The CETRA Blog

Special issue of Translation in Society, guest-edited by Cornelia Zwischenberger (University of Vienna). Submission deadline: 31 August 2023

For more information, see: https://transcultcom.univie.ac.at/news-and-events/news-detail/news/call-for-papers-special-issue-of-translation-in-society/

The concept of ‘translation’ is ubiquitous in a wide range of disciplines, nowhere more so than in the Social Sciences – indeed, entire sociologies have been built on and around it (Callon 1981, 1984; Renn 2002, 2006). Similarly, the Social Sciences have always been a particularly important source of core concepts for Translation Studies, including ‘norm’, ‘role’, ‘habitus’, ‘system’, ‘profession’ and, more recently, ‘collaboration’, to name but a few. These ‘travelling concepts’ (Bal 2002) have always been of fundamental importance to Translation Studies in that they have underpinned the important shifts, or rather turns, within it. A closer look at how some of these travelling concepts are used in Translation Studies and, vice versa, how Translation Studies’ master concept ‘translation’ is used in the Social Sciences reveals that these have tended to be one-way trips. That is what this Special Issue attempts to reverse.

Concepts in the sense of Bal (2002: 11) are understood here as dynamic in themselves as well as polysemantic, often ambiguous, closely linked to certain discourses and not so much as firmly established univocal terms. Establishing univocal terms goes along with striving for terminological precision and standardization. This task is often pursued by traditional terminological approaches (Iveković Martinis et al. 2015). Concepts are not to be confused with casual words either as academic concepts always unite entire theories or approaches behind them which they represent (Bal 2002: 33).

‘Translation’ is widely used in the Social Sciences. One of the most well-known uses is certainly in Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) (Callon 1981, 1999; Latour 1993, 1994). ‘Translation’ is in fact an integral part of the lexicon and the very functioning of the theory. Broadly speaking, ‘translation’ is used there to bridge the separation between subjects and objects, and thus to overcome the dualism of sociologism and technologism. The act of translation between subjects and objects creates hybrid actors, which are the core component of networks in ANT. This theory was conceived of as a sociology of translation and/or the sociologic of translation (Callon 1981, 1984). Though of a different kind, Renn’s (2002, 2006) sociology is similarly built on and around ‘translation’. Modern societies, fragmented as they are, depend on constant communication. Translation is essential to communication between societies’ various social and/or cultural units and therefore helps to overcome boundaries (Renn 2002, 2006). In the same sense, ‘translation’ is also used in Organization Studies in the model proposed by Carlile (2004), coming into play when a semantic boundary needs to be overcome within an organization to facilitate collaboration among various units for the sake of innovation. In yet another example from Organisation Studies, an entire translation model is developed as a way of bringing about and explaining organizational change (Czarniawska & Joerges 1996; Czarniawska & Sevón 2005). What unites these examples, with the exception of Renn (2002, 2006), is that there is not a single reference made to Translation Studies and the body of knowledge it has accumulated around ‘translation’. ‘Translation’ is a very successful travelling concept in the Social Sciences in the sense that it is widespread. However, since it is normally used as a rather loose metaphor, the concept itself frequently lacks the heuristic power it could have (Zwischenberger 2022, 2023). Translation Studies’ critical engagement with the uses of the concept of ‘translation’ in other disciplines and fields of research is a rather recent phenomenon (e.g. Baer 2020; Blumczynski 2016; Gambier & van Doorslaer 2016; Dizdar 2009; Heller 2017; Zwischenberger 2017, 2019).

Translation Studies as an ‘interdiscipline’ sui generis has itself imported massively from other disciplines, especially from the Social Sciences, but it has frequently ignored the epistemological bases of those travelling concepts. The concepts of ‘role’ and ‘collaboration’ are two cases in point. Very often in Translation Studies, ‘role’ and ‘collaboration’ either remain undefined or are simply used as concepts from everyday language. In other words, ‘role’ is equated with the ‘task’ or ‘function’ of a translator or interpreter and ‘collaboration’ is simply used as a synonym for ‘working together’. Only recently has there been a more thorough engagement with these concepts and a turn to the disciplines in which they are used as master concepts, namely to Sociology, Social Psychology and Cultural Anthropology for ‘role’ and Organisation Studies for ‘collaboration’ (Zwischenberger 2015, 2022). The same is true of a conceptual engagement with ‘profession’ and consequently also the ‘(non-)professional’, which are very often taken for granted in the Translation Studies literature (Grbić & Kujamäki 2019). However, Translation Studies has, for example, undertaken some serious conceptual work with the concepts of ‘norm’, ‘system’ and ‘habitus’, successfully integrating them as academic concepts (Buzelin 2018)—although with quite some differences between the different subfields of the discipline.

Thus, whilst many disciplines pretty much ignore Translation Studies when it comes to ‘translation’ as a travelling concept, Translation Studies has sometimes also paid insufficient attention to the Social Sciences when adopting some of their travelling concepts. This has consequences for both Translation Studies and the Social Sciences. Travelling concepts can be vital tools for academic disciplines when properly adopted as academic concepts. Conceptual engagement lays bare the entire network within which a core concept is embedded, thus allowing a new and richer language to emerge. Ignoring the expertise that has been amassed on concepts newly adopted into a discipline hinders inter- and especially trans-disciplinarity. These travelling concepts would hardly make a round trip into the disciplines where they have an epistemological footing simply because doing so would bring no enrichment to them in their current form. This is particularly problematic for Translation Studies, a discipline that in general is less established than disciplines from the Social Sciences and beyond in terms of recognition and references being made to it outside its disciplinary borders.

This Special Issue aims to tackle this status quo. It is crucial for Translation Studies scholars to become proactive in order to strengthen their own discipline from the inside out and to become more attractive to other disciplines. One promising way of strengthening Translation Studies could be to sharpen its conceptual tools, potentially enabling analytically precise concepts to travel back to the Social Sciences and beyond, thereby inviting other disciplines to take a closer look at Translation Studies and its expertise on the concept of ‘translation’. This could then act as the basis for some inter- or even trans-disciplinarity (e.g. Bielsa 2022) in the form of round trips by the concept of ‘translation’ and concepts from the Social Sciences.

We therefore welcome conceptual-theoretical contributions that engage proactively with the uses of ‘translation’ as a travelling concept in other disciplines and/or with travelling concepts in Translation Studies and that address the following main questions (though we certainly do not remain restricted to them):
– What does Translation Studies have to offer to approaches in the Social Sciences that use the concept of ‘translation’?
– Why is Translation Studies relatively ignored by other disciplines despite its expertise with the concept of ‘translation’?
– What do Social Sciences using the concept of ‘translation’ currently have to offer to Translation Studies? What does an engagement with the uses of ‘translation’ outside its disciplinary borders tell Translation Studies about its own conceptions of translation?
– Which travelling concepts from the Social Sciences or beyond have so far had the greatest lasting impact on Translation Studies and why? Which travelling concepts from the Social Sciences or beyond should be adopted by Translation Studies because they hold great potential and could thus guide the way forward for the discipline’s development?
– Is more sound conceptual work the way forward to enable Translation Studies to strengthen itself from the inside out? Are there alternative and better ways for Translation Studies to make itself more relevant to other disciplines?

Please send your extended abstract (700-800 words, excluding references) to cornelia.zwischenberger@univie.ac.at by 31 August 2023.

Timeline
Deadline for abstracts: 31 August 2023
Notification of acceptance: 30 September 2023
Submission of full manuscripts: 31 January 2024
Notification of results of internal vetting process and peer review: 30 June 2024
Resubmission of accepted manuscripts with corrections: 30 September 2024
Final submission of papers to chief editors (after final checks by guest editor): 30 November 2024
Publication: Spring 2025 (online first, then special issue in print)

References
Baer, Brian James. 2020. “From Cultural Translation to Untranslatability.” Alif. Journal of Comparative Poetics 40: 139–163.
Bal, Mieke. 2002. Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Bielsa, Esperança. 2022. A Translational Sociology: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Politics and Society. London: Routledge.
Blumczynski, Piotr. 2016. Ubiquitous Translation. London: Routledge.
Buzelin, Hélène. 2018. “Sociological Models and Translation History.” In A History of Modern Translation Knowledge: Sources, Concepts, Effects, edited by Lieven D’hulst, and Yves
Gambier. 337–346. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Callon, Michel. 1981. “Struggles and Negotiations to Define What Is Problematic and What Is Not: The Socio-logic of Translation.” In The Social Process of Scientific Investigation, edited by Karin D. Knorr, Roger Krohn, and Richard Whitley. 197–219. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
Callon, Michel. 1984. “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay.” The Sociological Review 32 (1): 196–233.
Callon, Michel. 1999. “Actor-Network Theory—The Market Test.” In Actor Network Theory and After, edited by John Law, and John Hassard. 181–195. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Carlile, Paul R. 2004. “Transferring, Translating, and Transforming: An Integrative Framework for Managing Knowledge Across Boundaries.” Organization Science 15 (5): 555–568.
Czarniawska, Barbara, and Bernward Joerges. 1996. “Travels of Ideas.” In Translating Organizational Change, edited by Barbara Czarniawska, and Guje Sevón. 13–48. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Czarniawska, Barbara, and Guje Sevón. 2005. “Translation Is a Vehicle, Imitation its Motor, and Fashion Sits at the Wheel.” In Global Ideas: How Ideas, Objects, and Practices Travel in a Global Economy, edited by Barbara Czarniawska, and Guje Sevón. 7–14. Copenhagen: Liber & Copenhagen Business School Press.
Dizdar, Dilek. 2009. “Translational Transitions: ‘Translation Proper’ and Translation Studies in the Humanities.” Translation Studies 2 (1): 89–102.
Gambier, Yves, and Luc van Doorslaer. eds. 2016. Border Crossings: Translation Studies and Other Disciplines. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Gile, Daniel. 1990. “Scientific Research vs. Personal Theories in the Investigation of Interpretation.” In Aspects of Applied and Experimental Research on Conference Interpretation, edited by Laura Gran, and Christopher Taylor. 28–41. Udine: Campanotto.
Grbić, Nadja, and Pekka Kujamäki. 2019. “Professional vs non-professional? How boundary work shapes research agendas in translation and interpreting studies.” In Moving Boundaries in Translation Studies, edited by Helle V. Dam, Helle V. Brøgger, Matilde Nisbeth Zethsen, and Karen Korning Zethsen. 113–131. New York: Routledge.
Heller, Lavinia. 2017. “Eulen nach Athen?: Provokation und Reflexionsanstöße des translational turn der Kulturwissenschaft für die Translationstheorie.” In Interkulturalität. Studien zu Sprache, Literatur und Gesellschaft, edited by Lavinia Heller. 93–116. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.
Iveković Martinis, Anja; Lah, Josip, and Sujoldžić, Anita. 2015. “Terminological standardization in the social sciences and humanities – the case of Croatian anthropological terminology.” Ezikoslovlje 16.2-3: 253-274.
Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Hemel Hempstead: Harveser Wheatsheaf.
Latour, Bruno. 1994. “On Technical Mediation.” Common Knowledge 3 (2): 29–62.
Moser-Mercer, Barbara. 1994. “Paradigms gained or the art of productive disagreement.” In Bridging the Gap: Empirical Research in Simultaneous Interpretation, edited by Sylvie Lambert, and Barbara Moser-Mercer. 17–23. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Renn, Joachim. 2002. “Übersetzen, Verstehen, Erklären. Soziales und sozialwissenschaftliches Übersetzen zwischen Erkennen und Anerkennen.” In Übersetzung als Medium des Kulturverstehens und sozialer Integration, edited by Joachim Renn, Jürgen Straub, and Shingo Shimada. 13–39. Frankfurt: Campus.
Renn, Joachim. 2006. Übersetzungsverhältnisse: Perspektiven einer pragmatistischen Gesellschaftstheorie. Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft.
Zwischenberger, Cornelia. 2015. “Bridging Quality and Role in Conference Interpreting: Norms as Mediating Constructs.” In Interpreting Quality: A Look Around and Ahead, edited by Cornelia Zwischenberger and Martina Behr. 231-267. Berlin: Frank & Timme.
Zwischenberger, Cornelia. 2017. “Translation as a Metaphoric Traveller across Disciplines: Wanted: Translaboration!” Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 3 (3): 388–406.
Zwischenberger, Cornelia. 2019. “From Inward to Outward: The Need for Translation Studies to Become Outward-Going.” The Translator 25 (3): 256–68.
Zwischenberger, Cornelia. 2022. “On Turns and Fashions in Translation Studies and Beyond.” Translation Studies. Online first.
Zwischenberger, Cornelia. 2023. “Interdisciplinary Approaches.” In Routledge Handbook of Translation Theory and Concepts, edited by Kobus Marais, and Reine Meylaerts. 307-
London: Routledge.

22 MARCH 2024 | KU LEUVEN, BELGIUM

During the long eighteenth century, several changes in the conception of literary authorship took place. As previously underrepresented groups in Europe – such as women writers, migrant writers, and hack writers – increasingly found their way to pen, page and printing press, the perception and the actuality of the “Author” was no longer restricted to the classically-trained Man of leisure. Instead, the image of the author became more fluid: an enterprising, collaborating professional of any gender or background, whose eclectic oeuvre contained a variety of genres, forms, original works and translations (Griffin 2014; Havens 2019; Schellenberg 2019). While searching for a position in the literary field, these writers reflected on their intellectual, translational and authorial identities in their texts, often in dialogue with their readers and/or members from their broader networks. Their published and unpublished writings carry traces of this exploration, construction, fragmentation and (re)negotiation of their intellectual, authorial and authoritative self/ves (Meizoz 2007; Amossy 2010). These discursive self-representations reflect, moreover, the writers’ stance on multilingualism. Recent scholarship has already demonstrated that early modern writers lived at the crossroads of different languages, dialects, vernaculars and classical languages alike (Burke 2004; Burke 2005; Fidecaro et al. 2009; Hayes, J.C. 2009; Bloemendal 2015; Frijhoff and Rjéoutski 2018; Bennet and Cattaneo 2022). The modes and processes in which those languages informed the intellectual and authorial self-fashioning of eighteenth-century European writers remain, however, strikingly underexplored.

This conference will approach the intellectual and authorial self-fashioning of eighteenth-century European writers from a multilingual perspective: it seeks to understand the importance of the writers’ “tongues” to their self-representation and identity/ies. It inquires into the influence of language alternations (at the level of the (para)text or the oeuvre as a whole) and, more broadly, the influence of reflections on translation and multilingualism on processes of identity construction. How did early modern writers’ cultural, social, political… identity, their values, and relations affect their language decisions? To what extent did they utilize their “tongues” to comply with, contribute to, dissent from, subvertor manipulate behavioral patterns and power structures to forge their self-representation? As Burke (2004) highlights, an individual’s language use is an ‘act of identity’, a performance depending on the situation; multilingualism and translation can therefore also be understood as tools which underscore the mutability, discordance and heterogeneity in the creation and the representation of the literary self.

The objective of this conference is to welcome and facilitate interaction between different methodological perspectives and knowledge bases. Conference participants are encouraged to reflect upon the theoretical concepts used in authorship, translation and literary multilingualism studies. The aim is to stimulate awareness of the importance of literary multilingualism and translation to eighteenth-century conceptions and realities of authorship, as well as and to inform and encourage conversation, during and after the conference, between scholars of different disciplines.

The organisers welcome submissions on the following topics:

• The role of language (literary multilingualism and translation) in the self-representation of eighteenth-century European writers;
• The interplay between authority and literary languages (vernacular and classical languages alike);
• The presence of multilingual authorship in the text, paratext, and/or translation;
• Literary multilingualism and translation in the writer’s network;
• Writers’ discourse, metadiscourse and debate on literary multilingualism/translation;
• The multilingual writer and/or translator versus the emerging nationalist ideal of “one language, one people, one culture”;
• Theoretical and methodological approaches to historical authorship, literary multilingualism and translation.

Confirmed keynote speaker: Professor Gillian Dow (University of Southampton) 

Interested speakers are invited to submit a title and an abstract of 300 words for 20-minute presentations in English by 15 September 2023.

Please send the abstracts, accompanied by a short bionote, to Amélie Jaques (amelie.jaques@kuleuven.be), Merel Waeyaert (merel.waeyaert@kuleuven.be) andBeatrijs Vanacker (beatrijs.vanacker@kuleuven.be). 

Notification of acceptance will be given by 1 November 2023.

Selected bibliography

Amossy, R. (2010). La presentation de soi: ethos et identité verbale. Presses universitaires de France.

Bennet, K. and Cattaneo, A. (2022). Language dynamics in the early modern period. Routledge.

Bloemendal, J. (2015). Bilingual Europe: Latin and vernacular cultures, examples of bilingualism and multilingualism c. 1300-1800. Brill.

Burke, P. (2004). Languages and communities in early modern Europe. Cambridge University Press.

Burke, P. (2005). Lost (and found) in translation: a cultural history of translators and translating in earlymodern Europe. NIAS.

Fidecaro, A., Partzsch, H., van Dijk, S. and Cossy, V. (2009). Femmes écrivains à la croisée des langues 1700-2000. Métis presses.

Frijhoff, W. and Rjéoutski, V. (2018). Language choice in Enlightenment Europe. Education, sociability, and governance. Amsterdam University Press.

Griffin, D. (2014). Authorship in the long eighteenth century. University of Delaware Press.

Havens, H. (2019). Revising the eighteenth-century novel: authorship from manuscript to print. Cambridge University Press.

Hayes, J. C. (2009). Translation, subjectivity, and culture in France and England 1600-1800. Stanford university Press.

Meizoz, J. (2007). Postures littéraires: mises en scene modernes de l’auteur: essai. Slatkine.

Schellenberg, B. (2019). “The eighteenth century: print, professionalization, and defining the author”. In Berensmeyer, Ingo; Buelens, Gert; Demoor Marysa (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Literary Authorship, pp. 133-146. Cambridge University Press.

In recent years, periodicals have increasingly drawn the attention of Translation Studies (Fólica et al. 2020); reciprocally, Periodical Studies have been moving towards a transnational turn (Ernst 2022; Van Remoortel 2022). These disciplinary moves are (amongst others) informed by the development of digital methods and techniques, as well as vast digitization efforts of the archive, that have gathered speed over the past two decades (Bode 2018) and which enable the extraction, processing and analysis of the enormous amounts of information contained in periodicals. Translations constitute a significant tranche of the information periodicals publish, permitting uniquely detailed and quantitatively grounded insight into the dynamic processes that subtended transnational traffic between literatures and cultures. Notwithstanding the clear promise of research at the intersection of translation and periodical studies, and the burgeoning scholarly work that has begun to explore this middle ground, there remains a significant hiatus: there is yet strikingly little material that offers theories, methods, or instructively representative cases. On an empirical level, well-established high-brow periodicals have been the main focus of research, whereas the more popular low and middle-brow periodicals are yet to receive proper place on the research agenda.  More concretely, serial publishing practices (so-called feuilletons) and the interactions between translated and non-translated content within periodicals demand much closer attention.

The key question which this conference seeks to ponder is whether periodical translation can be argued to have particular qualities that differentiate the practice from other forms of translation, notably for print books, much as periodical writing can be distinguished from book writing. The discursive techniques of periodical translation, and its key role in the mediation of culture and the dynamic exploration of the present that has long been argued to be central to the specificity of the periodical, are likely to be key touchstones in responding to this question. The international conference ‘Translation and the Periodical’ aims to push forward decisively the developing conversations on cultural translation in periodicals. Its target is to bring scholars from various disciplines together and to activate and advance significantly on extant qualitative (cfr. Guzmán et al. 2019; Pym 2007) and quantitative work (cfr. Caristia 2020). The objective is to be a hub of knowledge and expertise in this field as it continues to grow, in particular in those periodicals that have so far largely remained out of the focus of scholarship.

The organizing committee aims to cover a broad scope of subjects and a variety of methodological perspectives in order to reflect current work on translation in periodicals, and both to inform and enhance conversations and debates to come.

Suggested topics for papers include (but are not limited to):

• theoretical contributions, defining translation in periodicals as a praxis and sharpening terminology
• methodological contributions, e.g. focusing on Digital Humanities tools for Translation Studies research
• quantifying approaches (distant reading) that establish the ratio of translated content vs. non-translated content
• transnational networks and periodicals
• the limits of the transnational paradigm
• translation as cultural mediation in periodicals
• visual analyses of translation in periodicals
• in/visibility of translation and translators in periodicals
• migrant/diaspora periodicals and their orientation towards the hosting culture vis-à-vis preserving their domestic heritage
• translation in children’s magazines
• comparative approaches to translation in newspapers and periodical journals
• archival examinations of editorial practices
• sociology of translation, identifying the translators and other actors involved in periodical publishing
• translators’ periodicals, and – in a wider frame – translation discourse in periodicals
• translational and localization practices of comics
• transnational periodicals and their role as furnishers of content for local or regional periodicals
• syndicated fiction
• readers’ responses to translation (readers’ letters etc.)

Submission guidelines
Abstract deadline: 20 April 2023
Provide a provisional title and abstract (max. 250 words, excluding references), as well as up to 5 keywords and a short bionote (max. 150 words)
e-mail: ghentconference2023@ugent.be
 
Submissions welcome for:
individual presentations (20 min.)
thematic panels (3 participants, 20 min. each)
 
Notification of acceptance: 1 May 2023
 
Info on the postgraduate workshop can be found here.

References

Ardis, A. (2013, January 1-4). Towards a Theory of Periodical Studies. MLA Convention, Boston.

Bettina R. Lerner. (2009). A French lazarillo: Translation and popular literature in nineteenth-century France. Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 38(1), 9–23. https://doi.org/10.1353/ncf.0.0113

Bode, K. (2018). A world of fiction: Digital Collections and the future of literary history. University of Michigan Press.

Caristia, S. (2020). At the intersection of quantitative and qualitative. Propositions for a weighted analysis of translations in periodicals. In: L. Fólica, D. Roig-Sanz & S. Caristia (eds.), Literary Translation in Periodicals (pp. 175-202). Benjamins.

Cronin, M. (2013). Translation in the Digital age. Routledge.

de Groote, B. (2022). Translation as Cultural Technique: Constructing a Translation History of Media. Target. https://doi.org/10.1075/target.20180.deg

Ernst, J. & O. Scheiding (2022). Periodical Studies as a Transepistemic Field. In: J. Ernst, D. von Hoff & O. Scheiding (eds.), Periodical Studies Today. Multidisciplinary Analyses (pp. 1-24). Brill.

Fólica, L., Roig-Sanz, D. & Caristia, S. (eds.) (2020). Literary Translation in Periodicals: Methodological Challenges for a Transnational Approach. John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Gambier, Y., & Van Doorslaer, L. (2016). Border crossings: Translation studies and other disciplines. John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Guzmán, M. C. et al. (2019). Translation and/in Periodical Publications (special issue). Translation and Interpreting Studies, 14(2), 169–173. https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/18762700/14/2

Littau, K. (2011). First steps towards a media history of translation. Translation Studies, 4(3), 261–281. https://doi.org/10.1080/14781700.2011.589651

Mus, F. (2020). Translation, monolingualism and multilingualism as symptoms of literary internationalisation after the First World War. In: L. Fólica, D. Roig-Sanz & S. Caristia (eds.), Literary Translation in Periodicals (pp. 47-67). Benjamins.

O’Connor, A. (2019). Translation in nineteenth-century periodicals. Materialities and modalities of communication. Translation and Interpreting Studies, 14(2), 243–264. https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.00040.oco

Özmen, C. (2019). Beyond the book: The periodical as an ‘excavation site’ for translation studies. TranscUlturAl: A Journal of Translation and Cultural Studies, 11(1), 3–21. https://doi.org/10.21992/tc29447

Pym, A. (2007). Cross-Cultural Networking: Translators in the French-german network of petites revues at the end of the nineteenth century. Meta. Translator’s Journal, 52(4), 744–762. https://doi.org/10.7202/017695ar

Schäffner, C. (2013). Rethinking transediting. Meta, 57(4), 866–883. https://doi.org/10.7202/1021222ar

Tahir Gürçağlar, Ş. (2019). Periodical Codes and Translation. Translation and Interpreting Studies, 14(2), 174–197. https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.00037.tah

van Doorslaer, L. (2011). The Relative Neglect of Newspapers in Translation Studies Research. In L. Chalvin, e.a. (Ed.), Between Cultures and Texts: Itineraries in Translation History (pp. 45–54). Peter Lang.

Van Remoortel, M. (2022). How to Avoid Making False Friends: Taking the Multilingual Turn in Periodical Studies. Journal of European Periodical Studies 7/1: 57-58. https://doi.org/10.21825/jeps.84969

Applications due by 6 March 2023!

For more information about the programme and application instructions, see http://www.arts.kuleuven.be/cetra/summer_school.

Linguistic Landscapes: Using Signs and Symbols to Translate Cities (June 26-30, 2023)

Call for applications: December 1, 2022 – February 28, 2023, via the VIU website

This course focuses on the growing interdisciplinary field of Linguistic Landscapes (LL), which traditionally analyses “language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings”, usually as they occur in urban spaces. More recently, LL research has evolved beyond studying only verbal signs into the realm of semiotics, thus extending the analytical scope into the multimodal domain of images, sounds, drawings, movements, visuals, graffiti, tattoos, colours, smells as well as people. The school will look at how these landscapes translate cities.

Students will be informed about multiple aspects of modern LL research including an overview of different types of signs, their formal features as well as their functions.

Faculty
Kurt Feyaerts, KU Leuven 
Claire Holleran, University of Exeter
Eliana Maestri, University of Exeter
Michela Maguolo, Iuav University of Venice
Luca Pes, Venice International University
Paul Sambre, KU Leuven
Richard Toye, University of Exeter

Who is it for?
Applications are welcome from current final year Undergraduates (finalists, BA3), MA and MPhil/PhD Students in Linguistics, Sociology, Classical Studies, (Business) Communication Studies, History, Cultural Studies, Political Studies, Translation Studies or any other related discipline.

Further details including fees and application form can be found here –https://www.univiu.org/study/summer-schools/linguistic-landscapes

26th and 27th October 2023, University of Liège, Belgium

Initially relegated to the margins of translation studies, literary self-translation has now become a research topic in its own right, both in the fields of translation studies and comparative literature. While translation studies typically concentrates on the variety of (sociological, ideological, aesthetic) reasons why authors would choose to translate their literary texts themselves and on comparisons between self-translations, translations and other types of transfer activities such as rewriting, the field of comparative literature addresses self-translation mainly as a cause of literary multilingualism, with a clear focus on so-called transnational literatures. Our conference aims to bring both approaches together by examining self-translation as a practice that prompts self-reflexive metadiscourses on literary and translation production and gives new insights into the motivations and literary language uses of multilingual writers. This metadiscourse is present in the literary text itself and in essays, speeches delivered during award ceremonies, interviews, blogs, social media posts, academic lectureships or activism statements for minority rights. 

Self-translations challenge binaries pertaining to the relationship between original and copy, author and translator, source and target language, which are inherent in the traditional understanding of translation itself. In a world marked by globalisation, transnational movements and the aftermath of colonialism, self-translation also unsettles power relations and forms of imbalance that are especially at play in contexts in which minority and majority languages come into contact. By taking a closer look at the metadiscourses of authors who use self-translation as a literary tool, we seek to analyse to what extent this practice counters linguistic hegemony and/or cultural oppression in contexts characterised by power differentials, but also to understand why and how self-translation might function as a source of inequalities. 

Contributions from different disciplines, linguistic traditions and on various historical periods are welcome. While we are particularly interested in forms of self-translation in postcolonial contexts, we also encourage participants to submit propositions highlighting power relations in other transnational contexts. Possible questions and topics include, but are not limited to, the following: 

– What are the factors influencing the choice to self-translate in all kinds of linguistic and cultural minority settings, such as those experienced by indigenous communities in various postcolonial areas or by migrant writers and writers in exile? 

– How is the practice of self-translation shaped, for instance, by collaborative writing projects involving asylum-seekers and/or refugees, or by writers self-translating into more than one language? 

– How is self-translation used, in postcolonial countries, as a way of escaping national censorship or as a weapon to denounce abusive situations? 

– What are the reasons prompting some authors’ refusal to self-translate in given postcolonial circumstances? 

– How can the practices of ‘canonical’ self-translators be reinterpreted in the light of postcolonial approaches? 

This literary and translation studies conference co-organised by the University of Liège (ULiège) and the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) will be held in Liège on 26th and 27th October 2023, under the auspices of the local translation and postcolonial studies centres, namely CIRTI (Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherche en Traduction et en Interprétation) and CEREP (Centre d’Enseignement et de Recherche en Études Postcoloniales). 

We welcome proposals in both English and French, providing a basis for 20-minute papers (which will be followed by 10-minute discussions). Please email abstracts of no more than 300 words and a 100-word bio note to postcolonialselftranslation@uliege.be by 15th February 2023. Notification of acceptance will be sent by 31st March 2023. 

The Convenors:

• Marie Herbillon (ULiège) 
• Myriam-Naomi Walburg (ULiège) 
• Maud Gonne (ULiège) 
• Núria Codina Solà (KU Leuven) 
• Reine Meylaerts (KU Leuven) 

Dr. Lehka-Paul’s talk concentrates on how the effort invested by the translator to produce the translation affects the way in which a potential reader processes the output. Translation scholars unanimously agree that the translator’s decisions influence the sensemaking process on the reader’s end (Alves & Jakobsen 2020, Kotze et al. 2021), but there is little empirical research into the extent to which the translator’s effort eventually pays off. This talk presents preliminary findings of an empirical study conducted within the framework of the research project on “The Reading and Reception of Mediated (Translated) Text: The Read Me Project”. The project, which belongs to the field of cognitive translatology, offers an innovative approach to analysing the relationship between translators’ and readers’ effort by means of looking at the key-logging data received from the translation process and readers’ eye movements recorded with an eye-tracker. Some of the questions addressed in the talk include: (1) Does the translator’s effort pay off and the reader does not display difficulty when reading the final text as indicated by long fixations and re-fixations? (2) Do the easy stretches of text production correlate with the ease of reading? (3) How do translation and language errors affect the reading and reception of translated texts? (Rayner and Liversedge 2011). The talk may be interest to both translation studies scholars and reception studies scholars.

Olha Lehka-Paul is a senior lecturer at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, and previously an assistant lecturer at Ivan Franko University in Lviv, Ukraine. She is also a freelance translator and interpreter with English, Polish and Ukrainian as working languages. Her research is concerned with establishing connections between translator’s personality characteristics and translation performance, translator’s self-efficacy, translator’s decisions and revision tactics, translation training and translation process research in general. She is a strong advocate of translation psychology as both a line of research and a new course to set in translator training curricula.

The Baker Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies is accepting submissions for this year’s Martha Cheung Award for Best English Article in Translation Studies by an Early Career Scholar up until 31 October 2022.

The Award is established in honour of the late Professor Martha Cheung (1953-2013), formerly Chair Professor of Translation at Hong Kong Baptist University. Professor Cheung was an internationally renowned scholar whose work on Chinese discourse on translation made a seminal contribution to the reconceptualization of translation from non-Western perspectives. For a brief biography and a list of her most important publications, see Professor Martha Pui Yiu Cheung’s Publications.

The Martha Cheung Award aims to recognize research excellence in the output of early career researchers, and to allow them, like Professor Cheung herself, to make their voices heard in the international arena and play a role in charting the future directions of research in the discipline. The restriction of the award to articles published in English is also intended to ensure consistency in the assessment process.

The Award

The award is conferred annually for the best paper published in English in the previous two-year period, and takes the form of a cash prize of 10,000 RMB (approximately 1,400 euros). A certificate from the SISU Baker Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies will also be presented.

Eligibility

• Applicants must have completed their PhD during the five-year period preceding the deadline for submission of applications, or be currently registered for a PhD.
• Given the emphasis on early career scholars, the award is restricted to single-authored articles: co-authored articles will not be considered.
• The scholarly article submitted must be already published. Work accepted for publication but in press will not be considered.
• The term ‘published’ also covers online publication
• The article must have been published in English, in a peer-reviewed journal of good standing. Book chapters and entries in reference works do not qualify.
• The article does not have to have appeared in a journal of translation or interpreting. Journals of media, linguistics, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, etc. all qualify, as long as the article engages with translation/interpreting in a sustained manner.
• Submissions will be assessed solely on their scholarly merit, as judged by a panel of established scholars; considerations such as formal journal ranking and impact factor will not form part of the judging criteria.
• The article may present research relating to any area of translation, interpreting or intercultural studies, and may draw on any theoretical models or methodologies.
• Applicants can only submit an article once. Resubmissions of articles already assessed in an earlier round will not be admitted. 

Submission

Applicants may apply directly themselves for the award, or their work may be nominated by other scholars. A full copy of the article should be submitted in e-copy, in pdf format, together with the completed application/nomination form, downloadable here. Completed, typed applications should be sent to the Award Committee at this address: ctn@hkbu.edu.hk. The Committee will not consider handwritten applications.

Timeframe

For the submission of articles published between 30 September 2020 and 30 September 2022:

Application closing date for the 2023 Award:           31 October 2022

Announcement of award winner:                                31 March 2023

This lecture is co-organised by CETRA and CERES – Centre for Reception Studies (KU Leuven).

Thursday, 20 October, 12:30pm to 2pm

Follow the lecture online (Microsoft Teams) or on-site (KU Leuven, Campus Antwerp – Sint-Jacob)

Entrance is free, but you are kindly asked to register by Tuesday, 18 October via email to jack.mcmartin@kuleuven.be. Note that on-site seating is limited to members of CETRA and CERES, and preference will be given to doctoral researchers.

Professor Lehka-Paul’s talk will concentrate on how the effort invested by the translator to produce the translation affects the way in which a potential reader processes the output. Translation scholars unanimously agree that the translator’s decisions influence the sense-making process on the reader’s end (Alves & Jakobsen 2020, Kotze et al. 2021), but there is little empirical research into the extent to which the translator’s effort eventually pays off. This talk will present preliminary findings of an empirical study conducted within the framework of the research project on “The Reading and Reception of Mediated (Translated) Text: The Read Me Project”. The project, which belongs to the field of cognitive translatology, offers an innovative approach to analysing the relationship between translators’ and readers’ effort by means of looking at the key-logging data received from the translation process and readers’ eye movements recorded with an eye-tracker. Some of the questions addressed in the talk include: (1) Does the translator’s effort pay off and the reader does not display difficulty when reading the final text as indicated by long fixations and re-fixations? (2) Do the easy stretches of text production correlate with the ease of reading? (3) How do translation and language errors affect the reading and reception of translated texts? (Rayner and Liversedge 2011). The talk should be of value to both translation studies scholars and reception studies scholars.

Olha Lehka-Paul is a senior lecturer at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, and previously an assistant lecturer at Ivan Franko University in Lviv, Ukraine. She is also a freelance translator and interpreter with English, Polish and Ukrainian as working languages. Her research is concerned with establishing connections between translator’s personality characteristics and translation performance, translator’s self-efficacy, translator’s decisions and revision tactics, translation training and translation process research in general. She is a strong advocate of translation psychology as both a line of research and a new course to set in translator training curricula.