Knowledge Building through Collaborative, Translation and Translanguaging Practices

Abstract

ABSTRACT Implementing translanguaging in language education requires a rich understanding of learners’ complex meaning-making practices. Enactments of translanguaging simply as an acknowledgement of learners’ home languages and translation practices reflects a confusion between the concept of translanguaging and translation and a lack of understanding of the complexities involved within these two practices for language learning. This study explores how a university lecturer and a graduate student enact translation and translanguaging in a collaborative dialogue to solve a linguistic problem. Based on a thematic analysis of their text-message interaction and evidence from stimulated recalls, we demonstrate how practices of translation and translanguaging are different and yet intertwined as affordances for learning. We also consider the diverse linguistic, emotional, social, and historical resources that both interlocutors leverage to facilitate a collaborative learning space. We conclude by highlighting the importance of a multilingual pedagogical design that goes beyond visibility and audibility of multiple languages.