Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts - Volume 8, Issue 2, 2022

Abstract

James Stratton Holmes (Iowa, 1924 – Amsterdam, 1986) is known as both a major translator/editor of poetry from Dutch (Brems and McMartin 2020, 2021) and as a teacher and researcher of translation, whose professional career was centred in the Netherlands at the University of Amsterdam. He has had a long-lasting influence on the development of the field of translation as an academic subject with his landmark essay “The Name and Nature of Translation Studies”. First presented at a 1972 conference in Copenhagen, it is “generally regarded as the founding statement of the discipline” (Gentzler 2001, 93). Yet, fifty years on, how valid is that essay in today’s context? We present a review and reappraisal of the essay in the context of Holmes’ academic work as a whole and we raise a few questions about the future and history of the discipline.

Abstract

This paper proposes a sociolinguistic approach to understanding the phenomenon of divergence from the standard norms of English that can be observed in public texts in the Greek city of Thessaloniki’s translation landscape. This approach fits in with the growing body of research that recognises that not all translations are carried out by professional translators. Certainly in the case of Thessaloniki, translations are typically carried out by non-professionals who draw on the linguistic experience and resources they possess in order to communicate with visitors and residents who do not understand Greek. As a result, several linguistic and pragmatic divergences from Standard English can be observed in the target text, which native speakers of English seem to be willing to disregard, provided that the message is intelligible. The sociolinguistic approach adopted in this paper reveals the translators’ effective use of the English language in conveying the message of the Greek source text, on the basis of the judgements expressed by translation professionals as well as native speakers of Greek and English.

Abstract

Amidst the demand for multilingual pedagogies that advocate the use of the first language (L1) in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), this article first investigates the concept of translanguaging as a possible panacea. Translanguaging mainly refers to natural multilingual practices of speakers with multicompetences beyond their dominant language. However, doubts need to be expressed as to whether students without adequate language resources in the foreign language (FL) (henceforth referred to also as L2 intercheangeably) can fully enjoy all the benefits of translanguaging. Thus, the concept of translanguaging was adapted into trans-foreign-languaging (Trans-FL), making its distinctness available for CLIL. During an interventionalist study carried out in a 10th grade CLIL Politics & Economics classroom, where the students’ L2 is English and German, the official school language, is L1, three different models of Trans-FL were designed together with the students as main stakeholders, using triangulated data. The genesis of the three models was reconstructed as thick description in the Appendix, elucidating different intensities of dynamic bilingualism within a natural classroom ecology. Finally, the models were incorporated into one single and comprehensive CLIL teaching model for an affordance-based and differentiated approach that recognizes the needs of various student types. The result is a tangible pedagogy that integrates L1 use into various CLIL contexts as a norm.

This article reviews Corpus Exploration of Lexis and Discourse in Translation9781003102694