6th International Conference Media for All

16-18 September 2015, Sydney, Australia

http://uws.edu.au/mediaforall

About the Conference

The University of Western Sydney in Sydney, Australia, is proud to announce the 6th
International Media for All Conference Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility:
Global Challenges. For the first time ever it will be held outside Europe and aims to attract
academics, researchers, language practitioners, translators, interpreters, broadcasters,
government agencies, support groups and the audiovisual translation (AVT) and media
accessibility industry from Australia and Asia Pacific and other parts of the world.
AVT and media accessibility are becoming increasingly interdisciplinary and intercultural,
and include subtitling, live subtitling, dubbing, voice over, closed captioning/subtitling for
the hard-of-hearing (SDH) and audio description for the blind and partially sighted. Not only
do these many AVT modes make audiovisual content accessible to global audiences, they
are also being put to efficient use in a growing number of other contexts such as
intercultural communication, language learning, university teaching, corporate
communications and social media. . The conference will provide an outstanding opportunity
for participants to compare practices and exchange views on media access and audiovisual
translation practice, research and training.
Important Dates

Closing call for papers: 28 February 2015

Notification of acceptance: 31 March 2015

Keynote Speakers
David Katan
David Katan worked at the School for Interpreters and Translators in Trieste, Italy for20
years before taking up the post of full professor of English and Translation at the University
of Salento (Lecce) in 2006. He has been the senior editor of Cultus: the Journal for
Intercultural Mediation and Communication, since its inception in 2008.
David Katan specialises in intercultural communication and has over 60 publications,
including the influential book Translating Cultures: An Introduction for Translators,
Interpreters and Mediators (1997/2012); the headword entry Culture for the Routledge
Encyclopedia of Translation (2008); Translation as Intercultural Communication for the
Routledge Companion to Translation Studies (2009); 2 entries for Benjamins Handbook of

Translation Studies (2012, 2013), and Cultural Approaches to Translation in the WileyBlackwell Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics (2013). His research interests have more
recently turned to investigating The Status of the Translator. The results of the first global
survey with over 1000 replies were published in Benjamins, 2012, 2013). He is currently
working on the second global survey of the profession. He is a licensee of the diagnostic
tool, The International Profiler, allowing him to work with individuals on developing their
Intercultural Competence.
Brij Kothari
Brij Kothari grew up in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, India. He has a PhD in
Education from Cornell University, USA, and a Masters in Physics from the Indian Institute of
Technology, Kanpur. He is on the faculty of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
(IIM-A) and the founder of PlanetRead and BookBox, dedicated to scalable solutions for
literacy and language learning, using ICTs. He serves on the World Economic Forums Global
Agenda Council for Education. He is an Ashoka Fellow and a Schwab Social Entrepreneur. He
was a Reuters Digital Vision Fellow at Stanford University. His research primarily focuses on
literacy and primary education in developing countries. He is a regular columnist on social
innovation and entrepreneurship.
At IIM-A and PlanetRead, Brij Kothari and his team have innovated, researched and
implemented Same Language Subtitling (SLS) on television for mass literacy. SLS on
Bollywood film songs delivers reading practice to 200 million early-readers in India,
prompting Bill Clinton to call it a small change that has a staggering impact on peoples
lives. BookBox produces animated stories for children, integrated with SLS, to deliver
reading and language learning in over 30 languages. The SLS innovation received the
International Literacy Prize from the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.) and was granted
awards from the All Children Reading Grand Challenge (USAID), Tech Museum of Innovation
(San Jose), the Institute for Social Inventions (London), Development Marketplace (World
Bank) and the NASSOM Foundation.
Pablo Romero-Fresco
Pablo Romero-Fresco is a Reader in Translation and Filmmaking at the University of
Roehampton, London, United Kingdom, where he teaches dubbing, subtitling, re-speaking
(live subtitling) and filmmaking. He also teaches AVT at the Universidad Autnoma de
Barcelona and the University of Vigo, both in Spain. He is author of Subtitling through
Speech Recognition: Respeaking (2011?) and is the external reviewer of Ofcom, the British
media regulator, for the assessment of the quality of live subtitles in the UK. He collaborates
with Stagetext and the National Gallery in the UK, Ai-Media in Australia, Swiss TXT in
Switzerland and the North-West University of South Africa on respeaking-based access to TV,
live events, museums, galleries and teaching environments. He was a member of the first
international Focus Group on Audiovisual Media Accessibility organised by the United

Nation's ITU. He is a member of the CAIAC/TransMedia Catalonia research group, for which
he has coordinated the subtitling research of the EU-funded DTV4ALL project.
Pablo is also a filmmaker and works on accessible filmmaking with a view to integrating
translation and accessibility as an integral part of the filmmaking process. His first
documentary, Joining the Dots (2012), which had audio description as its central theme, was
screened at the 69th Venice Film Festival as well as at film festivals in the UK, Poland, France,
Switzerland and Austria.

Call for Papers

Globalisation and worldwide migration and mobility have resulted in an exponential
increase in the demand for multilingual content and hence for AVT, translation and media
access in its various forms. Digital technologies have revolutionized the provision of content
to diverse audiences across the globe. Multilingualism has taken on new meaning in our
cultures.
However, each country, each language and culture has its own way and means in dealing
with its unique circumstances and addressing media accessibility. This conference offers a
platform to showcase local and global best practices, research, technological innovations,
intercultural themes, multimodal responses and related hybrid applications in teaching,
training and other contexts.
We invite proposals for papers and posters on the following themes and topics within the
context of audiovisual translation in the broadest sense:
1. Audiovisual Translation, Media Accessibility, Localisation: die-hards, new trends,
hybrid forms
Subtitling and surtitling
Dubbing
Voice-over
Subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
Live subtitling
Re-speaking
Audio description
Sign language
Fansubbing
Fandubbing
New media formats
Live performances and museums
2. Continental Differences and similarities: mapping the past and the present

History and development in regions and on continents

Legislation, regulation, policies
Industry standards
Quality benchmarking
Quality monitoring and quality control
Broadcasting for minority audiences and community based broadcasting
Global competition and ethics
Censorship and manipulation from linguistic, cultural, religious and political
perspectives

3. Methodology and Research: interdisciplinary approaches, quantitative and

qualitative approaches
Audiovisual translation
Reception research and audience needs
possibilities and limitations of practice-oriented research
Translation studies
Intercultural communication
Linguistic studies
Intercultural pragmatics
Media studies
Language learning and second language acquisition
Localisation
Methodology and research tools
experimental research design
4.

Technology, Practice, Training: new professional profiles and competing priorities

Machine translation
Re-speaking technology
Mobile device and applications
Multiplatform and social media
Multi-language subtitling
Editing
Post-editing
Professional training
International markets

Proposals of 250 300 words for papers and posters should be submitted online on the
abstract form available here (http://uws.edu.au/mediaforall/home/abstract_form) .

Abstracts should be submitted by 28th February 2015 at the latest. Notification of

acceptance will be sent by 31st March 2015.
We also invite proposals for symposiums on related topics for time slots of 2 hours.
Symposiums will be convened by the person submitting the proposal, who will also contact
the speakers (max. 6) and review their abstracts. The same deadlines as indicated above for
submission of the theme and abstract apply. As soon as the conference organisers approve
the symposium theme, the chairpersons should finalize their choice of speakers and send
the bionotes of their speakers to the organisers by 30th April 2015 at the latest.
Committees
The Steering Committee (SC):
Jing Han, I&T Program, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, University of
Western Sydney; Head of Subtitling Department, SBS TV Australia
Peter Hutchings, Dean, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, University of
Western Sydney
Jenny Purcell, School Manager, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, University
of Western Sydney
Aline Remael, Department Chair and Research Coordinator, Department of Applied
Linguistics/Translators & Interpreters, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Alex Varley, CEO, Media Access, Australia
TransMedia Research Group
Mary Carroll (Carroll Communication, Berlin, Germany)
Jorge Daz-Cintas (University College London, UK)
Anna Matamala (Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona, Spain)
Joslia Neves (Doha, Qatar)
Pilar Orero (Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona, Spain)
Aline Remael (Artesis University College Antwerp, Belgium)
Diana Snchez (Red Bee Media, Seville, Spain)
Advisory Committee (AC):
Tony Abrahams, CEO of ai-media, Australia
Annamaria Arnall, President, AUSIT (Australian Institute of Interpreters & Translators),
Australia
David Bane, CEO, Mada (Qatar Assistive Technology Center), Qatar

John Beever, CEO, National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI),
Australia
Rachel Bentley, CEO of TVS, University of Western Sydney, Australia
Jenny Brigg, Australian Communications & Media Authority (ACMA)
Mary Carroll, Carroll Communication / TransMedia Research Group, Germany
Gilbert Fong, Hang Seng Management College, Hong Kong
Yota Georgakopoulou, Deluxe, UK
Chris Howe, Red Bee Media Australia (Ericsson)
Peter Khalil, Special Broadcasting Service (SBS TV), Australia
Jan-Louis Kruger, Macquarie University, Australia
Kristijan Nikoli, University of Zagreb, Croatia
Minako OHagan, Dublin City University, Ireland
Jan Pedersen, Stockholm University, Sweden
Wu Qing, Beijing Foreign Studies University, China
Agnieszka Szarkowska, University of Warsaw, Poland
Mustapha Taibi, University of Western Sydney, Australia
Christopher Taylor, University of Trieste, Italy
Wendy Youens, Able, New Zealand
Patrick Zabalbeascoa, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain