following a recent set of workshops on the topic of online teaching organised by the Association of Programmes in Translation and Interpreting Studies (APTIS), several academics in TIS have already been identified as potential contributors to this special issue.

Call deadline: 31 July 2020 extended abstracts; 31 October 2020 full papers

For more information, click here

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism provides an accessible, diverse and ground-breaking overview of literary, cultural, and political translation across a range of activist contexts.

As the first extended collection to offer perspectives on translation and activism from a global perspective, this handbook includes case studies and histories of oppressed and marginalised people from over twenty different languages. The contributions will make visible the role of translation in promoting and enabling social change, in promoting equality, in fighting discrimination, in supporting human rights, and in challenging autocracy and injustice across the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, East Asia, the US and Europe.

With a substantial introduction, thirty-one chapters, and an extensive bibliography, this Handbook is an indispensable resource for all activists, translators, students and researchers of translation and activism within translation and interpreting studies.

For more information, click here