CALL FOR PAPER - SPECIAL ISSUE - SEMIOTIC ASSEMBLAGE, TRANSLANGUAGING AND TRANSLATING LAWS OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICAN REGION

 CALL FOR PAPER
SPECIAL ISSUE
SEMIOTIC ASSEMBLAGE, TRANSLANGUAGING AND TRANSLATING LAWS OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICAN REGION

Vol.38/7 (2025)

Guest Editors – Rafat Y. Alwazna, Zoe Hurley & Tariq Elyas

The Middle East and North African region (MENA) is an interesting area where several laws ranging from sacred laws to secular laws are applied to different institutions in the area. 

The conceptual incongruency and terminological asymmetry between such laws within and outside the MENA region make the process of legal translation an arduous and formidable task that needs to be performed by professional and expert legal translators who possess the relevant knowledge, competence and skill. Failure in conveying the legal meaning of any legal term may affect the practical application of the target legal text, thus impacting the entire legal effect of the law in question. 

Concurrently, semiotic assemblages are forged by a range of sociocultural trajectories, varying semiotic resources, historical and contemporary objects and interpretations of the linguistic landscape. The broad range of semiotic resources available includes images, sounds, clothing, movements, food, buildings, traffic systems, computer systems, artificial intelligence as well as people who are immersed and absorbed in spaces defined by hybrid legal frameworks.

To explore the eclecticism, dilemmas and interpretative challenges of MENA’s semiotic legal assemblages, we thus require an expanded version of language which attends not only to the borders between languages, but also to the borders between semiotic modes. Linguistic landscape research has therefore shifted its understanding of language from a focus on linguistic signs in the public domain to include greater contextual (ethnographic) and historical understandings of texts in the landscape – who put them there, how they are interpreted, and what role they play in relation to space, race, ethnicity, gender, class, migration, mobility and law. To develop greater comprehensibility of MENA’s legal context and avoid any misinterpretation of the source legal text, if originally written in a foreign language, scholars and students of law and legal translation need to consider the practice of linguistic translanguaging in interpreting and explaining the source legal text, including diverse semiotic assemblages of different terms, concepts and imaginaries for the purpose of achieving acceptable legal communication.

Contributions may address the rendition of any law applied to the MENA region into a different law and vice versa, the concept of translanguaging in legal translation pedagogy/training and semiotic assemblages specific to the everyday practices, interpretations and challenges of the MENA region’s legal systems.

Submissions should be addressed to Rafat Y. Alwazna (alwazna@gmail.com), Zoe Hurley (Zoe.Hurley@zu.ac.ae) and Tariq Elyas (telyas@kau.edu.sa)

- Abstracts of 300 words by 15 April 2024.

- After selection, final papers (no more than 10,000 words) should be submitted by 15 August 2024.