June 21-23, 2027

Geneva, Switzerland

Deadline: October 31, 2026

In the current era of globalisation and media convergence, multilingualism, multiculturalism, and translation appear in most of the news, whether international news or national news, whether in monolingual or multilingual countries (Rodriguez-Blanco and Davier 2026). Scholarly interest in international news flows can be traced back to the landmark Foreign News Study (Sreberny-Mohammadi et al. 1980) and the MacBride report (International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, MacBride, and UNESCO 1980), which criticised the uniformity of news flows from the Global North to the Global South. More recent research has reopened these debates by examining contra- or South–South flows of information (Kavoori 2007; Rantanen 2007; Thussu 2007). Nevertheless, inequalities in representation persist. Africa, for example, has long been subjected to negative coverage, despite slight shifts in journalistic angles (Bunce, Franks, and Paterson 2016). Latin America has remained underrepresented by international news organisations (Wu 1998; Cazzamatta 2020), with indigenous voices being marginalised or silenced, even if they now appear in some news reports by global news agencies (Rodríguez-Blanco 2025).

In times of cascading crises, news organisations, news agencies, public relations practitioners, digital platforms, and citizen journalists all participate in shaping public agendas and circulating information across borders (Valenzuela and McCombs 2019 [1996]; Golan 2006). Furthermore, the transnational nature of disinformation raises questions about multilingual factchecking practices and the circulation of contested narratives across linguistic and cultural contexts (Cazzamatta 2025).

More broadly speaking, the practice of interlingual translation influences the syntax of the target language (McLaughlin 2011), the selection of sources (Davier 2017; van Doorslaer 2009), and the framing of countries and individuals (Bassnett 2005; Valdeón 2014; Filmer and Riggs 2023). Furthermore, since the disruption caused by the public release of ChatGPT in late 2022, journalists have increasingly integrated machine translation and AI into their daily news routines to meet the demands of the industry or in response to organisational policies (Conway et al. 2025; Nurminen 2025).

From a methodological perspective, contrastive media analysis (Kelly-Holmes and Milani 2013; Hauser and Luginbühl 2012) has progressively integrated ethnographic sources of information (Coesemans 2012) and drawn on insights from the sociology of journalism (Paterson 2008). Journalistic translation research has also imported methods of data collection from the social sciences, for example observations, field notes, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaires (van Rooyen and Davier 2025; Bielsa and Bassnett 2009). In addition, applied linguistics has combined ethnography and process-oriented methods of data collection such as screen recording and retrospective interviews (Perrin 2013; Merminod and Haapanen 2025).

Beyond interlingual translation, contemporary media increasingly rely on multimodal forms of communication in which information is transformed across semiotic modes (Riggs 2024), for example, from text to image, video, infographics, or social media content. Pan, Wu, Luo and Qian (2024) emphasise the inherent multimodality of any form of communication, including a focus on paratextual features (including headlines and photos) in the news narrative. The multimodal nature of news therefore invites the examination of how meaning is negotiated, transformed, and contested across languages, cultures, and media formats.

Given that translation and related multilingual, multicultural, and multimodal processes, practices, and products permeate the media without necessarily leaving visible traces (Van Rooyen and Davier 2026), this conference aims to showcase research that sheds light on these often-hidden forms of mediation.

To date, these issues have largely been examined within the separate traditions of translation studies, applied linguistics, journalism studies, communication, and media studies. This conference aims to bring these disciplines into closer dialogue.

For the Multilingualism, Multiculturalism, and Translation in the News Conference, we welcome contributions from a wide range of disciplines, addressing some of the following questions:

• How is the news produced in multilingual and multicultural environments?
  
• What role does translation play in contemporary news production and dissemination?
  
• How do journalistic writing practices reflect multilingual and multicultural influences?
  
• How is multilingualism made visible or rendered invisible in news?
  
• How do journalistic cultures differ across countries, regions, and language communities?
  
• How does topic selection vary among language services and media organisations?
  
• How is multimodality integrated into multilingual news production processes?
  
• What is the effect of increased multimodality or cross-platform production on multilingualism and translation?
  
• How do disinformation and misinformation spread across national borders?
  
• How is factchecking conducted across linguistic and cultural boundaries?
  
• How are the concepts and practices of constructive journalism, peace journalism, or development journalism, among others, translated and adapted across cultural and linguistic boundaries?
  
• How do practitioners conceive of their journalistic work aimed at multilingual and multicultural audiences?
  
• How do audiences perceive international news coverage across different linguistic and cultural settings?
  
• How do machine translation and generative artificial intelligence reshape multilingual journalistic practices?
  
• Do they make multilingualism and translation more or less visible?
  
• How are marginalised, indigenous, and underrepresented voices translated, mediated, and circulated in local and global news ecosystems?
  
• How do processes of resemiotisation transform information across linguistic, cultural, and multimodal contexts?
  

The conference focuses on key themes, including:

• News/journalism
  
• Multilingualism
  
• Multiculturalism/intercultural studies
  
• Translation
  
• International/regional/national news
  
• Infrastructure/materiality
  
• News values/news selection/journalistic discourse
  
• Global news flows
  
• Factchecking beyond borders
  
• Multimodality
  

We welcome contributions from a range of disciplines, including, but not limited to:

• Applied linguistics
  
• Communication studies
  
• Contrastive media studies
  
• Intercultural communication
  
• International journalism
  
• Journalism studies
  
• Media studies
  
• Multimodal studies
  
• Pragmatics
  
• Sociology of journalism
  
• Translation studies
  

The conference seeks to create a space for meaningful exchange between the Global South and North, encouraging dialogue across disciplines. We look forward to receiving proposals that advance our understanding of multilingualism, multiculturalism, translation, and media production in an increasingly interconnected yet uneven global information landscape.

Organising Committee

• Lucile Davier, University of Geneva (Switzerland)
  
• Natalia Rodriguez-Blanco, University of Geneva (Switzerland)
  
• Marlie van Rooyen, University of the Free State (South Africa)
  

Scientific Committee

• Aragrande, Gaia (University of Bologna, Italy)
  
• Boulanger, Pier-Pascale (Concordia University, Canada)
  
• Bornoz, Tristan (Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland)
  
• Conway, Kyle (University of Ottawa, Canada)
  
• Davier, Lucile (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
  
• Feinauer, Ilse (University of Stellenbosch, South Africa)
  
• Gagnon, Chantal (University of Montreal, Canada)
  
• Hernández Guerrero, María José (University of Málaga, Spain)
  
• Huotari, Léa (University of Turku, Finland)
  
• Jalalian Daghigh, Ali (Universiti Malaya, Malaysia)
  
• Kelly-Holmes, Helen (University of Limerick, Ireland)
  
• Kim, Kyung Hye (Dongguk University, South Korea)
  
• Lagneau, Éric (EHESS, France)
  
• Mairi McLaughlin (UC Berkeley, United States)
  
• Merminod, Gilles (Zurich University of Applied Sciences)
  
• Mustvairo, Bruce (Utrecht University, Netherlands)
  
• Perrin, Daniel (Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland)
  
• Riggs, Ashley (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy)
  
• Rodriguez-Blanco, Natalia (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
  
• Surm, Jasmin (University of Leeds, United Kingdom)
  
• Valdeón, Roberto A. (University of Oviedo, Spain)
  
• van Doorslaer, Luc (University of Tartu, Estonia & KU Leuven, Belgium)
  
• Van Leuven, Sarah (Ghent University, Belgium)
  
• van Poucke, Piet (Ghent University, Belgium)
  
• Van Rooyen, Marlie (University of the Free State, South Africa)
  

Keynote speakers

• Regina Cazzamatta, University of Erfurt (Germany)
  
• Kyle Conway, University of Ottawa (Canada)
  
• Cyril Lemieux, EHESS (France)
  

Timeline

• Submission of 300-word abstracts by 31 October 2026
  
• Notification of acceptance by 31 January 2027
  
• Travel grants, decision by 15 February 2027
  

Support

This conference is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the National Research Foundation (NRF) as part of the SNSF-NRF project “South–North flows of information through translation in the global news agency AFP”.

References

Bassnett, Susan. 2005. "Bringing the News Back Home: Strategies of Acculturation and Foreignisation." Language and Intercultural Communication 5 (2): 120-130. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708470508668888.

Bielsa, Esperança, and Susan Bassnett. 2009. Translation in Global News. London: Routledge.

Bunce, Mel, Suzanne Franks, and Chris Paterson. 2016. "A new Africa's Media Image?" In Africa's Media Image in the 21st Century: From the "Heart of Darkness" to "Africa Rising", edited by Mel Bunce, 1-14. London: Routledge.

Cazzamatta, Regina. 2020. "Four facets of Latin America: A study of the German press coverage from 2000 to 2014." SComS: Studies in Communication Sciences 20 (1): 7-23. https://doi.org/10.24434/j.scoms.2020.01.002.

---. 2025. "Building a cross-border European information network: Hyperlink connections among fact-checking organizations." Media and Communication 13. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.9389.

Coesemans, Roel. 2012. "Contrastive News Discourse Analysis from a Pragmatic Perspective: Context, Ideology and Representation in Press Coverage About Kenya's Crisis." In Contrastive Media Analysis: Approaches to Linguistic and Cultural Aspects of Mass Media Communication, edited by Stefan Hauser and Martin Luginbühl, 67-98. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Conway, Kyle, Julie Alice Gramaccia, Nikita Scholz, and Téana Averbeck. 2025. "Measuring lexical distance between parallel corpora: the case of AI-generated news translation." Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice: 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2025.2590066.

Davier, Lucile. 2017. Les enjeux de la traduction dans les agences de presse. Lille: Presses universitaires du Septentrion.

Filmer, Denise, and Ashley Riggs. 2023. Translating the cultural Other during Covid: A comparative study of Italian and UK online news. inTRAlinea 25.

Golan, Guy. 2006. "Inter-media agenda setting and global news coverage." Journalism Studies 7 (2): 323-333. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616700500533643. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616700500533643.

Hauser, Stefan, and Martin Luginbühl. 2012. "Approaching contrastive analysis." In Contrastive Media Analysis: Approaches to Linguistic and Cultural Aspects of Mass Media Communication, edited by Stefan Hauser and Martin Luginbühl, 1-7. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, Sean MacBride, and UNESCO. 1980. "Many voices, one world: Towards a new, more just, and more efficient world information and communication order. Report of the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems." UNESCO. Accessed 26/08/2026. http://www.un-documents.net/macbride-report.pdf.

Kavoori, Anandam P. 2007. "Thinking through contra-flows: Perspectives from post-colonial and transnational cultural studies." In Media on the Move: Global Flow and Contra-Flow, edited by Daya Kishan Thussu, 49-64. London: Routledge.

Kelly-Holmes, Helen, and Tomasso M. Milani. 2013. "Introduction: Thematising multilingualism in the media." In Thematising multilingualism in the media, edited by Helen Kelly-Holmes and Tomasso M. Milani, 1-22. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

McLaughlin, Mairi. 2011. Syntactic Borrowing in Contemporary French: A Linguistic Analysis of News Translation. Vol. 30Research monographs in French studies. London: Legenda.

Merminod, Gilles, and Lauri Haapanen. 2025. "Hidden behind the text: A linguistic ethnographic study of stancetaking in news production." Language and Communication 101: 15-27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2024.12.014. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0271530924001046.

Nurminen, Mary. 2025. "Machine translation in non-translation workplaces." In The Routledge Handbook of Translation Technology and Society, edited by Stefan Baumgarten and Michael Tieber. London: Routledge.

Pan, Li, Xiaoping Wu, Tian Luo, and Hong Qian, eds. 2024. Multimodality in Translation Studies: Media, Models, and Trends in China London: Routledge.

Paterson, Chris. 2008. "Why ethnography?" In Making online news, edited by Chris A. Paterson and David Domingo, 1-14. New York: Peter Lang.

Perrin, Daniel. 2013. The linguistics of newswriting. Vol. 11. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Rantanen, Terhi. 2007. "Flows and contra-flows in transitional societies." In Media on the Move: Global Flow and Contra-Flow, edited by Daya Kishan Thussu, 165-181. London: Routledge.

Riggs, Ashley. 2024. "Verbal and visual communication in constructive news across cultures: A case study of a bilingual English-Spanish corpus with a focus on metaphor." Language & Communication 96: 26-41. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2024.02.001. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0271530924000107.

Rodríguez-Blanco, Natalia. 2025. "'El litio, no comemos nosotros': la traducción de voces locales en la cobertura multilingüe y multimedia de Agence France-Presse." Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción 18 (2): 318-343. https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.mut.v18n2a03. https://revistas.udea.edu.co/index.php/mutatismutandis/article/view/360514.

Rodriguez-Blanco, Natalia, and Lucile Davier. 2026. "Translation in news agency journalism." In Routledge Handbook of News Agencies, edited by Pedro Aguiar, Joseph Oliver Boyd-Barrett and Christian Vukasovich, 483-493. London: Routledge.

Sreberny-Mohammadi, Annabelle, Kaarle Nordenstreng, Robert Stevenson, and Frank Okwu Ugboajah. 1980. The World of the News/The News of the World: Final Report of the ‘Foreign Images’ Study Undertaken by the International Association for Mass Communication Research for UNESCO. University Centre for Mass Communication Research (Leicester). https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000065257.

Thussu, Daya Kishan. 2007. "Mapping global media flow and contra-flow." In Media on the Move: Global Flow and Contra-Flow, edited by Daya Kishan Thussu, 11-32. London: Routledge.

Valdeón, Roberto A. 2014. "From adaptation to appropriation: Framing the world through news translation." Linguaculture 5 (1). https://doi.org/10.1515/lincu-2015-0019.

Valenzuela, Sebastián, and Maxwell E. McCombs. 2019 [1996]. "The agenda-setting role of the news media." In An Integrated Approach to Communication Theory and Research, edited by Don W. Stacks and Michael B. Salwen, 99-112. London: Routledge.

van Doorslaer, Luc. 2009. "How language and (non-)translation impact on media newsrooms: the case of newspapers in Belgium." Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice 17 (2): 83-92. https://doi.org/10.1080/09076760903125051.

van Rooyen, Marlie, and Lucile Davier. 2025. "Translation and mass media." In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Sociology, edited by Sergey Tyulenev and Wenyan Luo, 306-321. London: Routledge.

---. 2026. "Learning from news translation research to unblackbox paraprofessional translation." In Translating at Work: Paraprofessional translation in organizations, edited by Kaisa Koskinen, 76-96. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Wu, Haoming Denis. 1998. "Investigating the determinants of international news flows: A meta-analysis." Gazette 60 (6): 493-512.