Bilingual Workers Research Articles

Methodological Considerations in Conducting a Bilingual Study

<i>This methodological reflection is developed from a nursing research study that compared health systems in Canada and Saudi Arabia, using both English and Arabic languages for data collection. Conducting research in a language not spoken by all the research team members is relatively common, yet addressing the nuanced details of implementing bilingual work has limited guidance within extant literature. This includes consideration of promising practices for concept development, translation, data analysis, and presenting the findings. </i><i>This article </i><i>discusses the strengths and limitations of bilingual research and recommendations regarding these issues from our own experiences. Ultimately, it is proposed that via bilingual research, the accumulation of knowledge pertaining to qualitative research concepts, translation, analysis, and dissemination of comprehensive frameworks can be enacted, ultimately enhancing the rigor of qualitative research and increasing confidence in applying knowledge created in the chosen language of participants.</i>

Changing attitudes toward heritage language education: a longitudinal study of marriage-migrant mothers in South Korea

ABSTRACT This study explores Vietnamese marriage-migrant mothers’ changing attitudes toward heritage language (HL) education in South Korea through narratives collected in an interview setting over a period of four years. The findings show that while the mothers placed some value on HL education, they initially prioritized Korean at home because they viewed it as key to their children’s academic success in Korea. However, the mothers’ perceptions of the value of their native language changed over time, influenced by their increasing awareness of the benefits of bilingualism, their imagined bilingual communities, Korea’s increasingly competitive job market, and their children’s social and academic experiences in school. Over time, the mothers came to view their minority language as an asset rather than a deficit and thus chose to invest in developing their children’s HL skills to position them as potentially valuable bilingual workers in both Korean and transnational contexts. The participants’ narratives reflect their view of the minority HL as primarily a socioeconomic resource rather than an identity resource, while the longitudinal study highlights the dynamism and changing nature of language ideologies in relation to HL maintenance.

It's our job to bridge the gap: Perspectives of bilingual autism providers on heritage language care.

In the United States, many people have heritage languages they speak in their homes other than English, such as Chinese or Spanish. Autistic children whose families speak different languages could benefit from support and teaching in their heritage languages. Still, caregivers have reported that it is challenging to do so. Many autism professionals make suggestions that are not based on research. To date, researchers have not examined the perspectives of the small group of bilingual professionals in the United States who provide bilingual support for autistic children. Therefore, this study explored how bilingual autism providers in the United States talked about their work, bilingualism, and the impacts their bilingual work has on autistic children and families. The bilingual providers in this study reported many positive outcomes for autistic children when they can learn and use their heritage languages and some negative outcomes when providers cannot communicate in the same language. Recommendations from this study highlight the need to recruit more bilingual providers in the field of autism.

Decommodifying Spanish-English bilingualism: aggrieved whiteness and the discursive contestation of language as human capital

AbstractOver the past few decades in the United States, a powerful consensus has emerged around the value of bi-/multilingualism as human capital, including as an advantage for individuals on the labor market. In this article, I consider how the advantage that Spanish-English bilingualism affords some Latinxs on the labor market might be contested, especially by whites who feel disadvantaged by employers’ preferences for bilingual workers. I explore data from an online petition opposing the use of bilingualism in hiring decisions. Drawing on insights from critical discourse analysis, linguistic anthropology, and the sociology of race, I analyze the discursive strategies that petition signers use to contest the economic advantages afforded by Spanish-English bilingualism. I show that signatories draw on a set of strategies that includes reproducing a naturalized one nation, one language ideology; constructing English as equal opportunity language; decommodifying Spanish; and racializing Spanish and its speakers. My analysis suggests that the apparent economic advantages afforded by Spanish-English bilingualism are a salient target for white racial resentment. Thus, I argue that discussions centering around bi-/multilingualism as human capital should consider how neoliberalism and aggrieved whiteness both, in different ways, undermine the labor market advantages bilingualism offers some Latinxs.

Communication and engagement of community members from ethnic minorities during COVID-19: a scoping review

ObjectivesThis review examined the factors influencing communication and engagement with ethnic and racial minority groups in Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic. It aimed to answer two main questions: (1) what...

La Chine, le Japon et l’« étoffe » de Perse

Abstract in English Pressing past the frameworks of the wa-kan (Japanese-Chinese) and sangoku (“the Three Kingdoms”), this essay explores a border-crossing “geopoetics” in order to espy distant “Persia” in the literary culture of classical Japan. In the “Picture Contest” midway through The Tale of Genji, an illustration supposedly set in far-off Persia is praised not for its exoticism but rather for its adroit synthesis of Japanese and Chinese pictorial elements. It turns out that the Persia made by Japanese persons around the beginning of the eleventh century is connected to the intermixing of all things Chinese and Japanese, especially when it comes to poetry. In other words, the stuff of this artificial Occident is laced through with these twin poetries from Asia’s easternmost extremities. We can see this interlacing in vernacular fictions, such as The Tale of the Tree Hollow (Utsubo monogatari), in which one of the protagonists is a Persian mage reincarnated in Japan obliged to recite passages in bilingual alternation, night by night, before the monarch. Elsewhere, academicians of Chinese “letters” exhibit their boundless knowledge of this “Far West” in such bilingual works as The New Man’yōshū (Shinsen man’yōshū) and The New Collection of Resonant Verse (Shinsen rōeishū). The latter presents itself as a learned sequel to The Collection of Japanese and Chinese Resonant Verse (Wakan rōeishū)—an emblem of the Heian period’s bilingual poetics which, in its turn, attracted the attention of monk-commentators who used the anthology to develop their Indo-Buddhist cosmo-cartography, including Persia. Persia, therefore, gets woven out of this mix of poetry in Chinese and Japanese—a mixed arrangement that enjoys an unparalleled display in the scrolls of the Collection of Resonant Verse. In its turn, The Collection itself begins to appear like an altogether “Persian” kind of terrain : a virtual terrain which belongs neither to China nor to Japan, but which is nonetheless made out of both.

Bilingual workers in a monolingual state: bilingualism as a non-skill

ABSTRACT This article examines the institutional and market treatment of the profession of interpreting in the English-monolingual context of Australia. Based on qualitative interview methods with 67 healthcare interpreters in Australia, the study aims to explore the impact of the linguistic hierarchies in favour of English on the financial and professional valuing of bilingualism and bilingual workers, most of whom are migrants speaking English as their additional language. With Bourdieu’s linguistic market as a key theoretical framework, the findings reveal how deeply English monolingualism is entrenched in the local interpreting industry and healthcare institutions and how the pervasive monolingual ideologies work to devalue bilingualism as a non-skill. The study highlights strong ties between monolingualism, power, class and race, with a particular focus on the migrant-concentrated aspect of the interpreting profession. It illuminates the role of language in justifying and sustaining power and structural inequalities, which, in turn, disproportionately impacts vulnerable populations.

Building bridges: the bilingual language work of migrant construction workers

The construction industry (CI) employs significant numbers of migrant workers, making construction sites multilingual spaces. Workers who do not share a common language work alongside each other, posing issues for safety, integration and productivity. Methods used to overcome these language barriers include the use of bilingual workers as informal interpreters. The prevalence and importance of informal interpreters is recognized in the literature. However, their language work is not well understood, and hence, the research question addressed is: what language work do the informal interpreters do and how? This study uses the theoretical lens of translanguaging to conceptualize communication onsite between speakers of different named languages, emphasizing the flexible and multimodal nature of language in use. An ethnographic approach is adopted, comprising 40 international informal interviews, and observational field notes and material data from the UK. The language work of the informal interpreters is explored through this data and theoretical lens; their language tasks and the nature of their language work is identified, including the use of visuals, gesture, and technology. Far from being straightforward and predictable, the findings show that the scope of their language work varies considerably. In this informal language work, the boundaries between languages and of what constitutes interpretation are blurred. A novel aspect of language work emerges from the data, showing that this often includes mediation. This study clarifies understandings of communication and informal interpretation on multilingual construction sites and these findings could contribute to future best practice on the use of bilingual workers as informal interpreters.

When was co-drafting ‘invented’? On history and concepts in Legal Translation Studies

ABSTRACT Scholars of legal translation have shown particular interest in the methods of multilingual legislative drafting that are used in several national and international institutions. The origin of these methods is usually traced back to Canada in the late 1970s. However, a prefiguration of co-drafting practices can be found in Switzerland several decades earlier: by the First World War, this officially multilingual country had already experimented with sophisticated measures to improve the quality of legislative translation. As there is only fragmentary knowledge of this historical precedent, this article proposes to study it in greater depth, with a view to explaining its lack of visibility in Legal Translation Studies. The study covers the period from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century and is based on digitized institutional archives. It shows that the Swiss legislative process routinely involved collective bilingual work in German and French, including forms of co-revision and co-editing. It also shows how political factors contributed to the integration of Italian, the third official language. By contrast, the article places the emergence of the contemporary concept of co-drafting in its historical Canadian context. The conclusion highlights the potential contribution of such historical research to critical approaches to legal translation.

Les débuts de la phraséologie et les premières « phraséologies historiques » italo-françaises

Phraseological studies are prospering, as there have been many important publications over the last years. However, while most researchers date phraseology studies back to Charles Bally (1909), they have a long tradition that has been ignored for years. Indeed, the term phraseology has been found in lots of works dating back centuries, even in the title of works going back to the 16th century (cf. also Autelli 2021a, 2021b). The main goals of this paper are to illustrate the concept of phraseology throughout the years and to investigate some of the works found, as they do not all look alike and still play an important role for terminology, phraseography and phraseodidactics. In particular, some of the most significant bilingual works (from the 19th and 20th century) based on French and Italian so-called “phraseologiae” (that contain terms such as “phraséologie” or “fraseologia” in the title of the works) will be analysed, as there are significantly more of them than in other languages.

김용익 소설에 나타난 기억의 장소: 「촛불이 꺼질 때까지」, 「밀수선」, 행복한 나날을 중심으로

Yong-ik Kim is one of the most highly esteemed first-generation Korean American novelists. He can be distinguished from the other Korean American writers, such as Youngjill Kang and Richard Kim because of his bilingual works as a full-time writer and local color of Korea especially of Tongyeong, his hometown. Specifically he usually sets up the background of his novels in his early days in a fishing village, Songwaji. Pierre Nora argues that established history cannot inspire oneness any longer with individuals who have fragmented memories. He emphasizes on gathering these memories on tangible and intangible objects as collective memory which can be shared with group members. Kim’s early stories, “Till the Candle Blew Out”, “Smuggler’s Boat” and The Happy Days, are full of the images based on his early day’s reminiscences. The very Korean family relationship, friends, custom, food and even the landscape are so well-organized in the background that they arouse his longing for the homeland which can not be found and shared as the other in the U.S at all. The images of the homeland are well harmonized with its landscape, family, custom and food peculiar to Korea as the site of memories in his early stories to inspire solidity and identity with the group which he aches with longing for.

THE MAIN FACTORS OF HUNGARIAN-SLOVAK BILINGULAISM

The study briefly describes the bilingual language situation of Hungarian minority communities living outside Hungary. It deals with the fact that for the Hungarian communities discussed, the Hungarian language is the primary identity-forming factor, briefly covering the effects of bilingualism on the language of the Hungarian minorities in the Carpathian Basin. It shows the close connection between language maintenance and minority education, arguing that one of the most important issues for minority education policy is how bilingual development works. The paper analyzes the educational situation of the Hungarian minority communities in the Carpathian Basin and states that the basic condition for the survival of the language and culture of the Hungarian minorities living outside Hungary is adequate minority education.

The impact of verbal working memory on written translation: Empirical evidence and an initial model

Working memory refers to a metaphorical mental workspace involved in the temporary storage and processing of information which has been considered a key construct in Cognitive Translation Studies. This study investigates whether verbal working memory in the translator’s first and/or second language is related to written translation speed and quality. Through three selection tests, 33 student translators in the second or third year of their Master’s in Translation and Interpreting at nine Chinese universities were selected to participate. In the first test, processing and storage capacities of verbal working memory in their first and second language were assessed separately by means of a dual-task paradigm implemented in the e-Prime software suite. In the second study, participants translated a technical text from their second language to their first language. Their behavioural data were collected with a keylogger and the quality of their translations was evaluated by four expert translators. The correlation analysis suggests that the processing function of verbal working memory in the second language does affect logged translation speed; and that the processing function of verbal working memory in the first language has an effect on translation quality. Furthermore, through regression analysis, an initial model was established, which shows the precise structure of the impact of bilingual working memory on written translation. These findings have significant implications for translation skills training. It appears that additional verbal working memory training for both first and second languages would enhance the students’ translation skills.

Билингвальная картина мира в творчестве А.И. Мишина (Олега Мишина — Армаса Хийри) (на примере авторского перевода)

The article analyzes the interaction of two worldviews that coexist in the mind of a bilingual poet, on the example of self-translation. Finnish-Ingrian by birth, A.I. Mishin (Oleg Mishin — Armas Hiiri) begins his literary career in Karelia in the 1950s as a Russian poet. After a decade and a half of creative work in the Russian language, Mishin-Hiiri begins to publish poems in Finnish as well. The 1970s is the first stage of his bilingual work that has memory and symbolic return to the roots by learning the native Finnish language as its main theme. Being a native speaker of two languages (Russian and Finnish), the bilingual author enters the cognitive intercultural dialogue reflected in his poetic worldview that bears a mark of his national identity. The article discusses the author’s self-translations of Finnish poems into Russian, the result of the dialogic creative thinking in two languages. These self-translations are the texts semantically different from the originals. The poet not only begins to explore the possibilities of versification in two different languages but also employs different poetic images and symbols and uses different intonation. His poems and their self-translations reflect the difference in mentality of Russian and Finnish people that harmoniously co- exist in Mishin’s poetry shifting between two language systems.

Borovnik S. Večkulturnost in medkulturnost v slovenski književnosti. Maribor: Univerzitetna založba univerze, 2017. 172 str. ISBN 13-978-961-286-093-6

This review of the monograph “Multiculturality and Interculturality in Slovenian Literature” (Maribor, 2017), by Slovenian literary critic and Doctor of Philology Silvija Borovnik, discerns the content and problems of the book. We focus especially on the chapters that deal with intercultural interaction between Slovenia and the republics of the former Yugoslavia. We also consider in particular the analysis of the essays by Drago Jančar and Aleš Debeljak, as well as the bilingual works of Josip Osti and Goran Vojnović. Borovnik's work also examines the opus of Carinthian writers F. Lipuš, M. Haderlap, P. Handke, the Slovenian-French novelist B. Svit, the Slovenian-German writer M. Krese, the American-Slovenian writer E. Johnson Debeljak, and the Slovenian-Austrian novelist and poet Alma Karlin, amongst others, through the prism of multiculturality and interculturality.

“We contribute to the development of South Korea”: Bilingual womanhood and politics of bilingual policy in South Korea

AbstractGlobal flows of migration to South Korea bring a new challenge of how to negotiate the identities of migrants. Unlike other reported cases that reframe the value of migrants’ first language as part of contingent practices of diversity management, the South Korean government has responded to this challenge by explicitly reframing so-calleddamunhwamothers (foreign women married to Korean men) as bilingual workers, imagining them as self-governed, autonomous workers whose linguistic capital can be mobilized for the betterment of South Korean society. The government’s adoption of linguistic entrepreneurship and ethnocentric nationalism becomes particularly salient in this process. This paper studies how fourdamunhwamothers respond to this new bilingual worker identity as promoted in the bilingual policy texts. We examine the ways in which they negotiate their bilingual worker identities by echoing the government’s new linguistic nationalism and linguistic entrepreneurship on the one hand, and by problematizing the insecure job markets, stratified linguistic needs, lack of systematic training for bilingual instructors, and native Korean’s misunderstanding of their new roles on the other. Finally, we discuss the implications of Korea’s bilingual policy, elaborating on the significance of linguistic entrepreneurship in language policy planning and practice and calling for more reflective accounts of ecological and translingual policy implementation in Korea.

Reflexiones acerca de la clasificación de las obras lexicográficas (semi)bilingües para el aprendizaje de lenguas

Las obras lexicográficas (semi)bilingües son repertorios híbridos que mezclan características de diccionarios bilingües y monolingües. Por ese motivo, la metalexicografía entiende tales obras lexicográficas como complejas y bajo esa designación insertan diccionarios de características muy diversas, lo que conlleva que esas obras han tenido investigaciones muy escuetas y una producción lexicográfica escasa. Se ha observado que tanto la concepción como también la designación de los diccionarios (semi)bilingües varían mucho, de manera que en ese estudio se los concibe como un nuevo subtipo de obra lexicográfica interlingüe. En ese contexto, los principios clasificatorios que describen esas obras lexicográficas no han sido establecidos de forma satisfactoria, por ello proponemos esa reflexión partiendo de una propuesta taxonómica. La dificultad en elaborar una propuesta de clasificación para las obras (semi)bilingües radica en aunar criterios lingüísticos, históricos y culturales, además del hecho que las obras que existen presentan sistemáticamente una combinación de rasgos de diferentes diccionarios. Aún así, se defiende la importancia de la elaboración de principios clasificatorios para los diccionarios (semi)bilingües por entender que eso aporta conocimientos que refinan los principios de recopilación de esas obras lexicográficas y culminan en la mejoría de su calidad lingüística y lexicográfica.

Juntos en la pandemia de COVID-19 (together in the COVID-19 pandemic): health-care professionals and the Latinx community

Juntos en la pandemia de COVID-19 (together in the COVID-19 pandemic): health-care professionals and the Latinx community

Testing the suitability of the ACCOM tool to measure outcomes of care for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse older people

ABSTRACT The Australian Community Outcomes Measurement (ACCOM) uses a standardized set of instruments to measures functional, health, and social care-related quality of life (SCRQoL) among older people receiving services at home. One of its key components is the use of modified ASCOT SCT4 survey developed by The University of Kent PSSRU. This paper presents the preliminary findings of a pilot testing of ACCOM with CALD clients in South West Sydney using face to face interviews conducted by bilingual workers as a novel approach to administering the tool. The paper will argue that some of the domains in ASCOT SCT4 survey pose unique challenges for culturally diverse groups that highlight the ethnocentric nature of some of the questions. It also discusses some of the strategies the service provider used to address these concerns and be able to utilize the tool in a culturally effective manner.

Samuel Beckett and the World Republic of Letters

Abstract In Samuel Beckett: Anatomy of a Literary Revolution, Pascale Casanova explores the formal and the historical elements of Beckett’s works to establish how the bilingual writer masters the art of “abstractification” in his pioneering venture of testing the limits of language. Casanova closely investigates the cosmopolitan space of Paris in particular in order to explain the socio-political field from which Beckett’s bilingual works stemmed. As this article argues, it is this early search for a literary field with Beckett’s autonomous writing at its core that leads Casanova to her critically acclaimed and contentious notion of the world republic of letters.