Second Forlì International Workshop on Corpus-based Interpreting Studies and Applications: At the Interface of Data and Technology 8–10 May 2025, Forlì, Italy, and online

Call for Papers

The Department of Interpreting and Translation at the University of Bologna is organising the Second Forlì International Workshop on Corpus-based Interpreting Studies and Applications on 8–10 May 2025 in Forlì, Italy, and online.

Background

The Forlì International Workshop series was launched in 2015 to stimulate the creation of interpreting corpora and corpus-based research projects. The first workshop gathered more than 100 scholars from around the world, resulting in a volume of state-of-the-art research (Russo et al. 2018https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-10-6199-8) and a special issue (Bendazzoli et al. 2018https://www.intralinea.org/specials/cbis). The tenth anniversary of the first workshop marks an opportune occasion to take stock of recent developments and chart new directions in light of corpora’s fundamental role in technological advancements.

Theme

Interpreting corpora serve as the descriptive foundation of research and the ground truth against which machine interpreting technologies are evaluated. Corpus-based interpreting studies, as envisaged by Shlesinger (1998https://doi.org/10.7202/004136ar), have developed into a highly productive line of inquiry with theoretical inputs from cognitive linguistics and sociology and methodological contributions from natural language processing, prosody research, and multimodality. Recently, large interpreting corpora have fuelled the deployment of machine interpreting technologies, together with deep learning algorithms that synthesise signing images and texts (e.g. Saunders et al. 2022https://doi.org/10.1109/CVPR52688.2022.00508). Amidst changing conceptual boundaries (Pöchhacker 2024https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.23028.poc), methodological developments, and technological landscape, a field-wide reflection on the role of corpora is necessary.

In this context, we view the Second Forlì International Workshop as an opportunity to bring together researchers who create, analyse, and use corpora to study interpreting and develop tools and applications for corpus-based research, computer-assisted interpreting, machine interpreting, automated interpreting quality assessment, pedagogy, and other related domains.

Submissions

We particularly welcome abstracts addressing the following topics:

* Theory testing and comparisons using corpora * Replication studies using corpora * Quantitative and qualitative approaches to corpus-based studies * Triangulating corpora with other data sources (e.g. user response, eye-tracking, EEG, and workplace ethnography) * Underrepresented corpora, e.g. those involving signed language interpreting and onsite versus remote interpreting * Corpora of constrained communication (Kotze & van Rooy 2024https://doi.org/10.1075/coll.60.01kot), e.g. those by untrained interpreters and learners * Multimodal and multiple interpreting corpora * Computer-assisted interpreting software and applications * Machine interpreting systems * Automated interpreting quality assessment based on corpora * Corpus design according to principles of scientific data management (e.g. FAIR principles; Wilkinson et al. 2016https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18)

The first page of the submission should contain each author’s name, affiliation (if any), and e-mail address. The abstract should be placed from the second page onwards, including the title, a text between 300 and 400 words (including examples, excluding references) that clearly states the research questions, methods, data, and (preliminary) results, and up to five keywords. The abstract should not contain any identifying information to allow for double-blind peer reviewing.

There will be three types of presentations:

* Full paper (20 minutes + 10 minutes Q & A) * Poster * Software demonstration

Abstracts will be submitted to unic@dipintra.itmailto:unic@dipintra.it. Authors may indicate a full paper, a poster, or a software presentation upon submission. Posters will be displayed on Day 1 of the Workshop, and a time slot will be reserved in the programme for participants to discuss with poster presenters. Software demonstrations will be held on Day 2 in a dedicated time slot.

A selection of papers will be published in an edited volume and a special issue in a scientific journal.

Language of the conference

English

Important dates

* Submission deadline: 1 February 2025 * Notification of acceptance and rejection: 1 March 2025 * Pre-workshop session on the Unified Interpreting Corpus (UNIC; https://unic.dipintra.it/) platform: 15:00–17:30, 8 May 2025 * Workshop: 9–10 May 2025

Pre-workshop session convenors

* Nannan Liu * Mariachiara Russo

Scientific committee members

Claudia Angelelli (Herriot-Watt University) Alberto Barrón-Cedeño (University of Bologna) Claudio Bendazzoli (University of Verona) Silvia Bernardini (University of Bologna) Sabine Braun (University of Surrey) Agnieszka Chmiel (Adam Mickiewicz University) Elena Davitti (University of Surrey) Bart Defrancq (Ghent University) Adriano Ferraresi (University of Bologna) Min-hua Liu (Hong Kong Baptist University) Nannan Liu (University of Bologna) Bernd Meyer (Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz) Maja Miličević Petrović (University of Bologna) Koen Plevoets (Ghent University) Bianca Prandi (University of Bologna) Mariachiara Russo (University of Bologna) Annalisa Sandrelli (University of the International Studies of Rome) Elisabet Tiselius (Stockholm University) Ira Torresi (University of Bologna) Kim Wallmach (Stellenbosch University)

Organising committee members

Alberto Barrón-Cedeño (University of Bologna) Michela Bertozzi (University of Bologna) Silvia Bernardini (University of Bologna) Francesca D’Angelo (University of Bologna) Bart Defrancq (Ghent University) Adriano Ferraresi (University of Bologna) Serena Ghiselli (University of Bologna) Nannan Liu (University of Bologna) Marco Lobascio (University of Bologna) Natacha Niemants (University of Bologna) Maja Miličević Petrović (University of Bologna) Bianca Prandi (University of Bologna) Mariachiara Russo (University of Bologna) Nicoletta Spinolo (University of Bologna) Han Wang (University of Bologna)

Contact

unic@dipintra.itmailto:unic@dipintra.it

Workshop website

Website coming soon.

Dr Nannan Liu Marie Curie Fellow Project FAITHhttps://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101108651 Department of Interpreting and Translation University of Bologna