Linguistic barriers exacerbate the already formidable challenges of responding to humanitarian crises, particularly—but not exclusively—in conflict zones. In the past decade alone, armed conflicts worldwide have inflicted untold suffering on large populations and often resulted in mass displacement. Addressing the needs of those affected by war and violence necessitates the involvement of large numbers of translators and interpreters, many of whom are frequently untrained volunteers. In addition to the immediate crisis response, people with, or seeking, refugee and/or asylum seeker status require sustained access to translation and interpreting support in host countries, both in order to access basic services and to enable their integration into local communities.
This event will bring together translators, interpreters, scholars, refugees, and NGO representatives to develop a deeper understanding of the complex demands and realities involved in translating conflict and refuge. Our aim is to create a space for meaningful exchange as well as to generate concrete opportunities for collaboration.
Plenary talks in the morning will be offered in hybrid format; parallel sessions in the afternoon will be in person only and will take the form of standard papers delivered in thematic panels.
This conference addresses topics related to armed conflict and forced displacement, including discussion of violence and humanitarian crises, and their impacts on individuals and communities. Some sessions may reference traumatic experiences.
Download event programme and abstract
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This programme may be subject to amendment. |
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| 9:00 - 9:15 |
Arrival and registration |
| 9:15 - 9:30 |
Welcome and introduction |
| 9:30 - 11:00 |
Room B Plenary Session 1: Translating in Conflict Zones: Challenges and ethical dilemmas (Hybrid) ‘Multilingual crisis communication in armed conflicts: on cooperation and collaboration’ ‘Access to translation as a means to the materialisation of human rights’ ‘The “chameleonisation” of Syrian conflict interpreters’ |
| 11:00 - 11:30 |
Refreshment break |
| 11:30 - 13:00 |
Room B Plenary Session 2: Translating at the Coalface and the Politics of Language in Conflict and Displacement (Hybrid) ‘Protection of civilian interpreters and translators in conflict zones’ ‘When language becomes evidence: strategic multilingualism, trust, and participation in human rights practice’ ‘Language, heritage, policy: ethical issues in co-researching with multilingual asylum-seeking children and interpreters in transit country contexts’ |
| 13:00 - 13:45 |
Lunch |
| 13:45 - 15:45 |
Parallel sessions (In person) Strands:
Please see a full list of presenters and titles below. |
| 13:45 - 15:45 |
Room B Parallel session 1: Language Justice, translation and language access policies, support for asylum seekers and refugees ‘Translating displacement in superdiverse societies: language access and the politics of representation’ ‘How are evaluations of the credibility of asylum seekers affected by interpreter-mediated encounters within the UK immigration system?’ ‘Climate Change, Migration, and the Politics of Communication: Translation and interpreting as infrastructures of sustainability’ ‘Refugees without Geography: The case of the Croatian Serbs’ ‘Simplifying Borders: Promises and limits of AI-driven easy-language translation’ |
| 13:45 - 15:45 |
Room D Parallel session 2: Interpreters and translators in conflict and displacement settings, ethical dilemmas, training ‘Interpreting Forced Migration: A dual-perspective study on Syrian refugee support in Türkiye’ ‘Interpreter Positionality in Conflict-Related Scenarios’ ‘Displacing the interpreters: The politics of the aftermath of war’ ‘Invisible Boundaries: Translating the voices of Chinese migrants with “Duldung” status in Germany’ ‘Interpreting Conflict: Military versus operational language mediators. Discursive socio-professional identity construction’ |
| 13:45-15:30 |
Room E Parallel session 3: Politics of representation, translation in media coverage and humanitarian discourse, literary translation ‘Translating testimonies in the platform age: self-translation, volunteer OCT, and ethical mediation of Gaza narratives’ ‘Representing Displaced People in the Mediterranean: Humanitarian discourse in translation’ ‘Cartographies of belonging: Migrant translation, urban space, and the politics of refuge’ ‘Translating Victimhood: Shaping Jewish refugee memoirs for interwar and wartime British readers’ ‘Translating Displacement across Ideological Borders: Language politics in East Germany’s Sinn und Form (1949–1990)’ |
| 15:30-16:00 |
Refreshment break |
| 16:00-17:30 |
Room B Reframing translation and displacement through collaboration Humanitarian response and practical support: ‘Respond Crisis Translation (RCT): from grassroots activism to economic justice for language practitioners’ ‘Navigating ethical and linguistic challenges in humanitarian response’ Literature, translation and advocacy: ‘The places in between: finding common humanity through translation and poetry’ ‘Imagining beyond conflict: Paranda’s translation ecosystem’ |
| 17:30 |
Room B Closing and farewell |
| 19:00 |
Conference dinner at Sidney Sussex College (limited places) |
Convened by
- Tugba Basaran (Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement/Cambridge Refugee Hub, University of Cambridge)
- Ángeles Carreres (Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics, University of Cambridge)
- María Noriega-Sánchez (Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics, University of Cambridge)
- Marissa Quie (Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement/Afghanistan Desk, University of Cambridge)
Registration fees will cover in-person attendance and refreshments:
Full in-person fee: £30
Concessionary in-person fee: £15 (student/unwaged)
Registration fee for remote access to morning plenary sessions only: £5
If you have specific accessibility needs for this event please get in touch. We will do our best to accommodate any requests.
Morning sessions (hybrid)
9:30-11am, Room B
Plenary Session 1
Translating in conflict zones: challenges and ethical dilemmas
‘Multilingual crisis communication in armed conflicts: on cooperation and collaboration’
Federico Federici, Professor of Intercultural Crisis Communication, Director of the Centre for Translation Studies (CenTraS), University College London (UCL), UK
In language discordant crisis contexts, communication depends on a collective willingness to collaborate in order to comprehend risks and diminish their impact on populations exposed to hazards. Crisis and emergency risk communication (CERC) embodies this paradigm: it demands cross lingual exchange to eliminate, reduce, or mitigate threats for all affected groups (Federici & O’Brien, 2020; O’Brien & Federici, 2020, 2023). Achieving these objectives presupposes an intent to cooperate in risk management, yet, by default, in armed conflicts and battlefield environments communication exists in reductive binaries—messages either bolster one’s allies or serve the enemy.
Studies about translation (Kelly & Baker, 2013; Stahuljak, 2009) and interpreting in armed conflicts (Ruiz Rosendo, forthcoming) show the consistent exposure to distrust of intercultural mediators – of any professional (Ruiz Rosendo, 2021; Tryuk, 2020) and non-professional kind (Al-Shehari, 2019).
Historically, the post Second World War era saw the emergence of language technologies precisely because military actors (e.g. ALPAC and Euratom) sought to bypass untrustworthy human intermediaries (Hutchins 1995). Trust in communication in the current era of AI-dominated discourses and unpredictable global relations concerns distinguishing facts and truth in simulated, as well as controlled language exchanges. Recurrent soundbites to launch AI language technologies focus on how they solved language barriers; unsurprisingly, machine translation development was intrinsically linked with conflicts and the need to listen in the enemy’s communication without relying on potentially untrustworthy human translators and interpreters.
This talk focuses on questions and concerns about using crisis communication theories in relation to interlingual communication in armed conflicts, where the collaborative willingness to understand risks and deal with them is shaped by the unwillingness to cooperate – any conflict’s default position. Humans are vulnerabilities; technologies symbolise the communicative paradox of interlingual communication in armed conflicts: it must happen when nobody trusts the people or mechanisms that make it happen.
‘Access to translation as a means to the materialisation of human rights’
Aline Larroyed, researcher and scholar in Translation Studies, School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies (SALIS), Dublin City University, Ireland
My research examines how the lack of adequate access to translation in crisis settings may amount to violations of international human rights law. It advances the argument that translation should not be understood as a merely technical or procedural matter, but as a structural condition for the effective protection and enjoyment of fundamental rights, particularly in situations of heightened vulnerability.
My work draws on a systematic analysis of key international human rights instruments, including declarations, treaties, soft law standards, academic literature, and emblematic judicial decisions, to explore how deficiencies in translation undermine the interpretation, implementation, and enforcement of human rights norms. The analysis focuses on crisis contexts such as forced displacement, climate-related emergencies, and public health crises, where language barriers frequently intersect with inequality, marginalisation, and asymmetries of power.
The legal analysis is complemented by empirical research based on interviews with key stakeholders, including diplomats, members of regional human rights commissions and courts, human rights defenders, professional translators, policymakers, and community leaders. These interviews provide grounded insights into how translation gaps operate in practice, revealing persistent institutional blind spots and patterns of neglect that are often normalised within crisis governance frameworks.
Central to this research is the concept of translation justice, which I develop as both a normative and operational lens. I argue that access to accurate, timely, and culturally appropriate translation is indispensable for the protection of rights such as access to information, equality before the law, healthcare, education, the right to a fair trial, and, ultimately, the right to life. Yet, despite its significance, translation remains largely invisible within existing legal and policy responses to crises. My work concludes by calling for clearer legislative and policy approaches that explicitly integrate translation into human rights frameworks and crisis management strategies.
‘The ‘chameleonisation’ of Syrian conflict interpreters’
Rasheed Abdul Hadi, freelance interpreter and translator, Senior Lecturer at Damascus University, Syria, and Visiting Research Fellow at Bath Spa University, UK
This talk examines what I term ‘chameleonisation’: the adaptive semiotic, linguistic, and narrative manoeuvres employed by interpreters working in and around the Syrian conflict, both before and after Assad’s downfall. In these contexts, interpretation extends far beyond the transfer of meaning between languages; it becomes a form of situated negotiation in which lexical choices, identity cues, and narrative positioning are inseparable from questions of professional practice, personal ethics, and, at times, physical survival. Drawing on selected discourse samples alongside glimpses from (auto)ethnographic encounters, the talk offers a curated series of moments that illuminate how interpreters navigate a communicative landscape where terminology is contested, meanings are continually re signified, and even a single word may carry implications for credibility, alignment, or safety.
Rather than presenting the full theoretical framework developed in my forthcoming article, the plenary foregrounds a handful of indicative instances that reveal the pressures of working across competing storyworlds. These examples demonstrate how interpreters respond to shifting power dynamics, recalibrate their stance in real time, and operate within environments where the ideal of neutrality is unstable, strategically performed, and often illusory. In foregrounding these moments, the talk highlights the ethical, political, and existential stakes of translation in conflict zones, and the ways in which interpreters become active narrators whose choices shape how the Syrian conflict is told, circulated, and ultimately understood.
Situating these insights within broader lenses of semiotics and narrative theory, the plenary opens a wider conversation about the limits of neutrality, the politics of voice, and the interpretive labour demanded in wartime contexts. In doing so, it invites reflection on how interpreters inhabit, resist, and reconfigure the narratives available to them, and what their practices reveal about the entanglement of language, power, and survival in conditions of protracted conflict.
11:30-1pm, Room B
Plenary Session 2
Translating at the coalface and the politics of language in conflict and displacement
‘Protection of civilian interpreters and translators in conflict zones’
Lesia Ponomarenko, researcher, freelance translator and interpreter, and Lucía Ruiz Rosendo, Associate Professor and Head of the Interpreting Department, Faculty of Translation and Interpreting, University of Geneva, Switzerland
As armed conflicts increase in scale, duration, and complexity, the demand for translators and interpreters in conflict zones has grown dramatically. These professionals serve as essential intermediaries between actors who do not share a common language, facilitating communication across humanitarian, diplomatic, and journalistic contexts. Translators and interpreters frequently operate under life-threatening conditions, often without adequate legal or institutional protection. This paper examines the current situation of civilian translators and interpreters working in armed conflict settings, focusing on three key categories: those supporting humanitarian organisations, diplomatic missions, and international news media teams. Drawing on archival analysis of publicly available organisational policies, international humanitarian law provisions, media reports of incidents, and firsthand accounts, the study explores how protection mechanisms differ among these groups and identifies the challenges faced by civilian translators and interpreters in areas of armed conflict. The findings reveal significant disparities. Translators and interpreters embedded in humanitarian organisations tend to enjoy comparatively better protection as members of these missions. By contrast, those working for diplomatic or monitoring bodies, particularly locally recruited personnel, receive only limited safeguards. Similarly, interpreters and local fixers assisting international journalists may theoretically fall within the protections to journalists accorded by IHL provisions, yet in practice, they often face severe risks once the media teams depart. By exploring the ongoing challenges faced by language professionals in conflict zones, this paper seeks to enhance awareness and highlight the need to improve protection for civilian translators and interpreters working in armed conflict zones.
‘When language becomes evidence: strategic multilingualism, trust, and participation in human rights practice’
Lucio Bagnulo, Deputy Programme Director, Head of Translation and Language Strategy, Amnesty International
Human rights work is often described in terms of evidence, accountability, and participation. Yet, in most cases, each of these depends on processes that are fundamentally multilingual. The transformation of lived experience into documented findings and human rights reporting, the way in which those findings are taken up in advocacy and campaigning at local, national, and international levels, and the possibility for affected communities to engage with what is produced in their name are all shaped by linguistic architectures that often remain invisible.
This perspective is rooted in the transversal dimension of multilingual practices in an international human rights setting and in research on multilingualism, trust, and linguistic justice. From this position, language shapes every stage through which lived experience becomes documented research and human rights reporting: it enables access across linguistic boundaries, makes testimonies and documentation analysable, and determines who is able to act on the findings that emerge, both in local and global contexts.
In this sense, multilingualism is not only a means of extending the reach of advocacy. It operates as a mechanism of recognition that allows the people most directly concerned to engage cognitively and socially with the documentation that affects them. When research becomes accessible in their languages, it can be discussed, contested, and mobilised, contributing to the construction of trust, to the sharing of epistemic authority, and to forms of participation that are substantive rather than symbolic.
What emerges from this perspective is the need to move beyond reactive and project-based approaches and to intentionally embed multilingualism in the design of human rights research, advocacy, and campaigning initiatives. Within such a framework, language professionals are not positioned at the margins of institutional workflows but participate in the co-production of evidence, institutional credibility, and the conditions that make human rights materially accessible.
‘Language, heritage, policy: ethical issues in co-researching with multilingual asylum-seeking children and interpreters in transit country contexts’
Yongcan Liu, Professor of Applied Linguistics and Languages Education, Faculty of Education, Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement, University of Cambridge, and Zach Denton, PhD student, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, co-founder and convener for the Cambridge Refugee Language Education Unit (CRLEU)
In transit countries, language policies play heavily into asylum seeking children’s access to different elements of society in transit (i.e., formal education, service providers, refugee communities, extended families). Their language choices have significant impact not only on themselves and their families in the present but also through a protracted resettlement process, potentially through several countries. While research with forcibly displaced children in transit is of paramount importance, research of this kind is often difficult to conduct. The array of languages and language varieties in each participant’s repertoire is one potential hurdle that may be overcome through the help of interpreters from relevant forcibly displaced communities. This session explores insights into co-researching with multilingual asylum-seeking children and interpreters in transit countries and the interplay among language, heritage and policy in this context.
The talk opens with an overview of present research on language policy, heritage language maintenance, and refugee language education. The review of research will illuminate the importance of language policy and education particularly within forcibly displaced communities in transit. After identifying pathways for future research, we reflect on our own experiences conducting research in dynamic, multilingual spaces with forcibly displaced people. We draw on examples and insights from working alongside refugee community interpreters to provide recommendations for community-informed, collaborative standards of practice. This presentation will conclude with a discussion of ethical dilemmas, such as the imperative of access to quality interpretation and how to preserve the safety of interpreters and participants in insecure contexts.
Afternoon sessions (in person)
Abstracts in alphabetical order by author’s surname
‘Climate change, migration, and the politics of communication: translation and interpreting as infrastructures of sustainability’
Sofía Antequera, Candelas Bayón, Carmen Pena and Andrea Sanz (University of Alcalá, Spain)
Climate change is increasingly recognized as a driver of displacement and forced migration, with so-called sudden and slow onset events (i.e. rising sea levels, extreme weather conditions) reshaping mobility patterns across the globe (International Organization for Migration, 2022, p.6). Europe, situated at the intersection of multiple migration routes, is already attempting at tackling climate migration-related challenges, through initiatives like the adherence to the UN’s 2030 Agenda, but responses continue to be limited (Apap & Harju, 2023, p.2).
Stakeholders like the International Organization for Migration are aiming at developing rights-based, migrant-centered and integrated solutions for people on the move (IOM, 2022, p.17). However, these cannot be accomplished without guaranteeing linguistic rights and access to information, with communication being a less visible yet critical barrier in displacement processes. Many displaced populations speak languages of lesser diffusion (LLDs), for which professional translation and interpreting (T&I) services are virtually absent. The consequences of such linguistic invisibility range from misdiagnosis in healthcare or undermining of asylum processes, to trust erosion and integration obstruction in schools, municipal services and disaster response. Consequently, this paper explores T&I as resilience infrastructures in the context of climate-induced migration. Drawing on evidence from two major initiatives—the Erasmus+ project DIALOGOS, which developed training for public service interpreters in LLDs, and the Spanish national project Intercomsalud, which addressed intercultural communication by reinforcing the presence of interpreting services in public healthcare—it highlights concrete cases of communication breakdown, showcases innovative training and resources and, following a cross-sectoral approach, discusses how these models can inform future responses to climate-driven displacement through the establishment of professional and state-funded interpreting services.
Thus, this paper concludes that embedding language access into climate-induced migration responses, following an interdisciplinary agenda, is essential to safeguard rights, ensure institutional effectivenesss, and put the human consequences of climate change at the center.
‘Imagining beyond conflict: Paranda’s translation ecosystem’
Tamanna Easar (Writer and translator, Paranda network, Untold Narratives)
Untold Narratives is a writer development programme working with writers structurally marginalised by community or conflict. Through Untold’s projects, writers with creative ambition, who are currently unable to develop their writing beyond their immediate communities can develop their craft in their own languages, connect to each other, and reach new international audiences in translation.
Untold has been working with women writers in Afghanistan and the diaspora since 2019, supporting an online community, known as Paranda, to develop short story fiction in Dari and Pashto as well as in translation. Collectively, the group of 38 writers have had over 100 short stories and essays commissioned and published in international literary journals, anthologies, and online publications. The project has also produced three publications: My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women (MacLehose Press, 2022), Rising After the Fall (Scholastic, 2023), and My Dear Kabul: A Year in the Life of an Afghan Women’s Writing Group (Coronet, 2024).
This session, delivered by Paranda writer and translator Tamanna Easar, will offer a critical exploration of how Untold Narratives responded to a specific editorial need by developing a writer-editor-translator model for its Paranda writers’ group. The speaker will examine how this collaboration works in a way that keeps translation at the heart of the writer development process, enabling stories to circulate globally without flattening complex realities into stereotypical representations. What are the challenges, benefits and risks? How does literary collaboration function as a form of resistance to narrative simplification? And how might this model be replicable and scalable to other contexts?
‘Displacing the interpreters: the politics of the aftermath of war’
Hilary Footitt (Associate Fellow, Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK)
The paper takes as its subject the case of local Afghan interpreters employed by NATO forces, INGOs and ‘soft power’ agencies from 2001 until the Evacuation of 2021. It suggests that for these actors, temporal distinctions between war and postwar were necessarily blurred. Rather than limiting our analyses to the envelope of interpreting duties performed by these locally recruited personnel, the paper argues that we should engage with their aftermath of war, given that well after their contracts had terminated they continued to be named as ‘interpreters’ by both enemies and ex-Allies.
The story of Western lobbying for endangered Afghan interpreters and their postwar lives in the West as refugees present a number of challenges to traditional understandings of interpreters and their role in conflict. The tendency of Western advocacy groups to defend local Afghan interpreters by representing them in military terms, as military personnel, fellow army soldiers, calls into question the discourse of those who more often describe interpreting as axiomatically benign, associated with peace. As refugees in the West, Afghan interpreters, despite their past working lives alongside NATO armies, were caught up in a migration-security nexus, suspected as likely to present a security threat to their new host countries.
Taking this longue durée approach to local interpreters in conflict situations enables us to engage with the political situatedness of interpreting in war, and the personal, as opposed to the professional consequences of this situatedness. It helps us to look for some form of accountability from armies and agencies which employ local personnel, and emphasizes the highly political symbiotic relationship between employer and interpreter: ‘You said “we won’t turn our backs on you”. You lied. The internationals have lied to us’ (Interview, 14.02.22).
‘Interpreting conflict: military versus operational language mediators. Discursive socio-professional identity construction’
Nina Gavlovych (Universitat Jaume I de Castelló, Spain)
Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Ukrainian military greatly depends on both NATO’s and the EU’s assistance to upgrade its military’s operational readiness and mount a full-capacity military response to the incursion. Ukraine has officially proposed its adhesion to NATO, while the EU has deployed the first-ever Military Assistance Mission to Ukraine (EUMAM) under the aegis of a long-term US commitment to support the country. The interconnection of all these geopolitical structures makes military interpretation an indispensable tool to ensure effective communication.
Ideally, given the sensitive nature of the training and the classified information involved, high-level security clearances for interpreters should be required, as well as a duly accredited formal university education in translation and interpreting, balanced or equilingual level of bilingualism and a specialisation in military and medical terminology. However, countries and organisations approach candidate screening and eligibility criteria for recruitment differently.
Thus, the present study seeks to examine a corpus of 20 job advertisements extracted and carefully curated from both the EU and Ukrainian job search engines. A qualitative analysis of potential and real interpreter profiles is sketched with the aid of a multiperspectival SFL (Systemic Functional Linguistics) inspired focus, drawing on the principles of instantiation and, especially, individuation. Profiles are then collated and scrutinised in greater detail, with a view to poking into the interpreters’ socio-professional identity construction and the subsequent effects on their engagement and interaction within the geopolitical landscape.
The study showcases that, in effect, there is great heterogeneity in the recruitment criteria grounded in varying stages of professionalization and in different socio-professional construal of this occupation, in some cases conditioned by general scepticism, lack of generalised professional recognition, usurpation of this occupation by non-professional bilinguals, or geographical context (operational interpreters deployed in theater of war in Ukraine versus EU armed forces interpreters).
‘Interpreting forced migration: a dual-perspective study on Syrian refugee support in Türkiye’
Ahmed Halil (Cambridge Muslim College, UK)
The Syrian revolution, which began in 2011 as an uprising against the ruling regime and has continued for fourteen years, remains one of the most significant drivers of mass migration in the modern era. Millions of Syrians were displaced internally and externally, with Türkiye becoming the primary host country, receiving more than 3.5 million Syrian refugees (UNHCR 2023).
Interpreting for forcibly displaced populations under such conditions involves navigating linguistic, emotional, and ethical complexities; “being able to communicate in the dominant societal language of the host community is recognised as key within integration frameworks for refugee receiving countries” (Ager & Strang 2004; Wolffhardt et al. 2019).
The rapid arrival of a large refugee population created an urgent need for qualified interpreters in Türkiye. However, due to the limited availability of professionally trained interpreters, many humanitarian organisations relied on bilingual speakers of Arabic and Turkish to fill this gap, which introduced additional challenges for interpreters, field workers, and refugees alike.
Previous research on interpreters working in this field in Turkey (Jérôme Devaux, Sarah Cox & Ahmed Halil 2023) has shown that “there is an evident need for more comprehensive, targeted training programs. This is crucial not only for effective communication in public services but also for addressing the complex needs of trauma survivors.” Responding to this gap, the present study examines the challenges of interpreting for Syrian refugees by exploring the experiences of both interpreters and field workers, including psychological support providers. This dual focus captures two interconnected perspectives that are rarely analysed together.
Drawing on semi-structured interviews with five interpreters and five field workers, the research investigates issues such as emotional burden, role ambiguity, cultural mediation, ethical dilemmas, and trauma exposure. Bringing these perspectives into conversation provides a deeper understanding of how communication barriers shape humanitarian work. The study aims to offer practical recommendations for NGOs, interpreter training programmes, and humanitarian organisations to enhance collaboration, improve interpreter preparedness, and strengthen service provision for refugee communities.
‘Invisible boundaries: translating the voices of Chinese migrants with “Duldung” status in Germany’
Huiming Jin (Independent scholar and freelance court interpreter, Germany)
This paper examines the intersection of language, displacement, and representation through the case of Chinese migrants in Germany who hold a Duldung (tolerated stay permit). Drawing on my professional experience as a court interpreter and on field research, interview data, and interpreter protocols, I explore how linguistic mediation becomes both a survival tool and a site of exclusion for this marginalized community.
The study situates the phenomenon within broader socio-economic and political contexts: the industrial decline in Northeast China has driven many to seek livelihoods abroad, while restrictive German immigration policies have confined them to a state of “legal temporariness.” In this liminal space, the act of translation—whether in asylum hearings, medical encounters, or daily communication—shapes how their stories are narrated, interpreted, and often silenced. Their “invisible” presence in public discourse underscores how language politics and institutional translation practices can reinforce social invisibility and hinder integration.
This paper explores how the voices of Chinese migrants under Duldung status are mediated, reframed, and often silenced through institutional translation and legal discourse, revealing the politics of representation embedded in language and migration governance.
By engaging with theories of structural exclusion, transnational identity, and the ethics of interpreting, this paper highlights translation as a crucial lens for understanding displacement beyond traditional conflict zones. It calls for greater humanitarian awareness and inclusive translation practices that recognize the agency and dignity of those living under uncertain legal status. In doing so, it bridges the gap between translation studies, migration research, and lived experience, offering a perspective from within the act of translation itself.
‘How are evaluations of the credibility of asylum seekers affected by interpreter-mediated encounters within the UK immigration system?
Banaz Kamil (PhD candidate, University of the West of Scotland, UK)
“People were talking about my life, and I was there, but I never understood anything. I spoke my difficult truth through an interpreter, but I could never be sure the court heard it the way I said it.” In this quote, an asylum seeker described the difficulty of communicating their story through an interpreter, highlighting lack of understanding and participation, leaves them present, yet excluded.
Asylum seekers are particularly vulnerable due to language barriers and unfamiliarity with the legal process. Interpreters play a crucial role in the asylum process. The assessment of an applicant’s credibility often plays a determinative role in refugee status recognition (Gill et al., 2016). In credibility assessments, the emphasis placed on the consistency of the applicant’s account can raise challenges during interpreter-mediated hearings.
This paper is based on the author’s ongoing PhD research project, which employs an ethnographic and practical based approach to investigate interpretation in asylum hearings, focusing on how the credibility of an asylum seeker is affected by miscommunication in interpreter-mediated hearings. The paper draws on the author’s insights from ethnographic observation at the First Tier Immigration and Asylum Chamber in Glasgow and from semi-structured interviews. In doing so, this paper identifies emerging themes around miscommunication, credibility evaluations, and the practical and ethical issues that arise in interpreter-mediated asylum hearings.
Furthermore, the paper examines challenges of ensuring access to justice in asylum hearings by identifying additional, compounding barriers that arise during interpreter-mediated processes. Language barriers can compromise procedural fairness when asylum seekers cannot understand proceedings or communicate their case, undermining their fundamental right to justice. Building on these findings, the paper also presents outcomes from a completed SLSA Impact Grant project that developed a bilingual guide and animated video to support tribunal users requiring an interpreter, highlighting practical strategies to mitigate language barriers.
‘Translating displacement in superdiverse societies: language access and the politics of representation’
Javier Moreno Rivero (Beatriz Galindo Distinguished Professor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain, and Assistant Professor in Translation and Intercultural Studies at the City University of New York, US)
In superdiverse societies, sociologically understood as formations shaped by the interaction of multiple migration trajectories, legal statuses, and unequal access to institutional resources (Vertovec 2007), access to rights is mediated through procedural encounters in which language plays a constitutive role. Legal subjectivity in such contexts is not produced solely through the application of substantive law, but through communicative processes in which translation and interpreting determine intelligibility, credibility, and participation (Moreno-Rivero 2023).
This paper examines translation and interpreting practices in legal-bureaucratic settings as structural mechanisms through which refugees and forcibly displaced individuals are recognised, evaluated, or excluded within host-state institutions.
Drawing on an ethnographic research project conducted in a superdiverse urban context (New York City), the paper analyses language access policies, institutional documentation, and communicative practices within public agencies that interact directly with asylum seekers, as well as state and federal governmental bodies involved in language access policymaking. This multi-sited institutional ethnography provides the empirical basis for developing the concept of “punitive multilingualism” (Angermeyer 2023), used here to describe regimes in which linguistic diversity is formally acknowledged yet operationalised through minimal, compliance-driven measures. Within such regimes, translation functions primarily as an instrument of procedural management rather than as a guarantee of communicative equality, constraining the narrative agency of displaced individuals required to recount experiences of conflict and persecution (Maryns 2006; Inghilleri 2015).
Situated at the intersection of sociolinguistics, translation studies, and sociolegal theory, the analysis demonstrates how translation in superdiverse legal settings operates as a site of symbolic power, regulating whose voices are heard and how they are interpreted (Bourdieu 1991; Shohamy 2006). The increasing reliance on non-professional interpreters and automated translation technologies further intensifies these asymmetries, raising ethical and epistemic concerns in high-stakes encounters involving displaced populations (Ozolins 2010; Phipps 2018).
In sum, this paper positions translation as a central mechanism through which displacement is governed and experienced in superdiverse societies. It argues that prevailing approaches to linguistic mediation reproduce structural inequalities in representation and credibility, and calls for rights-based translation frameworks that foreground accountability and communicative justice in institutional responses to forced displacement.
‘The places in between: finding common humanity through translation and poetry’
Ambrose Musiyiwa (Poet and project coordinator, Journeys in Translation) and Christophe Gagne (Professor of French Language and Translation, University of Cambridge)
This paper explores translation as a space of encounter, empathy, and shared humanity, focusing on the case of Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for Those Seeking Refuge (2015) and its companion project, Journeys in Translation. Conceived by poets in the UK as a response to the polarised and dehumanising ‘refugee crisis’ discourses in the media and politics, the anthology brought together 101 poems from 82 voices. Its aim was twofold: to challenge dehumanising narratives and to raise funds for humanitarian organisations working with refugees and migrants.
The afterlife of the anthology took concrete form through Journeys in Translation, an international, volunteer-driven initiative coordinated by Ambrose Musiyiwa. The project invited bilinguals, multilinguals and language learners to translate a selected subset of poems into any language. Translations — literal or poetic — were shared publicly (blogs, social media, letters), and participants were encouraged to organise local events: reading sessions, discussion groups, and translation workshops.
In this paper, Ambrose Musiyiwa will present the overall project, its aims and international reach; Christophe Gagne will reflect on his experience translating poems from the anthology into French — how the process required close attention, empathy, and an ethical commitment to the subjects of the poems. This dual perspective shows translation not merely as linguistic transfer, but as a communal, politically engaged, and humanizing act: a praxis through which solidarity, dignity, and intercultural understanding can be enacted.
Drawing on theoretical frameworks that view translation as constitutive of human knowledge and ethics — from George Steiner and Barbara Cassin to Souleymane Bachir Diagne and Umberto Eco — the paper argues that translation provides a relational “place where we meet,” an alternative discursive space capable of resisting dehumanization and fostering shared humanity. In this way, the case of Over Land, Over Sea / Journeys in Translation exemplifies how literary translation can function as social activism and as a necessary epistemic and ethical practice in our multilingual, globalised world.
‘Interpreter positionality in conflict-related scenarios’
Mariia Onyshchuk (Assistant Professor at the Jan Kochanowski University, Kielce, Poland, and at the Мykhailo Drahomanov Ukrainian State University, Kyiv, Ukraine)
The paper examines the positionality of translators and interpreters in conflict-related scenarios (Federici 2016, O’Brien 2016), a situation often concerned with the conflict itself or its consequences, which is currently unfolding in Poland within the context of the refugee crisis. Particularly, it deals with my experiences of providing translation and interpretation services to the externally displaced Ukrainian population, primarily women and children who fled Ukraine with the outbreak of full-scale aggression by Russia in February of 2022. The numerous tasks I have performed made me reconsider the complexity and realities involved in translating conflict and displacement.
In the first section of the paper, I will discuss the role of the interpreter’s positionality and the relationships between stakeholders and translators, as well as the ethical issues of interpretation and the impact of conflict scenarios on translators and interpreters (Baker & Pérez González, 2011). In the second section, I will examine the tasks interpreters carry out (Todorova, 2017). They range from providing basic linguistic support in public institutions, outpatient and inpatient clinics, and city council consultations, to helping with documentation and applications to attend kindergartens and schools, aimed at integrating displaced population into a local community. I will share my experiences of escorting international NGOs during field study visits and provision of interpretation during symposia, conferences, and workshops on humanitarian aid.
In the paper, I consider that translating testimonies of conflict and refuge remains a relevant issue in reality settings. I hypothesise that the provision of translation and interpretation tasks in conflict-related scenarios poses serious challenges, among which ethnic bias (Baker, 2010; Packer, 2007; Palmer 2007), impact the perception and emotions towards the situation and the parties involved (Ruiz Rosendo & Persaud, 2019), the im/possibility to go beyond the linguistic and cultural mediation (Ficklin & Jones 2009; Ruiz Rosendo, 2019b), together with difficulty in adhering to codes of ethics and institutional guidelines. My intention is to explore the interpreter’s positionality in challenging settings, identify both explicit and implicit interpretation complexities with the aim of facilitating generation of contrete collaboration opportunities.
‘Navigating ethical and linguistic challenges in humanitarian response’
Eszter Papp (Terminology Officer at CLEAR Global and Visiting Lecturer and Researcher at Károli Gáspár University, BTK, TERMIK, Budapest, Hungary) and Alice Castillejo (Programme Development Manager at CLEAR Global)
The critical role of language in humanitarian response is often overlooked, despite evidence of its impact on access to critical information and services in emergencies, particularly those involving forced displacement. Linguistic barriers in high-stakes, volatile environments significantly exacerbate vulnerabilities and can critically hinder effective aid efforts. Miscommunication, misunderstanding of instructions, and cultural differences among multiple international and national stakeholders and affected communities can delay aid delivery and worsen outcomes. Furthermore, infrastructure damage often disrupts communication channels, limiting access to emergency services and vital information.
This talk explores the complex challenges and ethical dilemmas faced by language mediators, particularly untrained volunteer interpreters and first responders, operating in these intense conditions. The rapid, ad-hoc mobilization of untrained bilinguals and resources often leads to challenges around language use: materials are not available in the correct language or variant, and if they are, they have inconsistent quality and use inappropriate terminology, which is due to the fact that the humanitarian field uses unfamiliar concepts (such as ‘safeguarding’, ‘mainstreaming’) or domain specific jargon (such as ‘armed combatants’, ‘unaccompanied minors’, ‘protection’).
Addressing these challenges requires humanitarian action to be language sensitive from the outset, and to include planning and budgeting to address language challenges. Key solutions offered by CLEAR Global include: language maps that inform organizations about the languages spoken in an area; multilingual terminology databases that offer domain-specific essential concepts and their designations across languages; and evidence-based guidance and training for community engagement and accountability.
‘Translating victimhood: shaping Jewish refugee memoirs for interwar and wartime British readers’
Ellen Pilsworth (Associate Professor in German and Translation Studies at the University of Reading, UK)
Since the 1990s, Britain’s role as host to Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution has taken on a disproportionate place in Anglophone memory narrative of the years of Hitler’s rule. By contrast, historians have shown that contemporary British government policy developed in ways to minimise Jewish immigration (London, Whitehall and the Jews, 2000), and to censor news about the genocide as it occurred (Fleming, Auschwitz, the Allies, and Censorship of the Holocaust, 2014). My own work has explored how written narratives by refugees from Nazism were selected, translated, and shaped by publishers in order to make them ‘sellable’ on the British literary marketplace of the 1930s and 40s. I have found that different victim tropes took centre stage in the British imagination as Britains observed Nazism from overseas between 1933 and 1945, and that particular care had to be taken when translating and packaging Jewish victimhood for British audiences. The pattern of changes which were made to Jewish-authored narratives is highly revealing. It shows us how British assumptions and prejudices about Nazism and its victims effectively determined whose stories could be told and how they would be received. Jewish victimhood was often not represented at all, and could only be represented if framed in particular ways.
My work draws on New Censorship Theory which argues that ‘censorship is an integral feature of every discursive field’ (Baer and Merkle, The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Censorship, 2025). I argue that public media respond to perceived market demand, and thus maintain and nurture existing prejudices and biases in ways that constitute an unofficial censorship practice. Given the centrality of narrative to obtaining legal refugee status, and the vulnerability of all narratives to censorship (Eastmond, ‘Stories as Lived Experience: Narratives in Forced Migration Research’, 2007), a far greater understanding of these processes is needed.
‘“Simplifying borders”: promises and limits of AI-driven Easy-Language translation’
Eugenia Portioli, Paolo Canavese and Annarita Felici (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
When communicating with public authorities, migrants often face linguistic barriers that further exacerbate their already precarious situation. These barriers include dealing with texts written in a language they do not (sufficiently) understand or in a style that is overly complex, convoluted, and bureaucratic. Originally developed to support people with cognitive impairments, Easy Language (EL) can promote inclusion (Rink 2020, Maaß 2020), and is gaining scholarly attention for its applicability to people with limited proficiency in a second language, such as migrants (Fioravanti 2024; Ahrens & Fioravanti 2022; Ben Soltane 2022; Gutermuth 2020). This highly regulated way of communicating is characterised by a significant degree of simplification at the lexical, syntactic, and textual levels. Recent advances in generative AI offer promising tools for assisting this form of intralingual translation (Rivas Ginel et al. 2025; Beck van Raij et al. 2024; Deilen et al. 2023; Gerlach et al. 2022).
Against this background, the present study tests the potential of AI-assisted translation into EL to improve communication between migrants and local authorities at the French–Italian border, in Ventimiglia (Italy). The study was made possible thanks to a close cooperation with volunteers of local NGOs and charity organisations. It deals with a trilingual (Italian, English, French) summons letter issued by the Italian police and addressed to a migrant. First, we assessed the potential of AI to produce an EL version of the document. Using different prompting strategies and tools (ChatGPT-5, Claude 4.5, and Gemini 2.5), we generated simplified versions and evaluated them for content accuracy and adherence to Inclusion Europe standards (2017). The analysis highlights both the potential of such tools and the risks of content distortions that require human oversight. In the second stage, we presented the simplified versions to five migrants with different backgrounds. Semi-structured interviews carried out in summer 2025 revealed improved comprehension but also raised concerns about the trustworthiness of such overly simplified texts. While further research is needed on the role of EL in fostering migrants’ inclusion, the demand for more accessible administrative communication is indisputable.
‘Refugees without geography: the case of the Croatian Serbs’
Nebojša Radić (Director of the World Languages Programme, Language Centre, University of Cambridge, UK) and Timur Križak (Senior Adviser in History, Government Agency for Education, Croatia)
Wars displace entire communities, turning them into refugees. But what happens to communities that lose their political sovereignty, cultural dominance, linguistic vitality, and collective identity without ever leaving their homeland?
With the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the common official language, Serbo-Croatian (or Croato-Serbian) fragmented giving us the Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin and Serbian languages. These languages are mutually intelligible, and the choice of standard has become heavily politicised and serves as a marker of national identity rather than a reflection of linguistic difference. In this presentation, we will focus on the remaining Croatian Serbian population that is heavily marginalised, institutionally discriminated against and whose social and economic opportunities are limited, with special reference to aspects of their linguistic and cultural identity. Over the past thirty years, by remaining in their ancestral territories this community have experienced cultural and linguistic displacement without ever crossing a single border or moving house. They find themselves estranged both from their Catholic Croat neighbours and from the Orthodox Serbs in Serbia or Bosnia-Herzegovina, caught in an ongoing search for and negotiation of identity. We will begin our presentation by offering a concise historical overview of the Yugoslav national and linguistic unification and proceed by examining some of the key issues within the modern Croatian Serbian community, focusing on the politics of language and the phenomena of cultural and emotional displacement that has turned the members of this community into “refugees without geography”. We will conclude by arguing that within the given context, a translation from Serbian to Croatian (or vice-versa) is a political rather than linguistic undertaking.
‘Respond Crisis Translation (RCT): from grassroots activism to economic justice for language practitioners’
Seren Roff (RCT Training and Workforce Development Director) and Rosie Marteau (RCT Partnerships Lead)
Respond Crisis Translation (RCT) is a collective of language activists operating across political, economic and environmental crisis contexts, providing translation and interpretation support to displaced people, while promoting and prioritising professional development and wage justice for language workers.
RCT’s approach recognises that the very people who can provide language support, talented multilingual individuals who are themselves migrants, are systematically invisibilised, with their labour unpaid or poorly remunerated. RCT recruits and trains crisis-impacted language practitioners, so they can deliver services to others, while earning fair, life-saving wages. All RCT’s linguists complete trauma-informed training that explores both how trauma may manifest in the clients they work with, and the vicarious trauma implicit in interpreting for people in crisis.
A major part of the organisation’s work involves supporting asylum seekers, refugees and detainees to navigate the state violence and border imperialism of the Trump administration and ICE. Last year alone, ICE detained individuals from over 170 countries who spoke dozens of languages. RCT will share stories that epitomise what they mean by language violence and language rights violations in the carceral immigration and courts system.
Another example of RCT’s model is the organisation’s efforts to support and provide stable work and income to its linguists based in Gaza. Before October 7th, these translators were English professors, teachers, writers, journalists and university students. In the last two years, their schools and places of work were destroyed, while international aid organizations cut their programming and laid off staff in Gaza. In this void, RCT has been working to build infrastructure for dignified work for translators in Gaza, despite the brutal conditions.
RCT’s model is about more than just creating a job that meets basic needs: it’s about empowering and equipping people with the dignity, agency and freedom to move forward and thrive.
‘Representing displaced people in the Mediterranean: humanitarian discourse in translation’
Maria Cristina Seccia (Honorary Research Fellow, University of Hull, UK)
Armed conflicts and political instability across the Middle East and Africa continue to generate mass displacement towards the Mediterranean, where Italy – due to its geographical position – has emerged as a crucial hub for refugee flows. This has been the object of political and media instrumentalisation, resulting in dominant ‘refugee crisis’ narratives (Colombo 2018; Ambrosini 2025; Cantant et al. 2025; Peroni et al. 2025). In parallel with – and in reaction to – such practices of negative framing, humanitarian organisations have promoted alternative representations of refugees (Rajaram 2002; Parmiggiani 2013; Lampropoulou et al. 2025). Within this context, the present paper examines how four Italy-based humanitarian organisations operating in Mediterranean search and rescue – Emergency, Mediterranea Saving Humans, ResQ, and Maldusa – represent refugees in their English-language translated press releases. Drawing on a corpus-based Translation Studies approach (Laviosa 2002; Olohan 2004; Hu 2015) and focusing on the referential strategies used (van Leeuwen 1996; Reisigl and Wodak 2001), the analysis compares a corpus of Italian source texts with their English translations, tracing shifts in the lexical items used to refer to conflict-induced displaced people. Particular attention is given to how translated referents encode varying degrees of vulnerability, agency, victimhood and resilience, and to the ways these choices intersect with the politics of humanitarian representation. The analysis shows that translation in humanitarian communication actively contributes to the discursive construction – and, more specifically – humanisation of displaced people, shaping narratives of solidarity and responsibility, and highlighting the political stakes involved in mediating refugee experiences for an international audience.
‘Cartographies of belonging: migrant translation, urban space, and the politics of refuge’
Anneleen Spiessens (Associate Professor in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication at Ghent University, Belgium)
This paper examines the entanglements of language, displacement, and representation through the case study of Safe Haven/Thuishaven, a participatory outreach initiative at Antwerp’s Red Star Line Museum. Set against the backdrop of ongoing mass displacement and the pressing demand for inclusive civic spaces, the project invited newcomers to annotate minimalist city maps with locations where they felt safe or “at home.” The resulting archive—over 700 multimodal maps—provides an unparalleled window onto the lived experiences of migration, foregrounding translation not simply as linguistic transfer, but as a creative, embodied, and inherently political act.
Bringing together insights from translation studies (Cronin & Simon, 2014; Inghilleri, 2017; Polezzi, 2012), migration studies (Bertacco & Vallorani, 2021; Radstone & Wilson, 2020), and urban theory (Çağlar & Glick Schiller, 2011; Yamamura, 2025), this paper investigates how participants’ cartographies both enact and challenge the politics of language and belonging. The maps reveal a spectrum of translational strategies: some participants “over-translate” the city, densely populating the template with memories, critiques, and aspirations; others “under-translate,” signaling distance, opacity, or resistance to assimilation. The diversity of linguistic choices—spanning Dutch, English, Arabic, Catalan, and more—illuminates the tensions between institutional expectations and migrants’ lived repertoires, exposing the power asymmetries that shape translation in contexts of displacement.
At the heart of the project lies the transformative potential of creative translation and the agency of migrants as city-makers. Through drawing, collage, and poetic testimony, participants inscribe hybrid identities and re-signify Antwerp as a space of refuge and possibility. The museum, in turn, emerges as a translational mediator, amplifying migrant voices and unsettling dominant narratives of citizenship and integration.
‘At the margins of war and identity: interpreting queer refugee narratives’
Mikhael Touma (Founder and CEO, Language Justice Network, Australia)
Interpreting during conflict, displacement and Refugee Status Determination (RSD) plays an integral role in shaping whose stories are legible, credible and ultimately worthy of protection. As Baker (2019) elaborates, translators and interpreters do not simply relay information, they actively participate in producing the narratives through which war, violence and refuge are understood. For queer forcibly displaced people, this narrative terrain is especially fraught: their experiences of persecution are often fragmented, coded, or unsafe to disclose, making the interpreter central not only to communication but to survival.
Drawing on my lived experience as a queer forcibly displaced interpreter and my research on the legal treatment of credibility, trauma and linguistic mediation in RSD processes, this paper argues that interpreting in forced displacement must be understood as a practice of narrative justice. Neutrality, commonly framed as a professional ideal, can reinforce harm when interpreters witness misgendering, cultural violence, or adversarial credibility testing (Biagini et al., 2017; Touma et al., 2025).
Queer applicants are uniquely vulnerable when interpreters lack LGBTIQA+ competency, share cultural backgrounds in which queerness is criminalised or are untrained in trauma-informed practice (Savcı, 2021; Hernández et al., 2021). Errors or omissions in these moments can alter the coherence, credibility and perceived authenticity of an asylum seeker’s narrative, with life-altering consequences.
By integrating conflict translation theory, queer migration research and findings from community interpreting studies (Marianacci, 2022; Major & Marianacci, 2024), this paper calls for a shift toward qualified, trained, and structurally supported interpreters, with specific emphasis on recruiting and retaining queer interpreters and those with lived experience of displacement. I argue for a framework in which interpreters are recognised as relational co-producers of testimony, ethically responsible for protecting narrative integrity within systems marked by linguistic hierarchy and epistemic erasure.
Ultimately, strengthening interpreter training, resourcing and representation is essential to ensuring that those fleeing conflict are not only heard, but understood on their own terms.
‘Translating testimonies in the platform age: self-translation, volunteer OCT, and ethical mediation of Gaza narratives’
Sema Üstün Külünk (Associate Professor, Translation and Interpreting Studies, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Türkiye)
This study examines how testimonies from Gaza are translated, reframed, and shared on Instagram through two interconnected practices: (1) English self-translation by Palestinian narrators and (2) volunteer online collaborative translation (OCT) on Turkish Instagram. Considering platform-based translation as sociotechnical mediation, the project analyzes how voice, authority, and responsibility are redistributed among translators, digital tools, and paratexts such as captions, subtitles, and annotations. The research is guided by three questions: (1) How do self-translation and OCT affect the credibility, clarity, and emotional impact of conflict testimonies? (2) What ethical tensions emerge around speed versus accuracy, trauma exposure, authorship, and political agency? (3) What design and policy measures can promote accountable, trauma-informed humanitarian translation online?
Methodologically, the study uses a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative analysis of posting and engagement patterns with qualitative discourse analysis, thematic coding, semi-structured interviews with translators and moderators, and ethnographic observation of real-time workflow negotiations. The study conceptualizes English self-translation by Palestinians as a strategic practice that bridges linguistic divides, amplifies marginalized voices, and mobilizes transnational empathy without sacrificing narrative ownership. The OCT case traces relay translation chains, attribution norms, terminology management, and paratextual framing, highlighting translators’ situated ethics and shared authorship.
Preliminary findings suggest that platform features and paratexts significantly influence how people interpret and trust content; volunteer translators quickly increase access to multilingual testimonies when institutional channels fall behind, but they face risks such as decontextualization, misinformation, and emotional overload. Community glossaries, provenance indicators, transparent revision logs, and clear disclosure of human involvement in AI processes (OCR, ASR, MT) for sorting and drafting help reduce errors while maintaining flexibility. The study provides an empirically grounded framework for ethically translating testimonies of conflict and refuge in digital networks, offering practical recommendations for NGOs, platform teams, and translator networks on provenance, terminology management, trauma-informed moderation, and responsible AI use.
‘Translating displacement across ideological borders: language politics in East Germany’s Sinn und Form (1949–1990)’
Yanwei Wang (Doctoral candidate in Translation Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany)
This paper explores how translation became both a refuge and a weapon during the Cold War by examining Sinn und Form (1949–1990), East Germany’s most renowned literary journal. In a world divided by ideology, Sinn und Form used translation to stage encounters between languages, exiles, and political visions. The journal published writers who had fled wars, revolutions, and dictatorships—from Russian front-line poets and French exiles to anti-colonial authors from Africa and Latin America. Many, like Nazim Hikmet and Pablo Neruda, wrote from prison or exile, and their translated words carried the traces of forced movement and survival.
Yet the act of translating these displaced voices was never neutral. While the editors promoted a socialist ideal of “world literature,” they also filtered these works through Eurocentric and ideological lenses that defined which languages and experiences were worthy of translation. Translation thus became a form of symbolic displacement: testimonies of exile were relocated into German, a language of both refuge and control.
The paper develops a three-level analytical approach. On the institutional level, it maps which authors and languages were chosen, revealing hierarchies of translatability. On the editorial level, it analyzes paratexts—prefaces, biographies, editorial notes—that framed displaced writers within narratives of solidarity. On the textual level, it examines how translators’ choices either preserved or erased linguistic traces of exile.
By revisiting Sinn und Form’s Cold War translation politics, the study shows how historical practices of “solidarity translation” anticipate today’s humanitarian efforts to “give voice” to refugees—patterns visible in contemporary UNHCR storytelling initiatives, Words Without Borders anthologies, and European literary prizes dedicated to refugee and exile writing. It suggests that translation itself may reproduce displacement—transforming voices of the displaced into narratives legible to host cultures—and calls for more ethically self-aware translation frameworks in times of conflict and refuge.