Translators in Periodicals as Society-Shaping Agents

This session aims to explore the role of actors engaged in translational and translatorial actions within cultural periodicals. It aims to focus on such issues as the contribution of translation agents to creating cultural and political resistance, facilitating transnational cultural mediation, and building journals as nodes to establish transnational networks that facilitate “circulation of texts and publishing models” (Fólica – Roig-Sanz – Caristia 2020, 4). Periodicals containing translations, particularly those with significant curatorial input, have often served as zones of resistance against dominant narratives, with translators and editors playing crucial roles in this process. Through the creation of these heterogeneous platforms, translational agents often introduce alternative perspectives and amplify marginalized voices.

In this session, we encourage papers that examine such dynamics in periodicals across different regions and historical contexts and contribute to knowledge in the area where translation and translator studies meet studies in periodical cultures in which the issue of translation is still felt as “an understudied aspect” (Ernst 2022, 253). We encourage contributions that adopt interdisciplinary approaches which draw on translation studies, periodical studies, cultural studies, sociology, political science, digital humanities, and other fields.

The session wishes to address questions including, but not limited to:

• The formation and operation of actor-networks that establish periodicals as nodes in transnational networks
• Translation agents in periodicals and activism
• The role of translators and editors in facilitating cultural and political shifts
• The possibilities for research offered by digital humanities

Submission guidelines

The conference languages are English and Slovak. If you wish to present the paper in German, Spanish, French or Russian, please indicate so in the abstract. However, in view of the later publication we strongly recommend the use of English. All abstracts are to be submitted in English.

Abstracts of up to 300 words should be submitted by 31 January 2025 to registration@tic-conference.eu. Please include the title of your paper, your full name, institutional affiliation, and contact information and indicate the session title directly below your presentation title in your abstract as follows: “Paper for Session: Translators in Periodicals as Society-Shaping Agents.” Submissions will be reviewed by the conference committee, and notifications of acceptance will be sent by 10 March 2025. All abstracts will be double-blind peer-reviewed by the members of the scientific board.

We encourage contributions from scholars at all career stages, as well as practitioners who can provide insights from the field.

References

Ernst, Jutta. 2022. “Translation,” in Periodical Studies Today, ed. by Ernst, Jutta – von Hoff, Dagmar – Scheiding, Oliver, 253-234. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill.
Fólica, Laura – Roig-Sanz, Diana – Caristia, Stefania. 2020. “Towards a transnational and large-scale approach to literary translation in periodicals.” In Literary Translation in Periodicals Methodological challenges for a transnational approach, ed. by Fólica, Laura – Roig-Sanz, Diana – Caristia, Stefania, 1-17. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

This session is organised as part of EU – NextGenerationEU through the Recovery and Resilience Plan for Slovakia under the project No 09I03-03-V04-00667 Information flows and zones of resistance: Translation in Slovak cultural and literary periodicals since the 1990s (principal investigator: Ivana Hostová)