Editorial

A desire to be less Eurocentric has been one of the recurrent themes of JoSTrans's editorials. In our past issues, the visibility of non-European authors and translators has been less prominent than we were hoping.

There are many reasons for this, but I'll state two of the main ones. First, the journal's editorial board is based in the UK. Virtual contacts alone are often not sufficient to spur transcontinental working relationships. Even though we try to use the international conference circuit to solve this problem, most active members working for the journal are European. The publication field is no different from any other field: relationships tend to dictate the nature of outputs.

There is also a language issue. Non-English native speakers, as we all know, tend to be under pressure to publish in English. Even though JoSTrans's policy is clearly multilingual, most of the texts we receive are in English and are not written by a native speaker. These articles therefore frequently require extensive style editing, but in the case of writers who have limited access to native English speakers, Chinese authors for example, this process can be extremely time consuming for the editors. In a context where funds, and therefore, time, are limited, this means that we sometimes have to reject very poorly written articles in spite of interesting ideas that reflect non-European visions.

Thanks to Deborah Cao, our new Chinese editor, we are hoping to hear more Chinese voices in future issues, as is already visible here. We hope that this transcontinental trend will continue and that we will be able to collaborate more strongly with translators and translation scholars from the Far East, the Middle East, Australia and South America in particular.

This issue reflects the wide range of topics that have been approached so far, proposing articles discussing many subjects, from interpreting to legal and technical translation issues. It also explores topics which have not been considered before in this journal, such as copyrights for instance, in an interview with Richard Balkwill. We are also launching a 'translator's corner', to provide shorter, more practical contributions.

With this seventh issue, JoSTrans celebrates its third birthday. In our fourth year, we aim more than ever to bring diversity forth to a wide audience and to be a dynamic platform for the translation community. Editors, writers and readers converge to make the miracle of this virtual platform possible. Let us enjoy it!

Lucile Desblache