Calls for papers
Translation Matters publishes two issues per year, a general issue in the Spring and a Special (thematic) Issue in the Autumn. Submissions for the general issues are welcome throughout the year and may be uploaded onto the platform at any time. They will automatically be considered for the next available Spring issue. The Special Issues are subject to Calls for Papers.
Open Calls:
- Music and/in Translation. Deadline: March 7, 2025 (see below)
- History as Translation. Deadline: December 15, 2025 (see below)
- Submissions for our general issues are always open.
CALL FOR PAPERS: Special issue on History as Translation (Vol. 8.1, Spring 2026)
Guest-editor: Margarita Savchenkova
Over the past few decades, translation studies have shown an increasing interest in historical themes. This emerging focus has led to a range of publications that seek to offer a thorough understanding of how history and translation intersect (see Bastin and Bandia, 2006; Hermans, 2022; Rundle, 2022). Nevertheless, much of this research approaches translation primarily as an interlingual activity, often identifying temporal gaps, along with cultural and linguistic aspects, as key challenges faced by translators.
This special issue of Translation Matters encourages rethinking translation beyond a strictly interlinguistic framework and exploring the idea of interpreting history as translation in its broadest sense, sparking discussions and debates around the implications of this perspective.
The idea of history as a form of translation first appeared in critical historiography. For instance, Hayden White ([1987] 1990, p. 1) describes narrative—and therefore history—as “the problem of how to translate knowing into telling, the problem of fashioning human experience into a form assimilable to structures of meaning that are generally human rather than culture-specific”. Alun Munslow (1997, p. 6; 2012, p. 150) also argues that history is fundamentally “the process of translating evidence into facts” and is essentially “a translation exercise”. Historical writing can be seen as translating between different mediums (LaCapra, [1983] 1994, p. 26), where the past is converted into written form and interpreted through contemporary concepts (Jenkins, [1991] 2003, pp. 15–16). In this context, historians act as translators bridging the past and the present. As Peter Burke (2005, p. 3) aptly states, “[i]f the past is a foreign country […], then historians may be regarded as translators between past and present.”
This conception, introduced by critical historiography, has recently been systematically explored in one of the most comprehensive and innovative works on the intersection of historiography and translation studies, La traducción y la(s) historia(s). Nuevas vías de investigación, by África Vidal Claramonte (2018). In this monograph, the author challenges the traditional view of history as an objective account of “reality”, positing instead that history is not a single text, but rather texts that rewrite and translate “reality” intralingually (Vidal Claramonte, 2018, p. 2). She thus encourages readers to reconsider history as an intralingual form of translation. Similarly, Luigi Alonzi’s (2023) History as a Translation of the Past: Case Studies from the West approaches historical interpretation as a translation process. In his introduction, Alonzi (2023, p.1) argues that interpreting the past can be seen as an “act of translation, both epistemologically and cognitively”. Another noteworthy contribution is Margarita Savchenkova’s (2024) work, La traducción emocional de la historia. La memoria traumática en la obra de Svetlana Alexiévich. Savchenkova explores how history, translation, traumatic memory, and emotions intersect in the context of (re)writing Soviet history.
Going further, it is important to note that the understanding of history through the lens of translation increasingly transcends the textual realm. For example, Peter Burke (1997) employs the concept of translatio to analyze the emergence of the carnival tradition in the Americas. In the same vein, Sergei Oushakine (2013) invokes the idea of translation when discussing the military parades that the Russian government organizes annually to mark the end of the war between Nazi Germany and the USSR. Scholars working within the field of conceptual history frequently draw on the notion of translation to illustrate the intricate process of both establishing and operationalizing concepts (see Pernau and Sachsenmaier 2016). Additionally, researchers within the history of emotions have turned to translation-oriented approaches. A prime example is William M. Reddy’s monograph ([2001] 2004), The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions.
Finally, when discussing history, it is essential to consider closely related concepts such as archives, memory, archaeology, and prehistory, all of which can be included within the framework of history and examined through the perspective of history as translation.
This special issue of Translation Matters seeks to engage with ongoing discussions by examining different dimensions of history as translation. It invites proposals on topics that explore the intersection of history and translation, focusing on how history can be understood through the lens of translation in
- Academic historiography
- Autobiographies and memoirs
- Archives and archival materials
- Archaeological studies
- Popular history publications
- Historical romance
- Graphic novels and comics
- Artistic expressions (theater, painting, dance, etc.)
- Audiovisual media and video games
- Tourism content and advertising
- Architectural heritage
- Museums and exhibitions
- Material culture
- …
Articles, in English or in Portuguese, should be 6000-8000 words in length, including references and footnotes, and be formatted in accordance with the guidelines given on the journal’s website. Papers should be uploaded onto the site by December 15th 2025. http://ojs.letras.up.pt/index.php/tm/index. Any inquiries should be addressed to: margsav@usal.es
References
Alonzi, L. (ed.) (2023) History as a Translation of the Past: Case Studies from the West. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Bastin, G. L. and Bandia, P.F. (eds.) (2006) Charting the Future of Translation History. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.
Burke, P. (1997) Varieties of Cultural History. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Burke, P. (2005) ‘Lost (and Found) in Translation: A Cultural History of Translators and Translating in Early Modern Europe’. NIAS, Amsterdam [online]. Available at: https://nias.knaw.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/KB_01_Peter-Burke.pdf (Accessed: 15 Dec. 2024).
Hermans, T. (2022) Translation and History: A Textbook. New York and London: Routledge.
Jenkins, K. ([1991] 2003) Re-Thinking History. New York and London: Routledge.
LaCapra, D. ([1983] 1994) Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Conttexts, Language. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
Munslow, A. (1997) Deconstructing History. London and New York: Routledge.
Munslow, A. (2012) A History of History. London and New York: Routledge.
Oushakine, S. (2013) ‘Remembering in Public: On the Affective Management of History’, Ab Imperio, 1, pp. 269–302 [online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1353/imp.2013.0000 (Accessed: 15 Dec. 2024).
Pernau, M. and Sachsenmaier, D. (eds.) (2016) Global Conceptual History: A Reader. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Reddy, W. M. ([2001] 2004) The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rundle, C. (ed.) (2022) The Routledge Handbook of Translation History. New York and London: Routledge.
Savchenkova, M. (2024) La traducción emocional de la historia. La memoria traumática en la obra de Svetlana Alexiévich. Granada: Comares.
Vidal Claramonte, M. C. Á. (2018) La traducción y la(s) historia(s). Nuevas vías para la investigación. Granada: Comares.
White, H. ([1987] 1990) The Content of the Form. Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press.
CALL FOR PAPERS: Music and/in Translation
The idea that translation could take place between sign systems other than the verbal was first mooted by Roman Jakobson in 1959, but, for reasons that had largely to do with the intellectual climate and a tendency towards disciplinary over-specialization, it took some time for the concept to be applied to music. However, in recent years, a number of works have appeared that include not only theoretical (Desblache 2019, Grajter 2024) and cultural (Susam-Sarajevo 2015) reflections about the relation between translation and music, but also case studies of intersemiotic translations between music and other arts, such as the chapters by Minors, Stones and Moss in Helen Minors’ Music, Text and Translation (2013), and by Ng, Takebee and Vidal in Şerban & Chan’s Opera in Translation (2020), or Bennett in Campbell and Vidal’s The Experience of Translation (2024). Sign-singing, or ‘embodied songs’, aimed primarily at the deaf and hard of hearing, is another form of intersemiotic translation that is now attracting scholarly attention (Maler 2013, Fisher 2021), while multilingual hiphop has also been approached from a translational perspective (Taviano 2019).
Not all translational activity involving music is intersemiotic, of course. A great deal of conventional interlingual translation takes place in musical contexts, such as when Italian opera, American musicals or indeed pop songs are performed in other languages or included in films which are then subtitled or dubbed for export. In the first case, the music itself will act as a powerful constraint on the translation, as songs performed in other languages have above all to be singable, as well as respecting rhythmic and melodic structures (Low 2017; Apter & Herman 2016). In the second, the constraints are more of a technical nature, such as the spatial and temporal limits or lip-synchronization common to other forms of audiovisual translation (Rędzioch-Korkuz 2016).
Finally, the concept of translationality, developed first in the field of medicine and brought to the attention of translation scholars by Robinson (2017) and especially Blumczynski (2023), offers remarkable potential for exploring how musical themes and genres are transported through time and space (see Bennett forthcoming, also Vidal Claramonte 2017).
This special issue of Translation Matters aims to contribute to these ongoing conversations by exploring all aspects of musical translation, whether intersemiotic, interlingual, experiential or other. Hence, proposals are invited on topics such as:
- Song translation
- Opera subtitling and surtitling
- Translation for musical films and animations
- Sign-singing and embodied song for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Intersemiotic translation to/from music
- Linguistic hybridity in musical contexts
- Translation in ethnomusicology
- Interlingual translation on musical themes
- Translationality in music
Articles, in English or in Portuguese, should be 6000-8000 words in length, including references and footnotes, and be formatted in accordance with the guidelines given on the journal’s website. Papers should be uploaded onto the site by 7th March 2025. http://ojs.letras.up.pt/index.php/tm/index. Any inquiries should be addressed to kbennett@fcsh.unl.pt.
References:
Apter, R. and Herman, M. 2016. Translating for Singing: The Theory, Art and Craft of Translating Lyrics. London: Bloomsbury
Bennett, K. forthcoming. Translationality in Music. London: Routledge
Blumczynski, Piotr. Experiencing Translationality: Material and Metaphorical Journeys. New York, NY: Routledge, 2023
Campbell, M. & R. Vidal, eds. 2024. The Experience of Translation: Materiality and Play in Experiential Translation. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
Desblache, L. 2019. Music and Translation: New Mediations in the Digital Age. London: Palgrave Macmillan
Fisher, V. J. 2021. ‘Embodied songs: Insights Into the nature of cross-modal meaning-making within sign language informed, embodied interpretations of vocal. Frontiers in Psychology, 12
Gorlée, D. L. 2005. Song and Significance: Virtues and Vices of Vocal Translation. Amsterdam: Rodopi
Grajter, M. 2024. Applying Translation Theory to Musicological Research. Springer.
Jakobson, R. 1959. ‘On linguistic aspects of translation’. In L. Venuti, ed. The Translation Studies Reader, London and New York: Routledge, 2000: 113-18.
Low, P. 2017. Translating Song: Lyrics and Texts. London and New York: Routledge
Maler, A. 2013. ‘Songs for hands: Analyzing interactions of sign language and music’. Music Theory Online, 19/1.
Minors, H. J. ed. 2013. Music, Text and Translation. New York: Bloomsbury.
Rędzioch-Korkuz, A. 2016. Opera Surtitling as a Special Case of Audiovisual Translation: Towards a Semiotic and Translation Based Framework for Opera Surtitling. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang
Şerban, A. and K. Y. Chan, eds. 2020. Opera in Translation: Unity and Diversity. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Susam-Saraeva, Ş. 2015. Translation and Popular Music: Transcultural intimacy in Turkish-Greek relations. Vienna: Peter Lang
Taviano, S. 2019. ‘Translating identity and politics in Arab hip hop’. In K. Bennett & R. Queiroz de Barros, eds. Hybrid Englishes and the Challenges Of/For Translation: Identity, Mobility and Language Change. London and New York: Routledge. 57-72.
Vidal Claramente, M.C.A. 2017. “Dile que le he escrito un blues”. Del texto como partitura a la partitura como traducción en la literatura latino-americana. Madrid/Frankfurt: Vervuert Iberoamericana.
Past Calls:
CALL FOR PAPERS: Special issue on (Inter-)Epistemic Translation
In the conclusion to his 2017 work Translationality, the translation scholar Douglas Robinson (2017:200-203) proposed to extend Jakobson’s (1959) famous tripartite division of translation with the introduction of a new category that he calls inter-epistemic translation. Defined as translation between different knowledge systems, it would focus on the transfer or transmission of knowledge between different ‘written genres (or semiotic worlds)’ in a process of narrative reframing ‘which is never a “cloning” of knowledge, of course, but always involves… “translationality”: adaptation, transformation’ (2017: 200). In the pages that followed, Robinson envisaged a whole series of different relations that could be studied under this rubric, ranging from the kinds of operations contemplated in translational medicine and the medical humanities, through the writing of popular science and representation of scientific issues in literary fiction to the study of how knowledges transform over time as epistemological paradigms wax and wane.
At the same time as Robinson was completing Translationality, the Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos was refining his concept of ‘intercultural translation’ to describe a slightly different but related manoeuvre, namely the translation that could and does occur between ‘the knowledges or cultures of the global North (Eurocentric, Western-centric) and [those of] the global South, the east included’ (2018: 34). Developed most fully in his 2016 work Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide (2016: 212-236), ‘intercultural translation’ is assumed as part of an ethical mission to undo the ‘epistemicide’ resulting from the hegemony of western science, by working towards the ‘ecologies of knowledge’ necessary to achieve ‘cognitive justice’ (2016: 188-211).
At the core of ecology of knowledges is the idea that different types of knowledge are incomplete in different ways and that raising the consciousness of such reciprocal incompleteness /…/ will be a precondition for achieving cognitive justice. Intercultural translation is the alternative both to the abstract universalism that grounds Western-centric general theories and to the idea of incommensurability between cultures” (Santos 2016: 213).
Following our successful conference Epistemic Translation: Towards an Ecology of Knowledges, held in Lisbon in December 2023, submissions are invited for a special issue of the open-access journal, Translation Matters on the subject of (Inter-)Epistemic Translation. The issue aims to investigate the semiotic processes (verbal and nonverbal) involved in the transfer of information between different ‘epistemic systems’, particularly the transactions occurring between western science (the hegemonic knowledge of the globalized world, which purports to be objective, rational and universal) and the various embedded, embodied and subjective forms of knowledge that have served as its Others in different times and places.
Hence, proposals are invited about the translational processes involved in:
- educational science, the popularization of science, the creation of literary works on scientific themes
- translational medicine and science, the medical humanities
- analogue-to-digital conversion and vice versa (this includes not only computer languages but also systems such as morse code, and the various attempts to create a universal language of knowledge by reproducing in verbal language the rigour of mathematics)
- bringing western science (particularly medical and technical knowledge) to indigenous peoples of the Global South
- bringing the epistemologies of indigenous peoples of the Global South to the attention of the west/north
- bringing eastern epistemologies (e.g. Buddhism, Dao, Yoga) to the west
- the reconceptualization of pre-scientific knowledges (such as alchemy, astrology, Aristotelian physics, logic, rhetoric) in the early modern period
- intersemiotic reconstruals taking place in different historical periods in the domains of cosmology, cosmography and cartography
- ….
Articles, in English or in Portuguese, should be 6000-8000 words in length, including references and footnotes, and be formatted in accordance with the guidelines given on the journal’s website. Papers should be uploaded onto the site by 31st March 2024. http://ojs.letras.up.pt/index.php/tm/index.
Any inquiries should be addressed to kbennett@fcsh.unl.pt and marconeves@gmail.com.
References:
Jakobson, Roman (2000 [1959]) ‘On linguistic aspects of translation’. In L. Venuti, ed. The Translation Studies Reader. London & New York: Routledge. 113-8
Robinson, Douglas (2017) Translationality: Essays in the Translational-Medical Humanities. London and New York: Routledge
Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2016) Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. London and New York: Routledge
Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2018) The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South. Durham: Duke University Press
Past Calls:
- Special issue on (Inter-)Epistemic Translation
- Special issue on Translation in and from the Middle Ages (Vol. 5.2, Spring 2023)
- Special issue on Picturebooks and Graphic Narratives in Translation (Vol. 3.2, Autumn 2021)
- Special issue on Translation under Dictatorships (Vol. 2.2, Autumn 2020)
- Special issue on Intersemiotic Translation and Multimodality (Vol. 1.2., Autumn 2019)