BOOK OF ABSTRACTS EST CONGRESS 2019 Keynote Speakers Abstracts are published here as received from the authors and remain the property of the authors. EST CONGRESS 2019 9 – 13 SEPTEMBER 2019 STELLENBOSCH, SOUTH AFRICA PAGE 1 The message in the noise: Reflections on complexity in communicating science Prof. Guy Midgley Stellenbosch University, South Africa One of the most vital forms of translation today is that from scientific findings to public and policy messages. Human society has risen to become a dominant “force of Nature”, recognized by the geological term Anthropocene, describing an increasingly complex relationship between people and planet. Our understanding of this complexity is evolving, and is itself contributing to the complexity. It seems that we now live in a world of “hyper-complexity”, where the anticipation of future events, based on mostly an incomplete understanding, feeds back to influence current events (“contamination by prediction”). Information is an increasingly valuable commodity, and the ability to recognize messages amongst noise, and translate them, is critical. I will reflect on two examples. First, a message that may have been lost for centuries to millennia in the remnants of a South African stone age society which illustrates how our preconceptions may blind us from perceiving and engaging with a remarkable early scientific insight. Second, the widely misinterpreted “butterfly effect” that originated in climatology, and whose correct understanding could help us to engage more productively with the notion of the limits on our predictive ability in a complex world. EST CONGRESS 2019 9 – 13 SEPTEMBER 2019 STELLENBOSCH, SOUTH AFRICA PAGE 2 Translation, Power Asymmetry, Minority Language Cultures Prof. Paul F. Bandia Concordia University, Canada In tune with the overall theme of this Congress, “Living Translation”, my talk will explore “The role of translation in the lived experience of the Other.” This study is done in light of the inherent practice of translation in contexts where multilingualism is the norm, as well as within the scientific discourse on alterity and representation of otherness in contemporary global languages. The evocation of translation in contexts of multilingualism and expressions of the lived experience of the Other often imply recourse to the intersection between translation and power relations to account for the impact of global inequalities be they linguistic, economic or technological on the translation process. To the extent that African literature is a window into life in contemporary African society, the role of translation will be discussed with respect to the power imbalance between orality and writing, between indigenous languages and the languages of colonization. This power differential is enhanced further by the ever-increasing gap between languages of officialdom and the evolving and rapidly assertive languages of creolization. African literary discourse lays bare the power differentials that have characterized relations historically in the contexts of colonization, post-colonialism, neo-colonialism and globalization. Translation has indeed been pivotal in negotiating and asserting the African experience within global discourses on inequality, power asymmetry and intercultural relations and communication. EST CONGRESS 2019 9 – 13 SEPTEMBER 2019 STELLENBOSCH, SOUTH AFRICA PAGE 3 Minding the Gaps: Translation and Interpreting Studies crossing interdisciplinary boundaries Prof. Claudia V. Angelelli Heriot-Watt University, Scotland Translation and interpreting (T&I) are areas of inquiry supported by substantial scholarship. However, the scholarly study of T&I is fairly recent. Only in the last 30 years have anecdotal and largely prescriptive writings on translation and interpreting given way to empirical research and descriptive studies. In addition, recently, the scholarly study of T&I has expanded at a rapid pace. This development is evident in the increasing number of university programs, specialized journals, conferences, scholarly associations, and publishing houses. Translation and interpreting is an interdisciplinary endeavor. Its interplay with other sciences such as sociology, artificial interpreting or with the language industry, however, is incipient. Although we have seen projects that bring together T&I scholars and Computer Sciences, for example, the gap between these two fields still exists and offers many opportunities for cross-fertilization. In our societies today, linguistic and cultural diversity permeates every thread of human interaction. Communication in general, and inter-linguistic/cultural communication in particular, is perceived, valued, and understood differently by peoples across space and time. In addition, goals, ideas, or messages are not immune to the interplay of social factors (e.g., ethnicity, age, gender, and socio- economic status) to which T&I studies add a layer of complexities. For TIS experts concerned with issues of language, access, linguistic minorities, and interaction, the field of T&I opens possibilities to explore many areas such as: T&I as a situated practice, the characteristics of communication between speakers of societal and non-societal languages, the nature of language transfer, the processes and products of high-level development of two languages, or the effects of instruction on the development of non-societal languages and its measurement. To that end, in this presentation, we will explore some issues arising from interdisciplinary T & I projects in healthcare, law and education that have resulted from crossing boundaries, yielding important empirical data. EST CONGRESS 2019 9 – 13 SEPTEMBER 2019 STELLENBOSCH, SOUTH AFRICA PAGE 4 Translating time: Modelling the (re)processing of emerging meaning Prof. Kobus Marais Department of Linguistics and Language Practice University of the Free State, South Africa [email protected] The choice between substance ontology and process ontology has been haunting humanity since, at least, Ancient Greek philosophy. Generally, it seems that the Platonic view that the constant is more basic holds sway in most thinking. The intuitive assumption seems to be that things are the way they are and that one has to put work into changing them. Constancy or substance, in this view, is primary and change (or process) secondary. In translation studies, this plays out in the source text as the stable starting point (stability is primary) that has to be changed (change is secondary) into a target text. In the more pessimistic views, such as those on the impossibility of translation, the form of the source text is so unique or materially set (stable) that it cannot be changed. Basing my argument on Peirce’s process semiotics and other process thinkers like Deacon (2013), Queiroz (Queiroz & Ata, 2018; Queiroz & Loula, 2010) and Whitehead (1985), I inverse the above argument, arguing that change or process is primary and constancy secondary. Because all of reality is subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it is process taking form rather than form changing (Marais, 2018). This would mean that time is crucial in this conceptualisation. Translation is not only process in the sense of changing a stable text into another stable text. Rather, translation is the very process that drives meaning in the first place. It is the virtual metabolism that relates the metabolism of the organism to its environment. A text is a process that has been constrained materially to be relatively stable, but the stability is not original, it is the effect of semiotic work, translation. My interest is thus in the semiotic work that was done to constrain semiotic process into some form of stability and the ways in which one can get to know or understand these constraints. This complexity view (Marais, 2014)on process and form has massive theoretical implications for translation studies. I spend half of this paper exploring some of these implications. However, this reversal of ground and figure also challenges the modelling of translation. If translation is process, how do we model it in a static medium such as print? I therefore explore the affordances that new computational technology offers for translating static models into changing ones. References Deacon, T. W., 2013. Incomplete nature: How mind emerged from matter. New York: WW Norman & Company. EST CONGRESS 2019 9 – 13 SEPTEMBER 2019 STELLENBOSCH, SOUTH AFRICA PAGE 5 Marais, K., 2014. Translation theory and development studies: A complexity theory approach. London: Routledge. Marais, K., 2018. A (bio)semiotic theory of translation: The emergence of social-cultural reality. New York: Routledge. Queiroz, J. & Ata, P., 2018. Intersemiotic translation as an abductive cognitive artifact. In: K. Marais & R. Meylaerts, eds. Complexity and translation: Methodological considerations. New York: Routledge. Queiroz, J. & Loula, A., 2010. Self-organization and emergence of semiosis. Jornada Peirceana, 13(2), pp. 239-249. Whitehead, A. N., 1985. Process and reality (Corrected version. New York: The Free Press. EST CONGRESS 2019 9 – 13 SEPTEMBER 2019 STELLENBOSCH, SOUTH AFRICA PAGE 6 Panel Presentations Abstracts are published here as received from the authors and remain the property of the authors. EST CONGRESS 2019 9 – 13 SEPTEMBER 2019 STELLENBOSCH, SOUTH AFRICA PAGE 7 60 years after Jakobson: new directions in intersemiotic translation From intersemiotic translation to transmediality: a view from semiotics of culture Elin Sütiste University of Tartu In this