Languages and social sciences research seminar: Writing, translating and disseminating
It aims to address two issues: the language of writing and production in the humanities and social sciences today, and the examination of their dissemination, which for a long time went through scientific publishing houses and is now diversifying in the digital age.
Find below the program of sessions for the year 2025-2027.
The seminar aims to intersect two issues: that of the language of writing and production in the humanities and social sciences today, and an examination of their dissemination, which has long passed through scientific publishing houses and is now diversifying in the digital age.
One of the contemporary paradoxes is to promote the circulation mainly in English of so-called scholarly knowledge, whereas the translation of concepts has in the past been an important source of new knowledge. Plurilingualism, always advocated by international organizations starting with the European Union, seems increasingly out of step when it comes to the human and social sciences, their production and dissemination. Yet it is essential to renew our questioning of translation knowledge and circulations between languages, at a time when digital tools are revolutionizing the work of writing, translating and disseminating knowledge, and post-truth discourses are invading the public arena.
This seminar brings together researchers and translators with professionals from scientific publishing, libraries and documentation. The aim is to show the extent to which translation and plurilingualism are present in the production of knowledge, and to explore innovative practices in translation and plurilingualism, on cases involving Balkan languages, Persian, as much as English, German, Chinese, etc....
The aim is also to question the contemporary paradoxes of the circulation of knowledge and the imaginary of a "global space" of social sciences confronted with scientific hierarchies and the localization of political and social debates.
The seminar will lead to the preparation of a collective publication
Seminar program for 2025-2027
- Session 1: Thursday, October 16, 2025 from 3:00 pm to 6:30 pm, BULAC (65 rue des Grands Moulins Paris 13e), Salle du conseil and by videoconference (Link Zoom ici)
Title: Automatic translation in the humanities and social sciences: have we entered a new era?
For the past decade or so, digital tools that are overturning current translation practices have been invading academic usage. Researchers, translators and librarians are seizing on them, while exploring their limits and biases. The use of machine translation tools is transforming the way texts are circulated and the translator's profession, but is also questioning writing itself, the transmission of knowledge, and the meaning of the internationalization of research.
- François Yvon (CNRS, ISIR-UPMC),Machine translation in the age of deep networks and large language models
- Damien Nouvel (ERTIM, Inalco), Les défis liés aux écritures pour les modèles translittération et de traduction
- Marc Aymes(CNRS-EHESS, CETOBaC), Des nouvelles de l'intraduisible: qu'est-ce qui fait souffrir les machines?
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Upcoming sessions
- Session 2: Thursday, January 22, 2026, BULAC (65 rue des Grands Moulins Paris 13e), Salle du conseil and by videoconference (schedule to be announced)
Title: Writing and thinking between languages: experiments in translation and self-translation
- Session 3: Day, time and place to come
Title: The semantic web: Archiving and circulating bibliographic information to the test of multilingualism
- Session 4: Day, time and place to come
Title: Writing and disseminating contemporary thought in several languages
- Session 5: Day, time and place to come
Title: Dissemination in an international space of SHS research journals and data
- Session 6: Day, time and place to come
Title: Editing SHS books in translation: new issues
This seminar continues and renews the debates and reflections conducted as part of the seminar "Penser en plusieurs langues: éditer des traductions en sciences humaines et sociales" coordinated by Anne Madelain, Franziska Humphreys and Marc Aymes at EHESS between 2016 and 2019.
Organizers
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Anne Madelain (CREE, Inalco)
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Amélie Neuve-Église (CERMOM, Inalco)