Academia-Industry Synergies in Translation and Interpreting Studies: Showcasing Impactful Collaboration
Translation and interpreting are increasingly shaped by complex, real-world technological, institutional, and socio-cultural contexts. Yet, research that emerges from direct engagement with these contexts often remains underrepresented in scholarly publishing. Collaborative research, understood as research conducted by or with practitioners, offers a vital corrective: it brings to light the lived realities, adaptive strategies, and situated expertise of professionals working within and alongside evolving systems. Academia-industry collaboration is the cornerstone of future-facing and impactful translation and interpreting education and research. This special issue aims to showcase how collaborative research and educational partnerships with the professional world advance theory, push disciplinary boundaries, and deepen our understanding of translation and interpreting as practices shaped by social, cultural, and pedagogical contexts.
Synergising professional experience and field research has gained significant attention in recent years, particularly in certain areas such as audiovisual translation (Tuominen & Silvester, 2025) and language automation technology (Rodríguez de Céspedes & Bawa Mason, 2022). Although perhaps rare in other fields within the arts and humanities, academics who also professionally involved in the industry are relatively common in translation and interpreting. This has logically led to certain research outputs focusing on aspects such as working conditions and translation rates (Carreira, 2023; Lambert & Walker, 2022, 2024) and trust in translation project management (Olohan & Davitti, 2015), among many other areas of scholarly interest that can be found in recent publications on the translation industry (Angelone, Massey & Ehrensberger-Dow, 2019; Walker & Lambert, 2025).
The current scholarship in translation and interpreting education suggests that higher-education institutions are becoming increasingly keen to foster academia–industry collaborations that make their programmes more robust and align them more closely with industry demands. Such collaborations expose translation trainees to current translation technologies, encourage partnerships with translation companies, and emphasize the development of soft skills (Massey, Piotrowska & Marczak, 2023; Koka et al., 2024). These studies underscore the need for innovative, learner-centred pedagogical approaches that aim to equip students with the skills necessary to thrive in a highly dynamic market that is subject to constant transformation (Penet, 2024). Some training-focused studies have explored the latest developments of technology in the industry and their impact on education (Eugeni et al., 2025; Ward et al., 2025). Similarly, scholars have also looked into the sustainability of language, translation and interpreting professionals in response to disruptive workflows and working conditions (Lambert & Walker, 2024), as well as emotions and wellbeing (Hubscher-Davidson, 2024; Penet & Fernández-Parra, 2023) and practitioners’ perceptions of reward, resilience and sustainability within the language professions (Lambert & Walker, 2022). Pym (2020: 18) observes “amazingly little mutual trust” between academia and industry, yet such partnerships can generate well-informed research on professional conditions, workflows, technological innovations, and quality assurance. They also enhance graduates’ employability and open diverse career pathways, key factors for the success of translation and interpreting programmes in the digital age (Rodríguez de Céspedes, 2017).
This special issue is inspired by the APTIS25 online conference (“Better Together: How can industry and academia collaborate to empower future language professionals?), hosted by the UCL Centre for Translation Studies (November 2025), which focused on how academics and industry partners can work together to support and shape the next generation of language professionals, emphasising quality, wellbeing, resilience, ethics, and enjoyment in the language professions.
As with the APTIS25 conference, for this special issue, we particularly welcome contributions that address collaborations viewed as essential for preparing translation and interpreting specialists, in both academia (i.e., researchers) and industry (i.e., practitioners), to meet 21st century industry demands while fostering innovation, creativity and critical thinking. We are keen to publish studies written by researchers and practitioners who have developed real-life applications and/or effective strategies for enhancing these collaborations and addressing the challenges arising from ever-changing industry and societal demands with regards to language, translation and interpreting services.
We warmly invite manuscripts that engage with one or more of the following key themes, while also welcoming fresh perspectives that expand the conversation:
- Wellbeing, resilience, and soft skills in translation and interpreting practice;
- Employability and career pathways for graduates entering the language professions;
- Situated learning and work placements as bridges between academia and industry;
- Embedding professional practice in teaching through practitioner involvement and industry-informed curricula;
- Networks, support systems, and alumni engagement for sustainable career development;
- Diversity, equity, and inclusion: embracing difference in collaborative contexts;
- Educating clients, companies, and end users about translation and interpreting, including AI/MT-mediated content;
- Ethical collaborations and responsible partnerships between academia and industry;
- Innovation, co-creation, and participatory research methods;
- Enjoyment and rewards of the language professions (slow translation);
- Ways in which academia-industry synergies generate new knowledge, foster innovation, and support inclusive, context-sensitive scholarship
As a discipline committed to understanding translation as a dynamic form of communication embedded in culture and society, Translation Studies benefits enormously from research that is grounded in fieldwork, co-creation, and participatory methods. We believe this special issue is highly responsive to current disruptions and debates, fuelled by the rapid uptake of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in the language industries. While scholarly attention to automation has recently been exacerbated by GenAI tools such as large language models (LLMs), there is an urgent need to document how practitioners react by rethinking quality, redefining roles, and renegotiating value, among other concerns. Our priority is to provide a platform to explore this new ecosystem through collaborative research, reinforcing the human dimensions of translation and interpreting in the digital age.
Practical information and deadlines
Selected papers will be submitted to a double-blind peer review.
Submission of paper proposals (including a title and an abstract of approximately 300 words, excluding references) should be sent to all three guest editors:
Xiaochun Zhang (xiaochun.zhang@ucl.ac.uk)
Alejandro Bolanos-Garcia-Escribano (a.bolanos@ucl.ac.uk)
Olivia Cockburn (o.cockburn@ucl.ac.uk)
Abstract deadline: 1 May 2026
Acceptance of abstract proposals: 1 July 2026
Submission of papers: 1 December 2026
Acceptance of papers: March 2027
Submission of final versions of papers: 1 June 2027
Editorial work (proofreading, APA, layout): September – October 2027
Publication: December 2027
