Voices – VAKKI

The University of Vaasa Research Group for Translation, LSP and Multilingualism held the 37th annual VAKKI Symposium on February 9 10, 2017 in Vaasa, Finland. The theme of the Symposium was Voices. According to the VAKKI tradition, papers were presented in Finnish, Swedish, English and German. The invited plenary speakers were Professor María Ángeles Orts Llopis (University of Murcia) and Dr. David Giles (University of Winchester). The Humanist of the Year prize 2016 was awarded to the Ostrobothnia Interpreter Centre. The motivation is included in the present publication.

Professor María Ángeles Orts Llopis examined the challenges for translators, linguists and specialists in the area of legal English in her talk, Legal English as the Lingua Franca of International Law: An Account of Traits and Pit-falls for Continental LSP practitioners and Legal Translators. She started by explaining the Anglo-American legal system and that of continental Europe, and discussed problems that translators and LSP practitioners may encounter when dealing with the complexity of legal English and its status as lingua franca.

In his plenary lecture, Celebrities, Audiences, Fans: To What Extent Do Social Media Dissolve the Boundaries?. David Giles discussed the relationship between the production of social media content and its reception by audiences. He started by introducing the traditional relationship between media producers and their audiences, where there isa clear boundary between the two roles. He went on to characterize the new leveled-off relationship, in which both creator and audience share the same toolset, presenting findings from recent studies on Twitter. He then spoke about the phenomenon of YouTube celebrities, and the reasons for their popularity.

This year’s extensive symposium theme attracted a large audience who examined the theme of Voices from many different angles of language-related research. These Proceedings contain 19 articles that are based on plenary, sessions, and workshop presentations from the symposium. The articles have been selected for publication through a double blind review procedure, which was carried out by VAKKI Publications´ international pool of referees.

VAKKI-symposiumi XXXVII. Vaasa 9.-10.2.2017

Vaasa 2017

Toimittajat: Nicole KENG, Anita NUOPPONEN & Daniel RELLSTAB

Toimitussihteeri: Tiia NURMI

ISBN: 978-952-68538-4-0 (PDF)

ISSN-L: 2242-6841
ISSN: 2242-685X (PDF)

Opening

Plenary paper

Section papers

VAKKI-symposiumi XXXVII. Vaasa 9.-10.2.2017