International Conference ‘New Trends in Translation and Technology’ (NeTTT’2024)

Varna, Bulgaria, 4-7 July 2024





First Call for Papers


The conference

The second edition of the forthcoming International Conference ‘New Trends in Translation and Technology’ (NeTTT’2024) will take place in Varna, Bulgaria, 4-7 July 2024.

The objective of the conference is (i) to bridge the gap between academia and industry in the field of translation and interpreting by bringing together academics in linguistics, translation studies, machine translation and natural language processing, developers, practitioners, language service providers and vendors who work on or are interested in different aspects of technology for translation and interpreting, and (ii) to be a distinctive event for discussing the latest developments and practices. NeTTT’2024 invites all professionals who would like to learn about the new trends, present the latest work or/and share their experience in the field, and who would like to establish business and research contacts, collaborations and new ventures.

The conference will take the form of presentations (peer-reviewed research and user presentations, keynote speeches), and posters; it will also feature panel discussions. The accepted papers will be published as open-access conference e-proceedings.


Conference topics

Contributions are invited on any topic related to latest technology and practices in machine translation, translation, subtitling, localisation and interpreting.
NeTTT’2024 will feature a Special Theme Track "Future of Translation Technology in the Era of LLMs and Generative AI".

The conference topics include but are not limited to:

CAT tools

- Translation Memory (TM) systems
- NLP and MT for translation memory systems
- Terminology extraction tools
- Localisation tools

Machine Translation

- Latest developments in Neural Machine Translation
- MT for under-resourced languages
- MT with low computing resources
- Multimodal MT
- Integration of MT in TM systems
- Resources for MT

Technologies for MT deployment

- MT evaluation techniques, metrics and evaluation results
- Human evaluations of MT output
- Evaluating MT in a real-world setting
- Quality estimation for MT
- Domain adaptation

Translation Studies

- Corpus-based studies applied to translation
- Corpora and resources for translation
- Translationese
- Cognitive effort and eye-tracking experiments in translation

Interpreting studies

- Corpus-based studies applied to interpreting
- Corpora and resources for interpreting
- Interpretationese
- Resources for interpreting and interpreting technology applications
- Cognitive effort and eye-tracking experiments in interpreting

Interpreting technology

- Machine interpreting
- Computer-aided interpreting
- NLP for dialogue interpreting
- Development of NLP based applications for communication in public service settings (healthcare, education, law, emergency services)

Emerging Areas in Translation and Interpreting

- MT and translation tools for literary texts and creative texts
- MT for social media and real-time conversations
- Sign language recognition and translation

Subtitling

- NLP and MT for subtitling
- Latest technology for subtitling

User needs

- Analysis of translators’ and interpreters’ needs in terms of translation and interpreting technology
- User requirements for interpreting and translation tools
- Incorporating human knowledge into translation and interpreting technology
- What existing translators’ (including subtitlers’) and interpreters’ tools do not offer
- User requirements for electronic resources for translators and interpreters
- Translation and interpreting workflows in larger organisations and the tools for translation and interpreting employed

The business of translation and interpreting

- Translation workflow and management
- Technology adoption by translators and industry
- Setting up translation /interpreting / language provider company

Teaching translation and interpreting

- Teaching Machine Translation
- Teaching translation technology
- Teaching interpreting technology
- Latest AI developments in the syllabi of translation and interpreting curricula

Ethical issues in translation and technology

- Bias and fairness in MT
- Privacy and security in cloud MT systems
- Transparency and explainability of MT systems
- Environmental impact on MT systems

Special Theme Track - Future of Translation Technology in the Era of LLMs and Generative AI

We are excited to share that NeTTT’2024 will have a special theme with the goal of stimulating discussion around Large Language Models, Generative AI and the Future of Translation and Interpreting Technology. While the new generation of Large Language Models such as CHATGPT and LLAMA showcase remarkable advancements in language generation and understanding, we find ourselves in uncharted territory when it comes to their performance on various Translation and Interpreting Technology tasks with regards to fairness, interpretability, ethics and transparency.

The theme track invites studies on how LLMs perform on Translation and Interpreting Technology tasks and applications, and what this means for the future of the field. The possible topics of discussion include (but are not limited to) the following:

- Changes in the translators and interpreters’ professions in the new AI era especially as a result of the latest developments in LLMSs and Generative AI
- Generative AI and translation
- Generative AI and interpreting
- Augmenting machine translation systems with generative AI
- Domain and terminology adaptation with Large Language Models
- Literary translation with Large Language Models
- Improving Machine Translation Quality with Contextual Prompts in Large Language Models
- Prompt engineering for translation
- Generative AI for professional translation
- Generative AI for professional interpreting

We anticipate having a special session on this theme at the conference.

Submissions and publication

NETTT’2024 invites the following types of submissions:

User papers – for industry and practitioners. References to related work are optional. Allowed paper length: between 1 and 4 pages.

Academic submissions, in three different categories (have to follow formatting requirements, references to related work are required):
• (academic) full papers – describing original completed research. Allowed paper length: maximum 8 pages + 2 for references.
• (academic) work-in-progress papers/posters – describing work in progress, late breaking research, papers at a more conceptual stage, and other types of papers that do not fit in the ‘full’ papers category. Allowed paper length: maximum 6 pages + 2 for references.
• (academic) demo papers – describing working systems. Allowed paper length: maximum 4 pages + 2 for references. In addition to the papers, the authors will be expected to demonstrate the systems at the workshop.

The submission will be electronic, using the Softconf START conference management system which will be available at the conference website soon. The follow up calls will provide more further submission details.

Each submission will be reviewed by three members of the Programme Committee.

The final version of the accepted papers will be published in e-proceedings with assigned ISBN and DOI.

All accepted papers will be included in the conference e-proceedings which will be available at the conference.


Schedule

Submission deadline: 31 March 2024
Notification: 5 June 2024
Final version due: 20 June 2024

Venue

The conference will take place at Conference Hotel Cherno More, Varna, situated only 200 m away from the fine sandy Black Sea beach.


Further information and contact details

The second call for papers is expected in December 2023 and registration will be open as from January 2024. The follow-up calls will list keynote speakers, conference chairs and members of the programme committee once confirmed.

The conference website is https://nettt-conference.com and will be updated on a regular basis. For further information, please contact us at nettt2024@nettt-conference.com