Forthcoming Publications

In my post on September 28, I mentioned that Şebnem Susam-Sarajeva of the University of Edinburgh (see photo) was hunting for fan translations of song lyrics. She’s still hunting. But in the meantime, she’s now become co-editor of a new book with the title Non-professionals Translating and Interpreting: Participatory and Engaged Perspectives, to be published by St. Jerome Publishing of Manchester, UK. At present it’s at the preliminary stage of a ‘call for papers’, and publication is not expected until June 2112.

The call says:

This collection [of articles] proposes to explore the field of non‐professional translation and interpreting with a view to learning from the individuals who take on translation/interpreting activities; the networks and organisations for which they translate and interpret; the media which facilitate the distribution of amateur translations; and, last but not least, the societies where these activities emerge and impact on the political, economic and cultural spheres.

The themes are:

• Amateur news translation and distribution
• Non‐professional translation/interpreting within the context of religion
• Scanlation and fansubbing
• Fanfiction and translation
• Translation and the blogosphere
• Interpreting within local NGO settings
• Non‐professionals translating/interpreting within conflict situations
• Activist translation/interpreting
• Amateur translation as a form of cyberactivism
• Child‐language brokering vis‐à‐vis professional interpreting

The contributions should be between 6,000 and 10,000 words and the deadline for submission of abstracts is July 30.

Hard on the heels of this announcement comes another Call for Papers: Community Translation: Translation as a Social Activity and Its Possible Consequences. The editor is Minako O’Hagan of Dublin City University, and it’s to appear in Belgium in the Linguistica Antverpiensia series. It’s perhaps more limited in scope than the Manchester book, since it seems to be entirely devoted to crowdsourcing.

[It] seeks to address how far-reaching the consequences of the new trends afforded by new technological platforms may be, possibly affecting many different dimensions of translation.

In this case the deadline for proposals is June 20 and the publication date has been set at December 2011.

Both of the above are academic publications – that’s why it takes so long to bring them out. They have to be ‘refereed’. But some of you out there are academics, so this is a chance for you to be published and get in on a new field before it becomes crowded. Two volumes do not a literature make, but they’re a welcome sign of stirring in academia.

CONTACTS
Şebnem Susam-Sarajeva: s.susam‐sarajeva@ed.ac.uk

Minako O'Hagan: minako.ohagan@dcu.ie

Photo: University of Edinburgh