Call for Papers

Call for Papers  

The 14th Annual Glendon Graduate Conference in Translation Studies Glendon Campus, York University, Toronto  

April 13, 2024  

Revisiting the Future: Translation and Technology  

The interplays between technology and translation are increasingly complex and require thinking that goes beyond simply considering the speed of their development. As Stephen Hawking stated at the beginning of the century, we are in the “century of complexity” (Jogalekar and Jogalekar). We seek to understand our relationship with evolving technology while also being attuned to its diverse emerging properties and problems.   

Building on the 11th Annual Glendon Graduate Student Conference in Translation Studies, titled Facing the Future: Translation and Technology, and held in 2021, the upcoming conference revisits our future in the complex realm of interactions between translation, technology, and their environment. Given the rapid advancements in AI and machine translation, with the emergence of diverse CAT tools and collaborative platforms, our aim is to expand upon previous inquiries into what Minako O’Hagan (2019) describes as the entanglements of “the human and the machine”. In other words, we seek to step back and revisit this complex situation from a broader perspective. The 14th Annual Glendon Graduate Student Conference will focus on the emerging properties and associated challenges of this entanglement, with the goal of identifying new solutions.  

While we ask many of the same questions as we did in 2021, new ones arise, such as the role of technology in Translation Studies or translation pedagogy, the impact of technology on the inclusion/exclusion of marginalized communities, and machine translation literacy (Bowker). We invite proposals on topics related to interpreting and translation of texts of all types, multimodal representations, performances, and other instances of cross-linguistic exchange. These include, but are not limited to the following:  

  • Artificial intelligence tools and translation  
  • Technology for accessibility/inclusivity and accessibility/inclusivity of technology  
  • Technology for research on translation and interpretation  
  • Technology for translation and interpretation pedagogy  
  • Technology and its effects on the translation market (client expectations, reception, costing) and industry (policies, labor division)  
  • Technology and translation for non-dominant languages and for language revival and re-vitalization;  
  • Translation, technology and colonialism  
  • Gender issues in technologically mediated translation  
  • Technology and untranslatability  
  • Translator (in)visibility, status, and agency  
  • Technology and politically engaged translation, including time-sensitive translation and interpretation like crisis translation and disaster management  
  • Technology and translation-related processes (e.g. crowd-sourcing, terminology, and localization)  
  • Technology and translator ethics  

Graduate students and emerging academics are invited to submit proposals by March 8, 2023, via this form, including author’s name, email, affiliation, short biography, title of the paper, abstract of 250-300 words. Please indicate whether you will be available to present in person at the Glendon campus or online only.  

Abstracts will be accepted in Spanish, French or English. Presentations will be held in one of those three languages and should be no longer than 15 minutes.  

For any questions or concerns, please contact us at glendontsconference@gmail.com 

References  

Bowker, Lynne. n.d. Machine Translation Literacy. Accessed November 23, 2023. https://sites.google.com/view/machinetranslationliteracy/  

Jogalekar, Ashutosh, and Ashutosh Jogalekar. n.d. “Stephen Hawking’s Advice for Twenty-First Century Grads: Embrace Complexity.” Scientific American Blog Network. Accessed November 23, 2023. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/stephen-hawkings-advice-for-twe nty-first-century-grads-embrace-complexity/  

O’Hagan, Minako “Introduction” in The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Technology, edited by Minako O’Hagan, Routledge, 2019, p.18