Convergence - Human-Machine Integration in Translation and Interpreting
This year, the University of Surrey’s Centre for Translation Studies celebrates its 40th anniversary since foundation. To mark this occasion, and as a natural progression from the Convergence lecture series, CTS is proud to announce its first Convergence conference.
In a globalised society and economy, few people remain unaffected by the design and delivery of language services. As the demand for these services increases, the use of technologies adds new layers of complexity to the processes of translation and interpreting, calling for innovative and adaptive multidisciplinary approaches. The ‘technological turn’ in translation and interpreting requires all stakeholders to develop a better understanding of the impact and potential of translation and interpreting technologies, and of the products and services they facilitate. This understanding will help mitigate obstacles and barriers, driving genuine innovation that harnesses the full potential of the digital transformation and the ‘AI revolution’.
The broad aim of the Convergence conference is to promote responsible and smart integration of the capabilities of human agents and machines in the fields of translation and interpreting, embedded in a multidisciplinary framework that enables the generation of new theoretical perspectives and practices of research. Our point of focus is the integration of research on human, machine-assisted, semi-automated, and fully automated translation and interpreting workflows, exploring the crucial role each workflow can play in supporting effective global and local communication, and in building a sustainable society.
The conference will consist of a series of individually tailored thematic sessions, each bringing together experts who will discuss innovative perspectives, new empirical approaches, and an analysis of use cases for the most advanced language technologies. The planned themes of the conference are:
Embracing the complexity: hybrid practices for interlingual communication in real time
Convergence and collaboration in translation research
Technologies in interpreting
Translation of creative content and technology
NLP Augmenting translation and interpreting
Media accessibility and (language) technology
Bringing together corpus linguistics in translation studies and machine translation
Language barriers in mental healthcare and the role of technology
The Convergence conference will be held from 1st to 3rd February 2023. Onsite participation in Guildford (UK) will be restricted to speakers but everyone is welcome to join us online, as the event is free of charge and will be streamed online. We will not be issuing a call for contributions, but more details about the conference, the list of experts invited to contribute to the panels and a detailed program of the conference will be published in the autumn. Please save the date in your diaries.