Université Bourgogne Europe - Intersections: Translation, Accessibility, Inclusion

This was a day-long conference, with many talks on many different topics! While I could not attend all the talks, here are a few of the highlights.

From Linguist to UX Researcher by Marie-Aude Sourd

In this talk, Marie-Aude Sourd made the point that UX (user experience) design and linguistics require the same skill: empathy. Linguists and translators do very well in UX design scenarios, because they have the skills to take the time to understand users.
I found this viewpoint very insightful, as it describes something I have been experiencing myself, but never managed to put into words! Through my translator lens, I can easily see the UX issues products have– it just, makes sense to me. And that’s because I have been training the skills required to put yourself in the shoes of a user for so long!

I think it would make sense here to also reference Tiina Tuominen’s work on user-centred translation, in particular in the context of AVT (Audio-Visual Translation), which also attempts to bridge the gap between software usability and translation.

The main takeaway from Marie-Aude’s talk in my opinion is the following definition (that was most likely slightly re-worded in my notes):

Cognitive empathy: Understanding a user’s mental model and perspective– not just feeling their emotions.

WCAG 2.2 Card Deck by Johanes Lehner

While I do not have much to say about the talk itself, it was overall a lovely introduction to Johanes Lehner’s project to make the WCAG 2.2 accessibility guidelines more accessible, by turning them into a card deck– and developing a community of volunteer contributors around it!

Queering the Commodore 64 by Charlotte Courtois

(sorry, could not find an online presence for this speaker! If that’s you, please email me!)

This talk presents efforts to hack support for non-binary inclusive (or, as they call it, “post-binary”) French typography into the Comodore 64 computer system¹. The goal is to allow the use of newly-made additions to the Latin alphabet aiming to be used in French word-endings to replace the existing gendered endings, and thus “remove gender”.
To do this on the Comodore 64, unused characters were replaced with those new letters, which can be input using key combos.

While it is utterly unpractical (nobody is going to write a report on a 50+ years old computer!), I found this talk very enlightening, and learned there about the existence of a more practical project named Bye Bye Binary - which aims to do much the same thing, but on modern computers.

Besides being a source of inspiration for my Master’s dissertation, I have a particular fondness for such attempts at overcoming technical hurdle, not to create a meaningful product or to sell something, but just to practice your craft and have fun.

All other talks

There were a ton of really interesting talks I didn’t get to attend! If you haven’t been mentioned here, it doesn’t mean I didn’t like your talk, it’s most likely that I just didn’t get to attend it! I also only attended the online event, so am completely unaware of the in-person-only happenings.