Call for Research Papers

The UNESCO Chair in Translating Cultures at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies (KFCRIS) with the support of the Literature, Publishing and Translation seeks to meet a growing need for interdisciplinary research in the humanities and social sciences that focuses on translating Arab cultures. To implement its mission and vision, the UNESCO Chair has established the Translating Cultures Lab (TCL), a collaborative and interdisciplinary forum, bringing together internationally recognized and early-career researchers to contribute to the annual publication of six research articles that explore this year’s theme of translating cultures from multiple perspectives, with an emphasis on South-South knowledge transfer and translation. Rethinking the concept of translating cultures will inspire scholars to broaden their understanding of translation and culture in an age of technological globalization and cross-cultural contact. It will further prompt scholars to rethink translation studies and foreground it within the Global South humanities, an area that has continued to be overlooked without adequate exploration of its diversities within translating cultures.

The UNESCO Chair in Translating Cultures at KFCRIS takes a global rather than Eurocentric view of translating cultures, building on the historical Arab trajectory of South-South translation in the multicultural societies of the Umayyads, Abbasids, and Andalusis. The UNESCO Chair perceives translating cultures as a concept that reflects much broader debates in the global humanities and recognizes that translating cultures is an ongoing process involving translation, transmission, cross-cultural communication, and the dissemination of knowledge. The Chair seeks to reimagine the epistemological turn that translating cultures has taken in the twenty-first century and embraces transiting cultures’ growing emphasis on theoretical approaches and geo-linguistic diversity. It encourages theoretical discussions that explore and problematize the cultural and interdisciplinary discontinuities and the untranslatable in between.

While the growth of translation in the Arab world has generated a significant body of globally recognized translated works into Arabic and lively academic discussion, the concepts of untranslatability and translation theory have not been re-examined and repositioned across disciplinary boundaries. Given this situation, to what extent does translating cultures as a valuable conceptual framework expand or delimit the possibilities of global South-South interdisciplinary theoretical approaches to the suggested themes?

Papers presenting new research are welcome from different disciplines and must address at least one of the following themes:

  • New pathways in translating cultures as a means of illustrating crossings between disciplines, emphasizing the theoretical, philosophical, and historical aspects of translation studies in Arab and Islamic history.
  • New directions in the development of cultural translation or cultures of translation, especially in the Arab world.
  • Nations in translation and new understandings of transnationality informed by cultural transfers.
  • Interdisciplinary perspectives in posthumanism and ecocriticism as ways of understanding the forms of un-translatability in the relation between the human and others.

We invite articles that critically examine and rethink translating cultures and other related theoretical approaches to translation in the Global South humanities. We welcome innovative discussions from various interdisciplinary perspectives, including translation theory, cultural studies, and social sciences. The selected articles will undergo a peer-review process by the UNESCO Chair in Translating Cultures and prominent scholars in the relevant fields of research. There will also be an academic review process in collaboration with the Translating Cultures Lab, wherein authors will have the opportunity to receive mentorship from a Lab-affiliated research fellow and present their work in progress to the broader Lab. The UNESCO Chair will collaborate with a major international refereed journal in publishing a special issue that features the selected papers.

Application Process and Deadline

The deadline for the submission of an abstract is Wednesday, May 15, 2024, at 11:59 PM Riyadh time (GMT+3). Notifications of acceptance will be sent by the end of June . Articles will be presented in a workshop at the Translating Cultures Lab in early fall, and completed articles will be submitted by November 22, 2024.

All materials should be submitted to KFCRIS via its online submission system. Information on how to set up an account can be found below. Submissions should be in English and should include the following information:
  • Title of the paper.
  • An abstract (approx. 250-300 words).
  • The following author information: full name, title, affiliation, email address, and brief bio (up to 200 words, listing previous publications).
Setting up an Account for Submission
  • Go to the Submission Site
  • Create an account and log in.
  • Select Author from the top bar.
  • Select Start New Submission, then Begin Submission.
  • Drop your Abstract.
  • Select Research Proposal.
  • For Categories, select Research Paper.
  • For Programs, select the UNESCO Chair.
  • Continue the steps and make sure to upload all required files (abstract with paper title, author information) at (Step 2: File Upload).
For further information: Author-Guide
Contact
Questions? Please contact TranslatingCultures@kfcris.com