Julia travelled from Graz (Austria) to Germersheim (Germany)

The CIUTI Trav­el Scheme enabled me to con­duct a two-week research stay at the Fach­bere­ich Translations‑, Sprach- und Kul­tur­wis­senschaft (FTSK) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mainz (Ger­m­er­sheim) in Ger­many. Over the course of my stay, I met up with var­i­ous researchers and pro­fes­sors spe­cial­ized in trans­la­tion or lit­er­ary his­to­ry as well as in the field of gen­der stud­ies. These exchanges did not only immense­ly ben­e­fit my cur­rent dis­ser­ta­tion project, but also paved the way for future col­lab­o­ra­tions. I was also able to access the university’s library, which owns a lot of rel­e­vant books that I had only been able to retrieve via inter­li­brary loan before­hand. Final­ly, I took Ger­m­er­sheim as the start­ing point for addi­tion­al vis­its to sur­round­ing archives and research cen­tres, such as the Deutsche Stiftung Frauen- und Geschlechter­forschung in Hei­del­berg or the Archiv der deutschen Frauen­be­we­gung in Kas­sel. I am real­ly grate­ful to have had this oppor­tu­ni­ty and would def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend apply­ing for the CIUTI Trav­el Scheme, giv­en the com­par­a­tive­ly straight­for­ward appli­ca­tion pro­ce­dure and the amount of mon­ey grant­ed for the research stay.

Michał travelled from Warsaw (Poland) to Antwerp (Belgium)

My research stay at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Antwerp was an incred­i­bly enrich­ing and ful­fill­ing expe­ri­ence. From the moment I arrived until the day of my depar­ture, every moment was filled with valu­able encoun­ters, learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, and inspir­ing dis­cus­sions.

Dur­ing my time in Antwerp, I had the priv­i­lege of meet­ing esteemed experts in the field of intra- and inter­lin­gual res­peak­ing. These inter­ac­tions pro­vid­ed me with invalu­able insights into the didac­tics of res­peak­ing and allowed me to exchange expe­ri­ences and ideas with pro­fes­sion­als at the fore­front of this field. More­over, I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to receive method­olog­i­cal guid­ance from Dr. Jankows­ka and her col­leagues, which assist­ed me in refin­ing my research method­ol­o­gy. Their exper­tise and advice helped me nav­i­gate the selec­tion of appro­pri­ate meth­ods and soft­ware for the qual­i­ta­tive analy­sis of the in-depth inter­views con­duct­ed as part of my doc­tor­al research. Addi­tion­al­ly, my time in Antwerp allowed me to col­lect vital research data, includ­ing com­pre­hen­sive notes from inter­views, obser­va­tions of res­peak­ers’ work dur­ing the Media4All con­fer­ence, and insights gath­ered from vis­its to the DPG Media headquarters.

Beyond the aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ments, my stay also fos­tered mean­ing­ful con­nec­tions with young acces­si­bil­i­ty researchers from var­i­ous coun­tries. Togeth­er, we dis­cussed future col­lab­o­ra­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties, includ­ing poten­tial part­ner­ships with­in the Open Research Net­work con­sti­tut­ed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Antwerp.

I am excit­ed to con­tin­ue my col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Antwerp through a co-tutelle PhD pro­gram and look for­ward to future pub­li­ca­tions dis­cussing the out­comes of my research experiment.

I am tru­ly grate­ful for this incred­i­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty and the unwa­ver­ing sup­port I received through­out my research stay in Antwerp, also from CIU­TI’s part. This expe­ri­ence has left an indeli­ble mark on my aca­d­e­m­ic and pro­fes­sion­al jour­ney, and I am con­fi­dent that the knowl­edge and con­nec­tions gained will shape my future endeav­ors in the field of acces­si­bil­i­ty and respeaking.

Karolína travelled from Prague (Czech Republic) to Madrid (Spain)

After the ini­tial in-per­son con­sul­ta­tion with the super­vi­sor, when I explained my aims and needs: the col­lec­tion and ver­i­fi­ca­tion of bib­li­o­graph­ic data for the data­base of lit­er­ary trans­la­tion of Czech lit­er­a­ture into Span­ish. I received many valu­able method­olog­i­cal and prac­ti­cal rec­om­men­da­tions and con­tacts, the major part of the works was car­ried out at the Span­ish Nation­al Library (Bib­liote­ca Nacional de España – BNE) build­ing in Madrid. Dur­ing two weeks of 6–8 hours of day work I bor­rowed and phys­i­cal­ly con­sult­ed hun­dreds of books – lit­er­ary trans­la­tions of our data­base cat­a­log which are avail­able at the library resources, com­piled the missing/digitally not avail­able bib­li­o­graph­ic infor­ma­tion and checked the mis­lead­ing or ques­tion­able data. I also made pho­to­copies of the cov­ers and select­ed peri­texts of the books to have the proof of the source of infor­ma­tion. Accord­ing to this method­ol­o­gy I man­aged to gath­er a big amount of infor­ma­tion need­ed to final­ize our project, but the phys­i­cal con­sul­ta­tion of the books (more specif­i­cal­ly found­ed peri­texts) has, more­over, pro­vid­ed us with the infor­ma­tion about oth­er exist­ing trans­la­tions of our focus I had not found yet. The final results (num­ber of suc­cess­ful­ly con­sult­ed books and amount of new trans­la­tions found­ed) have sur­passed the expec­ta­tions and our aims. For that rea­son I eval­u­ate the CIUTI stay as high­ly ben­e­fi­cial for our PhD project with­out which I could not ver­i­fy the missing/unclear/misleading/incomplete data pre­sent­ed by dig­i­tal sources nei­ther get informed about oth­er trans­la­tions which were not orig­i­nal­ly part of our cor­po­ra, but after the ver­i­fi­ca­tion process were added to it. I would cor­dial­ly thank, first, to CIUTI for pro­vid­ing this oppor­tu­ni­ty award­ing me the finan­cial sup­port, and sec­ond, to prof. Dr. Nadia Rodríguez Orte­ga for her pro­fes­sion­al and friend­ly sup­port dur­ing my stay in Madrid.

Monika travelled from Vienna (Austria) to Ghent (Belgium)

As a doc­tor­al assis­tant at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na, I got the oppor­tu­ni­ty to trav­el to Ghent Uni­ver­si­ty thanks to the CIUTI PhD Trav­el Scheme. With­in a peri­od of two weeks, I was able to work on my PhD project with Prof. Bart Defrancq whom I can­not thank enough for his excel­lent sup­port. Espe­cial­ly his exper­tise in infer­en­tial sta­tis­tics turned out to be more than valu­able to me. Apart from a lot of new insights in terms of con­tent, I was lucky to get to know fel­low PhD can­di­dates and oth­er col­leagues work­ing at the Depart­ment of Trans­la­tion, Inter­pret­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion of Ghent Uni­ver­si­ty. A spe­cial high­light was the quiz night on Flem­ish dialects organ­ised by the depart­ment where we learned a lot about the lin­guis­tic vari­ety of Dutch – includ­ing the kind of expres­sion tools you will def­i­nite­ly not be taught in lan­guage class­es. Last but not least, the city of Ghent with its beau­ti­ful archi­tec­ture cer­tain­ly was the cher­ry on top of my stay in Bel­gium. All in all, the time at Ghent Uni­ver­si­ty was an absolute­ly worth­while expe­ri­ence that I can whole­heart­ed­ly rec­om­mend to every­body inter­est­ed in get­ting an addi­tion­al per­spec­tive on their PhD project. For this, and for cre­at­ing new net­works with col­leagues from abroad, the CIUTI PhD Trav­el Scheme is a per­fect occasion. 

Alicia travelled from Alicante (Spain) to Winterthur: (Switzerland) Machine translation for crisis communication

This is Ali­cia, an in-house trans­la­tor and a PhD can­di­date in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ali­cante (Spain). I applied for the CIUTI Trav­el Scheme in order to seize the oppor­tu­ni­ty to expe­ri­ence how research groups work in oth­er coun­tries. My research inter­ests include trans­la­tion tech­nolo­gies, machine trans­la­tion, and spe­cial­ized lan­guages. Thanks to CIUTI, I had the chance to par­tic­i­pate in the research project “Machine trans­la­tion for cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tion” in the Zurich Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences (IUED). This project focus­es on how machine trans­la­tion tools can assist pub­lic ser­vice pro­fes­sion­als in com­mu­ni­cat­ing with refugees and over­com­ing lan­guage bar­ri­ers. Dur­ing my stay, I have been able to col­lab­o­rate with a group and to gain insights into var­i­ous roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties with­in a research project. My time in Zurich has sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tributed to my PhD progress through the advance­ments in machine trans­la­tion tools. Addi­tion­al­ly, this stay not only has been fruit­ful for my PhD, but it also was per­son­al­ly enrich­ing. Being able to explore Switzer­land, its land­scapes and cul­ture was an unfor­get­table adventure!

Manuel travelled from Graz (Austria) to Forlì (Italy)

Thanks to CIUTI, I had the pos­si­bil­i­ty to spend two weeks at the Depart­ment of Inter­pre­ta­tion and Trans­la­tion of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bologna in Forlì.

Orig­i­nal­ly, I planned to con­duct a small­er study on the trans­la­tion and post-edit­ing of gen­der-fair lan­guage from Eng­lish into Ital­ian. This exper­i­ment is inspired by Trans­la­tion Process Research and has the objec­tive to inves­ti­gate cog­ni­tive process­es in the appli­ca­tion of gen­der-fair lan­guage beyond the binary.

While I found five par­tic­i­pants and gath­ered first data in Italy, I unfor­tu­nate­ly did not man­age to find a sixth per­son to take part in my study. This would have been impor­tant in order to have two groups, i.e., trans­la­tors and post-edi­tors, of equal num­ber. Nev­er­the­less, I am still in con­tact with Pro­fes­sor Ped­er­zoli and we are try­ing to recruit one more participant.

Even though I do not have enough data to include in my the­sis, the stay in For­lì was essen­tial because I had the pos­si­bil­i­ty to dis­cuss my research endeav­or with Prof. Ped­er­zoli, who is an expert in gen­der-fair trans­la­tion, and also with inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned researchers such as Sil­via Bernar­di­ni and Ricar­do Munoz Mar­tin. Their use­ful insights helped me improve the the­o­ret­i­cal back­ground of my the­sis as well as my line of argu­men­ta­tion as to why my work is rel­e­vant for Trans­la­tion Studies.

In addi­tion, I could get in touch with oth­er researchers and stu­dents who are inter­est­ed or work­ing on sim­i­lar top­ics. I am deeply con­vinced that such a net­work is extreme­ly impor­tant to improve the qual­i­ty of our research which rep­re­sents a nice broad­en­ing of queer trans­la­tion studies.