The Department of English and American Studies, Translation and Interpreting Section, Philosophical Faculty of Palacký University in Olomouc, Czech Republic is organizing a Translation and Interpreting Forum Olomouc (TIFO) 2014, entitled “Interchange between Languages and Cultures: The Quest for Quality“. It is to be held from September 19–20, 2014.

I have been reliably informed by the organizers that legal translation and interpreting does indeed fall under the remit of the forum (it is not explicitly stated at present on the conference website), and that they would be delighted to welcome presentations on the legal field, from academia and from practice.

The issue of quality is of course a burning one in the legal translation domain, both in terms of source texts and target texts. Indeed Juliane House, one of the plenary speakers, is a leading authority on the subject.

There aren’t so many publications about translation quality that specifically talk about legal texts. One example I posted about in the past is the report published by the European Commission Quantifying quality costs and the cost of poor quality in translation, the interpretation of which might depend on your role in the process 😉 (see this post). The QUALETRA project (see here for part 1, and here for part 2) is making a first foray into certain specific points. If you’d like an overview, have a look at Ingemar Strandvik’s comprehensive presentation from a legal translation conference held in Lisbon.

For information I reproduce the call for papers below, and more details can be obtained from the Forum website. You are strongly encouraged to apply!

In the previous two years (see TIFO 2012 and TIFO 2011) the Translation and Interpreting Forum Olomouc established itself as an open platform which is not limited only to an academic exchange within translation and interpreting studies research but embraces discussion with all players in the field of trans-language and trans-culture communication.

The 2014 conference theme “Interchange between Languages and Cultures: The Quest for Quality” brings into focus the issue of translation/interpreting quality. The featured invited speakers for TIFO 2014 are Mona Baker (University of Manchester, UK) and Juliane House (University of Hamburg, Germany).

Conference sections are suggested as follows:

• models and approaches to translation/interpreting quality assessment
• T & I classroom perspective: giving quality assessment and feedback 
• literary translation criticism
• quality issues in audiovisual and media translation
• quality issues in various modalities of interpreting
• language industry perspective: quality standardization
• translation technology and quality assurance.

We welcome BOTH papers presenting results of academic research AND contributions by professionals in the field. Invitation to participate is extended to all parties concerned: academics (teachers and students), professional translators and interpreters, trade organisations and professional institutions, publishing houses, agencies providing language services, “in-house” language departments of transnational corporations, companies developing support tools and technology, et cetera.

It is possible to apply with a paper, presentation or poster. The deadline for abstracts is May 15, 2014. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by June 15, 2014. For further details refer to the registration form.

Selected papers are to be published in a peer-reviewed thematic volume of Olomouc Modern Language Series in 2015. The series volumes (see OMLS Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3) are submitted to Thomson Reuters Web of Science for inclusion in the WoS™ Core Collection Citation Index database.