The professional conference “New Normal – Neue Wege”, “New Digital Challenges in Translation Science” was attended by speakers from Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, and Hungary, who discussed the current issues of translation studies, caused by the Covid pandemic and tried to propose answers to those problems and possible good practices.
Helga Begonja (University of Zadar) gave a review of the impact of the pandemic on the Croatian translation market, Viktorija Osolnik Kunc (University of Ljubjana) analysed the Slovenian situation, Krisztina Varga (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest) and Péter Csatár (University of Debrecen) reflected on the challenges of Hungarian online translation training and the lessons learned from virtual translation courses.
In addition to the training, the conference also discussed current issues of literary translation. The presentation by Lídia Nádori (Association of Hungarian Literary Translators) enabled those interested to gain insight into how the translation environment has changed with the spread of the pandemic, and what effects this has had and will continue to have on the future. Daniela Vladu (Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca) presented practices that can be applied in the translation of literary texts in the current situation as well.
– The main message of the conference is that the use of multimodal e-learning systems, which has become prominent in the training of translators, will remain an integral part of the training in the future. The electronic interfaces (MOODLE, CANVAS, and MS TEAMS) will not only be used as a storage of the used literature and the administration of education, but will also occupy a prominent place in teacher-student interaction, and some of the testing can also be transferred to the online space, said Péter Csatár, Head of the Department of German Linguistics, UD, Faculty of Arts.
– Literary translators believe that it might take even longer than a year before it becomes apparent how badly the translation market has been affected by the downturn in orders in the present period of the fading pandemic, UD coordinator, programme moderator Péter Csató explained.
The online event, organized with the participation of literary translators from the four above nations, was followed by both lecturers and students in Hungary as well as abroad.
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