Call for Papers: Guest-edited Issue on Non-Professional Interpreting in Conflict and War: Power, Ideology, and Political Agency

2026-02-26

 

Call for Papers: Guest-edited Issue on Non-professional Translation and Interpreting in Conflict and War:

Power, Ideology, and Political Agency

Guest-edited issue of the new Journal of Non-Professional Interpreting and Translation (JoNPIT) by Ahmad Ayyad (Binghamton University, USA) and Rachele Antonini (University of Bologna, Italy)

 

Non-professional translation and interpreting has received increasing attention as an independent area of inquiry within Translation Studies over the past decade (e.g. Susam-Saraeva and Pérez-González 2012; Martínez-Gómez 2015; Antonini et al. 2017; Grbić and Kujamäki 2018; Angelelli 2019; Monzó-Nebot and Wallace 2020). This growing body of research has highlighted the crucial contributions of individuals who translate or interpret outside formal, institutional, or professional frameworks. Non-professional translation and interpreting practices have been examined across a wide range of contexts, including media (e.g. Antonini and Bucaria 2016), public services (e.g. Baraldi and Gavioli 2017; Pöllabauer 2017), healthcare (e.g. Aguilar-Solano 2015; Ticca 2017), humanitarian settings (e.g. Doğan and Kahraman 2011; Rogl 2017), child interpreting (e.g. Antonini 2010; Katz 2014), and migration (e.g. Angelelli 2015; Rossato 2017).

Despite this expanding literature, non-professional translation and interpreting in contexts of conflict and war remain largely underexamined, with only a limited number of notable exceptions (e.g. Palmer 2007; Baker 2010; Wolf 2016). This gap is particularly significant given the central role these individuals often play in such settings—not as neutral intermediaries compensating for the absence of trained professionals, but as active agents who shape, circulate, and contest narratives of conflict and war within asymmetrical power relations. These actors may include politicians, journalists, academics, humanitarian workers, activists, or community members who bring their own ideological and political positionalities to the task. Whether translating political documents, mediating negotiations, relaying testimonies, or reporting on conflicts and wars, they make choices that can construct, reinforce, or challenge dominant narratives. Far from neutral conduits, they act as political agents whose interventions, consciously or unconsciously, influence both immediate developments on the ground and the longer-term historical record of conflict.

This special issue of JoNPIT addresses this critical gap by foregrounding Non-professional translation and interpreting practices in contexts of conflict and war—settings in which linguistic mediation is frequently carried out by refugees, volunteers, activists, journalists, and other untrained or informally trained agents operating under conditions of heightened risk and asymmetrical power relations. While Translation Studies has increasingly recognized non-professional agents, their roles in armed conflict remain under-theorized, particularly with regard to political agency, ethical responsibility, and exposure to danger.

In conflict and war, non-professional translators and interpreters operate in circumstances that differ fundamentally from institutional or professional environments. The boundaries between mediation, advocacy, testimony, and survival are often blurred, challenging conventional distinctions between “professional” and “non-professional” practice. Translation and interpreting in these contexts function not merely as acts of transfer, but as interventions embedded in struggles over meaning, legitimacy, visibility, and authority.

By centering the agency and positionality of non-professional language mediators, this special issue seeks to stimulate critical reflection on the ethical, political, and practical dimensions of non-professional translation and interpreting in conflict and war, and to position Non-professional translation and interpreting as a key site for understanding how language practices shape contested political realities.

For this special issue, we invite contributions that address a broad range of topics, including but not limited to:

  • The identities, positionalities, and roles of non-professional translators and interpreters in recent or ongoing conflicts and wars, with empirical examples from Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan, Syria, Myanmar, and Latin America;
  • The role of non-professional translators and interpreters in constructing, framing, contesting, or legitimating dominant and counter-narratives of conflict and war;
  • Questions of neutrality, ethics, trust, risk, and positionality in non-professional translation and interpreting practices in conflict and war;
  • The use of AI-based tools, machine translation, and emerging technologies in non-professional translation and interpreting in conflict and war contexts;
  • Crowdsourced, volunteer, and community-based translation and interpreting initiatives in contexts of conflict and war, including humanitarian crises, conflict reporting, and refugee support;
  • Empirical case studies and critical accounts of non-professional translation and interpreting practices in conflict and war;
  • Translation and interpreting as forms of political intervention, resistance, or propaganda in conflict and war;
  • Theoretical and methodological reflections on studying non-professional translation and interpreting in contexts of conflict and war.

    Submission Timeline

  • Abstracts (400-500) words due to guest editors: June 15, 2026
  • Decision on abstracts: July 15, 2026
  • Full papers due: December 15, 2026
  • Peer review feedback and decision to authors: March 15, 2027
  • Final versions of papers due to guest editors: June 15, 2027
  • Publication of special issue:September 2027

 

  • Authors are invited to submit a 400–500 word abstract clearly indicating the topic, methodology, and original contribution of their proposed paper. Abstracts should be submitted as a Word attachment to Ahmad Ayyad (aayyad@binghamton.edu) and Rachel Antonini (rachele.antonini@unibo.it) by June 15, 2026. Please use the following subject line format for your email: “JoNPIT Special Issue – [Title of Paper]”.

 

References

Ayyad, Ahmad. 2025. “Translating Peace Proposals During Times of Conflict: Incompatible Political Interpretations and Competing Ideologies”. In Routledge Handbook on Interpreting and Translation in Armed Conflicts, edited by Marija Todorova and Lucia Rosendo 379-395. London: Routledge.

Ayyad, Ahmad. 2024. “Contested Naming Practices in the Palestinian–Israeli Conflict: A Translation Perspective.” Translation Studies 17 (2): 229–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/14781700.2023.2258133.

Aguilar-Solano, María. 2015. “Non-professional Volunteer Interpreting as an Institutionalized Practice in Healthcare: A Study on Interpreters’ Personal Narratives.”  Translation & Interpreting: The International Journal for Translation and Interpreting Research 17 (3): 132-148.

Angelelli, Claudia V. 2019. “Non-Professional Interpreting and Translation.” Translation and Interpreting Studies 14 (1) (Special issue: Non-Professional Interpreting and Translation: Translational Cultures in Focus, ed. Feyza Evrin and Bernd Meyer): 1–7.

Angelelli, Claudia V. 2015. “Justice for All? Issues Faced by Linguistic Minorities and Border Patrol Agents during Interpreted Arraignment Interviews.”  MonTI: Monografías de traducción e interpretación (7):181-205.

Antonini, Rachele. 2010. “The Study of Child Language Brokering: Past, Current and Emerging Research”. mediAzioni 10:1–23.

Antonini, Rachele, Cirillo, Letizia, Rossato, Linda and Torresi, Ira. eds. 2017. Non-professional Interpreting and Translation: State of the Art and Future of an Emerging Field of Research. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Antonini, Rachele, and Chiara Bucaria. 2016. Non-professional interpreting and translation in the media. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Baker, Mona. 2010. “Interpreters and Translators in the War Zone Narrated and Narrators.” The Translator 16(2): 197-222.

Baraldi, Claudio and Gavioli, Laura. 2017. “Intercultural mediation and “(non)professional” interpreting in Italian healthcare institutions.” In Non-professional Interpreting and Translation: State of the art and future of an emerging field of research, edited by Rachele Antonini, Letizia Cirillo, Linda Rossato and Ira Torresi, 83–106. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Doğan, Aymil, and Rana Kahraman. 2011. “Emergency and Disaster Interpreting in Turkey: Ten Years of a Unique Endeavour”. Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi 28(2): 61–76.

Grbić, Nadja and Kujamäki, Pekka . 2018. “Professional vs Non-Professional? How boundary work shapes research agendas in translation and interpreting studies.” In Moving Boundaries in Translation Studies, edited by Helle Dam, Matilde Brøgger, and Karen Zethsen, 113–132. London. Routledge.

Katz, Vikki S. 2014. Kids in the Middle: How Children of Immigrants Negotiate Community Interactions for Their Families. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Martínez-Gómez, Aída. 2015. “Bibliometrics as a tool to map uncharted territory: A study on non-professional interpreting.”  Perspectives 23 (2): 205-222. 

Monzó-Nebot, Esther, and Melissa Wallace, eds. 2020. Ethics of Non-Professional Translation and Interpreting. Special issue of Translation and Interpreting Studies 15 (1).

Palmer, Jerry. 2007. “Interpreters and Translators on the Front Line. Interpreting and Translation for Western Media in Iraq.” In Translating and Interpreting Conflict, edited by Myriam Salama-Carr, 13-28. Amsterdam: Radopi.

Pérez-González, Luis, and Susan-Saraeva, Şebnem. 2012. “Non-Professionals Translating and Interpreting: Participatory and Engaged Perspectives”. The Translator 18(2): 149–165.

Pöllabauer, Sonja. 2017. “Issues of terminology in public service interpreting. From affordability through psychotherapy to waiting lists.” In Non-professional Interpreting and Translation: State of the art and future of an emerging field of research, edited by Rachele Antonini, Letizia Cirillo, Linda Rossato and Ira Torresi, 131–155. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Rogl, Regina. 2017. “Language-related disaster relief in Haiti: Volunteer translator networks and language technologies in disaster aid.” In Non-professional Interpreting and Translation: State of the art and future of an emerging field of research, edited by Rachele Antonini, Letizia Cirillo, Linda Rossato and Ira Torresi, 231–255. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Rossato, Linda. 2017. “From confinement to community service. Migrant inmates mediating between languages and cultures.” In Non-professional Interpreting and Translation: State of the art and future of an emerging field of research, edited by Rachele Antonini, Letizia Cirillo, Linda Rossato and Ira Torresi, 157–175. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Ticca, Ann Claudia. 2017. “More than mere translators: The identities of lay interpreters in medical consultations.” In Non-professional Interpreting and Translation: State of the art and future of an emerging field of research, edited by Rachele Antonini, Letizia Cirillo, Linda Rossato and Ira Torresi, 107–130. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Wolf, Michaela, ed. 2016. Interpreting in Nazi Concentration Camps. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

 

You can access and download the full call for papers in Word format at this link.