CFP: The Translation of Economics and the Economics of Translation (Perspectives)

A guest issue of Perspectives. Studies in Translatology (2017)

Call for papers: Perspectives: Studies in Translatology
Guest Edition

The Translation of Economics and the Economics of Translation
Editors: Łucja Biel (University of Warsaw) and Vilelmini Sosoni (Ionian University)

[url=http://explore.tandfonline.com/cfp/ah/rmps-cfp]http://explore.tandfonline.com/cfp/ah/rmps-cfp[/url]

Since the mid-1990s globalisation has shrunk the world by removing barriers and allowing access to information from anywhere in the world (Cronin, 2003, p. 43), while market deregulation led to an explosion of financial transactions and increasing business activity. In that climate, Economic Translation –including business and financial translation– has been central in translation practice and increasing in volume as well as impact, although it has been little researched and discussed over the years. Yet, it constitutes a fascinating and robust area which grows hand-in-hand with the evolution of human civilisation and the development of societies, while its impact is felt on every single citizen whether living in the capitalist part of the world where the maximization of growth and the subsequent breadth of financial and commercial transactions are sine qua non or the developing world where Emerging Economies, albeit globalised, are still relatively small and less affected by capitalism and consumerism.

In particular, in the present age of globalisation and the information society, where the global economy focuses on production and distribution processes, but also on information and communication, translation plays an ever-increasing role: banks and institutions operate in more than one language; multinationals produce documents in different languages to expand their services and reach markets around the world, while large companies and SMEs adopt a multilingual approach when accessing markets in new countries to achieve maximum penetration. What is more, with low-cost country sourcing (LCCS), i.e. a procurement strategy in which a company sources materials from countries with lower labour and production costs like China, Brazil, India and Eastern Europe in order to cut operating expenses, the need for the translation of contracts, franchise agreements, company documents, financial statements and related documentation grows exponentially. Similarly, translation services occupy a central position in the successful cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A) which are built on the efficient and effective sharing of information between all parties to the transaction in their language of choice. Under that light, fascinating research avenues are born which are related to Economic Translation and the challenges posed by its production in diverse settings and global markets. There, all key actors are highly interconnected, which means that they have to understand key concepts and use key terms which keep increasing with the accelerated development of international business and international finance.

Unlike other types of specialised translation, such as legal translation, technical translation, localisation or audiovisual translation, economic translation has been a rare topic of monographs or special issues of Translation Studies (TS) journals. As a result, research into economic translation is spread across a number of publications and focuses on selected isolated issues. Most attention is paid, naturally, to economic terminology, e.g. within terminography (Bergenholtz, 2012) or within studies into aspects of terms, such as neologisms, Anglicisms and other borrowings, acronyms, vagueness and ambiguity (cf. Stolze, 2003; Kelandrias, 2007; Toft, 2007; Poder, 2012). Another frequently-explored aspect is the function of metaphors in business terms and cross-cultural limitations in their translation (Fuertes Olivera & Nielsen, 2011; Nicaise, 2011; Fraile Vincente, 2008). Research into metaphors has been intensified by discourses about the financial crisis which largely rely on figurative language (cf. Schäffner, 2014; Kaniklidou & House, 2013). In addition to terminology, other topics include politeness patterns (Fuertes Olivera, Montero-Martinez & García de Quesada, 2005), rhetorical patterns, ethical issues and certain text types, e.g. financial statements, business correspondence, advertisements or the business press. Last but not least, some studies investigate training issues and attempt to integrate them with recent approaches, such as social constructivism (Li, 2013). Yet the field seems to be largely fragmented and segmented.

Secondly, Translation Studies has experienced a significant growth as a discipline in the last two decades – thematically, methodologically and geographically. New methods were introduced and developed, including corpus-based translation studies, process research, workplace studies, ethnographic approaches, cognitive approaches, neurolinguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, etc. One of the objectives behind this special issue is to map main research trends and topics in Economic Translation, both as regards translation practice and translator training. We would like to see how Economic Translation has embraced new methodologies and foci and how it contributes to our understanding of the processes behind its production.

What is more, the concept of ‘economics’ in translation has become even more relevant lately, due to the ever-increasing technicalisation of the profession and the global economic crisis of 2007-8 which brought about the rapid development of Machine Translation (MT) (cf. Olohan, 2011; Pym, 2011; O’Brien, 2012) and the prolific use of crowdsourcing and amateur translation as an alternative to professional translation (cf. Díaz-Cintas & Muñoz Sánchez, 2006; O’Hagan, 2009; Perrino, 2009; Cronin, 2010; García, 2010; McDonough Dolmaya, 2013). All this alters the translation habitus in Bourdieu’s terms, which unavoidably affects the translation status not least with respect to the diminishing rates and deteriorating working conditions.

The aim of this special issue is thus twofold: it aims to explore the specificities and particularities of economic translation as it has been practiced over the years and as it is being currently practiced around the globe and also investigate new research trends that appear in the field, while at the same time it wishes to cast some light into the economics of the profession and the changing habitus of the translator.

We invite papers in English that deal with this issue’s theme from various contexts, fields, and perspectives. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following
areas:

o International Business and Multilingual Communication
o Economic Translation in multilingual and/or minority settings
o Ideology, bias and power in Economic Translation
o Translation, re-writing and re-telling in the corporate world
o Corporate image building and product promotion
o Idiomatic language in Economic Translation
o Terminology issues in Economics, including metaphors and figurative language, neologisms, borrowings and calques, phraseology
o Business translator training
o Austerity and translation
o The translator’s changing habitus
o Agency in translation
o The status of the translation profession and emerging translation profiles
o Non-professional translation and crowdsourcing
o Machine Translation and post-editing

Submission process
1. Submission of full papers:  25 January 2016 by e-mail to l.biel@uw.edu.pl and sosoni@ionio.gr.
2. Authors have to follow closely the journal guidelines which can be found at [url=http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/0907-676X]http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/0907-676X[/url] .
3. Please feel free to contact the guest editors if you have any questions/concerns: l.biel@uw.edu.pl and sosoni@ionio.gr.

Important issues and dates
1. Length of full manuscripts: 5,000-7,000 words.
2. Deadline for sending manuscripts to guest editors: 25 January 2016
3. Expected publication date: Second half of 2017

IMPORTANT DATES:
Submission of full manuscripts: 25 January 2016
Refereeing process: 26 January 2016 – 09 May 2016
Notification of reviewers’ comments & guest editors’ decision: 16 May 2016
Resubmission of accepted manuscripts with corrections (to guest editors): 12 September 2016
Final submission of papers to chief editors (after guest editors have checked if corrections have been made): 19 December 2016
Expected publication date: Second half of 2017

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