News

Last week we published a new, fresh, sixteenth special issue of the journal Translation Studies, continuing the debate on the interplay between translation, ideology and ethics, which was launched at last year's conference Translation, Ideology, Ethics: Response and Credibility, and which is highly topical in today's geopolitical context.

This issue is edited by Prof. Nijolė Maskaliūnienė and Ingrida Tatolytė.

The authors of the articles delve into how ideologies affect the field of translation (Seyhan Bozkurt Jobanputra and Mehmet Zeki Giritli, Nataliia Rudnytska, Paulius V. Subačius, Karolina Butkuviene and Lolita Petrulionė); how translation influences our attitudes and values, and how it shapes the way we perceive ourselves and others (Ayman S. Elbarbary, Sabrina Solange Ferrero); how translation studies are enriched by multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches (Anna Sverediuk, Mathilde Kamal-Girard); how we understand the history of translation and how it influences our collective and individual memory (Antony Hoyte-West, Karin Sibul, Gaëtan Regniers, Andrejs Veisbergs, Gunta Ločmele); what skills translators and interpreters should acquire in order to be able to work in situations where they are expected to play a more active role as communication facilitators, rather than just passively 'transmitting' a message, and how they should be trained for this role (Carmen Torrella Gutiérrez and Francisco J. Vigier-Moreno).

We hope you will also be interested in two conversations with renowned translation studies scholars, Professors Jorge Díaz-Cintas (University College London) and Outi Paloposki (University of Turku), who discuss the changing field of translation studies, the growing emphasis on the power and impact of translation, the contexts in which translation takes place, and the responsibility and self-reflection of translators. Although these scholars address seemingly disparate sub-fields of translation studies - audiovisual translation, which is forward-looking and technology-oriented, and the history of translation, which looks to the past and the archives - the issues they raise are very similar. Both also stress the need for closer collaboration between practitioners and theorists.

We invite you to read this special issue online and join the debate.

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We are pleased to announce that our department has been granted free access to the Phrase Academic Edition, an academic program designed for universities with translation courses.

You are kindly invited to the Translating Europe Workshop 2023 in Vilnius or online. This year the focus is on research into the language of EU documents.

The agenda of the event may be found here.

Please register here: https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/TEW_Vilnius

Only registered users will be sent the link to the event via Teams.

International conference

Translation, Ideology, Ethics: Response and Credibility

with the International Translating Europe Workshop

Ethics in the Era of Machine Translation

Department of Translation and Interpretation Studies, Faculty of Philology, Vilnius University, Lithuania

22–24 September 2022

Department of Translation and Interpretation Studies at the Faculty of Philology of Vilnius University cordially invites you to celebrate its 25^th anniversary by revisiting the place, role and impact of translation in the broad, dynamic social and multicultural communicational context, and to take part at the international conference on Translation, Ideology, Ethics: Response and Credibility which will include the international workshop on Ethics in the Era of Machine Translation.

Nowadays global processes invite ever-increasing multicultural interaction, exchange of ideas and multinational coordination, therefore the demand for translation and its significance are growing, respectively raising visibility of translation as mediation, and of its participants. As translation never takes place in the vacuum and the need for it emanates in the contexts that are saturated with various ideologies, cultures and stands, the very process of translation, its product, and participants are affected by these contexts and make an impact on them. Recent geopolitical changes, fast-growing communication technology, media intervention into the spheres that used to belong exclusively to home affairs, global quest for information and its deliberation in social networks highlighted the questions of reliability of translation and trust in it, and emphasised responsibility of translators and translation technologies. The collisions of ideologies, combined with the ethical stances that translators have to assume in response have drawn attention to the risks associated with translation situations that extend beyond the text and directly affect the participants of those situations. These developments consequently touch the field of Translation Studies which, as it is rightly noted by Susan Bassnett and David Johnston, is necessarily situated in the context of the ‘issues alive in the perceptions and relationships of our world today.’

We hope to expand the discussion on interrelation between translation, ideology and ethics, by inviting papers addressing, but not limited to the following questions:

* How do ideologies affect the field of translation?

* What is characteristic of the process of translation in crisis situations?

* What are translator’s ethical choices in crisis situations?

* What are the ideological assumptions and implications of translation from/into major and minor languages?

* How does translation influence our positions and values, and form our images and perception of ourselves and others?

* How do we perceive history of translation? How does the history of translation function in the collective and individual memory?

* What is a rendition quality of ideological and ethical contents in human and machine translation? Who is to be held responsible for reliability of translation?

* How is the notion of translation ethics changing?

* What skills are to be acquired by translators in the developing situation when they cease being perceived as merely a passive channel of transmission and assume a more active role of a communication moderator?  How do these changes affect translator training?

* How do Translation Studies respond to the changing milieu? What problems and ethical challenges do researchers in TS face? How is the inquiry into translation enriched by the multidisciplinary, transdisciplinary and supradisciplinary research approach? Is the translation research trusted in the view of ideological and ethical differences? What are the most relevant perspectives in nowadays translation research?

We are inviting papers touching upon these topics in different subfields of TS, including history (of) translation, (N)MT, audiovisual, literary, political, parliamentary, news, media and debates translation, and conference and community interpreting. Papers given by researches working in the field of ethics, political ideologies, intercultural relations, semiotics, socio- and psycholinguistics, psychoanalysis, memory studies, discourse analysis, imagology, textual criticism, and literary and classical studies with the focus on translation are also very welcome.

The workshop will cover a wide range of current trends in translation research, as well as its application to translation industry and public sector.

REFERENCES

Bassnett, S., Johnston, D. 2019. The Outward Turn in Translation Studies, The Translator, 25:3, 181–188.

Hatim, B., Mason, I. 1997. The Translator as Communicator. Routledge.

Lefevere, A. 1992. Translation/History/Culture. London, New York: Routledge.

Venuti, L. 1995. The Translator's Invisibility. London, New York: Routledge.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Prof. dr. Jorge Díaz-Cintas, University College London, United Kingdom

Prof. dr. Nike Kocijančič Pokorn, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

Prof. dr. Sharon O'Brien, Dublin City University, Ireland

Assoc. prof. dr. Elisabet Tiselius, Stockholm University, Sweden

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION

Conference and Workshop languages are English and Lithuanian. Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words, in English or Lithuanian by 20 June 2022 using the online abstract submission form: Abstract submission   

Notification of acceptance will be given by 1 July 2022.

Due to COVID 19 situation, in order to mitigate possible risks, we are planning our conference to be held in two formats: Live at Vilnius University (Vilnius, Lithuania), and online via ZOOM platform. Should the pandemic situation require, the whole conference will be held online.

If you have any questions related to this call, please feel free to contact Žygimantas Pekūnas on behalf of our organizing committee:

Details of the scientific and organizing committees, as well as all other information pertaining to the conference and workshop, are available on the website: Translation, Ideology, Ethics: Response and Credibility – 22–24 September 2022

For more information on the conference please visit: http://www.vertimas2022.flf.vu.lt/

You are kindly invited to register to the Translating Europe Workshop (TEW) Ethics in the Era of Machine Translation. This workshop brings the concerns of ethics into the changing scenery of translator’s/interpreter’s workplace and into the translation industry and public domain. It covers the range of questions from interrelations of the participants in the translation process when that is affected by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the platform economy, to the very question of ethics of Machine Translation (MT).

How much does the mechanisation of the translator’s work affect relations between clients, agencies/institutions, and translators/revisors? How do changing working conditions affect translators’/interpreters’ job satisfaction? Who is responsible for the reliability of the output when MT is used? Is MT being designed empathetically? How do companies, institutions and people in the public domain use MT? Do translators and users of MT trust it? How does this growing engagement with MT by companies and translation users change the role and visibility of translator/interpreter? What is the future of Translator/Interpreter Education and human translation in this rapidly digitalising world?

New technologies raise new ethical challenges. The participants of TEW seek to investigate how translation professionals can help in solving those tasks, and when MT could be used or perhaps should not be used at all.

Translating Europe Workshop Ethics in the Era of Machine Translation is held as part of International Conference Translation, Ideology, Ethics: Response and Credibility. Participation in the workshop is free. You can find the programme here.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER AND CONVENER

Assoc. prof. dr. Joss Moorkens, Dublin City University, Ireland

Simultaneous interpreting to English and Lithuanian will be provided for the Workshop presentations.

The Workshop is sponsored by the Directorate-General for Translation, European Commission.

On 8 October 2021, we invite you to participate in a traditional conference organized as part of the Translating Europe Workshop. This year's theme is "At the Edge of Translation and Beyond". Keynote speaker: Professor Andrejs Veisbergs, University of Latvia. Translation, Paratexts, Translator Visibility.
 
Conference programme can be found here. To join the conference, please click on the following Zoom link: https://liedm.zoom.us/j/86981829561.
 
Organised by the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies, Faculty of Philology, Vilnius University and the Department of the Lithuanian Language, Directorate General for Translation, European Commission
Social partners: the Lithuanian Translators Association and the Lithuanian Association of Conference Interpreters

Interpreting into English and Lithuanian will be provided

Initiated in 2013 by EUATC, the European Language Industry Survey (ELIS) is co-organized with ELIA, FIT Europe, GALA, the EMT university network, the European Commission’s LIND group, and Women in Localization. It's a perfect example of a collaboration that produces concrete results. GALA is pleased to play a role in the creation of the survey and the dissemination of the results. Special thanks are owed to Rudy Tirry (EUATC) for all his hard work analyzing and visualizing the data.  

The survey solicits input from language service companies (LSC), independent language professionals, training and language technology providers, language service buyers, and private and public translation departments. The survey covers market trends, expectations and concerns, challenges and obstacles, as well as changes in business practices.

This year the ELIS survey received 907 responses:

• 172 language service companies
• 575 independent language professionals
• 105 representatives of training institutions
• 44 language departments and language service buyers
• 11 language technology providers

What was most surprising about the data for 2020 was that there were no big surprises. Considering that the world was gripped by a pandemic and world economies were in flux, the global language industry emerged mostly unscathed, and in some cases, ahead of the curve. Throughout the data, we saw a "sweet spot" emerge in the 1-5 million Euro revenue range. This segment seemed most likely to thrive and reported increased profitability, more new hires, and operational changes and developments focused on growth rather than just efficiency. Many of the other data were aligned with previous survey results. Certainly some changes were accelerated, but for the most part, LSCs stayed on a familiar trajectory.

We welcome you to download the full slide deck and review comprehensive survey results. 

(article prepared by Globalization and Localization Association)

On 13th May at 17.30 CEST, Arqus holds the webinar Ideological aspects of translation: Translation and censorship under a totalitarian regime by Nijolė Maskaliūnienė (Vilnius University). It will be broadcast live on the Arqus YouTube channel.

There are many different angles from which to approach the issue of ideology and translation. It relates to the theory of equivalence between two languages and translatability of the ST, to the theory of the norm and to the theory of cultural relevance in translation. Under certain conditions, translation may become a means of ideological manipulation – be it for the purposes to protect children from ‘improper’ influences or to protect the regime against real or imaginary threats that books by different authors pose to it.

In this lecture, Nijolė will speak about a particular ideological manipulation in the form of state censorship, focusing on the situation in Soviet Lithuania (1940–1990). The Soviet ideological system was a typical totalitarian regime, thus the analysis of censorship can be further projected on any totalitarian regime that existed or may appear in the future. We are going to discuss the goals of the Soviet censorship and criteria according to which authors and their works were selected for or excluded from translation, i.e. we will speak about preventive and repressive censorship as well as consider the role of the translator as a censor (self-censorship). The different types of censorship, i.e. based on political, religious and moral motives, will be discussed through a number of examples from the translations by such authors as Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Harriet Beecher-Stowe, Daniel Defoe, Jack Kerouac and a few others.