European Society for Translation Studies

7th EST Congress: Germersheim

29 – 31 August 2013

The next EST Congress will be held from 29 to 31 August 2013 in Germersheim (University of Mainz, Faculty for Translation Studies, Linguistics and Cultural Studies). The title of the congress will be:

Translation Studies: Centres and Peripheries

As Holmes states in his seminal paper “The Name and Nature of Translation Studies”, our discipline establishes institutions and discourses around which groups of researchers gather, exchange ideas and develop new theories and models. The growing number of training and research institutions for translation studies and of journals and book series focusing on translation research, the expanding territory of expert forums and blogs on the worldwide web as well as the numerous conference announcements from all over the world are clear indications of an ever increasing interest in the discipline. Whereas initially research, teaching and theory were mainly based in European contexts, promoted under European influence and shaped according to European theoretical perspectives and translation politics, nowadays approaches to translation from different geographies all over the world have been gaining more and more ground. Besides its own ‘internal’ impetus, translation studies has also been receiving growing attention from scholars in other disciplines. The Germersheim EST conference is designedto provide a framework for discussing centre-periphery relations within the discipline from a multifaceted angle: centre-periphery relations concerning the objects of research, the discourses of Translation Studies, and the links between Translation Studies and other disciplines.

Venue

The most convenient way to travel to Germersheim by plane is via Frankfurt Airport which serves the most international destinations in the world. With its frequent flight schedules it offers many alternatives for connections from all international airports. Note that the location of Germersheim and its railway connections to cities like Mannheim or Karlsruhe provide a wide range of alternatives for those travelling from cities in Europe.

Accommodation

The hotels in Germersheim can accommodate about 180 guests. All of these are situated within walking distance of the campus. The city of Speyer, which can be reached easily by regional rail (a twelve-minute ride), provides 664 additional rooms in hotels of different categories. Students participating at the conference can be offered lodging in the dormitories on campus.

Rooms and equipment

The Germersheim faculty offers several types of lecture halls and workshop rooms. The largest lecture hall will hold up to 400 conference participants; two others have seating capacities for 200 people each. Finally, we have 13 rooms with 50 to 80 seats each, which can be used for parallel sessions. All rooms offer WLAN access (Wi-Fi), data projectors, overhead projectors and blackboards. The rooms will be equipped with notebooks; the largest rooms offer video equipment, microphones and speakers. In addition, the faculty building also offers a conference room with 50 seats and 14 interpreting booths. This allows talks in languages different from the usual conference languages which can then be interpreted by our interpreters.

Profile

The variety of cultures and languages within our faculty is exceptional: with 2,300 students from more than 80 nations, Germersheim has become a cosmopolitan centre within the (geographical) periphery. Translation research and teaching at our faculty has developed in this international, plurilinguistic atmosphere since 1947. Thanks to partnerships with over 100 universities abroad, the research focus of our faculty is similarly intercultural and interdisciplinary. Besides our student exchange programmes, we routinely invite visiting lecturers and professors from around the world and send our students, lecturers and professors abroad to maintain a close relationship with the scientific community. Our profile of translation studies is thus international and interdisciplinary and encompasses translation and interpreting studies, linguistics and cultural studies as well as literary studies and intercultural communication. Since the 1970s, Germersheim has always been one of the major centres for the promotion of translation studies as an independent discipline – starting with the development of the Skopos Theory by Vermeer and the work of subsequent generations.

Social programme and tourism

The faculty is located in one of the most famous wine-growing regions of Germany, which is also known for its fine cuisine. The surrounding area thus offers many entertainment options in picturesque villages embedded in lovely vineyards; the conference participants might enjoy rewarding themselves with some fine wine and delicious food. Michael Schreiber, on behalf of the local organizing committee (Dörte Andres, Şebnem Bahadır, Dilek Dizdar, Don Kiraly, Silvia Hansen-Schirra, Andreas Kelletat, Lavinia Heller, Michael Schreiber).