International Conference ‘New Trends in Translation and Technology’ (NeTTT’2024)

Varna, Bulgaria, 4-7 July 2024

First Call for Papers

The conference

The second edition of the forthcoming International Conference ‘New Trends in Translation and Technology’ (NeTTT’2024) will take place in Varna, Bulgaria, 4-7 July 2024.

The objective of the conference is (i) to bridge the gap between academia and industry in the field of translation and interpreting by bringing together academics in linguistics, translation studies, machine translation and natural language processing, developers, practitioners, language service providers and vendors who work on or are interested in different aspects of technology for translation and interpreting, and (ii) to be a distinctive event for discussing the latest developments and practices. NeTTT’2024 invites all professionals who would like to learn about the new trends, present the latest work or/and share their experience in the field, and who would like to establish business and research contacts, collaborations and new ventures.

The conference will take the form of presentations (peer-reviewed research and user presentations, keynote speeches), and posters; it will also feature panel discussions. The accepted papers will be published as open-access conference e-proceedings.

Conference topics

Contributions are invited on any topic related to latest technology and practices in machine translation, translation, subtitling, localisation and interpreting.

NeTTT’2024 will feature a Special Theme Track "Future of Translation Technology in the Era of LLMs and Generative AI".

The conference topics include but are not limited to:

CAT tools

Translation Memory (TM) systems
NLP and MT for translation memory systems
Terminology extraction tools
Localisation tools

Machine Translation

Latest developments in Neural Machine Translation
MT for under-resourced languages
MT with low computing resources
Multimodal MT
Integration of MT in TM systems
Resources for MT

Technologies for MT deployment

MT evaluation techniques, metrics and evaluation results
Human evaluations of MT output
Evaluating MT in a real-world setting
Quality estimation for MT
Domain adaptation

Translation Studies

Corpus-based studies applied to translation
Corpora and resources for translation
Translationese
Cognitive effort and eye-tracking experiments in translation

Interpreting studies

Corpus-based studies applied to interpreting
Corpora and resources for interpreting
Interpretationese
Resources for interpreting and interpreting technology applications
Cognitive effort and eye-tracking experiments in interpreting

Interpreting technology

Machine interpreting
Computer-aided interpreting
NLP for dialogue interpreting
Development of NLP based applications for communication in public service settings (healthcare, education, law, emergency services)

Emerging Areas in Translation and Interpreting

MT and translation tools for literary texts and creative texts
MT for social media and real-time conversations
Sign language recognition and translation

Subtitling

NLP and MT for subtitling
Latest technology for subtitling

User needs

Analysis of translators’ and interpreters’ needs in terms of translation and interpreting technology
User requirements for interpreting and translation tools
Incorporating human knowledge into translation and interpreting technology
What existing translators’ (including subtitlers’) and interpreters’ tools do not offer
User requirements for electronic resources for translators and interpreters
Translation and interpreting workflows in larger organisations and the tools for translation and interpreting employed

The business of translation and interpreting

Translation workflow and management
Technology adoption by translators and industry
Setting up translation /interpreting / language provider company

Teaching translation and interpreting

Teaching Machine Translation
Teaching translation technology
Teaching interpreting technology
Latest AI developments in the syllabi of translation and interpreting curricula

Ethical issues in translation and technology

Bias and fairness in MT
Privacy and security in cloud MT systems
Transparency and explainability of MT systems
Environmental impact on MT systems

Special Theme Track - Future of Translation Technology in the Era of LLMs and Generative AI

We are excited to share that NeTTT’2024 will have a special theme with the goal of stimulating discussion around Large Language Models, Generative AI and the Future of Translation and Interpreting Technology. While the new generation of Large Language Models such as CHATGPT and LLAMA showcase remarkable advancements in language generation and understanding, we find ourselves in uncharted territory when it comes to their performance on various Translation and Interpreting Technology tasks with regards to fairness, interpretability, ethics and transparency.

The theme track invites studies on how LLMs perform on Translation and Interpreting Technology tasks and applications, and what this means for the future of the field. The possible topics of discussion include (but are not limited to) the following:

Changes in the translators and interpreters’ professions in the new AI era especially as a result of the latest developments in LLMSs and Generative AI
Generative AI and translation
Generative AI and interpreting
Augmenting machine translation systems with generative AI
Domain and terminology adaptation with Large Language Models
Literary translation with Large Language Models
Improving Machine Translation Quality with Contextual Prompts in Large Language Models
Prompt engineering for translation
Generative AI for professional translation
Generative AI for professional interpreting

We anticipate having a special session on this theme at the conference.

Submissions and publication

NETTT’2024 invites the following types of submissions:

User papers – for industry and practitioners. References to related work are optional. Allowed paper length: between 1 and 4 pages.

Academic submissions, in three different categories (have to follow formatting requirements, references to related work are required):

(academic) full papers – describing original completed research. Allowed paper length: maximum 8 pages + 2 for references.
(academic) work-in-progress papers/posters – describing work in progress, late breaking research, papers at a more conceptual stage, and other types of papers that do not fit in the ‘full’ papers category. Allowed paper length: maximum 6 pages + 2 for references.
(academic) demo papers – describing working systems. Allowed paper length: maximum 4 pages + 2 for references. In addition to the papers, the authors will be expected to demonstrate the systems at the workshop.

The submission will be electronic, using the Softconf START conference management system which will be available at the conference website soon. The follow up calls will provide more further submission details.

Each submission will be reviewed by three members of the Programme Committee.

The final version of the accepted papers will be published in e-proceedings with assigned ISBN and DOI.

All accepted papers will be included in the conference e-proceedings which will be available at the conference.

Schedule

Submission deadline: 31 March 2024

Notification: 5 June 2024

Final version due: 20 June 2024

Venue

The conference will take place at Conference Hotel Cherno More, Varna, situated only 200 m away from the fine sandy Black Sea beach.

Further information and contact details

The second call for papers is expected in December 2023 and registration will be open as from January 2024. The follow-up calls will list keynote speakers, conference chairs and members of the programme committee once confirmed.

The conference website is https://nettt-conference.com and will be updated on a regular basis. For further information, please contact us at nettt2024@nettt-conference.com