Media School

International Research School for Media Translation and Digital Culture

MTDC 2023 MTDC 2021 MTDC 2019

The terms audiovisual translation, media translation and translation technologies have acquired and continue to enjoy great visibility in the field of translation studies. This research school fosters an open and wide-ranging take on media translation and digital culture, and the significance of both for and beyond translation studies; encourages cross-fertilization between the disciplinary sub-fields designated by the above terms; and addresses the new theoretical and methodological tools that translation scholars need in order to understand the strategic and catalyzing role played by translation in relation to a number of issues, including the following:

• Reconfiguring the ecology of networked media – from mainstream news organizations to citizen journalism outlets; from printed written articles to multimodal assemblages; from professional reportage to amateur coverage of conflicts and natural disasters;
• (Re)producing shifting public discourses about cosmopolitanism, gender, nation, expertise, fandom or activism – among other core issues;
• Developing more collaborative, participatory and deliberative processes of community formation, both online and on the ground;
• Enabling disciplinary discourses and developments in the fields of multimodality, media sociology, cultural studies, journalism, globalization studies and critical theories of communication technology.

The International Research School for Media Translation and Digital Culture is aimed at an international audience and primarily addresses the needs of doctoral and early career researchers in translation, interpreting and intercultural studies, as well as more experienced academics who are new to the discipline or interested in engaging with recent developments in the field. It contributes to realizing one of the priorities of the SISU Baker Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies, namely, advancing the study of translation in the context of digital (audiovisual) media and online spaces.

The School, whose inaugural edition took place at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in July 2019, takes place once every two years at Shanghai International Studies University, rotating with the Translation Research Summer School. 

Conceptual Remit

The International Research School for Media Translation and Digital Culture focuses on a range of related issues. The list below is meant as an indicative rather than exhaustive survey of such issues and themes:

• Translation, materiality and mediality: print culture, mass media culture, digital media culture;
• Media and globalization: instantaneity, deterritorialization and audience fragmentation;
• Translation of multimodal texts;
• Translation and self-mediation: participation, remediation and bricolage;
• Citizen media and amateur forms of translation;
• Media translation in situations of conflict and natural disasters;
• Social networking: communities and networks;
• Critical approaches to new technologies: questions of ethics, critical approaches to tech usage, how tech is changing conceptions of labour, etc.;
• New contexts of production and consumption in media translation: crowdsourcing and activism.

Syllabus and Organization

The International Research School for Media Translation and Digital Culture consists of five modules:

• Module 1. Theoretical Approaches | 2 x 90-minute sessions (A, B)
• Module 2. Research Methods | 2 x 90-minute sessions (A, B)
• Module 3. Research Design & Dynamics | 2 x 90-minute sessions (A, B)
• Module 4. Featured Theme | 2 x 90-minute sessions (A, B)
• Module 5. Academic Career Development | 2 x 90-minute sessions (A, B)

Each module encompasses three contact hours and approximately six hours of guided reading.

Group tutorials cover a range of topics and are designed to address themes that are relevant to participants’ current research, as outlined in their personal statements. 

On the final day, students present their work to fellow students and staff and receive verbal feedback.

Pathways

The International Research School for Media Translation and Digital Culture 2023 allows students to choose one of two pathways:

Pathway 1 caters for the vast majority of participants – those working towards a completion certificate. Pathway 1 students:

• deliver a presentation of their proposed research project on the final day of the School;

• submit a research proposal (between 2,000 and 3,000 words long, excluding the bibliography) by the end of September;

• attend three group tutorials during the School.

Pathway 2 caters for participants working towards an attendance certificate only. Pathway 2 students choose whether they wish to attend tutorials during the school (they will have expressed their interest in doing so via their participation form). They do not deliver a presentation nor submit a research proposal.

Presentation (Pathway 1)

Students in Pathway 1 will deliver a presentation of their research project on the final day of the School.
Presentations should last 10 minutes, followed by a 5-minute discussion session. They provide an opportunity for students to receive feedback from their peers and tutors in attendance. 

Indicative timetable

During the period 26 June-8 July students will attend one taught session every day (Monday-Friday). Saturday 8 July is Presentation Day for Pathway 1 students.

Due to the overall size of the group AND the fact that we have students based in different time zones, the 2023 School cohort will be divided into two groups. This division will be based on the location each student has provided in the Participant Form.

Group 1 includes all students based in the China/New Zealand time zone.

Group 2 includes students based in all other locations.

Note that these groups apply only in the case of taught sessions. The composition of tutorial groups will also take the issue of time zones into consideration.

N.B. The times indicated in the schedule are for Central European Time (CET).

 

WEEK 1

	Monday 26 June	Tuesday 27 June	Wednesday 28 June	Thursday 29 June	Friday 30 June
10.00 – 11.30	GROUP 1   Session 4B Sustainability, Translation and Streaming Kyung Hye Kim	GROUP 1   Session 1A Media Translation and Paratexts Henry Jones	GROUP 1   Session 1B Activism in Media Translation & Digital Culture Mona Baker	GROUP 1   Session 2B Project Planning in Media Translation Research Luis Pérez-González	GROUP 1   Session 2A Studying Online Conversations Henry Jones
14.00 – 15.00	SOCIAL EVENT	Games & Gaming Jonathan Evans	Paratextual Theory Henry Jones	Interviews Mona Baker	Multilingualism & Film Translation Kyung Hye Kim
15.00 – 16.00	FREE	Fandom & Translation Luis Pérez-González	Gender & Sexuality Jonathan Evans	Mediality Henry Jones	FREE
16.00 – 17.30	GROUP 2   Session 4B Sustainability, Translation and Streaming Kyung Hye Kim	GROUP 2   Session 1A Media Translation and Paratexts Henry Jones	GROUP 2   Session 1B Activism in Media Translation & Digital Culture Mona Baker	GROUP 2   Session 2B Project Planning in Media Translation Research Luis Pérez-González	GROUP 2   Session 2A Studying Online Conversations Henry Jones

WEEK 2

	Monday 3 July	Tuesday 4 July	Wednesday 5 July	Thursday 6 July	Friday 7 July
10.00 – 11.30	GROUP 1   Session 3B Platforms & Data Collection in Social Media Contexts Neil Sadler	GROUP 1   Session 3A Research Design for Paratextual Analysis of Media Texts Kyung Hye Kim	GROUP 1   Session 5A Understanding Academic Job Markets & Building Rounded Profile Neil Sadler	GROUP 1   Session 4A Environmental issues in T&I: Towards Sustainable Approaches Jonathan Evans	GROUP 1   Session 5B Designing Interdisciplinary and Collaborative Research Projects Mona Baker
14.00 – 15.00	Conversation Analysis Henry Jones	Comics & Webcomics Jonathan Evans	Netnography Neil Sadler	SOCIAL EVENT	FREE
15.00 – 16.00	Narrative Analysis Neil Sadler	News Media Neil Sadler	History of Media Translation Jonathan Evans	FREE
16.00 – 17.30	GROUP 2   Session 3B Platforms &  Data Collection in Social Media Contexts Neil Sadler	GROUP 2   Session 3A Research Design for Paratextual Analysis of Media Texts Kyung Hye Kim	GROUP 2   Session 5A Understanding Academic Job Markets & Building Rounded Profile Neil Sadler	GROUP 2   Session 4A Environmental issues in T&I: Towards Sustainable Approaches Jonathan Evans	GROUP 2   Session 5B Designing Interdisciplinary and Collaborative Research Projects Mona Baker

 

 

* CET= Central European Time

10.00-11.30 (CET) = 04.00-05.30 (New York), 16.00-17.30 (Beijing), 18.00-19.30 (Sydney)
16.00-17.30 (CET) = 10.00-11.30 (New York), 22.00-23.30 (Beijing), 00.00-01.30 (Sydney)

To check times for all cities, see https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html

Group 1 = Beijing/Sydney time zones
Group 2 = CET/New York time zones

Students in each time zone will attend only one session on each topic.

 

Admission and Certificates

Pre-School

Post-School

Core Staff

The School is staffed by a core group of visiting and local academics. Additional tutors are involved on a one-off basis on different years, as required by the relevant featured theme. Not all members of the core group will necessarily be involved in each session of the School.

 

Professor Luis Pérez-González | Academic Director

Luis Pérez-González is Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Agder, Norway, and a member of China’s Audiovisual Translation and Dissemination Committee (established by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and China Alliance of Radio, Film and Television) and the Chinese Culture Translation and Studies Support Network. Former Editor of the Interpreter and Translator Trainer, he is the author of Audiovisual Translation: Theories, Methods and Issues (Routledge 2014), editor of the Routledge Handbook of Audiovisual Translation (2019), co-editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media (2021), and co-editor of the Routledge series Critical Perspectives on Citizen Media. His articles have appeared, among other journals, in Palgrave Communications, The Translator, The Journal of Language and Politics, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Journal of Pragmatics and Language and Intercultural Communication. He has acted as a consultant for the European Agency for Reconstruction on the development of translation and interpreter training programmes and translation certification mechanisms in Eastern Europe, and for the European Commission on a project on the social impact of translation in multilingual communities. He curates content on audiovisual and media translation on his personal website.

 

Professor Mona Baker

Mona Baker is Director of the Baker Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies at Shanghai International Studies University, Affiliate Professor at the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare Education (SHE) at the University of Oslo, co-cordinator of the Genealogies of Knowledge Research Network, and Honorary Dean of the Graduate School of Translation and Interpreting, Beijing Foreign Studies University. She is a recipient of the 2015 Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences Award in the field of Arts and Languages, Studies in Foreign Languages and Literatures, and honoree of the 2011 Fifth Session of Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Award for Translation, for contributions to the field of translation. Baker is author of In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation (third edition 2018) and Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account (2006; Classics edition 2018), co-author (with Eivind Engebretsen) of Rethinking Evidence in the Time of Pandemics: Scientific vs Narrative Rationality and Medical Knowledge Practices, and editor of Translating Dissent: Voices from and with the Egyptian Revolution (2016; winner of the Inttranews Linguists of the Year award for 2015), Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (third edition 2020, co-edited with Gabriela Saldanha), Critical Concepts: Translation Studies (4 volumes, Routledge, 2009), and Critical Readings in Translation Studies (Routledge, 2010). Her articles have appeared in a wide range of international journals, including Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Social Movement Studies, Critical Studies on Terrorism, Social Semiotics, The Translator and Target. She posts on translation, citizen media and Palestine on her personal website and tweets at @MonaBaker11.

 

Dr Jonathan Evans

Jonathan Evans is Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK. He is the author of The Many Voices of Lydia Davis (2016) and co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Translation and Politics (2018). He is Deputy Editor of Journal of Specialised Translation. His research has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), the Fund for International Collaboration (FIC), and the Newton Fund/British Academy. His articles appear in international journals such as Feminist Media Studies, Analog Game Studies, Translation Studies, TTR, Translation and Interpreting Studies, Translation and Literature, and others. His research interests lie in the circulation of media and non-hegemonic ideas.

 

Dr Henry Jones

Henry Jones is Lecturer in Translation Studies at the University of Manchester, UK. He is a co-coordinator of the Genealogies of Knowledge Research Network and co-editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media (2021). His current research interests include corpus-based translation studies, translation history, media theory and online translating communities.

 

 

 

 

 

Dr Kyung Hye Kim

Kyung Hye Kim is Associate Professor at the Institute of Corpus Studies and Applications, Shanghai International Studies University, China. Her academic interests lie in corpus-based translation studies, critical discourse analysis, and multilingualism in media translation. Her publications include ‘Renarrating the Victims of WWII through Translation: So Far from the Bamboo Grove and Yoko Iyagi’ (Target 2017), ‘Retranslation as a socially engaged activity: in the case of Rape of Nanking’ (Perspectives 2018), and ‘Museum Translation as a political act: narrative engagement for affective experiences in the War and Women’s Human Rights Museum in Seoul’ (Museum Management and Curatorship 2020). She is a member of Genealogies of Knowledge Research Network and an external partner of Global Health at the European University Alliance Circle U. She is also Chair of Conference Committee of IATIS, the International Association for Translation & Intercultural Studies.

 

 

Dr Neil Sadler

Neil Sadler is Senior Lecturer in Translation and Interpreting at The University of Leeds, UK. His monograph Fragmented Narrative: Telling and interpreting stories in the Twitter age (2021), examines the implications of the fragmentation characteristic of Twitter, and much contemporary communication more broadly, for narrative production and reception. He has chapters forthcoming in the edited volumes Debates in Translation Studies and the Routledge Handbook of Translation Theories and Concepts and his previous publications include articles in New Media & Society, Disaster Prevention and Management, and the Journal of North African Studies. He also contributed entries on ‘Twitter’ and ‘Social Media’ to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media (2021) and translated three entries from Arabic to English for the Routledge Anthology of Arabic Discourse on Translation (2022).