From the 12th to the 16th of March, 2017, the German city of Leipzig will be the host of the 10th international conference dedicated to exploring fundamental issues in the science of translation, or X. Internationaler Kongress zu Grundfragen der Translatologie – 10th Leipzig International Conference on Translation & Interpretation Studies. During this conference, a special workshop will be held on the translation of names. This workshop is a part of the work being conducted by the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names or UNGEGN. Details on the conference, including sessions and registration, can be found at their website.
While recent LICTRA congresses have focussed on T&I didactics (1997), T&I competence (2004), T&I quality (2007) and international synergies in T&I research (2010), the tenth in the series will concentrate on where T&I studies stand in the light of digitalisation in the age of industry 4.0 or Internet 4.0, as the increasing use of internet technology to facilitate communication between humans, machines and products is often called. The technological building blocks of this world are cyber-physical systems and the Internet of Things, which describes a process whereby the computer as a stand-alone device will lose much of its importance, as a network of identifiably different “intelligent” physical objects – things – is built up in a structure that is similar to or is a development of the Internet.