https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14781700.2025.2562191#abstract

Abstract: Engagement with infrastructural thinking, prominent in the humanities, social sciences, and science and technology, has received little attention in translation studies. This article argues that translation is surrounded by, embedded in, and inextricably bound to infrastructures and highlights the benefits of exploring the conceptual and analytical affordances of infrastructural thinking in relation to translation. The authors demonstrate how an infrastructural perspective can serve as a rubric for conceptualizing translation, and define key infrastructural characteristics and their influence on translation’s procedural and ontological dimensions. Applying this lens to three case studies, the article uncovers implicit infrastructural issues related to translation and argues that adopting infrastructural thinking can enrich our understanding of translation as an emergent, multifaceted practice, encouraging interdisciplinary dialogue and methodological innovation. Recognizing translation as an infrastructure itself enhances insights into its role as a communication facilitator (or constraint) in today’s interconnected world.

Abstract:

As a global institution, the Roman Catholic Church is committed to communicating in multiple languages, often multimodally, and its approach to news reporting can be described as a constructive news ethos. The news portal of the Catholic Church, Vatican News, therefore offers an excellent opportunity to comparatively study constructive news content across languages and cultures. The present chapter used a multimodal corpus of reporting on climate issues on the Vatican News platform in five different languages from October to December 2023. A mixed-method approach to the corpus consisting of metadata analysis, keyword analysis, topic modelling, sentiment analysis, and visual analysis was adopted to establish recurring themes and to enable a comparative overview of the whole multilingual segments. What emerges from this analysis is that, although news reporting in different language groups may vary in terms of length and expression, similar concerns and attitudes – driven by a constructive news approach – consistently shape the news coverage across the languages considered in the corpus. Furthermore, our analysis finds that image and text work together in the Catholic Church’s news reporting, and that there is a convergence of meaning across modes which invariably relates to an institutionally supported solutions-based approach to climate change.

Anne O’Connor, Established Professor in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Galway and P.I. of the ERC-funded PIETRA project was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy on May 23, 2025. Congratulations, Anne!

The PIETRA Advisory Board Meetings were a series of engaging discussions on translation theory, reflexivity in research, and the materiality of religious texts. The presentations and workshop by several members of the project’s Advisory Board provided valuable insights into contemporary translation studies, while the one-on-one meetings allowed for productive exchanges and collaborative planning. All the participants expressed enthusiasm for continued interdisciplinary dialogue and future research initiatives within the PIETRA project.

Day 1: Thursday, 27th February

The meetings commenced on February 27th at 10:00 am, with a workshop on “Positionality and Reflexivity” led by Professor Kaisa Koskinen from Tampere University. The session provided participants with practical frameworks for understanding their roles in translation research, emphasizing the importance of self-awareness and methodological transparency in academic inquiries.

The day continued with an informal lunch, which offered us with an opportunity to network and engage in preliminary discussions. The afternoon was dedicated to individual advisory meetings, a series of one-on-one meetings allowing participants to engage in focused discussions on their respective research areas.

Day 2: Friday, 28th February

The second day of the advisory board meetings began with further scheduled discussions and continued with two lectures. At 10:00 am, Professor Hephzibah Israel (the University of Edinburgh) presented her research on “Materializing the Translated Bible: Object, Fetish, and Faith.” Her talk examined the intersection of translation studies and religious material culture, considering how the translated Bible functions as both an object of faith and a material artifact within different communities. At 12:00 pm, Professor Piotr Blumczynski (Queen’s University Belfast) delivered a presentation titled “(Mis)applying Benjamin’s ‘aura’ to translation theory.” This session explored Walter Benjamin’s concept of ‘aura’ within the field of translation studies, critically assessing its applicability to contemporary translation practices and theoretical discourses.

The day ended with a late lunch at the Moffetts and delightful time with Sofia, the youngest of the PIETRA children.

Abstract: As a global institution, the Catholic Church is committed to communicating in multiple languages and has long embraced multimodal forms of communication. The multilingual and multimodal communication of the Catholic Church therefore offers an excellent opportunity to comparatively analyse modes and resources employed in different historical eras across languages and cultures. In this talk, the issue of multimodal translation will be explored using the examples of nineteenth century books and periodicals and a contemporary website. Using these as ‘a field of application’ (Bezemer & Jewitt, 2010) or enquiry, I will explain the theoretical approaches and methodologies being employed in the study of these multimodal fields. Specifically, with reference to the verbal and the visual, I will explore how meaning is made with different semiotic resources and their interactions, and how these resources and interactions fare in translation.

Panel convenors: Anne O’Connor, Raluca Tanasescu, Chris Tanasescu

Deadline for proposals: 30 August 2024

Submission link: https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/6903/submitter

Infrastructures encompass a wide range of physical and organizational systems that provide a foundation for many activities, including translation. They play a crucial role in shaping and enabling various actions and relationships and provide the necessary support systems for the dynamic processes of knowledge creation, collection, circulation and distribution (Carse 2017; Larkin 2013). The proposed panel seeks to delve into the intricate interplay between infrastructures and the field of translation, examining their affordances, historical trajectories, entanglements and essential components. In encouraging participants to think infrastructurally about translation, we wish to explore infrastructure for translation; infrastructure of translation and also

translation as infrastructure. Focusing on translation activities and on the concepts of connectivity and emergence—both in the digital realm and in the physical world—the discussion will shed light on the diverse ways in which infrastructures contain, facilitate, and shape interlinguistic, intersemiotic and interepistemic translation processes.

Critical aspects to be addressed are the incremental assembly of translation infrastructures, along with their inherent instability, incompleteness, and control. The panel will explore how infrastructures demand ongoing adaptation to technological advancements, institutional dynamics, societal shifts, and cultural changes (Kirby2024). Drawing on historical perspectives as well as on recent media studies approaches (Hesmondhalgh 2021), panelists are also invited to reflect on translation as knowledge embedded in the design of infrastructure and as generative mechanism of such material and virtual systems (Littau 2016; Cronin 2017).

Furthermore, the panel aims to investigate the extent to which emergent infrastructures rely on networked connections, functioning as scaffolding that involves publishers, institutions, authorities, writers, and stakeholders. Key questions to be explored include the examination the assemblages of human and non-

human actors within communicative infrastructures; the typology of infrastructures relevant to translation (institutional, publishing, community, digital, etc.); and the relationship between infrastructures and translational processes/content.

This panel aims to provide a nuanced exploration of the multifaceted relationships between translation and infrastructure, fostering a deeper understanding of the social, material cultural and technical complexities inherent in their intersection. We welcome theoretical and applied papers addressing the notions of

translation and infrastructure in the following possible contexts: e.g. digital platforms; translation management systems; publishing infrastructures; social media; professional associations and networks; institutional organisations; archives, libraries and documentation centers; conferences and events; and language (technology) research centres.

References:

Carse, Ashley (2017) “Keyword: Infrastructure – How a humble French engineering term shaped the modern world.” Infrastructures and Social Complexity: A Companion (ed. by Penelope Harvey, Casper Jensen, Atsuro Morita), 27-39. New York: Routledge.

Carter, D. (2016) “Infrastructure and the Experience of Documents.” Journal of Documentation, Vol. 72 No. 1, pp. 65-80. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-12-2014-0169

Hesmondhalgh, David (2021) “The Infrastructural Turn in Media and Internet Research.” The Routledge Companion to Media Industry (ed. by Paul McDonald), 132-142. New York: Routledge.

Larkin, Brian (2013) “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure.” The Annual Review of Anthropology 42: 327–43.

Littau, Karin (2016) “Translation and the Materialities of Communication.” Translation Studies, 9:1, 82-96, DOI: 10.1080/14781700.2015.1063449

Here are Menna’s impressions after attending three days of insightful talks and productive exchanges: “It was a great honor to participate in the Islam and Fraternity Congress in Abu Dhabi under a scholarship granted by Pluriel to PhD researchers. Marking the 5th anniversary of signing The Document on Human Fraternity, the congress presented the main opportunities and challenges on the way to Human Fraternity, which is key for solving many of the global calamities, crises and disasters. The congress discussed three main angles in relation to human fraternity: theological-dialogical, legal and geo-political. It was very interesting to see how almost all speakers from different fields engaged with language. Key terms and labels, including “fraternity,” “harmony,” “minorities,” “diversity,” “difference,” “marginalized” and “free conscience” were discussed in terms of their meanings, connotations, associations and etymology. Different papers also pinpointed how the use of some of these words would result in the inclusion or exclusion of the other. The congress was a great chance to meet scholars from different fields working on issues of relevance to interfaith and interreligious dialogue between Christians and Muslims.”