[CFP] MonTI – Calls for Papers

MonTI 10 (2018)

Current Challenges and Emerging Trends in Medical Translation

Editors: Vicent Montalt i Resurrecció (Universitat Jaume I) & Karen Korning Zethsen (University of Aarhus)Deadline for Submitting Original Full-Text Proposals: 30th June, 2017.

Historically translation and medicine have gone hand in hand. In recent decades, medical translation has become an important niche for professional translators. National and international health authorities, pharmaceutical companies, medical publishers, medical devices manufacturers, hospitals, and biomedical research teams, are among the many organisations in need of translators and interpreters. Specialised training in medical translation is starting to respond to the growing needs of the marketplace with specific programmes covering the particulars of this type of translation. However, as far as research in medical translation is concerned, it is still at an incipient stage. Much of the research done in the past had a predominantly prescriptive orientation, and focused mainly on the terminological issues related to highly specialised texts. More recently medical translation has been redefined to encompass not only a great variety of specialities and medical concepts, but also of resources, texts, communicative situations, organisations, contexts, and participants. This open perspective on medical translation includes not only highly specialised texts about biomedical research, but also the education of health professionals, patients’ education, popularisation, and the media.
This call for papers is an invitation to reflect on the relevance and scope of both medical translation and translators working with medical texts. It is also an invitation to explore how the traditional topics of medical translation – such as terminological issues – have evolved and how new interests have emmerged in recent years, including expert-to-lay translation, the professional profiles of medical translators, the training of medical translators, or the improvement of clinical communication through translation and mediation.
We welcome both conceptual and empirical research that can contribute to improving both learning and professional practice.

Possible tracks

• Translation of specific genres
• Translation in different settings (e.g. hospital)
• Translating between different genres
• Expert-to-lay translation (intralingual translation or in combination with interlingual translation)
• Terminology
• Emotional aspects of medical translation
• Cultural aspects of medical translation
• Cognitive aspects of medical translation, such as comprehension challenges for the expert-to-expert translator
• Didactic aspects of medical translation
• Professional aspects of medical translation

Calendar and Deadlines for Submissions

montalt@trad.uji.es

kkz@bcom.au.dk

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MonTI 11 (2019)

Because Something Should Change: Translator and Interpreter Training, Present and Future 

Editors: Miguel Tolosa Igualada (Universidad de Alicante) & Álvaro Echeverri (Universidad de Montreal)

Deadline for Submitting Original Full-Text Proposals: 30th May, 2018.

Considered by many as the third technical revolution in the history of humanity, the digital revolution has led society into the interconnected era and will certainly keep changing visions of the world at all levels. According to the Employment in the Digital Era Observatory, in the near future, eight out of ten people between 20 and 30 years of age will find a digital-related job among existing and yet-to-be invented occupations. However, jobs that have existed for millennia have adapted to the new ephemeral needs and requirements of a globalized world as change advances more rapidly than ever. Translation and interpretation belong to the group of occupations that have adapted better to societal change. The democratization of the Internet in the 90s provoked a Copernican-like revolution whose implications for translators rivalled the impact of the introduction of the interpretation booth on interpreters, in the 40s. Those advances also had a significant impact on the training of professional translators and interpreters.

Translation pedagogy, like translation studies, has consolidated and enlarged its focus of analysis. This has led to the proposition of several didactic approaches to translator and interpreter training in the last fifty years. Contrastive studies and traditional methods, common practice by the middle of the 20^th century, paved the way for the learning by objectives approach introduced by Jean Delisle in the 80s. In the early 90s, Amparo Hurtado proposed her task-based approach which soon gave way to her competence-based initiative, better suited to the requirements of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). A clear evolution in the relation learner-teacher has also taken place. Transmissionist conceptions common to traditional teaching are being continually challenged and replaced by learning approaches in which learners, with their teacher’s guidance, construct their own paths to learning. The “behavioral-cognitive” model (Delisle 1990) and the socio-constructive model (cf. Kiraly 1995, 2000), combined with metacognitive initiatives, have been pushing for a redefinition of the roles played by participants in the learning process.

Significant progress notwithstanding, it has become imperative to reflect on the I-Here-Now at work in every educational project, particularly in a world that is constantly and rapidly evolving. Today, in our fields of study, the structure of that I (translator-interpreter// teacher // initiator-client-consumer), of that Here (a globalised world) and of that Now (the present) of translation and interpretation lacks definition. Current translation endeavors all over the world rely, nonetheless, on this undefined structure. From a pedagogical point of view, exclusive focus by trainers on the present situation carries enormous risks. Translator and interpreter trainers must have one eye on the present and the other on a newly-unfolding horizon. The necessary, though insufficient, I-Here-Now must be replaced by considerations of the I-There-Then.

This edition of MonTI is an open invitation for proposals that can influence translator and interpreter training in line with the following research axes:

1. Analysis and reflection in relation to current and future translator and interpreter professional profiles. How can we define today’s and tomorrow’s translator and interpreter professional profiles? How will translator and interpreter tasks and functions change in the future? In what fields and environments will translator and interpreters work? What technologies do translators and interpreters use today and how will these evolve in the future?

2. Analysis and reflection on the profiles of consumers of translation and interpretation services in the digital era. What are the current needs, requirements and expectations of translation and interpretation consumers? What will be the forms and functions of future translations and interpretations?

3. Analysis and reflection on new ways to train translators and interpreters. Considering the previous research axes, and knowing that in today’s changing society “learning how to learn” is a must, how will students construct their own knowledge in environments where they will be required to co-operate and be critical and analytical while displaying empathy? Which elements will have greater influence in current curricular planning? How will such elements influence future curricular structures? How are current learning objectives going to evolve? What present and future translation competencies should translator and interpreter trainers aim at? How are current teaching methodologies being used? Which teaching methodologies will be used in the future? How will translators and interpreters be evaluated? What kind of technologies will be used for training the translators and interpreters of the 21^st century? Which aspects of the “knowledge, know-how, and savoir-être” of the learning process are currently favored and which will be favored in the future? Will translator and interpreter training be focused on the product or on the process?

4. Analysis and reflection about those elements of translator and interpreter training that will likely remain “the same” in both training and the profession in general. Where such elements exist, can they be used as the foundation on which to build a new pedagogy of translation and interpreting?

5. Analysis and reflection on training the trainers. Taking into account all the previous research axes, there will be a greater level of interest in researching how translator and interpreter trainers will embrace the new realities in the digital era and how they will adapt to those realities. Which of the training initiatives of today will still be pertinent in the future? What will be the objectives and the forms of such training? What will future trainers learn?

6. Analysis and reflection on research methods in translation and interpreting teaching. How will translation studies scholars interested in translator and interpreter training succeed in creating a stronger research tradition in pedagogy and translation didactics? That is, how can they succeed in bringing research practices to a degree of sophistication similar to the one attained by other branches of translation studies such as literary translation, translation theory, or the history of translation?

Deadlines

Persons interested in submitting a paper for this issue should send their complete manuscript, written in one of the journal’s official languages (English, Catalan, Spanish, French, Italian, or German), to the MonTI Secretary’s office (monti.secretaria@ua.es) by May 30^th, 2018. Submissions must include a title and a 150-word abstract in English and a second language from among the ones listed (English, Catalan, Spanish, French, Italian, or German). MonTI will provide authors with a reasoned statement regarding the acceptance or otherwise of their submission by September-October 2018. The expected date of publication of this issue will be the Spring of 2019.

Contact information
Enquiries concerning the scientific contents of the special issue can be addressed to the editors, in the following languages: Spanish, Catalan, English or French.

miguel.tolosa@ua.es

a.echeverri@umontreal.ca

Queries in English, Catalan, French or Spanish concerning practical matters will be answered by the MonTI Secretary’s office. General instructions and guidelines regarding working languages and editorial norms can be consulted at:

http://dti.ua.es/es/monti/normas-de-redaccion.html