New (and Old) Experiments in Translation (and Writing)

International Conference, Brock University (St. Catharines, ON, Canada) October 22nd to 24th, 2026

Organized by Dr. Nicholas Hauck, Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, Brock University (nhauck@brocku.ca) and Dante Ognibene, Brock University

Dates: October 22, 23 and 24, 2026

Location: Brock University, St. Catharines, ON, Canada

With the development of AI technologies and the increasing replacement (or displacement) of the task of the translator, can new (and old) experimental forms of translation offer alternative approaches to and strategies for creative practice, resistance, and understanding languages? Often, the translator’s task is focused on maintaining equivalence of meaning and sense between sources. While principles of correspondence between languages are important for cross-cultural dialogue—and, historically, often misused to colonize and dominate the other—we wish to think beyond the confinements of equivalence, all too often relegated to the assumed predictability of online translation tools and smartphone applications. We wish to shift away from the framework of translation as a transactional model between languages towards recognizing and attempting to account for the multidimensional, multimodal negotiations that occur in and through translation; it is never just about language. What might experiments in and with translation reveal or discover in artistic, critical, and theoretical discourse and practice?

New (and Old) Experiments in Translation (and Writing) welcomes scholars, writers, and artists whose work explores non-conventional forms of translation in material and immaterial contexts: inscribed, traced, non-human, somatic, oral/aural, etc. Open-ended and vulnerable, experiments in translation (and writing) are often determined by material conditions. To what extent are the material conditions we work in and with generative? When do they become constraints? How does experimental work negotiate the forms and fields with live in and with, breathe in and out, traceand let trace us? Thinking and moving across different material and immaterial relations can be considered as translations, as shifts between different systems of meaning-making and ways of living, as transitions/displacements from one form to another (or many). Through the various methods, strategies, and approaches that translation provides, we wish to explore different mobilizations and understandings of “experimental.” If experimental means “doing” translation and experimenting refers to the translator, what can translation experiments tell us about our own practices, tendencies, and desires? What happens when the translator is a nanochip, a sparrow, or a kelp forest?

Perceived limitations to experimental translation arise from its fluid and unstable definitions, its inherent risk of forgoing structure and criteria; it can be difficult to know where translation ends and artistic creation begins. We wish to think and translate in fluidity and instability by questioning preconceived notions of limits, structure, and criteria. Transcreation allows us to forget about beginnings and ends and move towards expressive, referential, and reflexive practices mobilizing cultural, political, and ecological processes and desires. We can think about transcreation in terms of eco-translation, which emphasizes translation’s role in ongoing conversations about ecology, environments, and sustainability. As Michael Cronin and others have suggested, communication between animals and humans is determined by biological and sensory difference, which requires a rethinking of how translation functions. Rather than simply reducing difference, how can experimenting with translation mobilize difference as generative, exploratory forms of care and co-habitation?

We are interested in facilitating dialogue and imagining practices that explore bio- and eco- semiotic systems and inter-species communication—mycological transfers of information, canine communication across time with urine, and geological formations speaking to and through muscles and joints, for example—without anthropomorphising; humans’ inability to translate and communicate with other species hinders our understanding of ecology and the world around us. New (and Old) Experiments in Translation (and Writing) allows for gaps in knowledge and accepts the limits of our embodied/disembodied realities—our shared lived experiences—and the ways we communicate (or not) and interact within these realities.

Contributions may take the form of talks, performances, participatory practices, guided discussions, workshops, or any format that addresses experimentation with(in) languages and/or translation.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

-hyper-local writing and translating

-non-verbal communication

-semantic/semiotic/somatic otherwise

-transcreation

-new writing systems, old writing systems, non-writing systems

-experimental strategies and approaches to translation

-non-human communication

-eco-translation

-experiments with AI and computer assisted translation

-translation as/in resistance and protest

Please send proposals (250-300 words) and a short bio-note (100-150 words) to xtranslationconf@gmail.com by May 15, 2026. Expect responses by June 30, 2026, and the final conference programme in September 2026.