U Graz University Assistant (Austria)

“JobUniversity Assistant with Doctorate, The Institute of Translation Studies, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Graz, Graz, Austria. Deadline: September 9, 2020.

40 hours a week; fixed-term employment for the period of 6 years; position to be filled as of October 12th 2020.

Your duties:

* Independent research and scientific collaboration in the research area “Translation and cooperation in times of technocapitalism”
* Possibility to write an empirically-based postdoctoral thesis (habilitation) with a focus on translation technology and (digital) translation didactics
* Preparation of a structured overview of new developments and innovations in translation technology and digital translation didactics
* Publications in scientific journals and/or other forms of knowledge transfer (dissemination of knowledge)
* Assistance in the acquisition of external funding
* Contribution to existing and new research projects
* Participation in and co-organisation of workshops, symposia and conferences
* Teaching of courses, among others in the field of translation technology
* Student support
* Administration related to research and teaching

CFP World Conference on Pluricentric Languages (Austria)

Call for Papers: World-Conference on Pluricentric Languages and their Non-Dominant Varieties
Organized by the International Working Group on Non-Dominant Varieties of Pluricentric Language (WGNDV)
July 08–11, 2015, University of Graz, Austria
Submission deadline: March 30, 2015
Notification of acceptance: April 15, 2015
Publication of papers: A volume of selected papers is to be published by Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt.
All papers for the conference and the publication will be peer-reviewed.

The conference will also have a section on language technology providing scholars the possibility to present their methods and approaches in corpus linguistics, natural language processing and the computational treatment of linguistic variation existing between and within national varieties.

The organizers of this 4th conference of the Working Group on Non-Dominant Varieties of Pluricentric Languages (WGNDV) would like to invite scholars from around the world to participate. The conference is devoted to the description of pluricentric languages and in particular of non-dominant national varieties of plc. languages. These are the varieties that are small by the number of their speakers and their symbolic power, and are not the primary norm-setting centres of the language. They may often be falsely attributed the status of a “dialect”, and have little or no codification of their norms. Typically, nd-varieties often have to legitimate their norms towards the dominant varieties etc. The previous conferences of the WGNDV have shown that non-dominant varieties around the world have many linguistic and sociolinguistic features in common. We would therefore like to deepen our knowledge and invite scholars from around the world to take part in the conference and give insight into the situation and features of as many nd-varieties and plc. languages as possible.

Objectives of the 4th conference:
The WGNDV wishes to continue in the line of the previous conferences and to extend the scope of its research. The main objectives of this conference are:
1.    To get more information about the situation of as many pluricentric languages and non-dominant-varieties in order to get empirically secure descriptions of effects of non-dominance.
*on the identity of their speakers,
*on the identity of their language communities,
*on the treatment of norms in written and spoken language,
*on the principles of codification and their spread to younger generations, and
*on methods in language-technology, how linguistic variation between and within national varieties and nd-varieties in particular can be treated and modelled computationally.

2.    To get exhaustive reports of the situation of as many plc. languages and nd-varieties around the world as possible and in particular of lesser known and researched plc. languages and nd-varieties like:
*Albanian, Aramaic, Aromunian, Basque, Bengali, Chinese, Croatian, Guaraní, Hebrew, Hindi/Urdu, Hungarian, Kiswahili / Swahili, Kurdish, Mapudungun, Occitan, Pashto, Punjabi, Quechua, Tamil, Romanian, Russian etc.
*ND-varieties of English in Europe, Americas, Africa and Asia;
*ND-varieties of French in Europe, Africa, Asia and America;
*ND-varieties of Spanish in the Americas and in Asia;
*ND-varieties of Portuguese in South-America, Africa and Asia;
*ND-varieties of German in Austrian, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg; and
*Reports on the development of Russian in the former member-states of the Soviet Union

3.    To deepen the theory of plc. languages and the methods for the description of nd-varieties in particular in respect to:
*migrant varieties creating new types of pluricentricity;
*second level forms of pluricentricity within national varieties and their theoretical treatment;
*strategies for coping with language shift caused by electronic media and satellite TV spreading dominant norms to non-dominant varieties;
*the treatment of linguistic and pragmatic features of nd-varieties in education in primary and secondary schools;
*principles of codification in diglossic language communities of plc. languages, esp. the treatment of divergent linguistic forms that are common in everyday communication;
*the usage of endonormative codification strategies and their impact on the development of varieties and languages;
*measures of status planning and corpus planning etc. etc.

Important dates:
All scholars working in this field are invited to submit proposals for papers/workshops by 30th March 2015.
Notification of acceptance: 15th April 2015.

Contents of papers:
Papers (25 mins. + 5 mins. discussion) should address one or more of the above mentioned objectives of the conference as mentioned above and should thus provide:
*Information about the situation of any pluricentric language and any non-dominant-varieties in order to get empirically secure descriptions.
*To get exhaustive reports of the situation of lesser known and researched plc. languages and nd-varieties (see the list) and may be of “new” plc. languages that have not previously been identified.
*Data that deepen the theory of plc. languages and the methods for the description of nd-varieties.
*Suggestions for other topics are welcome!<

Contents of workshops:
Workshops (90 minutes long) should concern specific languages and their various non-dominant varieties, and particular methodological problems in the description of non-dominant varieties.

Abstracts:
All abstracts must be written in English and copied into the field “abstract” on the registration page or submitted via email as an attachment in Word format.
*Abstracts for 25-minutes papers should not exceed 3000 characters (1 page A4) including 4 keywords. Suggested topics for presentations can be downloaded from the conference website.
*Abstracts for 90-minutes workshops should not exceed 5000 characters (1 1/2 page A4) including 4-8 keywords. Workshop organizers should outline the overall structure of the workshop and provide names of the participants.

Conference language(s) and Sections:
The conference languages will be English and German plus the languages of the sections for specific languages if there are enough presentations to establish a section. The following sections are envisaged: English, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, a general section and a language technology section. All presentations at the conference must be written in English, although the oral presentation can be held in the language of the section.