Volume 4, No. 1.
INContext: Studies in Translation and Interculturalism
The AI revolution and its applications in diverse aspects of our lives have transformed modes of human communication, including intercultural communications mediated through interpretation and translation. Despite quickly spreading concerns that AI-mediated communications would significantly affect and deprive human interpreters/ translators of their jobs, an increasing consensus in the interpreting and translation sector is that it is not an ‘EITHER-OR’ situation but a collaboration between human communicators and technology. The emerging perspective is that AI development advances equity in human communication due to its capabilities to increase language and information access.
In the above vein, the two special articles in the April 2024 issue allow us to think about the interpreting industry’s past, present, and future and ways to actively incorporate AI-supported technology in interpreting education. The Interpretation Industry in Japan (Chikako Tsuruta) provides an overview of the development of the interpreting profession in relation to the broader Japanese society and challenges us to expand professional development by optimally employing machine translation tools and platforms. Tsuruta’s points are echoed in How to Exploit China’s AI-Powered Platforms in Korean-Chinese Translation and Interpreting Education (Son Ji-Bong & Jin Tianxiang). The authors depict interpreting classroom landscapes in China by noting the extensive use of Learning Management System-based smart cloud platforms, AI platforms, and voice recognition applications and discussing their implications in the interpreting sector in the future.
Literary Transediting as a Collaborative Process between Author and Translator (Jeon Min-chul & Shoira Jumaniyazova) opens up new research possibilities on translation collaboration by analyzing the English translation of an award-winning Uzbek novel as a rare case of transedited literature. Anticipation of Predicates in Simultaneous Interpretation Between Different Word Order Languages (Ko Jinyoung) reports a weak yet discernible correlation between interpreting students’ anticipation attempts and their accuracy and stresses a need to incorporate how to teach anticipation as areas of further improvement in interpreting between structurally different languages.
A Comparison Between European Mystics in the 14th Century and Sumatran Sufis in the 16th-17th Centuries (Laurent Metzger) leads us to see how mystics from both the East and West tackled similar existential queries and embraced comparable methods of religious contemplation, which reflects a universal quest for understanding the divine essence. The Legacy of Taiwanese New Wave (Wan-jui Wang) discusses how female director Hsiu-Chiung Chiang helps empower women, reflecting the influence of feminism in East Asia, and offers insights into the interplay between transnationalism,
feminism, and cinematic representation. The Global Success of Netflix with Korean Contents (Chiu-Wen Kuo) discusses the changing landscape of Korea’s OTT content market as a result of the massive Netflix investment and its global success, touching upon Korean OTT companies’ content promotion strategies and their requests for governmental support.
Volume 4, Issue 1 is a testament to the concerted effort of our article contributors, reviewers, editors, readers, and the dedicated members of our editing board. We are excited to announce that we are preparing two special issues: one on community interpreting in the era of expanding global human contacts and another on the new horizons in the interpreting industry opened up by AI and technology. We eagerly invite interested scholars to contribute to these upcoming issues. Look out for our Call for Papers, which will be circulated and posted on our website (https://incontextjournal.org/) soon.
Ho-Jeong Cheong
Editor-in-Chief