KäTu2020: Translation and Interpreting: Focusing on Quality

University of Helsinki, 17–18 April 2020

The annual KäTu symposia offer researchers, teachers and practitioners of translation and interpreting a forum where they can discuss the diverse phenomena of the field, their ongoing research projects, and the state and development of Translation Studies in general. Doctoral students, in particular, are an important KäTu target group. They are offered the opportunity to present their work in its different stages of development, and receive valuable feedback.

For seventeen years, the KäTu symposia have brought together a wide array of participants interested in the field and its research: audience members and speakers, translators and interpreters of spoken as well as sign languages, researchers and teachers of translation and interpreting. The KäTu symposia are organised as a collaborative effort between the Teachers’ and Researchers’ Section of the Finnish Association of Translators and Interpreters (SKTL), and the different Finnish universities which train future translators and interpreters. Hosting the symposium is rotated between these Finnish universities. The 2020 symposium will be held at the University of Helsinki, which is proud to be organising and hosting the event for the fourth time.

Proposals for workshops and thematic sessions should be submitted no later than Friday 15th November 2019. Suggestions for thematic sessions must include the titles of the presentations to be included as part of those sessions. Proposals for session presentations and posters must be submitted no later than Friday 17th January 2020.

For more information, click here

ATISA X: Translation, Interpreting and movement(s). Biennial Conference of the American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association University of California, Santa Barbara / April 24-26, 2020

Keynote Speakers: Moira Inghilleri (UMass - Amherst) and Douglas Robinson (Hong Kong Baptist University)

The idea of movement is embedded in the very word translation. Acts of translation and interpreting involve ontological, physical, exegetical and epistemological movements that define both process and product. Translators and interpreters are themselves bodies in movement, travelling across languages and cultures and physically enacting the translation and interpreting process. And so, as we move further into the cyber era, what effect might this have on the translator’s body and the movement of translated texts? At the same time, the physical movement of peoples – in 2017 there were more displaced persons (refugees, asylum seekers and the internally displaced persons) than ever in history (UNHCR, 2018) – has produced a sharp increase in demand for translation and interpreting services. How is our understanding of the role and ethics of translation and interpreting affected by the conditions behind this unprecedented movement of peoples: migration, war and conflict, along with the rise of autocratic regimes and illiberal democracies? Also relevant here is the role and nature of translation and interpreting in various political and social movements. Moreover, the field of Translation and Interpreting Studies itself has been full of movements – shifts in perspectives, theories, space and place, and power. A field whose flux has often been presented as unproblematically linear and diachronic is now being challenged within more heterogeneous, transnational and rhizomatic paradigms. In addition, translation and interpreting, once banished from the language learning classroom, have been repositioning themselves as potentially effective language learning activities and as a way to teach learners about the nature of language.

Call for papers deadline: 1 November 2019

For more information, click here

The Departments of French at the University of Ghana, Legon, Linguistics and Language Practice at the University of the Free State and Afrikaans and Dutch at the University of Stellenbosch, in cooperation with ATSA, are presenting the Sixth School for Translation Studies (STSA) in Africa from 8 to 12 June 2020. The hosts are the University of Ghana, Legon, in Accra, Ghana.

The School is presented for doctoral/master’s students and/or lecturers in translation/interpreting studies and intercultural communication from all over Africa with the aim of working towards an African research agenda for translation studies. The School features lectures, tutorials and conference presentations under the guidance of prominent scholars in translation studies and intercultural communication.

For 2020, Prof Mona Baker, Emerita Professor from the University of Manchester will be the keynote speaker, addressing participants on various aspect of translation in the community

The 2020 event will be preceded by the Second Conference of the Association for Translation Studies in Africa (ATSA) in Accra on 6-7 June 2020. Participants who register for the Conference can attend the School for free.

For detailed information and registration forms, visit the web page of the School here

Artists study the reality they are surrounded by, people they live among, themselves, their instruments of work and how these areas are interconnected. Their work addresses complex issues, establishing dynamic relationships to a whole variety of other disciplines, from philosophy to new technologies. Their creative activity generates knowledge that could not be gained otherwise. Artistic knowledge is acquired through sensory and emotional perception and is practice-based, practice-driven, ‘felt’, ‘embodied’. It crosses the borders of different countries, languages, cultures, disciplines. Many artistic research projects are genuinely multicultural and interdisciplinary. Yet artists still often have to justify the idea that their practice is research.

Academic research too has become increasingly inter- and multidisciplinary. Cultural Literacy [CL] is the ability to think in literary ways about any topic or question, using the key concepts of textuality, fictionality, rhetoricity and historicity (see http://cleurope.eu/about/key-concepts/). How can the creative arts and CL come together to think about the contemporary world?

This Symposium is designed to generate active discussion, focusing on thinking and talking rather than formal presentations. If your proposal is accepted, it will be included in a ‘book of presentations’ that all participants will be asked to read in advance of the Symposium. The contributions will be grouped together into parallel break-out sessions of 90 minutes during which each presenter will briefly summarise their points and the subsequent discussion will aim to explore the key theme of the panel.

Deadline for submissions: 29 November 2019

For further details, click here

Crossing Borders: translate – transpose – communicate

On the occasion of the 10 years anniversary of stimmen afrikas.

More than 33 contributors - authors, translators, academics and creative artists – from 19 countries in Africa and the African Diaspora will present their work and participate in readings, performances, workshops and discussions for four days in the heart of Cologne at Neumarkt. They will discuss topics such as multilingualism and literary & cultural translation with the audience, providing them with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the art of African poetry and storytelling. Among others, the festival hosts the Nigerian publisher and guest curator Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, as well as Boubacar Boris Diop (Senegal), Susan Kiguli (Uganda), Mukoma Wa Ngugi (Kenya), Zukiswa Wanner (Zambia), Ebisse Rouw (Ethiopia), Sarah Ladipo Manyika (Nigeria) and many more. Discover the world of African mother tongues, the art of translation and the beauty of the literary voices of Africa.

For more information on this event, click here

When: 23–24 January 2020

Where: Cardiff University (Wales, UK)

This two-day interdisciplinary conference will explore the mobility of comics and graphic novels along three axes: time, space, and media. Mobility is understood to include all processes of transformation undergone by comics in their jour­ney across history (time), cultural and linguistic bound­aries (space), and different forms of artistic expression (media).

These three axes of comics’ mobility are often inter­con­nected but have so far mostly been explored in isolation and from the perspective of a single dis­cipline or language. The opportunities and challenges of comics’ translation into different languages, and their adaptation especially from/into narrative prose and film, have received increasing attention in recent years. Comics’ travel through time has not been explored with the same frequency and analytical depth. Here, aspects such as the different textual and paratextual environments in antholo­gies and re-editions, changes to the artwork, and practices of re-drawing deserve closer attention.

Keynote speakers

Prof Jan Baetens (KU Leuven)

Prof Federico Zanettin (Università degli Studi di Perugia)

Panel 1: Transformation: Comics Mobility Across Time

Panel 2: Translation: Comics Mobility Across Space

Panel 3: Adaptation: Comics Mobility Across Artistic Media

We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers that explore any of the dimensions of comics’ mobility outlined above. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words long (excluding references).

Please send your abstracts (in English) to Dr Tilmann Altenberg at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by 30 November 2019. Notifications will be sent out no later than 13 December 2019.

The conference is supported by the Institute of Modern Languages Research (London).

The focus of the corpus-based and corpus-driven study presented in this book is on a supranational institution that has received relatively little attention in linguistic research: the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). After briefly illustrating the functioning of the ECtHR and its historical development, the first part of the book delves into the Court’s language regime, which consists in the use of only two official languages, i.e. English and French. The linguistic study presented in the second part of the book concerns the presence of Italian national “system-bound elements” (SBEs) in ECtHR case-law. SBEs are elements originally embedded in a legal and judicial system that are recontextualised in a different legal environment. To extract Italian SBEs from a corpus of sixteen ECtHR judgments published in English, an innovative methodology was proposed combining event templates with keywords. This allowed the retrieval of 401 expressions referring to different Italian SBEs, which were analysed in terms of their frequency, distribution, and linguistic form. The study reveals that a variety of national and international sources co-exist in the corpus and that translation plays a fundamental role in the drafting of supranational case-law, which requires the creation of “stipulative corresponding expressions”.

For more information, click here

UCLouvain is a comprehensive university offering, in the context of the present position, the opportunity of cross-disciplinary research and teaching collaborations. The position is attached to the Faculty of Philosophy, Arts and Letters and to the Institute for Language and Communication that offer opportunities for diverse and stimulating teaching as well as an environment to carry out ambitious research. The Louvain-la-Neuve site offers a unique living environment inside a naturally preserved neighbourhood, conveniently located to the heart of Europe.

Deadline for applications: 15 November 2019

Start date: 1 September 2020

For more information on this position, click here

In recent years, comic studies have experienced a remarkable boost in Spain. This has been motivated by the recognition of their value as cultural artifacts, as means of artistic expression, and as sources of study in their own right. As a consequence, an increasing number of conferences, seminars and courses approaching this medium are being held.

The International Conference Comics in Dialogue / Conversaciones en torno al comics tries to be a space for dialogue in which Spanish and foreign creators occupy a prominent position in round tables, keynote speeches, interviews and tributes. At the same time, it aims at becoming a meeting point for researchers of different areas (literary and cultural studies, comparative literature, art history, communication, translation studies, history, education, gender studies...) working on comic studies.

The Conference is organized around the thematic areas described below. Conference languages are English, French, and Spanish.

Deadline for reception of abstracts is 31 Oct. 2019

For more information, click here

The Department of Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore, is one of the leading institutions in the world in the fields of Chinese Studies and Chinese Language and a major centre in Southeast Asia. We invite applications for the post of Tenure Track/Educator Track (Open Rank) in Translation/Interpretation.

Applicants for this position should have formal training in Translation/Interpretation and a PhD in Translation or a related field; extensive practical experience in translation/interpretation will be an added asset. The areas of expertise we are looking for will also include translation skills training on professional texts (e.g. business translation, medical translation, legal translation, etc.). The successful applicant will be expected to have a strong commitment to a) teach Translation/Interpretation (Chinese – English, English – Chinese) at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels; b) provide supervision to students in Translation; c) undertake research in Translation and/or related areas; d) play an active role in the Department’s curriculum and development; and e) provide support to management and professional service where required. S/he should possess native-speaking, or near native-speaking, competence in both Chinese and English so as to be able to teach and conduct research in this area.

Deadline for applications: 1 March 2020

For more information, click here