Call for abstracts extended (15 July) - special issue 2025: Looking Back and Looking Ahead: A Wide Angle Lens on Audiovisual Translation

2024-06-20

SPECIAL ISSUE 2025

Looking Back and Looking Ahead: A Wide Angle Lens on Audiovisual Translation

Deadline for full papers: 1 November 2024

Publication date: December 2025

Guest Editors: Linda Rossato (Ca’ Foscari, University of Venice, Italy) and Delia Chiaro (University of Bologna, Italy).

Research on Audiovisual Translation (AVT) has experienced exponential growth in the last 20 years, within the relatively young discipline of Translation Studies. Linguistic as well as cultural adaptation have been explored through different language combinations and across various media and screens, such as cinema, television, internet, stage, and electronic devices (Baccolini et al. 1994; Chaume and Agost 2001;  Gambier 2003; Gambier and Gottlieb 2001; Chiaro et al. 2008; Pérez González 2014). Recent studies have investigated the evolution of AVT practices and audiences (Bucaria 2023) as well as the use of cloud-based systems and machine translation in AVT in response to translation technology advancements (Volk 2008;  Romero-Fresco 2011; Baños 2019; Díaz-Cintas and Massidda 2019; Hu et al. 2020; Bywood et al. 2020; Bolaños-García-Escribano et al. 2021; Rossato and Di Francesco 2022).

Research has spanned from descriptive case studies based on the pragmatic, linguistic and translational aspects of audiovisual translated products (Bucaria 2008; Bruti 2009; Bruti and Pavesi 2008; Muñoz Gil 2009; Rossato 2020), to comprehensive works on methodological and theoretical issues covering different aspects of AVT practices and workflows (Chaume 2012; Pavesi 2013; Gambier and Ramos Pinto 2016). Encyclopedias and companion books have increasingly included entries referring to AVT related topics (Chiaro 2009; Chaume 2012; Pérez González 2019; Perego and Pacinotti 2020). From large, multimodal, corpus-based research projects (Antonini 2009; Zanotti et al. 2013; Pavesi 2013;  Soffritti 2019) to seminal works on the didactics of audiovisual translation (Díaz-Cintas 2007; Neves 2008) and issues related to accessibility and inclusiveness (Maszerowska et al. 2014; Perego 2016; Neves 2019), AVT has proven to offer many fruitful areas of research. Much has already been written and said about AVT, but some research gaps remain to be filled.

With the exception of a few studies that examine the historical development of audiovisual translation practices and phenomena (O'Sullivan and Cornu 2019; Ranzato and Zanotti 2019; Mereu Keating 2014; Mereu Keating and O'Sullivan 2021; Perego and Pacinotti 2020), most current research in the field has a predominantly synchronic focus. This, in our view, may be considered a limitation. Although technological innovation's increasing impact on AVT is a major current focus, research should consider both past and future perspectives. Concentrating too much on present scenarios can cause AVT scholars to lose sight of the influence of historical practices on the contemporary context. This special issue sets out to bring a broader perspective to the diachronic development of audiovisual translation. The objective is ultimately to provide greater insight into future developments in the field and their practical, technical as well as aesthetic and ethical implications. Historical accounts of AVT which consider the transformations that have occurred in both the visual and aural spheres of audiovisual texts and in the technological domain, are still underrepresented. Furthermore, this special issue also aims to assess the impact of technological advances on AVT practices over an extended period of time. Echoing Díaz-Cintas and Massidda's (2019) diachronic trajectory between the early days of cinema and Web 2.0 translation solutions, this special issue offers a space for discussion to compare earlier stages of screen translation with today's most innovative human-machine collaborative and cloud-based AVT practices. It explores the evolution of AVT over the past century in response to changes in the media and television domains.

Research topics include but are not limited to:

  • History of audiovisual translation (dubbing, subtitling, voiceover, audio description, etc.);
  • Diachronic evolution of stylistic features in AVT;
  • Re-translation of audiovisual texts: re-dubbing, re-subtitling;
  • Similarities and differences between past and present (professional) practices in AVT;
  • Beyond the dubbing-subtitling divide: voice over and new modes of re-voicing;
  • Humor and AVT: a diachronic perspective;
  • AVT of nonfictional products: past and current trends;
  • Advertising and AVT: past and current trends;
  • Subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing: past and current trends;
  • Audio description for the visually impaired from past to present day: an ever-changing scenario;
  • Audiovisual translation and the popularization of specialized discourse: a diachronic perspective;
  • The evolution of the television industry: international productions, evolving circulation and distribution routines and their impact on AVT practices;
  • AVT and audience(s): perception, reception, consumption;
  • AVT and videogames;
  • AVT and web localization;
  • Collaborative practices in AVT: past and current trends;
  • New technologies and new trends in audiovisual translation;
  • The future of audiovisual translation: exploring new media and formats;
  • Artificial intelligence (AI) and audiovisual translation (AVT);
  • Quality issues and quality assessment in AVT;
  • Ethical and economic issues involved in the expansion of AI in AVT practices.

 Important dates:

Deadline for submission of abstracts (400-600 words): 15 July 2024

Notification of provisional acceptance (abstracts): 30 August 2024

Submission of full papers: November 1st, 2024

Desk review: by November 15th, 2024

Sending out for peer review: by November 30th, 2024

First editorial decisions: by February 28th, 2025

Resubmission by authors: May 2025

Submission of final versions: May-June 2025

Language revision, APA, layout: June-October 2025

Issue published: December 2025.

 

Submission guidelines 

Please submit abstracts by email to sijat2025@unive.it

Full papers should be submitted by 1 November 2024 via the online submission system at www.jatjournal.org following the journal’s guidelines that can be consulted here: https://www.jatjournal.org/index.php/jat/about/submissions/

Contact 

Please contact the guest editors if you have any questions: sijat2025@unive.it

Linda Rossato: is Associate Professor of English Language and Translation at Ca' Foscari, University of Venice. Her research interests include audiovisual translation, non-professional translation and child language brokering, the language of food and tourism communication in a cross-cultiral perspective. She was a member of the competitive funding DAC research project on the Distribution, Adaptation and Circulation of Anglophone Television at the Department of Arts of the University of Bologna and she is part of a national research group coordinated by Ca’ Foscari, University of Venice on the promotion of Italy as a tourist destination (PRIN2020-DIETALY). She co-edited the volume Non-Professional Translation and Interpreting: State of the Art and Future of an Emerging Field of Research (2017), and a special issue of The Translator on Food and Culture in Translation (2015). She has recently published the book Food Television Discourse: A cross-cultural diachronic approach (2022) and is currently writing a new book about the diachronic evolution of dubbing (in Italy).

Delia Chiaro is Professor of English Language and Translation at the University of Bologna’s Department of Interpreting and Translation. Delia was part of the first group of scholars in Europe, led by the late Rosa Maria Bollettieri Bosinelli in the late 1990s, to begin carrying out research within the field of audio-visual translation. Since then, she has run three EU funded summer schools on the subject involving experts and students from seven European countries – Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Scotland and England as well as directing a successful master’s program on Screen Translation. She has organised dozens of conferences, is author of numerous books, articles and book chapters and has been invited speaker at conferences and universities all over the world. In 2014, she presented her work on dubbing as a keynote speaker at the European Commission in both Brussels and Luxembourg as part of "Library Days" events aimed to celebrate the Italian Presidency of the EU.  She has been interviewed by the BBC, RISS (Radio Svizzera), Radio Sydney and the Economist. Her forthcoming book, entitled Comedy in Political Language: How Politicians Use Humour, will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2024.

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