translation studies

Special Issue CFP – Living in Languages
“Becoming Translator: Ontological Shifts and Translational Praxis”
Abstracts due: August 30, 2025
Preliminary drafts due: November 30, 2025
Expected publication: Summer 2026

What happens to the translator in the act of translation?
This special edition of Living in Languages explores translation not only as the movement of
meaning across languages, but as a transformative ontological practice—one that acts upon the
translator, unsettling their assumptions, reconfiguring their relation to the world, and altering
their very being.

The English Department of the Faculty of Letters, History, Philosophy and Theology, West University of Timișoara, is pleased to announce its 34th international conference on British and American Studies, on the theme “Reconfiguring Borders and Boundaries in/through the Lens of Literature, Language and Culture,” which will be held on 14-16 May 2026. 

Oceanic Fictions in Indian Languages and Beyond

CALL FOR PAPERS

Crossroads VIII: Alterity And The Comparative Imagination

University of Massachusetts Amherst, Program in Comparative Literature | Amherst, MA

April 10-11, 2026 (In-person conference)

Translation is a practice and an academic discipline that is always concerned with otherness. While it can be framed optimistically as an act of connecting and fostering engagement with different cultures, it must also be considered as a potentially harmful act. Especially with regard to so-called cultural realia, translators are increasingly aware of the ethical implications of their work. As Ritva Leppihalme explains, “[s]ince all texts are anchored in their culture, it follows that culture-bound items in the source text can present problems for translators” (126) and translators should thus possess “intercultural awareness” and “metacultural competence” (Leppihalme 127).

Probing Humanities, Positioning Human-(i)-ties: New Paradigms and Shifts in the 21st century 

CONCEPT NOTE

Two-day International Conference

26-27 February 2026

VSES, VIPS-TC

Today, the Cold War is theorized through the organizational structure of the nation state (political knowledge) and area studies (institutional knowledge). Yet, in this framework, the key role of language—in diplomacy, intelligence, interrogation, and more—is often underlooked. Indeed, the Cold War and the ongoing cold war of today as a cultural, diplomatic exchange relies fundamentally on translation. While language has been privileged within area studies, with its focus on literary translation (Okada 2002), the perforation of the concept of “language” itself as a tool and weapon during the Cold War deserves greater analysis (Martin-Nielsen 2010, Haddadian-Moghaddam & Scott-Smith 2020).

Shakespeare exists across and between multiple worlds today. After centuries of circulation in Asia, Shakespeare inhabits all locales and cultural formations in ever-changing forms, but is contained by none. Neither completely virtual nor concretely embodied, long dead yet very much alive, inhabiting past, present and future in equal measure, Shakespeare continues to thrive in the act of playing, teaching and thinking. Recent Asian Shakespeare scholarship has critically reflected upon, yet ultimately celebrated such cross-cultural, international, world-wide flourishing, bringing together new arrangements, forms and collaborations of Shakespeare’s work across art, performance and cultures.

Editors of this issue:
Salomé Honório (University of Lisbon, Portugal)
Lamiae Bouqentar (University of Toronto, Canada)

LANGUAGE AND THE INEFFABLE: EXPRESSING THE INEXPRESSIBLE

8th Annual International Comparative Literature Conference Louisiana State University March 27-28, 2026 (Friday-Saturday) Virtual Format

Conference Theme

What happens when language encounters its own limits? This year's conference explores how writers, thinkers, and artists across cultures and centuries have grappled with expressing experiences that seem to transcend ordinary language—the mystical, the traumatic, the sublime, the deeply personal, and the utterly foreign.

This panel explores the regenerative power of early modern drama and travel narratives, focusing on how these texts reimagine cultural encounters, expand geographic and imaginative boundaries, and challenge traditional understandings of self and the other, with particular emphasis on the Mediterranean as a vital site of exchange. In harmony with the conference theme of (Re)generation, this panel invites papers that investigate how Shakespeare and his contemporaries engaged with the Mediterranean as a space of constant (re)formation, where diverse cultures, languages, and religions converged, influencing both dramatic form and narrative structure.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

Call for Submissions

The Arthur Miller Online Teaching and Learning Center www.amotlc.com  warmly welcomes contributions that reflect diverse perspectives on teaching Arthur Miller’s works. Submissions may include, but are not limited to:

To designate a space as “Southeast Asia” is already to engage a particular epistemology and toponym. Conveniently positioned as the marginal extension of both Indian and Chinese spheres, hence the colonial coinage of “Indochina,” the landscape of what we now call “Southeast Asia” (SEA) emerges from intersecting, if not competing, imperial imaginaries. A regional construct shaped by strategic demarcation and modern taxonomies, SEA (Đông Nam Á, Asia Tenggara, Asie du Sud-Est, Asia Selatan-Timur, Timog-Silangang Asya, Echia Tawan-ok Chiang Tai, Dōngnányà/Nányáng) has been translated into political discourse and variously reappropriated in local languages and scholarly traditions.

Faculty Development Programme

Translation as Dialogue: Creative License, Crossover and Current Developments

(Hybrid Mode) 

Organized by
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST), Shibpur

Important Dates