Abstract

Using conversation analysis, we explore workshop leaders' collaboratively coordinated translations in bilingual workshops for primary school children of a Finnish- and Swedish-speaking school. We focus on cases in which a turn transition occurs between the original and translatory turn. We show that to proceed in parallel in both languages, the participants need a locally negotiated mutual agreement regarding translation. The first speaker's task is to package the translatable items into translatable chunks. The second speaker needs to grasp the translatable content and the relevant timing of the translatory turn. In some cases, the translation process halts. We argue that the problems that arose were related to the timing of the local agreement, the chunking of the translatable items, and the lack of access to the ongoing embodied activity. We show how potential access problems can be overcome in a complex multimodal interactional sequence in which the second speaker moves bodily to enhance their visual access to the embodied activity, and the first speaker collaborates with proper, temporally fitted manipulation of artifacts. We show that non-professional translating in educational settings requires a great amount of intersubjective work in respect to timing, sequencing, and providing and gaining access to the ongoing embodied activities.

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