We are delighted to invite contributions on “Translation & Infrastructure” as part of Panel 45 at the 11th EST Congress in Leeds “The Changing Faces of Translation and Interpreting Studies” (June 30 – July 03, 2025).
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