IATIS – Confirmed Thematic Panels

Thematic panels are groups of papers organized around a particular sub-theme. The list of panels is available below and the details of the each panel can be found by clicking the links. To access the call for papers of thematic panels, please click here.

PANEL 01: At the Interface of Cognition and Multilingual Communication

PANEL 02: Grounded Theory in Translation Studies

PANEL 03-i: Human and Machine Translation Quality and Evaluation: From Principles to Practice

PANEL 03-ii: Assessing and Evaluating Translator and Translation Quality: Empirical Approaches for Commercial and Pedagogical Purposes

PANEL 03-iii: Quality in Cultural Mobility: The Impact of Technology-supported Interpreting on Performance Quality and Communication

PANEL 04: When Translation Goes Digital: Social, Legal and Economic Issues

PANEL 05: Translation and International Theatre

PANEL 06: Museum Translation: Encounters across Space and Time

PANEL 07: Crisis Communication and Translation

PANEL 08: Translation and Space/Place

PANEL 09: Translating Development: The Importance of Language(s) in Processes of Social Transformation in Developing Countries

PANEL 10: Audiovisual Translation as Cross-cultural Mediation – New Trajectories for Translation and Cultural Mobility?

PANEL 11: The Cultural Mobility of Queer Knowledges through Translation

PANEL 12: Advances in Discourse Analysis in Translation Studies: Theoretical Models and Applications

PANEL 13: Interpreting, Translation and English as a Lingua Franca (ITELF)

PANEL 14: Agents of Globalisation and Cultural Mobility: How do Sports Interpreting and Media Interpreting Relate to Each Other?

PANEL 15: Exploring Cultural Mobility through Visual and Performance Art

PANEL 16-i: Translation and Citizenship: Communication and Mobility in (Emerging) Multilingual Democracies

PANEL 16-ii: Cultural Translation, Democracy and the Universal

PANEL 17: Interpreting in Conflict-related Scenarios

PANEL 18: Translation-Oriented Localisation Studies (TOLS): New Trends, Future Challenges

PANEL 19: Citizen Media, Migration and Translation

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PANEL 01

PANEL 01: At the Interface of Cognition and Multilingual Communication

Panel Organizers:
Ana Mª Rojo López (University of Murcia)
Ricardo Muñoz Martín (University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria)
Sandra Halverson (Western Norway University of Applied Sciences)
Adolfo M. García (Institute of Cognitive and Translational Neuroscience)

In recent years, empirical research on translation, interpreting, and other forms of mediated multilingual communication has opened up to fresh approaches that conceive of cognition in ways other than the classical mind-as-computer paradigm. These approaches—such as embodied, embedded, enacted, extended and affective cognition (4EA cognition)—share some common assumptions within Translation and Interpreting Studies. For instance, they all agree on the need to develop theories which are not only cognitively plausible, but also socially and culturally realistic, by reembedding them in their respective milieus and constraints. In doing so, cognitive approaches also expand beyond the mediators themselves to focus on the cognitive aspects of all participants in communicative events (e.g., reception in readers, viewers) and their interactions (e.g., distributed cognition, perspective taking, turn-taking control, and the like).

These emergent views on the cognition of multilingual communication are still under development, but they all share a commitment to empirical research, often using either experimental settings and/or mixed-methods designs in naturalistic environments to account for HCI and cognitive ergonomics. Theoretical frameworks to sustain these new approaches are still taking their first steps and can be collectively dubbed cognitive translatology. This panel aims to bring together empirical and theoretical contributions from any relevant field to maximize the rapprochement between 4EA approaches to cognition and other classical trends within Translation and Interpreting Studies. Proposed papers should address:

  • Theoretical domains and epistemological issues
  • Empirical research methods
  • Empirical research constructs
  • Neuroscientific aspects
  • Attentional control and multitasking
  • Culture and cognition
  • Culture, embodiment, and cognitive processes in translation
  • Emotional processes
  • The role of individual and psychological factors, e.g. emotions
  • The cognitive impact of expertise

For informal enquiries: ricardo.munoz@ulpgc.es

Bio-note of Panel Organizers:

All conveners are members of the international research network Translation · Research · Empiricism · Cognition (TREC)

Ana Mª Rojo López is Associate Professor of Translation at the University of Murcia, Spain, where she coordinates the Master in Translation for the Publishing Industry and the doctoral program in translation. She is also a member of PETRA Research Group (Expertise and Environment in Translation, Spanish acronym), which focuses on the empirical research of the cognitive aspects of translation and interpreting. Her main area of research is presently the study of the translation process, with special emphasis on emotional and creativity processes. Prof. Rojo has published extensively in various formats, including books, articles, and book chapters on cognitive contrastive linguistics, translation, and research methodology. anarojo@um.es

Ricardo Muñoz Martín is Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain. He is also the coordinator of PETRA Research Group. Prof. Muñoz’s research focuses on the philosophy of mind and attentional processes in multilingual communication. As a visiting professor or invited scholar, Prof. Muñoz has lectured in more than 15 universities, always on the interface between translation and cognition. He has published more than 70 papers in competitive journals and top publishers, and has edited several special issues and books, including the recent Reembedding Translation Process Research. Prof. Muñoz is the editor of the journal Translation, Cognition & Behavior. ricardo.munoz@ulpgc.es

Sandra L. Halverson works at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. Her overarching research concern is the integration of insights from Cognitive Linguistics into Translation Studies. Prof. Halverson has published both empirical and theoretical/conceptual work on many questions related to Translation Studies and Cognitive Linguistics, such as the cognitive bases of translation universals and translation shifts. Another long-term research interest is the epistemology of Translation Studies. She is currently working on developing and testing hypotheses concerning the cognitive origins of lexical and syntactic patterns in translated language and on developing a cognitive account of metalinguistic processes in translation. Prof. Halverson is co-editor of the journal Target. Sandra.Louise.Halverson@hvl.no

Adolfo M. García serves as Scientific Director of the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology and Neuroscience (LPEN-INCYT), Assistant Researcher at CONICET, and Professor of Neurolinguistics at the Faculty of Education of UNCuyo. He has more than 90 publications, including books, chapters, and articles in leading journals on neuroscience, language, and translation. His distinctions include the Most Outstanding Paper Award (Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States, 2013) and the Young Investigator Prize (Argentine Association of Behavioral Science, 2015). Prof. García is Associate Editor for the Journal of World Languages and the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. adolfomartingarcia@gmail.com

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PANEL 02 

PANEL 02: Grounded Theory in Translation Studies

Panel Organizers:
Michael Carl (Renmin University of China)
Elisabet Tiselius (Stockholm University)
Silvia Hansen-Schirra (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz)
Moritz Schaeffer (Copenhagen Business School)

Grounded Theory is an inductive theory discovery methodology which is based on a continuous interplay between data collection and data analysis. Its specific approach to theory development is based on a re-iterating cycle of “coding steps” which starts with the analysis of empirical data (as opposed to deploying a pre-existing theory) and which ends with an integrated theoretical framework grounded in the data. The intermediate steps may be described as follows:

  • Simultaneous collection and analysis of data
  • Creation of analytic codes and concepts from inspection of the data
  • Discovery of the basic processes that created the data
  • Inductive construction of abstractions and categories
  • Theoretical sampling to refine categories
  • Writing of analytical memos as a step towards a grounded theory
  • The integration of categories into a theoretical framework

The panel calls for contributions which describe any or all of the coding steps that highlight how codes, concepts, categories and theories emerge from data in the context of translation studies. The panel is open to presentations making use of all kinds of data sources: video, written, spoken or interpreting data, monolingual or multilingual, and all kinds of data acquisition devices which allow for the construction of Grounded Translation Theory from textual data, behavioral or brain activity data, in-depth interviews, man-machine or social interaction, or others.

For informal enquiries: mc.ibc@cbs.dk

Bio-note of Panel Organizers:
Michael Carl is Professor at the MTI Education Center of the School of Foreign Languages at Renmin University of China and Director of the Center of Research and Innovation in Translation and Translation Technology (CRITT) at the Copenhagen Business School/Denmark. His current research interest is related to the investigation of human translation processes and interactive machine translation. He has also been working on machine translation, terminology tools, and the implementation of natural language processing software. Dr. Carl has organized numerous workshops, scientific meetings and panels on translation and translation process related topics and published widely in this field of research.

Elisabet Tiselius is Director of Studies for Interpreting at the Institute for Interpreting and Translation Studies, Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism at Stockholm University. Elisabet’s research interests are cognitive processes in interpreting, interpreters’ and translators’ development of competence and expertise, deliberate practice in interpreting as a carachteristic of expertise, and child language brokering.

Silvia Hansen-Schirra is Professor of English Linguistics and Translation Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germersheim, Germany. Her main research interests include specialized communication, text comprehensibility, post-editing, translation process and competence research. As fellow of the Gutenberg Research College she is the Director of the Translation & Cognition (TRA&CO) Center in Germersheim and co-editor of the online book series Translation and Multilingual Natural Language Processing.

Moritz Schaeffer has received his PhD from the University of Leicester and he has since worked as Research Associate at the Center of Research and Innovation in Translation and Translation Technology (CRITT), Copenhagen Business School, and at the Institute for Language, Cognition and Computation, University of Edinburgh. He is now Research Associate at the TRACO-Lab of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.

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PANEL 03-i 

PANEL 03-i: Human and Machine Translation Quality and Evaluation: From Principles to Practice

Panel Organizers:
Sheila Castilho (Dublin City University)
Stephen Doherty (University of New South Wales)
Federico Gaspari (Università per Stranieri “Dante Alighieri” & Dublin City University)
Joss Moorkens (Dublin City University)

This panel is intended to focus on human and machine translation quality and evaluation, with the aim of bringing together research from academic and industry settings that describes how they are combined in practice. This is critical to successful communication between cultures, and to the successful integration of translation technologies in the industry today, where the lines between human and machine are becoming increasingly blurred by technology. Quality evaluation affects the whole translation landscape, from students and trainers to project managers and professionals, including in-house and freelance translators, as well as, of course, translation scholars and researchers. The panel conveners have extensive experience of translation quality evaluation, within the ADAPT Centre and the QT Launchpad and TraMOOC EU-funded projects. In addition, their co-edited book (sharing a title with this panel) is due to be published in early 2018 by Springer.

Contributors might present work on:

  • Evaluation of technology in intercultural communication
  • Industry or institutional quality evaluation
  • Domain-specific quality evaluation
  • Evaluation of novel machine translation systems
  • Or any other topic pertaining to translation quality evaluation such as error typologies, quality estimation, or automatic metrics.

For informal enquiries: joss.moorkens@dcu.ie

Bio-note of Panel Organizers:

Sheila Castilho holds a Master’s in Natural Language Processing and obtained her PhD from Dublin City University in 2016. Currently, she is a post-doctoral researcher at the TraMOOC project in ADAPT Centre focusing on machine and human evaluation of automatically translated subtitles. Her research interests include machine translation, post-editing, machine and human translation evaluation, usability, and translation technologies.

Stephen Doherty is a Senior Lecturer and Program Convenor of Linguistics, Interpreting and Translation at the University of New South Wales. His research is based in the interaction between language, cognition, and technology. His current work investigates the cognitive aspects of human and machine language processing with a focus on translation and language technologies using a combination of traditional task performance measures, eye tracking, psychometrics, and electroencephalography.

Federico Gaspari has a background in translation studies and holds a PhD in machine translation from the University of Manchester (UK). He is Associate Professor of English Linguistics and Translation Studies at the University for Foreigners ‘Dante Alighieri’ of Reggio Calabria (Italy), and is a postdoctoral researcher at the ADAPT Centre in Dublin City University (Ireland), where he works on EU-funded international research projects focusing on machine translation quality evaluation and post-editing. His main teaching and research interests include translation technologies, technical and specialised translation, translation theory and corpus linguistics.

Joss Moorkens is a lecturer at the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies at Dublin City University and is a member of the ADAPT Centre and the Centre for Translation and Textual Studies. He currently leads development of a multimodal translation editing interface and contributes to the TraMOOC EU-funded project. He has authored journal articles and book chapters on topics such as translation technology, post-editing of machine translation, human and automatic translation quality evaluation, and ethical issues in translation technology in relation to both machine learning and professional practice.

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PANEL 03-ii 

PANEL 03-ii: Assessing and Evaluating Translator and Translation Quality: Empirical Approaches for Commercial and Pedagogical Purposes

Panel Organizers:
Geoffrey S. Koby (Kent State University)
Isabel Lacruz (Kent State University)

Two recent volumes (Translator Quality—Translation Quality: Empirical Approaches to Assessment and Evaluation, ed. Koby and Lacruz, and New Perspectives in Assessment in Translator Training, ed. Huertas Barros and Vine) focus on the issue of translator and translation assessment and evaluation from both empirical and pedagogical perspectives and confirm substantial current interest in this perennial yet thorny issue. In alignment with the theme of “translation and cultural mobility,” we argue that cultural mobility is impossible without high-quality translations. However, translation quality measurement remains a challenging task and new methodologies are still evolving. Non-traditional perspectives, such as supplementing the product-based notion of quality with the user-based notion of utility, encourage increased focus on how cultural differences might play a role in translation quality assessment. Although various methods have been proposed for measuring the translation product and pedagogical models have been devised for feedback to translation learners or professionals on product and/or process, none are completely satisfactory and few explicitly address cultural adjustments that are intrinsic to high quality translation. There is a pressing need for refinement and innovation in the measurement of machine (and human) translation quality and utility, along with post-editing quality and utility. The trade-off between effort and quality or utility is also significant, little understood, but important to measure. However, no broad consensus exists on how to measure translator or translation quality and utility for either human or machine translation.

This panel will focus on empirical approaches to assessing and evaluating translator quality and translation quality and utility from both commercial, cultural, and pedagogical perspectives. In addition to proposals for innovative methodologies, it will include examination of the interactions among methods for assessment (including process and product assessment), needs for assessment (for the classroom vs. for the translation industry), and approaches to assessment Contributions should address translator/translation/post-editing quality and utility from an empirical perspective using data-driven analyses and interpretations.

A list of suggested topics that intending contributors might address:

  • Process-oriented assessment
  • How translation processes affect translation quality and utility
  • Factors causing variation in translation quality and utility
  • Influence of measurement on quality and utility
  • Language proficiency and translation quality and utility
  • Product-oriented assessment
  • Machine translation quality/post-editing quality and utility
  • Models for feedback to translators (pedagogical or commercial)
  • Diagnostic vs. formative vs. summative assessment
  • Quality/utility levels vs. effort
  • Pedagogical assessment vs. commercial assessment (bridging the gap)
  • Assessment for certification
  • Case studies on translation quality assessment
  • Cultural aspects of translation quality and utility assessment

For informal enquiries: gkoby@kent.edu

Bio-note of Panel Organizers:
Geoffrey S. Koby, Ph.D., is Professor of Translation Studies and German at Kent State University. His research focuses on translation quality assessment and evaluation along with translation pedagogy. Recent publications include an edited volume, Economic, Financial and Business Translation: from Theory to Training and Professional Practice, with Gallego Hernández and Román Mínguez (2016), “Developing a specialized corpus database for ATA translator certification examinations” (2016), and “The ATA Flowchart and Framework as a Differentiated Error-Marking Scale in Translation Teaching” (2015). He is currently working on a co-edited volume entitled Translator Quality—Translation Quality: Empirical Approaches to Assessment and Evaluation, with Isabel Lacruz (2017).

Isabel Lacruz, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Translation Studies and Spanish Translation at Kent State University. Lacruz’ research focuses on the cognitive processes involved in translation and post-editing, and translation quality and utility assessment and evaluation. Lacruz co-organized panels at the IATIS 2015 conference in Belo Horizonte (Brazil) and at the EST 2016 conference in Aarhus (Denmark). Recent publications include a co-edited volume with Riitta Jääskeläinen, Innovation and Expansion in Translation Process Research (forthcoming). She is the author of several peer-reviewed theoretical and empirical articles and book chapters. She is currently working on a co-edited volume entitled Translator Quality—Translation Quality: Empirical Approaches to Assessment and Evaluation, with Geoffrey S. Koby (2017).

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PANEL 03-iii 

PANEL 03-iii: Quality in Cultural Mobility: The Impact of Technology-supported Interpreting on Performance Quality and Communication

Panel Organizers:
Sabine Braun (University of Surrey)
Franz Pöchhacker (University of Vienna)

One of the key features of mobility is the notion of movement. Advances in public and private transport since the early 20th century have fostered physical mobility, especially as a pattern of work life and in the form of politically or economically motivated migration, but the digital revolution of the 21st century, by enabling virtual mobility, has created unprecedented opportunities for the ‘movement’ of ideas and cultures across the globe. The shift from physical to virtual mobility is also changing the way interpreters work and interact with their clients. Just as the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) has virtualised the contact zones for cross-cultural encounters, so the interpreters as facilitators of these encounters have become agents of cultural mobility who operate in virtual spaces. On the one hand, virtual multilingual meetings using video- or tele-conferencing technologies require the integration of interpreters as virtual participants; on the other hand, the same technologies are used to overcome the constraints of the interpreter’s physical co-presence by accessing (qualified) interpreters remotely.

However, whilst the use of ICT to connect primary participants and interpreters creates an array of opportunities and configurations for promoting and indeed enabling cultural mobility, it also adds a new layer of complexity to interpreter-mediated communication. Linguistic and cultural mediation is complemented by technological mediation. The direct interaction between the interpreters and the primary participants is replaced by their interaction through the medium of technology. These developments raise important issues for the interpreting profession. The proposed panel will address one of them in particular, i.e. the issue of quality across different modalities of ICT-supported interpreting. Bearing in mind the importance of quality as a conditio sine qua non in professional interpreting as well as the complex and multi-faceted nature of the theoretical construct of quality, the panel aims to explore the impact of combining linguistic/cultural and technological mediation on interpreting quality in the broadest sense, i.e. on the interpreters, their perception and their performance; on the primary interlocutors, and their communicative contribution and interaction with the others; and on the communicative dynamics and the communicative event as a whole.

List of suggested topics that prospective contributors might address:

  • How does technological mediation affect the quality of interpreters’ performance and of the communicative process as a whole?
  • How does the quality of technology-mediated interpreting compare to onsite interpreting and to what extent is this comparison valid and appropriate?
  • What are the responses of different stakeholder groups to various modalities of technology-supported interpreting and quality of service?
  • To what extent does our understanding of interpreting quality need to be adjusted in order to accommodate the discussion of technology-supported interpreting?
  • Which aspects of interpreting quality emerge as relevant in technology-supported modalities of interpreter-mediated communication?
  • What do technology-supported modalities of interpreting reveal about the relationship between interpreter-mediated interaction and interpreting quality?
  • How does the use of communication technologies to link primary participants and interpreters impact on broader questions such as the interpreter’s role and agency, and the way interpreters are perceived by their clients?
  • Which methods are best suited to advancing the study of interpreting quality in technology-supported modalities of interpreting?

For informal enquiries: s.braun@surrey.ac.uk

Bio-note of Panel Organizers:
Sabine Braun is Professor of Translation Studies and Director of the Centre for Translation Studies at the University of Surrey in the UK. Her research focuses on new methods, modalities and socio-technological practices of translation and interpreting. She has a long-standing interest in video-mediated interpreting, where she has adopted discourse analytic, pragmatic and sociological approaches combining qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate and inform the integration of videoconferencing technologies into professional interpreting practice. She has led, and participated in, several international projects relating to videoconferencing and interpreting. This included working with the European Council Working Party on e-Law (e-Justice) to develop guidelines for video-mediated interpreting in legal proceedings, and advising justice sector institutions on the introduction of videoconferencing and interpreting. In 2015, she gave a keynote on video-mediated interpreting at the IATIS conference in Brazil. Sabine’s other research areas include audio description as a new modality of intersemiotic translation, and the use of multimodal technologies in interpreter education. Sabine led an international consortium which developed the first 3D virtual-reality environment to simulate interpreting practice.

Franz Pöchhacker is Associate Professor of Interpreting Studies in the Center for Translation Studies at the University of Vienna. He is the author of the textbook Introducing Interpreting Studies (2004/2016) and editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Interpreting Studies (2015) as well as co-editor of Interpreting: International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting. His research encompasses interpreting across professional domains and institutional settings as well as interpreting studies as a discipline. He has a longstanding interest in the study of quality in interpreting, going back to his PhD research in the early 1990s. From 2008 to 2010 he led an Austrian Science Fund project on quality in simultaneous interpreting, which focused on prosodic features in the interpreter’s delivery and on user assessment and comprehension. His more recent involvement in a pilot project designed to deliver video remote interpreting services to Austrian healthcare institutions has foregrounded various aspects of performance quality and the complex interrelationships between mediality and multimodality in this technology-based interactive environment.

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PANEL 04

PANEL 04: When Translation Goes Digital: Social, Legal and Economic Issues

Panel Organizers:
Renée Desjardins (University of Saint-Boniface)
Philippe Lacour (Federal University of Brasilia)
Claire Larsonneur (University Paris 8)

Digital technologies have significantly impacted the translation industry and, by extension, the skillsets and status of the translator and the content that requires translation. Faced with increasing digital innovation, translators must now contend with new ways of thinking about intercultural communication, with specific emphasis given to mobility and accessibility, which may in turn require a paradigm shift (or shifts) within the field.

This panel aims to explore the social, legal and economic issues raised by digital innovation, mobility and data-centrism. For instance we may consider the lack of geographical or chronological constraints in online settings, for-profit and not-for-profit business models, the advent of ‘play labour’ and crowdsourcing, increasingly prevalent peer-to-peer and sharing practices, as well as the risks fostered by data surveillance, hacking and over-sharing. These all have an impact on how the translation market is structured (big agencies versus small players versus rogue agents) and how translation, as a service, is perceived (service industry, public utility, common resource, marketable commodity). Innovation can be disruptive, but this disruption is not necessarily detrimental; information technologies and artificial intelligence can mean both positive and negative changes to the translation ecosystem.

Topics that could be addressed include:

  • E-volution of translated content: from text to posts, streams, threads, timelines, emojis/non-verbal content
  • E-volution of professional practice: transcreation, rewriting, text editing, localisation counselling, gist translation
  • Redefining working protocols: collaborative translation, not-for-profit translations, crowdsourcing, smart swarm, man-machine production
  • Quality assessment: peer review, voting systems, tagging, I.A. and data mining input
  • Intellectual property, copyright, copyleft, creative commons, open access, and other legal considerations
  • Digital visibility and accountability of translators
  • Remuneration models in the digital era: freemium, packages, subscription, ‘like economy’
  • Online and digital settings where translation takes place: platforms, social media, direct access to code

For informal enquiries: claire.larsonneur@gmail.com

Bio-note of Panel Organizers:
Renée Desjardins is Assistant Professor at the School of Translation at the University of Saint-Boniface in Winnipeg, Canada. She has worked in the private, public, and freelance sectors as a professional translator and social media specialist. She is the author of Translation and Social Media: In Theory, in Training and in Professional Practice (2017; Palgrave MacMillan). She is also the editor-in-chief of CuiZine: The Journal of Canadian Food Cultures.

Philippe Lacour is Adjunct Professor at the Federal University of Brasilia (Brasil) and Program Director at the Collège International de Philosophie (Paris). He teaches general and theoretical philosophy (theory of knowledge, philosophy of science), with a focus on Human and Social Sciences. His other line of research is the TraduXio project, a digital environment for collaborative and multilingual translation, which he has been developing over the past ten years. Among other publications:

Claire Larsonneur is Senior lecturer in Translation Studies and English Literature at University Paris 8, France (research unit TransCrit EA 1569) and a translator in social sciences. She co-directed the 5-year project “The Digital Subject” (2012-2016). She has published:

  • Le Sujet digital, Presses du Réel, Paris 2015. (co-dir)
  • La Recherche Internet en lettres et langues, Ophrys, Paris, 2008.

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PANEL 05

PANEL 05: Translation and International Theatre

Panel Organizers:
Geraldine Brodie (University College London)
Beverley Curran (International Christian University, Tokyo)
Marie Nadia Karsky (Université Paris 8)

‘Multilingual performances create communities of understanding and of non-understanding. The experience of non-comprehension can both validate and challenge an audience’s communal sense as cosmopolitan, or as part of the nation.’ (Lindsay 2006: 20 ). Theatre is increasingly intercultural and intermedial, whether performances aimed at multilingual audiences, such as the Singaporean productions described by Jennifer Lindsay; international festivals showcasing theatre companies from a range of cultures and languages, for example, the annual Avignon Festival in France; or travelling productions created by theatre practitioners like the Canadian Robert Lepage who integrates different languages and cultures within one work which is then presented to audiences around the world. Technological advances assist the mobility of international theatre, but is this internationalization at the cost of trivialising and commodifying the cultures that are represented, as Paul Allain and Jen Harvie suggest (2006: 156)?

This panel examines the various ways in which international productions and translation for the theatre – whether translating playscripts, surtitling theatre, or translating elements such as programmes, interpreting for interviews, or adapting other sources for the stage – contribute to perceptions of interculturality. What do the different types of interaction between translation and various forms of theatre and performance reveal about cultural mobility in mono- or multilingual cultures, where diglossia can be part of the picture, and for international audiences? In a world which now seems to be post-global in the sense that nations and nationalism are increasingly reinforcing themselves, what roles can international theatre play in crossing borders and in challenging obstacles to cultural and other types of mobility?
Participants will be invited to present papers along the following lines (not exclusive):

  • Translation and international communication at theatre festivals
  • Translation issues for travelling theatre productions
  • Multilingual performances and productions, past and present
  • Forms and impact of theatre translation in multilingual societies
  • The role played by international institutions in international exchange and in theatre translation (International Theatre Institute for instance, or on a much smaller scale in France, the Maison Antoine Vitez) ; the role of translation in such institutions and networks
  • Adapting other genres for the stage and for other cultures : from novels to manga
  • Mobilizing print media through sonic and somatic performance
  • The impact of context and of cultural mobility on translating and adapting older plays/classical plays/canonical texts
  • Theatre translation and various types of language: verbal, gestural, posture and the body
  • Translating site-specific forms of performance
  • Digital and intermedial developments in translating for the theatre
  • Accessibility and translation in international theatre, including sign language, audio description and surtitling for multilingual audiences

For informal enquiries: g.brodie@ucl.ac.uk

Bio-note of Panel Organizers:
Geraldine Brodie is a Lecturer in Translation Theory and Theatre Translation at University College London. Her research and publications centre on theatre translation practices in contemporary London, with recent publications in Authorizing Translation, edited by Michelle Woods (Routledge 2016) and a special issue of the Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance, which she also co-edited with Marie Nadia Karsky (May 2016). She is a panel Associate of ARTIS (Advancing Research in Translation and Interpreting Studies) and was co-editor of the IATIS journal New Voices in Translation Studies 2012-2015.

Beverley Curran teaches linguistic, cultural, and media translation in the Department of Society, Culture and Media at International Christian University in Tokyo. She is the author of Theatre Translation Theory and Performance in Contemporary Japan (2008; Routledge 2014) and co-edited Multiple Translation Communities in Contemporary Japan (Routledge 2015). She is the current editor of IASIL Japan’s Journal of Irish Studies.

Marie Nadia Karsky teaches English and translation studies in the English Department (DEPA) at Université Paris 8. She works on English translations of Molière’s comedies and on the way translations incorporate the body and its various rhythms (including gestures, movement, voices). She has published on Molière in English and on Shakespeare translated into French, and has recently edited ‘Traduire le rythme’ for the French translation journal Palimpsestes (n° 27, 2014), and co-edited, with Geraldine Brodie, an issue of the Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance on the theatre of Martin Crimp (2016).

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PANEL 06

PANEL 06: Museum Translation: Encounters across Space and Time

Panel Organizers:
Min-Hsiu Liao (Heriot-Watt University)
Sharon Deane-Cox (University of Strathclyde)

The panel will address the conference theme “translation and cultural mobility” in the specific context of museums. Museums are important sites of intercultural encounter, bringing visitors into contact with the tangible and intangible traces of other peoples, spaces and times. That encounter is frequently mediated through translation: many museums now provide international visitors with bilingual or multilingual texts in various modes, such as labels, text panels, leaflets, websites, audio guides, videos, interactive panels, tour guides. In multilingual societies, museums are often required by law to provide translation services. It follows that translation has the capacity to shape how the visitor understands and responds to the objects, images, sounds and memories that have been incorporated into a given collection or exhibition. Of particular interest are the various ways in which the translation of museum narratives re-mediates identities, voices, ideologies and pedagogies.

Taking its lead from the pioneering work of Kate Sturge (2007) and Robert Neather (2008), this panel aims to encourage and expand critical discussion on the important role played by translations in museums, not least since research on this topic remains relatively scant. This panel recognizes museum translation as an interdisciplinary research topic that can draw theoretical frameworks and methodological models from a range of academic fields, e.g. translation studies, museum studies, tourism studies, memory studies. Furthermore, museums as multimodal sites provide translation researchers with a rich source of data to examine how different modes of texts interact and communicate. This panel ultimately seeks to open up a collaborative and supportive space for researchers whose interests coincide with the topic, and in so doing, further our understanding of how translation mobilizes and directs cultural, cognitive, commemorative etc. encounters in the museum.
Contributors may address any aspects of museum translation. Below is a list of suggested questions:

  • How are individual, regional and national identities translated in museums?
  • How does translation transmit individual and collective memories in the museum?
  • What role does translation play in a museum’s narration of war, genocide and other traumatic experiences?
  • How do translations help museum visitors learn about other cultures?
  • How do translations negotiate different language communities in museums that are situated in multilingual societies?
  • How do translations mediate intersemiotic encounters in the multimodal space of museums?
  • How do visitors use translations in the museum?
  • How do museums decide on and implement translation policies?
  • Which theories and methodologies are helpful for the exploration of museum translation?

For informal enquiries: m.liao@hw.ac.uk

Min-Hsiu Liao is Lecturer of Languages and Intercultural Studies at Heriot-Watt University. Her recent research projects explored various aspects of museum translations, including how museum texts interact with visitors, how national identities are embedded in museum texts, and how narratives of trauma travel through time in memorial museums. Her articles on the topic of museum translation have been published in a range of interdisciplinary journals, including Translation Spaces, Museum and Society, Tourism Management, and East Asian Journal of Popular Culture.

Sharon Deane-Cox joined the University of Strathclyde as a Lecturer in Translation and Interpreting in October 2016, having previously held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship and various teaching fellowships at University of Edinburgh. Her research is anchored in the field of Translation Studies, but also intersects with a wide array of other disciplines, including Memory Studies, Holocaust Studies, Museum Studies, linguistics, and sociology. She is particularly interested in the translation of French individual and collective memories of occupation and deportation during WWII. She is author of the monograph Retranslation: Translation, Literature and Reinterpretation (Bloomsbury Academic, 2014) and a member of the IATIS Regional Workshop Committee.

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PANEL 07

PANEL 07: Crisis Communication and Translation

Panel Organizers:
Federico M. Federici (University College London)
Sharon O’Brien (Dublin City University)

Any crisis establishes a distinctive relationship of power between those in need of assistance and those who can provide aid, support, and medical assistance immediately and efficiently. In the context of international crises (defined in terms of cascading crises, where human-induced or natural hazards develop into major disasters that have significant impact on the society), the power of language becomes extremely significant yet the role of language mediators remains vaguely defined and understudied. Coordination in relief and humanitarian operations depends on efficient and prompt communication, the lack of which is recognized as the most common obstacle to coordinating efforts and resources in responding to emergencies by the international community (Harvard Humanitarian Initiative 2011) and in ground-breaking scholarship focusing on interpreting (Moser-Mercer and Bali 2007; Moser-Mercer et al. 2014; Tipton 2011) and translation (Federici 2016; Cadwell and O’Brien 2016; O’Brien 2016).

Contributions to this panel might address the following themes:

  • Crisis communication: the position of translation and interpreting
  • Language policies in response to crises in multilingual scenarios
  • Professional translators and non-professional translators in crises
  • Technological aids supporting crisis communication for interpreters and for translators
  • Translation and translator training for crisis response
  • Accessing reliable health-related content from a multiplicity of languages in crises
  • Multilingual communication as part of resilience, response and preparedness

For informal enquiries: sharon.obrien@dcu.ie

Bio-note of Panel Organizers:
Federico Federici is Reader in Translation Studies at University College London, UK. Previously, he founded and directed the EMT MA in Translation Studies at Durham University, UK (2008-2014), where he also founded and directed the Centre for Intercultural Mediation. He served as member of the Board of the European Master’s in Translation Network (2011-2014). His research focuses on translators and interpreters as intercultural mediators, on translators working in crises, and on reception of translated texts (as in his edited volume Mediating Emergencies and Conflicts 2016). He is involved in projects focusing on translators working in crises. From 2005 he has organised the ‘Translating Voices’ conference series, which focuses on the topics of minority and regional languages, with particular focus on risks, disasters and regional crises.

Sharon O’Brien is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies Translation Studies at Dublin City University. Her research to date has focused on the interaction between translators and technology (including Translation Memory and Machine Translation), cognitive aspects of translation, research methods, including eye tracking and keyboard logging, localisation and content authoring. She was Director of the Centre for Translation and Textual Studies (www.ctts.dcu.ie) from 2013-2017 and a funded investigator in the cross-institutional research centre Adapt (adaptcentre.ie). More recently, she has worked on the topic of translation in crisis scenarios (O’Brien 2016; Cadwell & O’Brien 2016). She is coordinator of the EU-funded project Interact – International Network on Crisis Translation.

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PANEL 08

PANEL 08: Translation and Space/Place

Panel Organizer:
Sue-Ann Harding (Hamad bin Khalifa University)

Questions of space and place are key features of narrative theory in which I have held a long-running research interest, and which informs my present research on reading, translating and recovering alternative narratives of natural and urban landscapes in Qatar. This research investigates how travellers, visitors, residents and citizens of Qatar have sought to ‘read’, or make sense of the landscape, acting, effectively as translators as they de-code for themselves and other audiences what they encounter during their sojourn in the country. Like social-narrative theory itself, theories of space and place are also rising to the attention of some Translation Studies scholars, as evident in recent publications such as Sherry Simon’s Cities in Translation (Routledge, 2012) and the Translation Studies Special Issue on ‘The City as Translation Zone’ (Routledge, 2014) edited by Sherry Simon and Michael Cronin, and in translation studies research interested in border crossings, travel, sites of memory and museums. Spatiality, human geography and phenomenology are also attracting scholars across disciplines, including those working in anthropology, archaeology, (comparative) literature, critical theory, ecocriticism, geography and with material and intangible cultures. Place and space are indeed rich sites for innovative, interdisciplinary exchanges that seek to further our understanding and experiences of the physical worlds we inhabit and traverse.

This panel aims to provide a platform in which these themes can be explored by translation studies and other scholars seeking to learn from each other. Translation, however broadly defined, remains inherent to our decoding, naming and narrating of places, and the panel aims to explore not only concrete (rather than metaphorical) sites of translation but also theories of translation, movement and spatiality and ways in which they can inform and enrich each other. Topics that could be addressed as part of this panel include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Landscape in translated literature
  • Performative and activist translation on contested sites and over contested narratives
  • Sites of translation: urban landscapes; borders, boundaries and barriers; de-territorialised zones (of conflict)
  • Translating geography and cartography
  • Translating pilgrimage
  • Translation and ecocriticism
  • Translation and historical travel and exploration narratives
  • Translation and movements of people and goods: migration flows, refugee camps, trade routes
  • Translation and practices of naming and (re)labelling physical landscapes
  • Translation and travel
  • Translation at sites of memory and memorial

For informal enquiries: sharding@hbku.edu.qa

Bio-note of Panel Organizer:
Sue-Ann Harding holds a PhD in Translation Studies and Russian and, since 2012, has worked as an Assistant Professor at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Qatar, where she teaches core courses in translation studies, translation theory and research methods. Her research interests are in the areas of translation and social narrative theory with a particular interest in sites of conflict and narrative contestation. She is the author of Beslan: Six Stories of the Siege, and several articles in leading journals, including Meta, The Translator, Target, Perspectives and The Russian Review. Sue-Ann is the Reviews Editor for The Translator, an ARTIS Associate and Chair of the Executive Council for the International Association of Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS). She is due to take up a position as Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies at Queen’s University, Belfast in May 2017.

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PANEL 09

PANEL 09: Translating Development: The Importance of Language(s) in Processes of Social Transformation in Developing Countries

Panel Organizers:
Hilary Footitt (University of Reading)
Kobus Marais (University of the Free State)
Carmen Delgado Luchner (University of Reading & University of the Free State)
Wine Tesseur (University of Reading)

The majority of the world’s population lives in emerging or developing countries. Most of these countries are highly multilingual and present a wealth of institutionalised and informal translation and interpreting (T&I) practices. In settings where many citizens have limited mastery of the official language of their country, translation can play an important developmental role by contributing to the emergence of shared representations and social forms. This role can only be understood by adopting a non-reductionist perspective, that takes into account the plurality of cultural, political and economic factors that influence how populations experience development.

However, compared with industrialised market economy countries (IMEC), developing countries also generally experience more acute limitations of skills, material and financial resources. This has implications for the practical implementation of multilingualism and the potential for professional T&I. National governments, multilateral organisations and foreign donors have been trying to address these limitations through a variety of national development initiatives and international aid. Development work has in turn given rise to its own practices of translation, interpreting and cultural mediation, including monolingual practices of ‘translation’ of local reality into international ‘development speak’. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs), in particular, have placed increasing emphasis on participatory development approaches which rest on their ability to communicate successfully across the linguistic and cultural divide that often separates them from project beneficiaries.

This interdisciplinary panel aims to establish a dialogue between translation studies, development anthropology, international relations and cultural studies, in order to address the nexus between translation/interpreting and development from three complementary angles: theory, practice and pedagogy. Contributors will discuss the importance of translation in the social transformations developing countries are experiencing, the specific translation practices produced by development projects, and the implications for translator and interpreter training in development contexts.

Suggestions of topics that might be addressed as part of this panel:

  • The role of T&I in the emergence of social and cultural forms in development contexts
  • T&I in the context of the development mandate of community media
  • T&I in Public Health and other essential sectors in development contexts
  • The identity and role of language intermediaries in development projects
  • Translators and interpreters as development brokers and knowledge producers
  • Translator and interpreter training for development contexts
  • Development-related constraints for the T&I professions
  • Development aid and the promotion of the English language

For informal enquiries: c.delgadoluchner@reading.ac.uk

Bio-note of Panel Organizers:
Hilary Footitt is Research Professor at the Department of Modern Languages and European Studies of the University of Reading, UK. She was the Principal Investigator for the AHRC ‘Languages at War’ project (2008-2011), which explored the ways in which foreign languages became part of the institution of war, in intelligence, in military-civilian relations, and in displaced communities. She is currently the PI for the AHRC project ‘The Listening Zones of NGOs’ (2015-2018), which focuses on the role of languages and cultural knowledge in the policies and practices of development NGOs.

Kobus Marais is Associate Professor of translation studies in the Department of Linguistics and Language practice of University of the Free State, South Africa. His research explores the links between translation theory, semiotics/biosemiotics and development studies, and aims to deepen our understanding of what it means for a group (of people) to develop. In 2014, he published the book Translation Theory and Development studies: A Complexity Theory Approach, which was awarded the UFS book prize for Distinguished Scholarship. In this book, he namely examines the links between translation and development and the role of the informal economy for translation studies.

Carmen Delgado Luchner is a post-doctoral researcher in interpreting studies. Her current research project, funded though an Early Postdoc.Mobility scholarship from the Swiss National Science Foundation, focuses on the role of language brokers in development projects, in collaboration with the teams of Prof. Footitt (UK) and Prof. Marais (South Africa). Her doctoral dissertation (University of Geneva) focused on the challenges of conference interpreter training in Africa, which she analysed through an ethnographic case study at the University of Nairobi, Kenya.

Wine Tesseur is a postdoctoral research assistant on the AHRC project ‘The Listening Zones of NGOs’. Her primary research interest in is language and translation policy at NGOs. Her doctoral dissertation focused on translation policies at the human rights NGO Amnesty International and on how translation and translation policy impact on an organisation’s message and voice as it is spread around the world. In addition to translation studies, Wine has an interest in sociolinguistics, development work, anthropology, and cultural studies.

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PANEL 10

PANEL 10: Audiovisual Translation as Cross-cultural Mediation – New Trajectories for Translation and Cultural Mobility?

Panel Organizers:
Marie-Noëlle Guillot (University of East Anglia)
Louisa Desilla (University College London)
Maria Pavesi (University of Pavia)
Patrick Zabalbeascoa (Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona)

How effective are the linguistic, pragmatic and other adaptive practices in evidence in audiovisual translation as tools for linguistic and cultural representation within the multimodal film medium, what is their cross-cultural impact and, ultimately, their intercultural reach?

These are the overarching questions that the proposed panel will address. They are underpinned by two complementary sets of research concerns, relating respectively to description and reception processes in mainstream AVT:

  • What are the main features of these adaptive practices?
  • How are they perceived and reacted to by audiences?

With the ever broader global dissemination and consumption of mainstream media and cultural products mediated through translation, these questions are increasingly critical. Specifically, there is a great deal of research ground to cover to systematise our understanding of how communicative practices are embodied in AVT, and how the interlingual representations they convey affect audiences’ responses to otherness.

There has been work in description, with input from linguistic disciplines like pragmatics and cross-cultural pragmatics and studies of communicative practices and their interlingual representation (e.g. Pavesi for dubbing, Guillot for subtitling, for example, and e.g. 2013 and 2017a respectively) and narrative aspects and characterization (see Guillot 2017b for an overview). AV texts’ creative capacity as meaning-making resources in their own right within the multi-semiotic context of AV products has been a strong emergent theme, fuelled by input from amateur practice (see e.g. Perez-Gonzalez 2012), and in research by new interdisciplinary takes, on participation framework and audience positioning, for example (e.g. Messerli 2017). It is a long way from being fully mapped out, or understood in all its implications, and needs to develop critical mass.

As regards reception, research into interpretation and responses to AV-mediated products is barely in its infancy from the perspective of cross-cultural understanding, with only sporadic incursions to date (e.g. Desilla 2014, De Pablos 2015). It stands to benefit from psycholinguistic input from studies into accessibility practices drawing on the latest technology (AD, SDH; eye tracking, neuroimaging/EEG technology, etc.) and applications to performance and physiological studies (see overview in Kruger 2016, for example, and contributions to Perego 2012, among others). There is know-how to be tapped from cultural and film studies in probing AVT as cultural exchange within its complex multimodal embeddings (Zabalbeascoa 2008 and others), and a channel for intercultural literacy (see e.g. Mingant 2010). There is a phenomenal challenge ahead of us still, however, in accounting for perceptual responses to AVT-mediated cultural products in all their expressive idiosyncrasies, including cultural a-synchrony between source context and target linguistic medium, and thus for the linguistic and cultural adaptability and mobility of audiences’ cross- and intercultural responses.

Other questions of relevance to cultural mobility and intercultural literacy are typical asymmetries in the languages and cultures represented via AVT, and in the pairs of languages involved, with English taking precedence, while in research the bulk of work has, conversely, been undertaken largely by researchers from non-native English backgrounds.

Taking forward the complex research agenda outlined in this brief overview calls for a pooling of resources and research within an interdisciplinary framework that it is the aim of this panel to foster. Contributions are invited on any of the themes below and related issues:

  • Audiovisual translation in a multilingual society
  • Linguistic and cultural representation in translated film
  • The perception of the other through audiovisual products
  • Multilingualism in subtitling and dubbing
  • Audiovisual translation and the promotion of diversity, tolerance and respect for difference
  • Linguistic and cultural literacy through audiovisual translation in the contemporary world
  • Immersion in foreign film as cultural mobility
  • Amateur practices across borders in fansubbing/dubbing

For informal enquiries: M.Guillot@uea.ac.uk

Bio-note of Panel Organizers:
Marie-Noëlle Guillot is a Senior Lecturer in French, Linguistics and Translation Studies at the University of East Anglia (UEA), Norwich, in the UK. The focus of her research has shifted from applied linguistics to cross-cultural pragmatics, and latterly to audiovisual translation from a cross-cultural pragmatics perspective. She has a particular interest in cross-cultural representation, and has explored the question in museum translation and in film subtitling. It is the main theme of the 2016-17 ARHC-funded international network project for which she is the Principal investigator – Tapping the Power of Foreign Language Films: Audiovisual Translation as Cross-cultural Mediation (AHRC Grant AH/N007026/1).
Her publications on the topic include ‘Film subtitles from a cross-cultural pragmatics perspective: issues of linguistic and cultural representation’ (The Translator, 2010), ‘Stylization and representation in subtitles: can less be more?’ (Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, 2012), ‘Film subtitles and the conundrum of linguistic and cultural representation: a methodological blind spot’ (in Luginbühl and Stefan eds, 2012), ‘Cross-cultural pragmatics and translation: the case of museum texts as interlingual representation’ (in House ed., 2014), ‘Cross-cultural pragmatics and audiovisual translation’ (in Ramos Pinto and Gambier eds, Target Special Issue ‘Audiovisual Translation: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges’, 2016), ‘Communicative rituals and audiovisual translation – representation of otherness in film subtitles’ (META, 2017), ‘Subtitling and Dubbing in Telecinematic Text’ (in Locher and Jucker eds, de Gruyter Handbooks of Pragmatics: Pragmatics of Fiction, 2017), ‘Subtitling on the cusp of its futures’ (in Pérez-González (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Audiovisual Translation Studies, fc. 2017 (submitted).

Louisa Desilla. After obtaining a first-class BA in English Language and Literature from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Dr Louisa Desilla was awarded an MA in Translation Studies (2005) and a PhD in Translation and Intercultural Studies (2009) by the University of Manchester. Her principal research interests reside in the pragmatics of intercultural communication and audiovisual translation. Through her doctoral studies, she has developed a strong interest in audience reception of subtitled/dubbed films. She is currently co-investigator on the AHRC-funded networking project entitled Tapping the Power of Foreign Films: Audiovisual Translation as Cross-cultural Mediation in collaboration with the University of East Anglia. She has published in international academic journals in the fields of Linguistics and Translation.

Maria Pavesi, Ph.D., is Professor of English language and Linguistics at the University of Pavia, where she also teaches Audiovisual Translation. Her research has addressed several topics in English applied linguistics, focusing on film translation, orality in dubbing with special attention to personal, spatial and social deixis, and second language acquisition via audiovisual input. In these areas she has published widely, both nationally and internationally. Her most recent publications include the co-edited volume The Languages of Dubbing. Mainstream Audiovisual Translation in Italy, Peter Lang, Bern 2014, “Formulaicity in and across film dialogue: clefts as translational routines”, Across Languages and Cultures, 2016,17/1 and, with Elisa Ghia, “The language of dubbing and its comprehension by learner-viewers. An empirical study”, Across Languages and Cultures, 2016 (17/2). Maria Pavesi was the coordinator of the international excellence project “English and Italian audiovisual language: translation and language learning” (2010-2012), which updated and developed the Pavia Corpus of Film Dialogue, a parallel and comparable corpus now comprising more than 650,000 words of Anglophone and dubbed and original Italian film transcriptions.

Patrick Zabalbeascoa is a Principal Lecturer in Translation Studies at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain. He lectures in translation theory and audiovisual screen translation, mostly from English into Spanish and Catalan. His research is focused on translation studies, with special attention to the television and the cinema. He also has numerous publications in translation theory, an area in which he has developed a model of priorities and restrictions, and proposed alternative approaches to traditional views on so-called translation techniques, or shifts. Some of his most recent thinking and publications have to with developing the idea of mapping translation solutions through a system of binary branching, and also mapping audiovisual text components on coordinates defined by an audio/visual axis, and a verbal / non-verbal axis. He has worked on several EC funded projects and Thematic Networks (LeViS http://levis.cti.gr, SLL http://www.sublanglearn.utu.fi, ClipFlair http://clipflair.net, TraFilM http://trafilm.net, The translation of multilingual films in Spain.)

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PANEL 11

PANEL 11: The Cultural Mobility of Queer Knowledges through Translation

Panel Organizers:
Ting Guo (University of Exeter)
Jonathan Evans (University of Portsmouth)

The translation of LGBT and queer texts has been a focus of work in translation studies since the early 2000s (e.g. Harvey 2003), but recent work (e.g. Domínguez Ruvalcaba 2016) has questioned the colonial nature of translations of the notion of queer, asking whether the idea of ‘queerness’ is itself a North American and European construct that is difficult to apply in other cultural situations (particularly Latin America). Translations of the notion of homosexuality have been re-examined as part of the recent questioning of translations of sexology (e.g. Bauer 2009, 2015; Guo 2016) which ask how Western notions were negotiated and adapted when key texts were translated. Particularly at risk in this process are ‘local knowledges’ (Halberstam 2011: 9-11), that is, indigenous conceptualisations of what it means to be LGBT and/or queer that are specific to the host culture, which stand to be elided or forgotten by the importation of new knowledge. This panel will investigate how notions of queerness move across cultures and how they are negiotiated, modified and appropriated by the host culture. These moves may take the form of the translation of scientific studies of sexuality (from the work of sexologists like Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis or the Kinsey reports to more recent scientific work), the translation of literary and cultural texts that depict LGBT or queer characters (such as the Taiwanese movie Blue Gate Crossing or the British film Weekend), the circulation of queer theory, the culture of gay/lesbian bars in different countries, among other topics. The aim is to discuss not only the textual adaptations taking place, but the cultural reception of these texts in order to better understand how these complex and sensitive ideas are negotiated as they circulate around the globe and how local populations digest their cultural mobility.

Topics:

  • Translation of ideas of gay, lesbian, queer across different cultures.
  • Use of foreign texts to initiate or develop discussions of LGBT/queer themes.
  • Negotiation of foreign ideas about sexualities.
  • Integration of local knowledges about sexualities in translations of foreign texts.
  • Cultural mobility of LGBT/queer institutions such as gay bars, LGBT student associations, etc.
  • Censorship and ways around it in relation to LGBT topics.
  • Comparative notions of queerness.
  • Queer theory in translation.

For informal enquiries: jonathan.evans@port.ac.uk

Bio-note of Panel Organizers:
Jonathan Evans is Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies at the University of Portsmouth. He is author of The Many Voices of Lydia Davis (EUP, 2016) and co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Politics (forthcoming 2018). He has published articles in journals such as Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance, Translation Studies, Journal of Specialised Translation, Translation and Literature, and TTR.

Ting Guo is Lecturer in the Department of Modern Languages, University of Exeter. She is the author of Surviving Violent Conflict: Chinese Interpreters in the Second-Sino Japanese War (1931-45) (2016). She has published in journals such as Literature Compass, Translation Studies and Translation Quarterly.

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PANEL 12

PANEL 12: Advances in Discourse Analysis in Translation Studies: Theoretical Models and Applications

Panel Organizers:
Jeremy Munday (University of Leeds)
Binhua Wang (University of Leeds)
Meifang Zhang (University of Macau)

Discourse analysis in its various forms (language use above the sentence, meaning-making in whole texts in specific social and cultural contexts) deals with the entire act of linguistic and cultural communication and the construction and representation of identity. It has long been applied in translation studies to explain the expression of ideology and to track the translator/interpreter’s cultural intervention. This panel is the continuation of the successful discourse analysis panel at IATIS 5 and the roundtables held in Macao (2012), Leeds (2014) and the University of New South Wales (2016). It aims to take stock of recent developments in the field and to explore, through the methodologies of discourse analysis, how cultural intervention is conducted in translation and interpreting.

While we are open to paper proposals in any aspect related to the panel theme, we particularly welcome submissions for the following areas:

  • Manifestations (linguistic and other) of translators’/interpreters’ cultural intervention.
  • Analysis of different types of multimodal and audiovisual texts.
  • Analysis of interpreting and of the interpreter’s positioning.
  • The development of new models and the enhancement of existing models of discourse analysis in translation studies.
  • The construction of identity in translation.
  • Translated discourse in institutions.
  • The translation of media, social media and political discourse.
  • Markers of appraisal/evaluation and the interpersonal meta-function.
  • Discourse analysis as a means of identifying audience interpretations.

Above all, we hope that the wide range of potential contributions will open up interaction with other panels around the main theme of the conference.

For informal enquiries: B.H.W.Wang@leeds.ac.uk

Bio-note of Panel Organizers:
Jeremy Munday is Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Leeds. His specialisms are: linguistic translation theories, discourse analysis (including systemic functional linguistics), ideology and translation, and Latin American literature in translation. He is author of Introducing Translation Studies (Routledge, 4th edition 2016) and Evaluation in Translation: A study of critical points in translator decision-making (Routledge, 2012).

Binhua Wang is currently Associate Professor and programme director of MA Conference Interpreting and Translation Studies in the Centre for Translation Studies at the University of Leeds. Previously he was assistant professor in the Centre for Translation Studies at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and associate professor and head of the Department of Interpreting at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. As a specialist in English/Chinese interpreting, he is Fellow of the “Chartered Institute of Linguists” (CIOL) and expert member (Fellow) of the “Translators Association of China” (TAC). His research interests lie in various aspects of interpreting and translation studies, in which he supervises PhD students. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles in interpreting and translation studies including nearly 40 in refereed CSSCI/Core journals and SSCI/A&HCI journals such as Interpreting, Meta, Perspectives and Babel, and over a dozen in peer-reviewed collections. He has also authored a monograph (A Descriptive Study of Norms in Interpreting, 2013), co-edited a collection (Interpreting in China: New Trends and Challenges, 2010) and co-translated the book Introducing Interpreting Studies into Chinese (2010).

Meifang Zhang is Professor and coordinator of MA in Translation Studies at the University of Macau. She is Vice President of the Macau Federation of Translators and Interpreters, and council member of the Chinese Translators’ Association. She is also a life member of the Hong Kong Translators’ Society, and a member of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies. She was organizer of the First International Conference on Discourse and Translation (2002 Guangzhou), the International Round Table Seminar on Discourse and Translation (2012 Macao), and co-organizer of the 2014 International Round Table Seminar on Discourse and Translation (2014 Leeds), as well as of the Panel on Innovation in Discourse Analytic Approaches to Translation Studies at the 2015 IATIS (Belo, Horizonte, Brazil). Meifang has published widely in translation and intercultural studies. She is now co-editor of Babel: International Journal of Translation and serves on several editorial boards of refereed journals.

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PANEL 13

PANEL 13: Interpreting, Translation and English as a Lingua Franca (ITELF)

Panel Organizer:
Michaela Albl-Mikasa (ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences)

The global spread of the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF) has obvious repercussions on translation and interpreting. While international contacts in the 20th century were predominantly established and maintained by means of translation and interpreting, the 21st century is marked by an overwhelming use of ELF. The challenge is not that interpreters and translators are made redundant, but that the number of source texts and source speeches produced in nonnative English is growing exponentially. The proposed panel looks at the academic study of ELF in relation to translation and interpreting (T&I). The study at the intersection of Interpreting, Translation and English as a Lingua Franca (ITELF) has only been emerging over the last 10 years. Combining research into ELF with interpreting and translation studies, it investigates the consequences of the growing importance of ELF for the translation and interpreting professions, for individual translators and interpreters as well as for T&I processes.

The focus of this thematic session is ITELF in a rather broad sense in order to gather the studies and findings in an as yet small subdiscipline.

Topics presenters are invited to address include:

  • The wider (socio-economic) impact on the profession in terms of market developments
  • The immediate effects on cognitive processing (difficulties, decisions, strategies, performance)
  • Changing perceptions and attitudes regarding the translator’s/interpreter’s status, role, and self-concept
  • ITELF-related developments in the EU (e.g., the introduction of an editing unit by the DG Translation)
  • ITELF-related developments in non-EU regions of the world

For informal enquiries: albm@zhaw.ch

Bio-note of Panel Organizer:
Michaela Albl-Mikasa is Professor of Interpreting Studies at ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences. She holds degrees from the universities of Heidelberg (Dipl.-Dolm. In Conference Interpreting), Cambridge (MPhil in International Relations) and Tübingen (Dr. phil. in Applied Linguistics). Her research and publications focus on ITELF (interpreting, translation and English as a lingua franca), the cognitive foundations of interpreting, the development of interpreting expertise, and medical interpreting. She is involved in professional development courses for community interpreters as well as collaborative projects with Asian partners, namely the ASEAN-based Association of Asian Translation Industry (AATI) and China’s Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU). She is a member of the European Network of Public Service Interpreting (ENPSIT) and the English as a Lingua Franca Research Network (ELF-ReN). She is also a member of the recently elected Executive Council of IATIS (International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies)
(Homepage: https://www.zhaw.ch/en/linguistics/forschung/dolmetschwissenschaft/)

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PANEL 14

PANEL 14: Agents of Globalisation and Cultural Mobility: How do Sports Interpreting and Media Interpreting Relate to Each Other?

Panel Organizers:
Roger Baines (University of East Anglia)
Annalisa Sandrelli (Università degli Studi Internazionali di Roma)
Pedro Jesús Castillo Ortiz (Heriot-Watt University)

The bulk of existing research into, and training for, interpreting relates to conference and community/public service interpreting. There are consequently a number of interpreting sectors which are relatively under-researched, of which media interpreting is one. Despite a number of relevant publications focusing on specific aspects of media interpreting (e.g. Castillo 2015, Falbo 2011, Gieve and Norton 2007, Katan and Straniero Sergio 2001, 2003, Kurz 1990, 1997, Mack 2002, Straniero Sergio 1999, 2003), there is a great deal more work that could be done in order to encompass the diversity and complexity of settings, productions and practices involving media interpreting.

By way of example, sport is a domain of major social and economic activity which affects the everyday lives of citizens all over the world, and is subject to very high media attention. In a wide range of sports at both elite and non-elite level, the effects of globalization have, over the past 25 years or so, contributed to both a major increase in the movement of migrant sport professionals and, in particular at elite level, the media coverage of these sport professionals. What goes hand in hand with the cultural mobility of these migrant athletes is, very often, a need for interpreting to help these agents of globalization communicate in the new cultural contexts into which they move. Similar trends can be seen in other settings that attract media attention, including film, music, current affairs and entertainment.
The aim of the panel is, therefore, to critically examine media interpreting in sports and in any other contexts which can play a relevant role in the processes of globalisation and cultural mobility.The panel also intends to highlight how these highly visible settings are key in conceptualising interpreting as a profession and a social practice (thus contributing to a better definition), and seeks to identify issues which may be common to a wide range of media interpreting contexts in order to develop scholarship in this field.

The panel convenors welcome contributions based on authentic empirical data collected in a variety of media contexts and analysed via a wide range of theoretical tools, including discourse analysis, pragmatics, conversation analysis, corpus-based interpreting studies, and so on.

A non-exhaustive list of suggested topics that intending contributors might address:

  • Sports media interpreting scenarios: an overview of settings and interpreting practices, highlighting the specific challenges of each (press conferences, flash interviews, interviews, etc.; radio, TV, new media; interpreting modes: bi-directional consecutive, simultaneous in the booth, whispered simultaneous, dialogue interpreting, remote…);
  • Institutional organisation of interpreter-mediated sports media events: what is the interplay between media outlets (particularly specialist sports media) and sports organisations (institutions, associations, clubs, etc.) when dealing with interlingual communication? Who hires the interpreters and how (selection criteria, situational and technical arrangements, involvement – or otherwise – of the interpreter in the organisation… )? What are the implications of this?
  • Professionalisation: media and sports industry awareness of the value of professional interpreters. What would an adapted code of practice look like in this context? What does ‘professionalisation’ mean in this context?
  • Training: what can the sports media industry teach interpreters/interpreting trainers and trainees, and vice versa?
  • Social and cultural practices, as well as media features, which tend to receive high media attention globally, such as sports, music, film, current affairs and entertainment, with the aim of reflecting the state-of-the-art of current research in media interpreting;
  • Quality: user perceptions of quality; parameters to measure quality in media interpreting;
  • Ethical concerns: media pressure/commercial pressure; working conditions; status of interpreters; power dynamics; confidentiality.

For informal enquiries: R.W.Baines@uea.ac.uk; annalisa.sandrelli@unint.eu; P.J.Castillo@hw.ac.uk

Bio-note of Panel Organizers:
Roger Baines is a Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies and French Language at the University of East Anglia. Relevant publications: (forthcoming) ‘Translation and Interpreting for the media in the English Premier League’ in Baumgarten, S., Cornellà-Detrell, J. & Ying, Y. (eds.) Translation and Power in Intercultural Dialogue (Bristol: Multilingual Matters); ‘Translation, Globalization and the Elite Migrant Athlete’ in The Translator (19, 2), pp. 207-28 21; ‘The Journalist, the Translator, the Player and his Agent: games of (mis)representation and (mis)translation in British media reports about non-anglophone football players’ in Maher, B. & Wilson, R. (eds.), Words, Images and Performances in Translation (London and New York: Continuum), pp. 100-111.

Annalisa Sandrelli is Lecturer in English Language and Translation at Università degli Studi Internazionali in Rome. Relevant publications: Sandrelli, A. (forthcoming) ‘Interpreter-mediated football press conferences: a study on the questioning and answering strategies’, in C. Bendazzoli, B. Defrancq & M. Russo (eds), Making way in Corpus-based Interpreting Studies. What do we know about interpreting thanks to corpora? (Singapore:© Springer Science+Business Media Singapore); (2017) ‘Interaction in interpreter-mediated football press conferences’, in M. Biagini, E. Davitti & A. Sandrelli (eds) Special Issue of the Journal of Pragmatics: Participation in Interpreter-mediated Interaction. Shifting along a Multidimensional Continuum, 107, pp. 178–194; (2015) ‘And maybe you can translate also what I say’: interpreters in football press conferences”. The Interpreters’ Newsletter 20 (Special Issue on Dialogue Interpreting), pp. 87-105; (2012)a ‘Introducing FOOTIE (Football in Europe): simultaneous interpreting at football press conferences’, in F. Straniero Sergio and C.Falbo (eds) Breaking Ground in Corpus-based Interpreting Studies (Bern: Peter Lang), pp. 119-153; (2012)b ‘Interpreting football press conferences: the FOOTIE corpus’, in Cynthia J. Kellett Bidoli (ed.) Interpreting across Genres: multiple research perspectives (Trieste: EUT), pp. 78-101.

Pedro Jesús Castillo Ortiz is Assistant Professor in the Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies at Heriot-Watt University. Relevant publications: Castillo, P. (2015) ‘Interpreting for the Mass Media’ in Mikkelson, H. and Jourdenais, R. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Interpreting, pp. 280-301; Castillo, P. and Comte, G. (2010) The Role of the Broadcaster in an Interpreter-Mediated Radio Interview. [DVD Documentary], copyleft license by Creative Commons; O’Rourke, B. and Castillo Ortiz, P. (2009), ‘Top-down or bottom-up language policy: Public service interpreting in the Republic of Ireland, Scotland and Spain’ in R. de Pedro Ricoy, I. Perez & C. Wilson (eds.) Interpreting and Translating in Public Service Settings: Policy, Pedagogy and Practice (Manchester: St. Jerome), pp. 33-51.

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PANEL 15

PANEL 15: Exploring Cultural Mobility through Visual and Performance Art

Panel Organizers:
Gabriela Saldanha (Birmingham University)
Cristina Marinetti (Cardiff University)

Performance and visual artists have started to engage with translation and interpreting as a theme and using translation as a tool to reflect their aesthetic and political concerns with cultural mobility, understood both as a force of ‘dislocation and displacement’ and as an opportunity for ‘dialogue and encounter’ (Sheller & Urry, 2005: 208). Grounded in a wide range of theoretical approaches (such as postcolonialism, deconstruction and field theory) and using very different art forms, artists are exploring some of the key questions that occupy translation theorists. Connelly’s (2015, 2016) practice-based research uses text, sound and live-performance to explore translation both as an embodied, subjective and collaborative process, whilst also interrogating other artists working with this subject – such as Holmkvist and Zdjelar – in an attempt to provoke new ways of thinking about translation. Holmkvist reflects on power relations in interpreting using film and Zdjelar explores the role of multilingualism in subject and identity formation using video and performance. Other relevant work is that of Heather, who uses multilingual choral compositions to celebrate the work of interpreters, and Vidal and Chamarette, who employ slightly different means, intersemiotic and inter-artistic translation, to explore whether an interest in foreign languages can be developed through the ludic use of art. The range and quality of the artistic work opens up avenues for public and political engagement with monolingual and multilingual audiences in a way that is beyond the reach of the translation studies academic community on their own. The aim of this panel is thus to open up a dialogue between artistic practice and translation so as to enable a more comprehensive exploration of the material and performative complexities of translation and interpreting, probing the potential of artistic practice to create new knowledge or present existing knowledge in a new light. The panel offers a space where academics can respond to such artistic and inter-artistic practices, exploring the role of art in relation to current concerns in translation studies. We also encourage contributions from practitioners wishing to discuss the conceptualization of translation and interpreting in their work and how it fits within contemporary translation studies research. Topics can include, but are not limited to:

  • Heterolingualism as an artistic tool
  • Translating art across languages and cultures
  • The role of the translator/interpreter in the art work
  • Communicating translation through artistic practice
  • Embodying/Visualizing translation and interpreting
  • Engaging with new audiences through transdisciplinary work
  • Translation as a performance art
  • Translation myths in the arts/Art myths in translation
  • Stabilizing meaning in intersemiotic translation

For informal enquiries: MarinettiC@cardiff.ac.uk

Bio-note of Panel Organizers:
Gabriela Saldanha is a Lecturer in Translation Studies at the University of Birmingham. She is co-author, with Sharon O’Brien, of Research Methodologies in Translation Studies and co-editor, with Mona Baker, of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. Her main area of research is translation stylistics and she is currently working on a monograph provisionally entitled Translation as Performance to be published in 2019 by Routledge.

Cristina Marinetti is a Lecturer in Translation Studies at Cardiff University. She has written on translation theory in relation to identity and performance, on drama and multimedia translation and on the interface between translation theory and practice. Her most recent EU-funded project W.I.S.E., a partnership between educational institutions and the cultural sector, explored the relationship between language, identity and memory through story-telling, translation and performance connecting communities in Germany, Italy, Poland and the UK (http://www.wisecampus.eu/).

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PANEL 16-i

PANEL 16-i: Translation and Citizenship: Communication and Mobility in (Emerging) Multilingual Democracies

Panel Organizers:
Bieke Nouws (KU Leuven)
Heleen van Gerwen (KU Leuven)
Marie Bourguignon (KU Leuven)

Throughout history, more often than not governments have had to deal with populations composed of more than one language group. It was from the late 18th century onwards, however, that multilingualism was increasingly considered an issue in Europe. Enlightened and Romantic nationalists often dreamed of a shared, national and official lingua franca, yet reality still involved a lot of translation, with the translation sector possibly even reaching a zenith in many emerging and centralising 19th-century nation-states. Inter- and intranational mobility of individuals across language borders complicated administration, challenging policy makers to enable the mobility of ideas and information despite these borders, as modern, self-respecting states owed to themselves – and still do. Democratic participation, equal access to public services and equal treatment before the Law are but a few features of such states, and of supranational regimes such as the EU, that require adapted language and translation policies, given the inevitable discordance between (ever changing) language groups and national borderlines.

This panel wishes to lay bare and compare the various roles allocated to translation by democratic policy makers, and to explore in particular how translation was put forward (or rejected) as a means for promotion or impediment of social, political and cultural mobility and the circulation of information and ideas. Papers may include studies on translation policies in democratic nation-states or supranational regimes with democratic aims. We welcome studies on cases from all over the world and from the perspective of different research fields (translation studies, linguistics, history, political science, law…). Possible topics are listed below, but we will also consider other proposals that deal with translation in (emerging) democracies:

  • Translation as political legitimation.
  • Translation as a means of communication between government and citizens.
  • Translation and the development of a ‘civil society’.
  • Translation policies supporting certain (democratic) language policies.
  • The ‘need for translation’ and ‘right to translation’ as themes in political discourse.
  • Translation between unequal language groups (diglossia).
  • Democratic regimes, the ideal of ‘one language for one nation’ and the role of translation.
  • Democratic regimes and the idea of a ‘lingua franca’.

For informal enquiries: bieke.nouws@kuleuven.be

Bio-note of Panel Organizers:
Bieke Nouws holds an MA in history from the University of Antwerp and is currently preparing a PhD on translation politics in 19th-century Belgium at the University of Leuven. Her topics of interest are modern parliamentary history, Belgian history and the study of political language and discourse in the 19th and 20th century.

Heleen van Gerwen holds an MA in Western Literature from the University of Leuven. In her PhD research, she studies translation and transfer practices in the legal and administrative domains in Belgium (1830-1914), and their influence on the development of a Flemish legal language and culture.

Marie Bourguignon obtained MA degrees in Journalism and Law at the Université catholique de Louvain. In October 2015, she started preparing a PhD about formal and informal regulations on translation and other initiatives by the authorities to manage the need for translation and translation practices. Special attention is dedicated in her research to translation and notaries.

We are all three members of KU Leuven’s Translation and Intercultural Transfer research group and together, combining expertise from different disciplines, we try to unravel the mysteries of translation policies, politics and practices in 19th-century Belgium (1830-1914). The project is supervised by Literary and Translation Studies scholars Drs. Lieven D’hulst and Reine Meylaerts, and Human Rights Law professor Dr. Koen Lemmens.

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PANEL 16-ii

PANEL 16-ii: Cultural Translation, Democracy and the Universal

Panel Organizers:
Sarah Maitland (Goldsmiths, University of London)
David Johnston (Queen’s University Belfast)

For Love of Country? (1996) is a collection of essays curated by Martha Nussbaum on cosmopolitanism and the politics of national identity. In the aftermath of 9/11 and the subsequent ‘war on terror’, Nussbaum published a new introduction, noting how often the focus of national imaginations remains fixed on the needs and vulnerabilities of a local ‘us’ that is secured through a demonization of ‘them’. In her own contribution, entitled ‘Universality in Culture’ and which makes productive use of the trope of translation, Judith Butler wrote that while it would be of great consolation to return to some ready-made universal through which citizens should identify the perfect moral attitude in the face of their own, narrower concerns, the meaning of the universal is culturally contingent, working against its own claims to universalism (45). “The contemporary scene of cultural translation”, she writes, “emerges with the presupposition that the utterance does not have the same meaning everywhere, indeed that the utterance has become a scene of conflict (to such a degree, in fact, that we seek to prosecute the utterance in order, finally, to ‘fix’ its meaning and quell the conflicts to which it gives rise” (50). In the absence of a fixed meaning and a definitive reading there can be no final resolution of conflicting positions. “Without this final judgment”, she argues, “an interpretive dilemma remains, and it is that interpretive dilemma that is the dynamic mark of an emerging democratic process” (50-51).Following the Brexit vote in the UK, a change of government in the USA, the Eurozone and refugee crises in Europe and the rise of anti-immigrant populist and ethnic nationalist movements, there is now a renewed focus on the relationship between questions of nationality, identity, citizenship and belonging and the influence of globalisation. This panel will address these and other questions to consider the role of translation in the universalisation of culturally contingent modes of reason and its relationship to questions of identity and difference in the articulation of new democratic ideals.

Following the Brexit vote in the UK, a change of government in the USA, the Eurozone and refugee crises in Europe and the rise of anti-immigrant populist and ethnic nationalist movements, there is now a renewed focus on the relationship between questions of nationality, identity, citizenship and belonging and the influence of globalisation. This panel will address these and other questions to consider the role of translation in the universalisation of culturally contingent modes of reason and its relationship to questions of identity and difference in the articulation of new democratic ideals.

Contributors are invited to address one or more of the following questions:

  • In what ways does translation discourse universalise culturally-variant values and constructions under the guise of transparency?
  • How does translation relate to cultural mobility, when the consequence of translation is less, not more, diversity?
  • How does translation balance competing claims to the universal?
  • What happens to the cosmopolitan imagination if all translation, despite its claims to reaching outwards, is ultimately a journey homeward bound?
  • Does translation issue an implicit challenge to cosmopolitanism?
  • Does translation function as a tool of neoliberal globalisation and, if so, can it also offer new solutions for the “emerging democratic process” of which Butler writes?

For informal enquiries: s.maitland@gold.ac.uk

Bio-note of Panel Organizers:
Sarah Maitland is Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she leads the MA in Translation. Sarah is also a member of the Executive Council of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies and is author of various articles on cultural translation, translation philosophy and hermeneutics. Her current research focuses on the politics of recognition and its bearing on questions of ethics and justice in multicultural society. Her new book – entitled What is Cultural Translation? – examines these and other areas and is published by Bloomsbury.
As a professional theatre translator, Sarah has translated for Words without Borders magazine, the Martin E. Segal Theatre New York, the Theatre Royal Bath, the Unicorn and New Diorama theatres in London and the Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance. Her most recent work includes guest editing the December 2016 edition of Words without Borders entitled, ‘The World on Stage: Micro-Plays in Translation’. She is also an active member of Out of the Wings, hosted by King’s College London, a collective of theatre-makers, researchers, translators and academics united by a shared love of theatre and the possibilities of cross-border collaboration and exchange that are released when works for the stage are translated for new audiences.

David Johnston is Professor of Hispanic Studies and Director of Translation and Interpreting at Queen’s University, Belfast. His research centres around theatre, translation and performance. As such it is supported by the principles of practice of research, where both are seen to be mutually interrogating, forming together a bi-ocular focus that brings together theoretical models and paradigms with forms of cultural praxis. In this sense, translation is assessed as a creative and re-creative practice whose methods, scope and insights underpin a conception of the Humanities as both rooted and contextualised in the current moment, and alive to the challenges and shaping forces of diverse histories and geographies.
In addition to his academic writing, he is a multi-award winning translator for the stage. Described in the journal Comedia and Performance as ‘the writer of the most innovative translations of Spanish theatre in the twenty-first century’, he has written over thirty translations of Spanish, Latin American, French and Portuguese writers for professional performance, most of which have been published (by Oberon). His translations have been performed by the BBC, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Washington Shakespeare Theatre; in London at the Playhouse, the Trafalgar Studios, the Gate Theatre, the Royal Court, in the Abbey and Lyric in Ireland, in the Sacred Fools Theatre in Los Angeles, the LaMicroTheatre of New York, and the State Theatre in Melbourne. His recent radio adaptation of Juan Mayorga’s The Boy at the Back, broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 2015, was named BBC Audio Drama of the Year, and has been nominated for two Prix Europa. His adaptation of Don Quixote was performed last year at London’s Oval House Theatre, and he is currently working on a translation of the Spanish opera Luisa Fernanda for the Orchestra of New Spain, in Dallas, Texas.

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PANEL 17

PANEL 17: Interpreting in Conflict-related Scenarios

Panel Organizers:
Lucía Ruiz Rosendo (Université de Genève)
Marija Todorova (Hong Kong Baptist University)

Conflict between parties with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds is pervasive in human history and has always involved interpreters in the sense of intercultural and linguistic mediators. In the last decade, the important role played by interpreters in situations of conflict—in the events leading to such conflict, and in dealing with its aftermath—has been gaining increased interest among translation studies scholars and scholars from other fields. In this particular context, interpreters are not just enablers of communication by transferring content from one language into another; they are actors embedded in the communicative situation, and active partners in the process of communication.

Although interpreting became highly professionalized from the second half of the twentieth century, language brokering in conflict zones is still an unregulated occupation mainly pursued by untrained interpreters. Also, there is a lack of recognition of the specific role that interpreters in conflict situations play, including military interpreters, locally-recruited interpreters working for the military, interpreters working for humanitarian organisations, among others. The lack of regulation and recognition makes it difficult to design specific training programmes in interpreting in conflict-related settings. In fact, there is a need for specific elements to be more clearly defined, including the position of the interpreter in the communication process, the interpreting tasks to be performed, the skills needed to perform the job successfully, the type and extent of conflict-related training to be provided to interpreters, the type and extent of conflict-related duties that would be expected of the interpreter and, last but not least, issues related to ethics and neutrality.

The aim of this panel is to shed light on the positionality, status, neutrality, ethical issues, training issues, and working practices and procedures of interpreters in conflict zones in the different stages of the conflict. This panel especially welcomes research in the areas of interpreter positionality, ethics and neutrality in conflict zones with a special focus on working with vulnerable populations such as refugees, internally displaced people, minority populations, etc., in different regions and contexts.

Possible topics might include, but are not restricted to:

  • The positionality of the interpreter
  • Limits of neutrality
  • Ethical issues related to interpreting in conflict-related scenarios
  • Intercultural awareness for interpreters who work in conflict zones
  • Role of interpreters in conflict resolution and transformation
  • Specific training programmes
  • Interpreting for refugees, internally displaced people, vulnerable populations, etc.

For informal enquiries: Lucia.Ruiz@unige.ch

Bio-note of Panel Organizers:
Lucía Ruiz Rosendo studied Translation and Interpreting at the University of Granada. In 2006 she completed her doctoral work in conference interpreting. She worked as an interpreter trainer and researcher at the University Pablo de Olavide from 2004 to 2015. In 2015 she was appointed assistant professor at the FTI. Her main areas of research are interpreting in conflict zones and scenarios, simultaneous interpreting in the scientific field and interpreter training.

Marija Todorova holds a PhD in Translation Studies from the Hong Kong Baptist University and PhD in Conflict and Development studies from Skopje University. She has taken part in the establishment of the Translation Programme of the University American College Skopje, where she has taught in translation, interpreting and intercultural communication. In 2007 she was the recipient of the National Translation Award. Marija is an Executive Council member of IATIS. She is currently Adjunct Scholar at the Hong Kong Baptist University, Centre for Translation.

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PANEL 18

PANEL 18: Translation-Oriented Localisation Studies (TOLS): New Trends, Future Challenges

Panel Organizers:
Jesús Torres del Rey (Universidad de Salamanca)
Silvia Rodríguez Vázquez (Dublin City University)
Lucía Morado Vázquez (Université de Genève)
Emilio Rodríguez Vázquez de Aldana (Universidad de Salamanca)

The idea of localisation as a merely business-driven activity to reach international markets, as was the case when it emerged in the 1980s, has traditionally moved certain scholars to regard it as a separate area of knowledge from the already well-established Translation Studies. Over the last years, however, technology has dramatically shaped not only the translation profession in terms of processes, as reflected in the recently published IATIS Yearbook (Kenny 2017), but also regarding the nature, form and context of reception of the texts and products that need to be rendered multilingual, predominantly digital. Within this digitalised space, the boundaries between translation and localisation are now more blurred than ever, as the ultimate goal of the latter is to overcome communication barriers (linguistic, cultural and technical) facilitating a successful access to and user experience with multilingual content in digital, interactive and online platforms and devices.

Translation-Oriented Localisation Studies (TOLS) seek to provide an answer to this new reality by defining localisation as a translation-oriented technology-intensive task. In other words, TOLS’ approach to the localisation of digital products is two-fold: (i) it takes into account the concerns and the analytical aspects of the translation profession and discipline –the study of the product, process, function and applications of localisation, the cultural and linguistic transfer, and the communicative action; and (ii) it integrates, at the same time, key concepts and best practices from neighbour technical disciplines, including Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)-related fields, which are gaining ground as essential disciplinary companions (Torres del Rey and Rodríguez Vázquez 2016). In this context, we will promote discussions about cutting-edge theoretical and/or empirical research work covering new trends in the localisation profession (technology, products, processes) or addressing the challenges that these may lead to in terms of localisation training, knowledge and know-how, translators’ identity, socio-professional position and (dis)empowerment, localisation professionals’ social and cultural goals, and the target end user experience.

This panel will welcome contributions on (but not limited to) new trends and future challenges related to the following localisation topics:

  • Automation in Localisation Workflows (methods, tools, processes)
  • Localisation and Crowdsourcing
  • Localisation and Technical Content Management
  • Localisation Education (academic, institutional, methodological issues)
  • Localisation, Usability and Accessibility
  • Machine Translation and Localisation
  • Multilingual Digital Content Production Strategies: Globalisation, Internationalisation, Transcreation
  • Profiles, Roles and Interdisciplinary Cooperation in Localisation Projects
  • Quality in Localisation (methods, tools, processes)
  • Standards of Localisation and Interoperability
  • Web, Software (including mobile applications) and Game Localisation

For informal enquiries: silvia.rodriguez@unige.ch

Bio-note of Panel Organizers:
All conveners are members of the Interuniversity Cod.eX Research Group (http://diarium.usal.es/codex/en/)

Jesús Torres del Rey is a senior lecturer at the University of Salamanca, where he teaches a number of translation technology, project and terminology management and localisation subjects both at undergraduate and postgraduate level. He also teaches software localisation and is module coordinator for localisation engineering in a Master’s degree course by the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo in Seville. In 2003 he was awarded a PhD by the University of Salamanca for his thesis on technology and translator education. He is the author of La interfaz de la traducción (Granada: Comares, 2005) and the author, co-author or co-editor of a series of articles and book chapters on translators’ technological training, computer tools for education, localisation and translation technology, accessibility and standards, digital lexicography, neology and technological interfaces between language service providers and scientists. He is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the Interuniversity Cod.eX Research Group.

Silvia Rodríguez Vázquez is a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)-funded postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Translation and Textual Studies (CTTS) of Dublin City University, Ireland. Her research interests include multilingual web accessibility, controlled language, localisation training and the accessibility of translation technologies for people with disabilities, topics about which she has published extensively over the last years. Silvia holds an MA in Translation Technologies and Localisation from the University Jaume I, Spain, as well as a Joint Doctoral Degree in Multilingual Information Processing and Translation and Intercultural Mediation by the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, and by the University of Salamanca (USAL), Spain, for which she has recently received the USAL Extraordinary Doctorate Award.

Lucía Morado Vázquez is a research and teaching fellow at the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting, University of Geneva, on the areas of localisation, computer-assisted translation tools and information technology. Lucía also collaborates with other universities and international institutions as a course facilitator, research collaborator and external examiner. Similarly, she regularly participates as a reviewer in scientific committees of international conferences and specialised publications in localisation and translation technologies. She has been voting member of the XLIFF (XML Localisation Interchange File Format) Technical committee for more than eight years and the XLIFF Promotion and Liaison Subcommittee since its establishment. Lucía holds a PhD in localisation from the Localisation Research Centre, at the University of Limerick, Ireland and a BA in translation and interpreting from the University of Salamanca, Spain.

Emilio Rodríguez Vázquez de Aldana is a lecturer at the Department of Computer Science and Automatics, working at the Faculty of Translation and Documentation, University of Salamanca, where he has been teaching a series of Information Science and Translation modules over the years. His main teaching and research activities have been related to information retrieval and natural language processing, and, currently, translation technologies and localisation. He is the main developer of Falang2XLIFF, an application facilitating the localisation of web content created in Joomla!, a popular Content Management System.

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PANEL 19

PANEL 19: Citizen Media, Migration and Translation

Panel Organizers:
Mona Baker (University of Manchester)
Moira Inghilleri (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

Citizen media has emerged as an important research theme that cuts across different areas of the humanities, including translation studies. Encompassing different aspects of the intervention of unaffiliated citizens in public spaces – both physical and virtual – it examines how citizens circulate media content with the aim of contesting hegemonic discourses and practices, and in so doing create interactive spaces where innovative and diverse understandings of the world are expressed. Both the public spaces and the media through which citizens exercise their agency vary. Increasingly, citizen media interventions are accessed online via social media sites, including blogs, but more traditional media such as film and print, television, and radio journalism, street art, agitprop theater and other performance arts continue to play an important role. These shared public spaces and diverse media provide a context for the expression of points of view that have historically been or are currently being ignored or suppressed. The public nature of citizen media interventions is also intended to serve as a reminder of the inevitability and undeniability of difference and as a means to mobilize new ways of ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’ each other. In this sense, engaging with citizen media is a way of promoting inclusivity – of different social classes, age groups, and different communities across the world. Given its organic nature, new forms of citizen media regularly emerge, often in response to an immediate local or global crisis situation. This is what gives citizen media practices their power as tools for promoting social justice, but it can also leave them open to appropriation by powerful institutions as well as groups and individuals advocating change of a different kind, as seen in the different types of ‘alt-citizen media’ being produced in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere, which support nativist, separatist, and supremacist agendas in response to current patterns of migration.

The panel organizers invite abstracts that critically engage with forms of citizen media that pertain specifically to migration and involve some type of translation or interpreting. We are particularly open to contributions that interrogate the societal function of citizen media – its potential to expand the perceptions and expectations of citizens on the one hand and to increase the polarization of public opinion on the other.

List of suggested topics:

  • The ethics of witnessing and solidarity in the context of interpreting and translating for migrants
  • The positioning of volunteer translators/interpreters in relation to mainstream institutional bodies (including NGOs and charities) in migrant and refugee camps, and the potential for cooptation
  • Ethical and practical challenges associated with translating/interpreting for vulnerable migrant populations, including questions of neutrality and advocacy
  • The role of creative art in mediating the experiences of migrants, and the contribution of translators and interpreters in this context
  • Theoretical perspectives and concepts that can enrich discussion of the translator/interpreter as unaffiliated citizen involved in mediating the experiences of migrants and refugees (for instance affect theory)
  • Translational interventions involving documenting and archiving migrant experience, for instance subtitling documentary films
  • The overlap and tension between the translator’s physical persona in the refugee camp and their online persona as they report on and engage with issues of migration on social media platforms
  • The potential for co-optation and instrumentalization of volunteer translation and interpreting by powerful players in the translation field, including translation companies, associations and academic institutions

For informal enquiries: minghilleri@complit.umass.edu

Bio-note of Panel Organizers:
Moira Inghilleri is Associate Professor of Translation and Interpreting Studies and the Director of the Program in Translation and Interpreting Studies. She is the author of Translation and Migration (Routledge 2017) and Interpreting Justice: Ethics, Politics and Language (Routledge 2012). She was co-editor of The Translator from 2011-2014 and review editor from 2006-2011. She guest-edited and contributed articles in two special issues of The Translator: Bourdieu and the Sociology of Translating and Interpreting (2005) and Translation and Violent Conflict (2010, co-edited with Sue-Ann Harding). Her research has appeared in Translation Studies, The Translator, Target, Language and Communication, Linguistica Antverpiensia and a number of edited collections. She is currently Series Editor (with Michael Cronin) of the Routledge book series, New Perspectives in Translation and Interpreting Studies.

Mona Baker is Professor Emeritus of Translation Studies at the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies, University of Manchester, UK, Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded project Genealogies of Knowledge: The Evolution and Contestation of Concepts across Time and Space, and co-editor, with Luis Pérez-González and Bolette Blaagaard of the Routledge series Critical Perspectives on Citizen Media. She is author of In Other Words (1992; second edition 2011) and Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account (2006), Editor of the award-winning Translating Dissent: Voices from and with the Egyptian Revolution (2016), Citizen Media and Public Spaces: Diverse Expressions of Citizenship and Dissent (2016, co-edited with Bolette Blaagaard), the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (1998; second edition 2009, co-edited with Gabriela Saldanha); Critical Concepts: Translation Studies (4 volumes, 2009); and Critical Readings in Translation Studies (2010). Her articles have appeared in a wide range of international journals, including Social Movement Studies, Critical Studies on Terrorism, The Translator and Target. She is founding Editor of The Translator (St. Jerome Publishing, 1995-2013), former Editorial Director of St. Jerome Publishing (1995-2013), and founding Vice-President of IATIS (2004-2015). She posts on translation, citizen media and Palestine on her personal website, http://www.monabaker.org, and tweets at @MonaBaker11.

 

 

https://www.iatis.org/index.php/6th-conference-hong-kong-2018/item/1459-panels#Panel09