11th EST Congress: The Changing Faces of Translation and Interpreting Studies

The 11th European Society for Translation Studies (EST) Congress will take place at the University of Leeds in 2025.

About the Congress

The ever-changing landscape of the translation and interpreting industry and academic research has led in the past 10 years to translation taking place in different places, platforms and modalities.

It has also led to a shift in the profile of the modern translator and interpreter, who are now expected to work in different domains, with different tools, and according to different workflows.

Academic research in translation and interpreting studies has also taken on different faces with a multiplication of different areas, tools, methodologies.

This has strengthened our understanding of translation and interpreting phenomena in all their complexity, but this has also caused a proliferation of discourses about translation and interpreting that do not always coincide or align with those of the industry.

Theme

The ever-changing landscape of the translation and interpreting industry and academic research has led in the past 10 years to translation taking place in different places, platforms and modalities. It has also led to a shift in the profile of the modern translator and interpreter, who are now expected to work in different domains, with different tools, and according to different workflows. Academic research in translation and interpreting studies has also taken on different faces with a multiplication of different areas, tools, methodologies. This has strengthened our understanding of translation and interpreting phenomena in all their complexity, but this has also caused a proliferation of discourses about translation and interpreting that do not always coincide or align with those of the industry.

In this Congress we aim to take stock of these different faces and discourses by sharing different needs and expectations, contrasting conceptual understandings of what translation and interpreting are, and reflecting on potential roles and opportunities for collaboration. The Congress will offer a fruitful forum for dialogue and collaboration between academics from different areas as well as stakeholders from across the industry.

Keynote Speakers

Details on keynote speakers will be added as and when confirmed.

Call for Papers

The Call for Papers is now open. Applicants may submit paper proposals to a choice of fifty thematic panels or a general (non-thematic) panel, with a number of broad sub-categories.

You can view the thematic panel titles in the drop-down menu below or download the two files below for more details. The file “EST25 Call for Papers” provides information on how to submit a thematic or non-thematic paper proposal and what information needs to be submitted, together with the list of panel titles. The “EST25 Book of Panels” provides an overview of each thematic panel and possible topics, together with the names of the panel convenors.

All paper proposals must be submitted via the Oxford Abstracts conference management software, using the following link: https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/6903/submitter

The deadline for proposals is 26 July 2024. Applicants will be notified of the outcome by late-October/early-November.

Panel Titles

The full list of thematic panel titles is shown below. For more details, please download the two documents under the Call for Papers heading above. 

  1. Adapting to Change: The Impact of Generative AI on Translator Education
  2. Affect(s) and Translation
  3. AI-enabled accessibility: promoting societal inclusion via multilingual and multimodal translation
  4. Archives in Translation: Inquiring on the Past, Understanding the Present, and Informing the Future
  5. Audio Description: The Visual Made Verbal
  6. Behind the Protective Shield of Neutrality: Interpreter Positionality in Mental Health Care in Spaces of Crisis
  7. Changes to the economic value of translation in the face of AI
  8. Changing models of translation cognition and the challenge of AI
  9. City Museums as City Translation
  10. Conference interpreting practice and research in the technological era: business as usual or next level?
  11. Contemporary Chinese Literature in the Anglophone World: Translation, Reception and National Image Building
  12. Cultural Diversity and Literary Translation Policy-Making in the 21st Century
  13. Disruption or facilitation? Teacher development and HE responses to language-industry (r)evolutions in the AI age
  14. Diversifying Discussions: The Feminist and Queer Production, Translation and Reception of Media in a Global Context
  15. Easy-to-Understand Languages in Translation Studies: from Written to Audiovisual Texts
  16. Embodied voices: Gesture in interpreter-mediated communication
  17. Ethics and Multilingual Communication Using Generative AI
  18. Evolving approaches to Cognitive Interpreting Studies: From psychological to socio-cognitive perspectives
  19. Exploring translators’ archives from a gendered perspective: methodologies and deontology
  20. Fostering Human-Centered, Augmented Machine Translation
  21. From Local to Global: Interdisciplinary and Transnational Perspectives to Global Food Translation
  22. GenAI in Domain-specific Translation and Interpreting Studies
  23. Global Visions, Local Voices: Translation as a Catalyst for Human Rights
  24. How do we train translators and interpreters for emergency contexts?
  25. Interpreting and Translation in Armed Conflicts
  26. Linguistic vulnerabilities in translation and interpreting in transnational patient mobility
  27. Literary Texts and Audiovisual Translation Practices
  28. Literary Translation in Transition: Disruptions in Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th and 21st Century
  29. Multimethod Research in Cognitive Translation and Interpreting Studies: Constructs and Indicators
  30. Quality assessment in multilingual, multimodal, and multiagent translation and interpreting: Exploring human and automatic evaluation approaches
  31. Role diversity in the language industry: conceptual and educational implications
  32. Seeing, hearing, changing faces: what perspectives can game accessibility bring to translation and interpreting studies?
  33. Shaping the future of interpreter training: extended reality and new digital tools in the interpreting classroom
  34. Testing the Changing Faces of Translation Reception: Challenges and Approaches
  35. The (De)Humanising Factor in Automation Technologies for Audiovisual Translation
  36. The Changing Face of Literary Translation (Studies)
  37. The Changing Face of Literary Translator Studies: A Dialogue between Academia and the Profession
  38. The Changing Face of the Literary Translation Classroom
  39. The Changing Face of the Translation Studies/Linguistics Interface
  40. The changing faces of Relevance Theory applied to translation and interpreting: novel insights at the interface between pragmatics and cognition
  41. The changing faces of surveys and interviews as methods and text genres
  42. The changing landscape of literary translation and/as soft power
  43. The Mediated and Multimodal Nature of Song Translation
  44. Translation (in/for) Minority Languages in Europe
  45. Translation and Infrastructure
  46. Translation in Multilingual Research 1: Translation as Method and the Construction of Knowledge
  47. Translation in Multilingual Research 2: Translation Ethics Meets Research Ethics
  48. Translatorial practices in contexts of low institutionalization of translation
  49. Video remote interpreting: Interaction, professional practice and training
  50. What are corpora good for? The new faces of corpus and digital humanities research in translation and interpreting studies

There are also four general (non-thematic) streams for those who wish to submit a paper proposal not related to one of the thematic panels above:

  1. General session: Translation
  2. General session: Interpreting
  3. General session: Audiovisual Translation
  4. General session: Other

Call for Panels (Closed to Submissions)

The Call for Panels is now closed. For reference, full details on the Call for Panels can be found in the document below:

Programme

The programme will be published in early 2025, but we expect the programme to be structured as follows:

  • 27 June: Congress online sessions
  • 30 June: Opening, Workshop sessions and reception
  • 1-3 July: Congress panels

Local Organising Committee

The Local Organising Committee welcomes you to the 11th EST Congress in Leeds! A wide range of academic and professional services staff are involved in the design, coordination and smooth running of the Congress.

General Coordinators

Local Organising Committee

Administrative and Professional Services Team

  • To be confirmed

Support Team

  • To be confirmed

Scientific Committee

The Scientific Committee is composed of a wide range of experts from around the world in the fields of translation and interpreting studies. The Scientific Committee is chaired by Professor Serge Sharoff, in conjunction with the two conference coordinators, Dr Sara Ramos Pinto and Dr Callum Walker, and members of the local organising committee, with special mention to Professor Binhua Wang, who contributed to the coordination of the Panel Review stage.

The current composition of the Scientific Committee is as follows:

  • Alexandra Assis Rosa (University of Lisbon)
  • Silvia Bernadini (University of Bologna)
  • Jacob Blakesley (University of Rome La Sapienza)
  • Jorge Díaz-Cintas (University College London)
  • Adriano Ferraresi (University of Bologna)
  • Yves Gambier (University of Turku)
  • Sandra L. Halverson (University of Agder)
  • Chao Han (National University of Singapore)
  • Kristian Tangsgaard Hvelplund (University of Copenhagen)
  • Abdel-Wahab Khalifa (Queen’s University Belfast)
  • Joseph Lambert (Cardiff University)
  • Anna Matamala (Autonomous University of Barcelona)
  • Christopher D. Mellinger (UNC Charlotte)
  • Robert Neather (Hong Kong Baptist University)
  • Joselia Neves (Hamad bin Khalifa University)
  • David Orrego-Carmona (University of Warwick)
  • Carol O’Sullivan (University of Bristol)
  • Emília Perez (Constantine the Philosopher University, Nitra)
  • Susan Pickford (University of Geneva)
  • Franz Pöchhacker (University of Vienna)
  • Valentina Ragni (University of Warsaw)
  • Nina Reviers (University of Antwerp)
  • Pablo Romero Fresco (University of Vigo)
  • Akiko Sakamoto (Kansai University)
  • Sergey Tyulenev (Durham University)
  • Susana Valdez (Leiden University)
  • Luc van Doorslaer (University of Tartu)
  • Judy Wakabayashi (Kent State University)
  • Catherine Way (University of Granada)
  • Minhui Xu (University of Macau)
  • Chuan Yu (Hong Kong Baptist University)
  • Federico Zanettin (University of Perugia)

University Venues

Conference Auditorium

The Conference Auditorium is the university’s primary and largest dedicated conference facilities, comprising two large auditoria and a spacious foyer and gallery, and is within short walking distance of the Roger Stevens Building and other buildings and spaces on campus. A map and written directions to the Conference Auditorium and rooms within the building can be found here: https://students.leeds.ac.uk/rooms - building=Conference-Auditorium

Roger Stevens Building

The Roger Stevens building is a unique example of the once futuristic and visually striking Brutalist style of the time it was designed and built. A Grade II Listed building, it serves as the university’s primary stock of lecture theatres, with 25 rooms ranging in capacity from 70 to 300 seats.

A map and written directions to the Roger Stevens Building and rooms within the building can be found here: https://students.leeds.ac.uk/rooms - building=Roger-Stevens-Building

Parkinson Building

The home of the Centre for Translation Studies, the Language Centre, and the iconic Brotherton Library, the Parkinson Building is a stunning Grade II Listed building and serves as a prominent landmark in Leeds. Its famed clocktower has become emblematic of the university itself and now forms part of the university logo.

A map and written directions to the Parkinson Building and rooms within the building can be found here: https://students.leeds.ac.uk/rooms - building=Parkinson-Building

Travel and Accommodation

Travel

Leeds is at the heart of northern England, at the intersection of a range of highly accessible road, rail and air connections.

Arriving by air

Leeds Bradford airport is located just 8 miles outside of the city centre of Leeds. Flights arrive at Leeds Bradford Airport from over 70 overseas destinations, with the international hubs of Dublin and Amsterdam Schiphol an hour away. Transport to and from the city can by made by taxi, public transport or car hire. Participants will be in the city centre of Leeds within 30 mins of leaving the airport. Or they may choose to travel to Manchester Airport which has great transport links to Leeds City Centre. Direct trains operate regularly with the average journey time from 1 hour to 1 hour 30 minutes. You can also take a taxi or hire a car with journey times by car taking approximately 1 hour 40 minutes.

Arriving by rail

Leeds is the busiest station in the north of England and a major hub for national rail transport. It can be accessed from every major city in the UK by train. London King Cross to Leeds takes an average of 2 hour 10 minutes. There are excellent links to Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool, York, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Bristol. It takes approximately 20 minutes to walk to the campus from Leeds Railway Station.

Arriving by road

Our accessible position on the UK motorway network makes reaching Leeds by car or coach very simple. The M1 links our city with London and the south, with the M62 stretching across the region to connect Leeds with the port of Hull in the east, to Manchester and Liverpool in the west. Further north, the A1(M) passes Newcastle, and on to Edinburgh.

Arriving on campus

The University of Leeds is a campus-based university, but the campus is at walking distance from the city centre, making it extremely convenient for participants to travel to campus. Participants can easily walk to campus or take one of the many bus routes that go from Leeds city centre to the Parkinson Building (4min ride).

Accommodation

Details on accommodation will be added to the conference website in due course. A number of rooms from the university’s accommodation stock will be available on campus, in addition to other options available across the city.

Internet Access

Participants will receive a university login to the wifi on arrival. Eduroam is also available on campus for those who already have access via Eduroam.

Prayer Rooms

The University has a number of spaces on campus available for prayer and quiet contemplation, whether you practise a particular faith or not. If you practise a faith, you can be confident that you will be able to follow your beliefs in Leeds and find support and information related to your faith. More information can be found at the University’s Chaplaincy website.

About the University

The University of Leeds, established in 1904, is one of the largest higher education institutions in the UK. We are renowned globally for the quality of our teaching and research. Our values of professionalism, inclusiveness, integrity, community and academic excellence are at the heart of everything we do. We strive to ensure that everyone within the University is treated fairly, with dignity and respect; that the opportunities we provide are open to all; and that the University provides a safe, supportive and welcoming environment.

As an international, research-intensive university with a strong commitment to student education, we have created an inclusive environment that attracts, develops and retains the best students and staff from all backgrounds from across the world and supports them in delivering their ambitions, contributing to our institutional strategic aims. We understand that what we do can have an impact on the wider community, which is why we take our social, economic and environmental responsibilities seriously. Our strategy sets a blueprint for a values-driven university. One that harnesses its expertise in research and education to help shape a better future for humanity, working through collaboration to tackle inequalities, achieve societal impact and drive change.

The Centre for Translation Studies (CTS), part of the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, brings together colleagues working in a variety of areas of translation and interpreting studies. CTS maintains an active research agenda across different areas of translation studies, such as translation technologies, industry studies, audiovisual translation, interpreting, media accessibility, corpus-based translation studies, reception studies, multimodality, comparative literature, literary translation, and legal translation. Our active postgraduate research community includes around 40 students from all corners of the world and working across translation and interpreting studies.

CTS offers a doctoral programme and a range of professionally-oriented MAs and Postgraduate Diplomas in applied translation, conference interpreting, business and public service interpreting, and audiovisual translation and localisation in a variety of European and non-European language combinations. The professional emphasis of our taught postgraduate courses allows students to work in realistic team scenarios which reflect industry practices, and also provide a solid basis for continuing on to a research degree. Our state-of-the-art facilities, skilled academic staff, and regular input from experienced professionals ensure that our students gain the expertise needed for a successful career in translation and interpreting.

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