Event Details

This interdisciplinary conference Natures in Translation: AI, Ethics and Environmental Conservation explores the ethical implications of AI-assisted animal translation for environmental conservation and human–environmental relations.

As AI systems increasingly promise to translate animal communications into human language, this project examines the profound ethical implications for biodiversity conservation, AI development and more-than-human relations.

The conference brings together perspectives from translation studies, animal behaviour science, philosophy, law, literature, computer science, social science, digital humanities and related fields.

It aims to build bridges between science, humanities and social science scholars, as well as practitioners working in conservation, animal welfare, AI development, animal studies and environmental advocacy.

At this conference, we invite perspectives from translation studies, animal behaviour science, philosophy, law, literature, computer science, social science, digital humanities and related fields to address urgent questions relating to the use of AI for environmental conservation purposes. Who has authority to speak for non-human animals? How do these technologies extract, process and interpret data, and what assumptions do they embed about animal communication? What conditions would allow these technologies to contribute to a more equitable listening culture, and how might we identify and address the logocentric or anthropocentric assumptions embedded in their design? What might a more expansive understanding of “listening” at the intersection of environmental conservation, translation studies, critical AI studies and media theory entail? What broader inter-disciplinary framework and collaborations can be developed to tackle these important epistemological, ethical, and ecological questions?

This conference is funded by AHRC-BRAID and delivered in partnership with New York University (NYU).

Programme

Thursday 1 October

• Keynote 1: Eva Meijer, ‘The Politics of Translating Animal Languages’
• Panel 1: Translation, Linguistics, and Machine Learning
• Panel 2: ‘Why We Need Animal Translation Studies’
• Panel 3: Soundscapes, Extractivism, and Environmental Activism
• Panel 4: Sensing the non-Human World: AI Mediations
• Keynote 2: Ursula Heise, ‘Aliens, Animals and AI’
• Performance: Khairani Barokka

Friday 2 October

• Keynote 3: César Rodríguez-Garavito: ‘Listening to our Animal Kin: Opportunities, Risks, and Guardrails in AI-Assisted Animal Communication Studies’
• Panel 5: Conservation, Listening and Ecological Networks
• Keynote 4: Şebnem Susam-Saraeva, ‘Reconceptualising Reciprocity in Interspecies Communication: A posthuman and Eco/feminist Translation Ethics’
• Panel 6: Public Engagement and Technologies of Interspecies Understanding
• Panel 7: Machine Vision, Digital Twining, Multispecies Governance

Keynote Speakers

Khairani Barokka

Khairani Barokka is a writer, artist, and former Editor of Modern Poetry in Translation. Among her honours, she’s been a UNFPA Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change, Delfina Foundation Associate Artist, Associate Artist at the UK’s National Centre for Writing, an Artforum Must-See, and a shortlistee for the 2023 Asian Women of Achievement Awards.

Ursula Heise

Ursula K. Heise is Distinguished Professor in the Department of English and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, and a co-founder of the Lab for Environmental Narrative Strategies (LENS). Her research and teaching focus on the environmental humanities; contemporary environmental literature, arts, and cultures in the Americas, Germany, Japan, Spain, and Vietnam; literature and science; science fiction; and narrative theory. 

Eva Meijer

Eva Meijer wrote over twenty books including novels, philosophical essays and poetry collections. Meijer is affiliated with the University of Amsterdam as a postdoctoral researcher, member of the Multispecies Collective, a multispecies art collective and co-chairs the Dutch study group for Animal Philosophy. They write essays and columns for Dutch newspapers. Recent books: Multispecies Assemblies and Multispecies Dialogues.

César Rodríguez-Garavito

César Rodríguez-Garavito is an Earth rights scholar, field lawyer, and founding director of the MOTH (More-Than-Human Life) Program at NYU School of Law, a leading global initiative advancing rights and well-being for humans, nonhumans, and the web of life that sustains us all. He is a Professor of Law and Director of the Earth Rights Research & Action (TERRA) Clinic at NYU. His ongoing initiatives include a pioneering ethical and legal framework for AI-assisted animal communication studies.

Şebnem Susam-Saraeva

Şebnem Susam-Saraeva holds a Personal Chair of Translation Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Her recent publications have focused on ecotranslation, particularly translation and ecofeminism, (knowledge) translation in climate crisis discourse, and interspecies communication. She is the co-founder of Eco-translation Network.

For more details about the conference, including the full programme and list of speakers, please visit: https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/animalsintranslation/conference/.

Illustration at top of page by Mollie Ray.