Call for Participants: Experimental Translations in/with East Asian Languages

[David Yang]

Dear colleagues,

The Yanai Initiative is pleased to invite proposals for a symposium entitled “Experimental Translations in/with East Asian Languages,” to be hosted at UCLA on April 10-11, 2026.

Over recent decades, scholars of East Asia have increasingly unsettled Eurocentric translation paradigms by foregrounding the rich history of the region’s linguistic and textual practices, creating new frameworks for understanding translingual encounters that move beyond the nation, notions of equivalence, and phonocentric conceptions of language. At the same time, the practice of translation has often served as a laboratory: a site of linguistic experimentation, serendipitous discoveries, and unexpected collisions. This symposium seeks to highlight the connections between these seemingly disparate strands of engagement by bringing together translators, artists, and scholars working at the intersection of East Asian languages and experimental translation.

We welcome proposals from practitioners and scholars who approach translation as a generative space—one that simultaneously opens onto creative experimentation and critical inquiry, serving as a medium for working through the tensions between theory and practice and pushing against their very boundaries. We are interested in work that foregrounds translation’s affective, material, and performative dimensions; that opens our eyes to new ways of seeing, engaging with, or experiencing translation; that explores innovative, unexpected ways of using translation in the classroom. By attending closely to the affordances of East Asian languages and scripts, this symposium seeks not only to deepen our understanding of translation, but also to showcase alternative translational practices that cut across linguistic, medial, and epistemic borders.

We invite proposals on topics or practices including, but not limited to:

• Experimental Modes of Translation: Visual, sonic, performative, and intermedial translation experiments (realized, hypothetical, or speculative).
• Language, Medium, and Materiality: Investigations into how translation from, into, or between East Asian languages negotiates diverse media, sensory registers, and material forms.
• Histories and Theories of East Asian Translation: Engagements with premodern or modern East Asian theories and practices of translation that challenge, complicate, or expand established perspectives, knowledge, or analytic frameworks.
• Asemic, Non-Representational, or Asignifying Poetics: Writing or translational practices that exceed conventional notions of semantic meaning.
• Algorithmic Translations: Projects exploring how machine translation, artificial intelligence, and digital interfaces can reconfigure the boundaries of language, authorship, and meaning.

Please submit a proposal (approximately 300-400 words) describing your project and how it fits into your broader intellectual and/or creative interests, along with a CV of no more than 2 pages, to David Yang (david...@g.ucla.edu) by November 30, 2025, 11:59 PM (PT). We encourage contributions in a variety of formats, from academic papers to creative-critical hybrids, including presentations and discussions of translations in the form of texts, artworks, performances, music, and so on. For visual, performative, or multimedia works, you are welcome to include documentation (images, video or audio links) and technical requirements. We will notify applicants of the results by late December. The Yanai Initiative will cover the cost of travel and accommodation for accepted speakers. 

We look forward to your proposals!

Sincerely yours,

Michael Emmerich
Director, Japan Past & Present
Director, The Yanai Initiative
Tadashi Yanai Professor of Japanese Literature, UCLA

David Yang
Doctoral Candidate
Department of Asian Languages & Cultures, UCLA