Multilingual Interaction Research Articles

Translation techniques in voiced-over multilingual feature movies

This paper maps out the use of translation techniques used for multilingual interactions in voiced-over movies. First, the present study aims to determine how multilingual elements are introduced into the films and what implications these elements carry. Secondly, qualitative analysis is used in view of showing which particular translation techniques are employed to transfer multilingual elements in voiced-over translation. Four multilingual movies available with Polish voiced-over soundtrack on DVD were selected: Vicky Cristina Barcelona (directed by Woody Allen, 2008), Nine (Rob Marshall, 2009), Avatar (James Cameron, 2009), and Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009). The analysis enabled us to distinguish a type of translation technique which has never been described before: exposition, which in the case of multilingual movies might constitute an efficient tool for recreating the presence of multilingual environment. The results also reveal that translation techniques used to translate multilingual elements do not significantly differ from those used when approaching L1 (main language of the source text) elements. However, the effect they can have on multilingualism might be completely different from that intended when translating L1.

Multilingual children's interaction with metafiction in a postmodern picture book

When teachers and school librarians choose picture books for multilingual children, they often base their choice on an evaluation of linguistic comprehensibility, content familiarity and cultural appropriateness. This means that postmodern picture books may be excluded. This paper presents a case study of multilingual children's encounter with a postmodern picture book with distinct metafictional features. In the page-by-page walkthroughs of the book, many of the multilingual children demonstrate a high level of literary competence. They deal with the book's metafictional features with great confidence and explicitly call for books which challenge them and break with their expectations as readers. Consequently, it is argued that postmodern picture books should be part of the range of books presented to multilingual children.

Multilingual Access to Digital Libraries: The Europeana Use Case / Mehrsprachiger Zugang zu Digitalen Bibliotheken: Europeana / Accès multilingue aux bibliothèques numériques: Le cas d’Europeana

The article determines multilingual access features in digital libraries with a special focus on cultural heritage digital libraries. An analysis of existing information systems in the GLAM-domain (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) was conducted to establish and collect solutions for searching, browsing and interacting with multilingual content. In particular, Europeana, the European digital library, archive and museum for cultural heritage was studied with a focus on multilingual interactions. Challenges and recommendations for the implementation of multilingual access features are presented and discussed.

Multilingual interaction and minority languages: Proficiency and language practices in education and society

In this plenary speech I examine multilingual interaction in a number of European regions in which minority languages are being revitalized. Education is a crucial variable, but the wider society is equally significant. The context of revitalization is no longer bilingual but increasingly multilingual. I draw on the results of a long-running project on the ‘Added value of multilingualism and diversity in educational contexts’ among secondary school students, and show that there are interesting differences and similarities between the minority language (Basque or Frisian), the majority language (Spanish or Dutch) and English. The focus on multilingualism is applied inside and outside the school. The discussion demonstrates the complexity of everyday multilingual practices and the outcomes have implications for the gap between education and society and for further research into the linkages between language proficiency and actual language practices.

Language choice adjustments in child production during dyadic and multiparty interactions: A quantitative approach to multilingual interactions

This paper aims to document two adjustment types motivating code choices in early production in the multilingual context of Veneto (Italy), where the regional dialects and Italian share the same geolinguistic space. Languages with which a child comes into contact in his/her environment could provide a vantage point for the study of early contextual language adjustments. We compared the early production of a child - Francesco (17-30 months) - with his input, through a quantitative lexical approach to the material. Data were collected in an ecological family setting. Dyadic interactions (15 hours) were taped in Francesco's home and multiparty interactions (20 hours) were recorded in his grandparents' home. In the first setting, statistically-driven acquisition could justify the adjustments in Francesco's production to the language choices in his home environment. In the second setting, where social interaction is different, pragmatically motivated adjustments are more likely to ground Francesco's choices. Results from the analyses suggest that a) child-directed speech promotes steady acquisition of the language which is selected the most frequently in the input and that b) pragmatically explicit interactional contexts could favour the production of lesser used languages.

Putting words into their mouths: ethnographic encounters of multilingual literacy practices in a British-Arab home

Literacy is often viewed as schooled literacy in the dominant language, generally English, and the role of the home in marginalised communities has often been undervalued in the past. In this paper, I examine, through a socio-cultural lens, the role played by the home and community in literacy learning. Through data elicited from observation of multilingual family interactions and conversations, as well as interviews with family members I examine the home and community literacy practices of a British-Arab family and ask how these practices intersect with schooled literacy. I concluded that multilingual families have far greater language and literacy skills than presumed, and that schools need to recognise the language and literacy practices that multilingual families engage in at home and in the community. This paper also highlights and emphasise that social justice for all requires educational shift starting with a shift in pedagogy.

Multilingual interactions in clinical dental education: A focus on mediated interpreting

In clinical dental consultations in multilingual contexts, medical interpreting is often performed by the supporting staff as part of routine triadic formulations. As academic dentistry becomes increasingly internationalized, issues of language and culture add to the interactional complexity of clinical communication and education. A multivariate approach was adopted to investigate one case of multilingualism in dentistry in Asia. Collection of both survey (n = 86) and interactional data provided empirical evidence regarding language use and language demands across integrated Polyclinics. Descriptive statistics of Dental Surgery Assistant (DSA) perception data and conversation analysis (CA) of mediated interpretation indicate that, as members of the oral healthcare team, DSAs in Hong Kong are an essential resource in their role of intercultural mediators between patients and clinicians, both staff and students. Discussion of sociolinguistic notions of place-as-location and place-as-meaning supports a wider conceptualization of the role of support staff as interpreters in clinical settings. Implications are drawn for policy, curriculum and staff development.

The interplay of language ideologies and contextual cues in multilingual interactions: Language choice and code-switching in European Union institutions

AbstractThis article analyzes multilingual practices in interactions inside European Union (EU) institutions. On the basis of our fieldwork conducted in EU organizational spaces throughout 2009, we explore different types of communication in order to illustrate how Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and officials at the European Commission practice and perform multilingualism in their everyday work. In our theoretical and methodological framework, we draw on existent sociolinguistic ethnographical research into organizations and interactions, and integrate a multilevel (macro) contextual and sequential (micro) analysis of manifold data (observations, field notes, recordings of official and semi-official meetings, interviews, etc.). In this way, a continuum of context-dependent multilingual practices becomes apparent, which are characterized by different patterns of language choice and which serve a range of both manifest and latent functions. By applying the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), the intricacies of the increasingly complex phenomenon of multilingualism in transnational-organizational spaces, which are frequently characterized by diverse power-related and other asymmetries of communication, can be adequately coped with. (Code-switching, multilingualism, power, institutional spaces, European Union, ethnography, discourse-historical approach, critical discourse studies)*

¡Vamos a Jugar Counters! Learning Mathematics Through Funds of Knowledge, Play, and the Third Space

Drawing on Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), funds of knowledge, and third space, this article presents a model for practitioners and researchers to think about how Latina/o, bilingual children develop explicit mathematics strategies through multilingual and multigenerational interactions. Using data collected through fieldwork in an urban afterschool club, this article illustrates how nonschool activities that draw on children's funds of knowledge (especially Spanish use) can foster robust problem-solving interactions. When activities are purposefully designed to build on productive tensions between the sometimes conflicting goals of participants, these “third spaces” lead to movement in the zone of proximal development. Multiple vignettes from the Counters game are presented to demonstrate how parents, undergraduates, and graduate students purposefully interact with children to facilitate movement from “informal” spaces to more “formal” spaces of mathematics. With the population of Latina/o bilingual children rapidly rising in urban schools throughout the United States, it is essential for practitioners and policy makers to adopt additive rather than subtractive views about the knowledge, linguistic, and cultural tool kits of Latina/o bilingual learners.

Language analogy teaching method by French and English comparison

Our college has applied French-English analogy-educating method ( trilingual education )to the medicinal French bilingual-educating course by means of the interactions of different languages. As the kin relations between English and French in the axea of medicine, as well as their interactions from the origin to the modem medical applications, it can be an effective method to use analogy-educating method in the French study course in medicine, which means that the multi-lingual interactions can be used in the bilingual, even the multi-lingual educating activities of bilinguai educating process of other subjects. Key words: Language; Analogy; Instruction

Monolingual Supervision of Bilingual Student Clinicians: Challenges and Opportunities

Monolingual Supervision of Bilingual Student Clinicians: Challenges and Opportunities

Multilingualism in cyberspace: conceptualising the virtual linguistic landscape

The linguistic landscape (LL) is a sociolinguistic concept that captures power relations and identity marking in the linguistic rendering of urban space: the city read as text. As such, LL is embedded in the physical geography of the cityscape. However, with the increasing scope of multilingual capabilities in digital communications, multilingual options and choices are becoming more prevalent in virtual space. These virtual linguistic voices are important forces in global language ecology. In this paper, the concepts of virtual linguistic landscape and linguistic cyberecology are delineated and exemplified in a variety of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 applications and environments. It is argued that the LL of virtual space, though grounded in the concept of multilingual interactions within a physically defined world, has distinct characteristics to the digital world that continue to evolve conterminous with the complex relationship of the real to the digital.

Translation style and participant roles in court interpreting1

This paper investigates the translation styles of court interpreters in New York City and the styles' social and pragmatic implications for multilingual interactions in court. Interpreters are found to vary between using first or third person to represent the voice of a translated source speaker, thereby varying between adherence to explicit institutional norms that require first person and accommodation to non‐professional interpreting practices that favor the use of reported speech. In a quantitative and qualitative analysis, this variation is shown to be influenced by several pragmatic and social factors, and to index the interpreters' stances towards source speakers and towards the immigrant court users who are the recipients of translations from English. It is argued that translation styles have profound consequences for limited English speakers, as the insistence on institutional norms in translating to them is viewed as a gatekeeping behavior that may impede their full participation in the proceedings.

‘Cheap’ c'est quoi? Immigrant Teenagers in Quest of Multilingual Competence and Identity

Second generation immigrants tend to shift their loyalty from their own languages (‘immigrant languages’) to the language of the host country (‘societal language’), given the socioeconomically weak vitality position of the immigrant languages. This language shift makes intergenerational communication, especially with folk left at home, often problematic. Similarly, intragenerational communication may equally be difficult among young relatives from families having adopted different societal languages. The present study draws from observational speech data of immigrant teenagers of Congolese origin during a seven-week reunion. The teenagers had adopted, respectively, French and English to the detriment of Kiswahili (for both sets) and of French for those who spoke only English. This paper highlights different coping strategies to smooth multilingual intragenerational interaction. These strategies include accommodation (mostly convergence), crossing, code negotiation, and negotiation of meaning. Convergence and divergence can be explained mainly by the existence of differing levels of integrative motivation. The data also reveal boundary crossing as a phenomenon of identity creation in which two of the youngsters engage, in contrast to resistance by another teenager.

Brought-along identities and the dynamics of ideology: Accomplishing bivalent stances in a multilingual interaction

Abstract This paper examines how the interconnected aspects of the stance triangle (Du Bois 2007) allow speakers to tap into multiple ideological layers as they take a stance and reveal intra-ethnic group tensions. Using a detailed interaction analysis of a Chinese American family's multilingual interaction, the paper explores how such ideological dynamics are associated with stance, and considers their relationship to emergent (Bucholtz and Hall 2004a; 2004b; 2005) and brought-along identities. Specifically, the paper analyzes how seemingly conflicting bivalent stances towards an increasingly dominant language (Mandarin) and its speakers discursively frame that group and their language as both similar to and different from the interaction's speakers and their own language (Cantonese). Through this downplaying and highlighting of similarities and differences, the participants' interaction captures not only the dynamics of an individual's identity but also the larger ideological dynamics of an ethnic community as its structure, and what it means to be a member, change over time.

Code-Switching as a Multilingual Strategy in Conversations among Indonesian Graduate Dtudents in the US

Choosing what language to use and what cultural values to adopt may be problematic for international students undertaking cross-border studies in the U.S. This –problem occurs simply because the students bring with them the various cultural values and beliefs, and language-related identities with them in a new linguistic environment. This paper aims at identifying the major patterns of language use among Indonesian students in the U.S. and the reasons of Indonesian students in choosing particular languages in conversations.The study involved eighteen Indonesian students undertaking master and doctoral studies in some American universities. The survey and interview methods are used to gather the data. The results of the survey and interview disprove my previous prediction that the inter-or intrapersonal mechanism, such as community or institutional norms, accommodation, politeness, physical condition such as fatigue or laziness, and rationality may determine the speakers' language choices. This study indicated that that Indonesians in the U.S. might be aware of the importance of influences such as, cultural values that may directly or indirectly impact the language preference, and some unpredictable and violable arrangements for language choice, such as exclusion/inclusion of others in addition to the apparent communal perception of English as the accepted institutional and social password in the U.S. Additionally, I learned that the students' multilingual strategy was reflected in. their ability to 'play safe' in using the languages in multilingual interactions, by selecting the most comfortable languages in conversations without neglecting others who were within their earshot.

Orientations de la recherche en traduction audiovisuelle

RésuméEn une décennie, les transferts linguistiques à la télévision, au cinéma, pour les vidéos ont fait l’objet de réflexions nombreuses, ponctuelles souvent. Il y a encore peu d’études systématiques touchant leur production et leur réception, touchant leurs effets culturels et langagiers. Le transfert est encore fréquemment perçu comme exclusivement “pratique”, sinon mécanique. Par ailleurs, et de manière paradoxale, on doit noter une prédominance de la perspective linguistique, alors même que l’objet est multisémiotique, combinant images, sons, langage (oral et écrit), couleurs, proxémique, gestuel, etc, intégrés aux codes de l’audiovisuel (mise en scène, suite de séquences et de plans, jeu des voix et des lumières, scénographie, conventions narratives, etc.). Deux facteurs expliquent sans doute ce paradoxe et cette limitation : d’une part, la formation de la plupart des chercheurs, marquée par les langues et la littérature, d’autre part les contraintes de publication (imprimée) à deux dimensions. L’extension des modes de transfert et les possibilités offertes par les cédéroms, le DVD...qui permettent l’accès aux images et à la bande sonore devraient peu à peu modifier les orientations actuelles, encore dominées par le sous-titrage et l’analyse du verbal. Après avoir circonscrit le domaine (Section 1 et 2), nous aborderons successivement le sous-titrage (Section 3), les autres modes de transfert (Section 4) et leurs implications théoriques et socio-culturelles (Section 5). L’ensemble qui suit est marqué d’une conviction : la traduction audiovisuelle (TAV) n’est pas toujours un problème ou une constellation de problèmes mais une solution et un atout dans les échanges culturels internationaux multilingues.

The European Union in Cyberspace

This article analyses the European Union’s Futurum discussion forum. The EU hoped that Futurum would help close the acknowledged gap between institutions and citizens by facilitating a virtual, multilingual, transnational public sphere. Futurum was both an interesting example of how the EU’s language policies shape the structure of deliberative experiments and of a public debate about their relative value. We combine various quantitative measures of the discussions with a critical discourse analysis of a thread which focused on language policies. We found that although the debates were predominantly in English, where a thread started in a language other than English, linguistic diversity was more prominent. The discourse analysis showed that multilingual interaction was fostered, and that the debate about language policies is politically and ideologically charged.

The NESPOLE! System for multilingual speech communication over the Internet

The NESPOLE! System is a speech communication system designed to support multilingual interaction between common users and providers of e-commerce services over the Internet. The core of the system is a distributed interlingua-based speech-to-speech translation system, which is supported by multimodal capabilities that allow the two parties participating in the communication to share Web pages and graphical content which can be annotated using gestures. We describe the unique features and considerations behind the design and implementation of this system, and evaluate these within the context of a constructed full prototype of the system that was developed for the domain of travel planning

The A mitié s system: Data-driven techniques for automated dialogue

We present a natural-language customer service application for a telephone banking call center, developed as part of the A mitié s dialogue project (Automated Multilingual Interaction with Information and Services). Our dialogue system, based on empirical data gathered from real call-center conversations, features data-driven techniques that allow for spoken language understanding despite speech recognition errors, as well as mixed system/customer initiative and spontaneous conversation. These techniques include robust named-entity extraction, slot-filling Frame Agents, vector-based task identification and dialogue act classification, a Bayesian database record selection algorithm, and a natural language generator designed with templates created from real agents’ expressions. Preliminary evaluation results indicate efficient dialogues and high user satisfaction, with performance comparable to or better than that of current conversational information systems.