I am pleased to pass on a call for papers relating to a special issue of the journal TIS – Translation and Interpreting Studies, entitled “The Ethics of Non-Professional Translation and Interpreting in Public Services and Legal Settings“. The guest editors are Esther Monzó-Nebot, Universitat Jaume I, Spain and Melissa Wallace, University of Texas at San Antonio, United States.

For this issue of Translation and Interpreting Studies (TIS), the guest editors invite contributions including but not limited to the following lines of research:

• Models of professional ethics in the development of the translation professions: Consequentialist versus deontological models; conflicts between materialistic and post-materialistic values in regulating the translation professions
• The (public) service ideal in the translation professions: How is the best interest of the client taken into account in processes of professionalization and codes of ethics? What is the role of natural translators and interpreters in fulfilling the mission of the translation professions?
• Training and ethics for non-professional translators and interpreters as mediators in public services: experiences and approaches developing and delivering crash courses and continuing education; use of real-world case studies
• The roles of non-professional translators and interpreters in human crises: the role of untrained natural translators and interpreters in promoting multicultural understanding; ethical approaches to the provision of remote professional translation and interpreting services
• Partiality and multi-partiality in translation and interpreting: the impact of natural translation and interpreting on roles and scopes for practitioners, scholars and trainers; power imbalances as a source of sociocultural and psychosocial exceptions to impartiality
• Descriptive approaches to norms governing ethical conduct for professional versus non-professional translators and interpreters
• The integration of non-professional translators and interpreters into professional communities
• Transnational or cross-cultural case studies documenting professionalization initiatives for non-professionals
• Ethical approaches to remuneration practices for non-professionals in public and legal settings
• The ethics of trainee placement: unpaid service learning of translators and interpreters as an ethical grey zone
• The ethics of (activist) volunteerism as a translator or interpreter
• Implications for clinical outcomes: the role and status of dual role providers (as opposed to professional interpreters) in healthcare settings
• Unfunded mandates: non-compliance with language access legislation and the fiscal consequences of contracting non-professional translators and interpreters.

Authors’ abstracts (400-500) words are due to guest editors before October 1, 2017.

For more details see the American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association (ATISA) website here.