Translanguaging practices of Chinese/English bilingual engineers’ communications in the workplace

Abstract

Abstract Existing literature argues for the urgent need to improve workplace and professional communication in the engineering field across the world. This paper reports on a study examining Chinese/English bilingual engineers’ translanguaging practices in their communications in English-speaking high-tech corporations in the United States. Evidence showed that bilingual engineers translanguaged extensively to construct meaning to meet the diverse communication needs at their workplace, which enables them to demonstrate their professional talents and skills. However, when English was the sole language for the interaction, they struggled to sound like English native speakers to convey their ideas and present their work, which disadvantaged them professionally, socially and emotional as professionals. Therefore, this study calls for a creation of a translanguaging space in the workplace to empower bilingual engineers and also a need to modify engineering education programs that recognize multilingual competence of bilinguals and enhance the development of their English professional communication ability (speaking and writing) in higher education.