Open Calls

ONLINE LECTURE SERIES

From November 2024, we will be launching a series of online talks by members of the team and other interested parties on subjects related to their research. This will be ongoing and proposals may be submitted at any time.

250-word abstracts, plus 100-word biosketch, should be sent to kbennett@fcsh.unl.pt and  mfneves@fcsh.unl.pt.

EDITED VOLUME

Following the successful publication of our inaugural special issue on (Inter-)Epistemic Translation of Translation Matters (Vol. 6/No. 1) in Spring 2024, the Call is now open for chapter proposals for a book, provisionally entitled (Inter-)Epistemic Translation: New Pathways, to be published by a reputable international publisher in 2025/26.

Subjects may include any of the topics covered by the EPISTRAN project:

• Science in Transit – how specialist knowledge is transmitted across disciplines, reformulated for different audiences, and reworked into imaginative literature, audiovisual content or works of art;

• Knowledges of the World – how forms of inter-epistemic translation can be used to interpret and explain traditional knowledges of the Global South and East, and convey Western know-how in the opposite direction

• The Invention of Modern Science – the translational processes involved in the Early Modern transition to a scientific mode of inquiry

• Eco-Translation – studies in bio-, geo- and terra-translation, and other eco-related forms of transit

• Cyber-Translation – human/machine communication, AI, analogue-digital translation of knowledge systems, and post-human epistemologies 

• Epistemic Emergence - the translational mechanisms involved in the coming-into-being of new knowledge about the physical, human or post-human world

We invite 300-word abstracts to be sent to email@epistran.org by 1st December 2024. The selection will be made by 1st February 2025, for the delivery of the full text by 1st September 2025.  

SPECIAL ISSUE

Translating systems of knowledge: beyond resemiotization, special issue Cultus (forthcoming), edited by Giuseppina Di Gregorio (U. Catania) and Marco Neves (NOVA University of Lisbon)

According to Iedema (2003), resemiotization provides the analytical means for tracing how semiotics are translated from one into the other as social processes unfold, as well as for asking why these semiotics (rather than others) are mobilized to do certain things at certain times. In fact, as Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996: 37) points out, transcoding between a range of semiotic modes represents a more adequate understanding of representation and communication. For this reason, over the past decades, social semiotics has tried to study the process of transduction/transposition (or intersemiotic translation) from the point of view of social interactions, highlighting the role played by modes’ affordances and their aptness in defining a given meaning for a given editor in a well-defined context, in terms of time and cultural references (Kress 2020).

If these considerations are applied to systems of knowledge, one question may arise: is it possible to translate one system into another? What are the key references to describe this process? In 2023, the Centre for English, Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies (CETAPS) at Nova University of Lisbon launched the EPISTRAN project, in order to investigate the semiotic processes (verbal and nonverbal) that are involved in the transfer of information between different ‘epistemic systems’, as those adopted by western countries and indigenous ones, by using concepts, methods and theories from the field of Translation Studies (Bennett 2024). In order to achieve this goal, EPISTRAN considers science, humanistic and indigenous knowledges as different modes of discourse, ‘neither of which is privileged except by the conventions of the cultures in which they are embedded’ (Levine 1987: 3).

The journal issue aims at further investigating the various textual transits that can occur when scientific knowledge is transducted/transcoded for non-specialist consumption, paying specific attention to scientific and legal texts and to the interaction between digital and analogue.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• the popularization of science and law, the creation of literary works on scientific and legal themes;

• accessibility to specialist knowledge in entertainment products (such as videogames);

• inter-epistemic translation and audiovisuality (with specific reference to dubbing  and subtitling);

• resemiotization examples;

• inter-epistemic translation and AI;

• digital-analogue interactions.

Articles, in English, 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.

Abstracts should be sent to: g.digregorio@unict.it by December 20th 2024.

Any inquiries should be addressed to mfneves@fcsh.unl.pt and g.digregorio@unict.it.

More information can be found at the official CfP:
http://www.cultusjournal.com/index.php/call-for-papers

References:

Bennett, K. (2024). Epistemic translation: towards an ecology of knowledges, Perspectives. DOI: 10.1080/0907676X.2023.2294123

Iedema, R. (2003). Multimodality, resemiotization: extending the analysis of discourse as multi-semiotic practice. Visual Communication, 2(1), 29-57. doi.org/10.1177/1470357203002001751

Kress, G. and Van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge.

Levine, G. (1987). One culture: Science and literature. In G. Levine, & A. Rauch (Eds.), One culture:  Essays in science and literature. University of Wisconsin Press.