It has always been a challenge to translate texts and ideas from one language to another or from one cultural or temporal context to another. Authors and translators work to add notes and other context to aide readers understand key ideas and details. These challenges have become much greater in a globally connected and dynamic world that includes instant authorial updates or edits and where social media add myriad comments and reactions. Dr. Tonfoni refers to our current state as the “information distress era.” She considers cases of single essays or articles where paragraph or sentence level translations become problematic. Even more complex are cases of a scholar’s entire oeuvre over a lifetime. It is challenging enough for institutional repositories to capture a scholar’s work in a single language, and this becomes very hard when the work includes translations. Dr. Tonfoni asks what kinds of tools or techniques authors, translators, and archive curators might use to manage meaning over time.

Dr. prof. Graziella Tonfoni, received her cum Laude Degree in Linguistics with a seminal dissertation on Translation theory, from the University Bologna Italy, 1980, where she has been research scholar teaching (1983-2015); the founder of Computational Literature, also an invited visiting professor presenting her pioneering work in most prestigious locations internationally. She has been the author of classics, fundamentals, chapters and articles, and more than a dozen of books, among which“Writing as a Visual Art”and “Information Design: The Knowledge Architect’s toolkit”. She received the Minerva award for “Outstanding woman in science, 1984” in Rome. She has been a member of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, Italian Association Artificial Intelligence, Italian Linguistic Society and the Information Design British Society. Since 2016, she has been an independent veteran researcher, a visionary author, observing analysing current problems, information disorders, writing and publishing narrative, essays and poetry on communication paradoxes we all have to cope with today.