
Clara Chuan Yu
Assistant Professor in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University
Affiliate Lecturer in the Department of Human Centred Computing at Monash University
Dr. Clara Chuan Yu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University and an Affiliate Lecturer in the Department of Human Centred Computing at Monash University. She is the author of Online Collaborative Translation in China and Beyond: Community, Practice, and Identity (2022, Routledge) and the Principal Investigator of the project Investigating the Role of Communities and NGOs in Supporting Sustainable Crisis Translation in Hong Kong (supported by the Research Grants Council, Hong Kong SAR). Clara has been conducting community- and participant-oriented translation studies research from an anthropological and sociological perspective. Her research interests include collaborative translation, non-professional translation, digital and technological translation research, internet research, crisis communication, studies of minority and marginalised populations, and ethnography. Her other publications include articles appearing in journals such as The Translator, Translation Studies, and The Journal of Specialised Translation, as well as book chapters appearing in edited volumes.
Pre-Conference Workshop: A design led approach to developing sustainable and impactful translation and media capacities within communities
Date: May 28, 2025 AM-
Venue: TBC
Workshop Details:
With the rapid growth of a media-driven society, translation is fast becoming a key concern related to all forms of media production and dissemination (Bielsa 2022), particularly in regions with diverse languages and in high-stakes contexts (Lee and Wang 2022). However, delivering high-quality translation in these the contexts such as natural disasters, public health crises and international development imposes challenges and requires us to develop innovative new strategies to support translation and for communities.
Working with communities can be a daunting task, it is therefore helpful to have a framework and methods to follow that guide our activities and help communicate our shared goals with our participants and communities. As academics, although we strive to undertake research that exerts meaningful and sustained impact on society, we sometimes struggle to configure research projects in a way to deliver this impact, especially past the end of a given project.
In this workshop, we introduce the Double Diamond – a straightforward approach that provides a frame for designing with communities and can be applied to any domain, with the aim to build community’s translation and media capacities so that they can sustain and grow. In this participatory workshop, you will engage in the whole double-diamond design process, learning about how it can be applied to your own contexts by ‘doing’ design in the workshop. You will learn about how to best frame the problem you are trying to solve, and work with communities in a variety of ways to create impactful and sustainable translation interventions that last beyond the lifecycle of a research project.
At each stage we will present and let you try out concrete methods that can be applied across your research agenda with a wide variety of your collaborators and partners. We will also illustrate how these methods have been applied in the real world through examples of our previous and ongoing research projects. As part of this process, how to configure existing technologies to support sustainable translation practices and how to combat the challenge of sustaining technology innovations past the end of a project will be discussed as well.
By the end of the workshop, we hope to see you feeling excited about designing with communities, for communities, and have awareness of the methods, technologies and processes to design lasting impact into your next partnership.
Why would I come to this workshop?
If you are interested in or are working with communities around translation and technology, then this is for you! No design experience or career stage required; everyone can learn something new!
What do I need to do to prepare?
Come with your own experiences and context, and we will go from there.
References:
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https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/our-resources/the-double-diamond/
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Bielsa, E. (Ed.). (2022). The Routledge handbook of translation and media (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781032126470
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Lee, T. K., & Wang, D. (Eds.). (2022). Translation and social media communication in the age of the pandemic. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781032025605