Articles

Intercultural Translation in Classroom-based Multilingual Educational Research

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Abstract

The article presents an appraisal of instances of intercultural translation whereby different processes of cross-language interaction and interpretation take place, and through which incommensurable forms are juxtaposed. The juxtaposition resulting from these practices highlights equivalence assumptions and draws attention to what remains equivocal—mainly, how intercultural translation interrogates equivalences and acknowledges equivocation as a transformative source. Viveiros de Castro (2004) introduced the concept of equivocation to include the sorts of conceptual relations that emerge in translation offering different perspectival positions. One goal is to recognize that understandings are not the same and that mutual incommensurability is what enables comparability through a difference in perspectives. Based on a one-year ethnographic study at an intercultural university in Mexico the article presents two examples of how intercultural translation works as a means and end of language socialization in classroom interactions. The first example illustrates the juxtaposition of greeting structures in the three languages and the different meanings of the word beel in Yucatec Maya. The second example focuses on the use of the standardized version of the question particle wáaj in Yucatec Maya, contrasting it to the use of questions marks in Spanish and to one of its contracted forms. Both examples demonstrate how lecturers and students engage in intercultural translation as a pedagogical practice. Findings show how the study of intercultural translation informs research practice, specifically, how we come to know other ways of doing, knowing, and being in multilingual contexts.

Keywords: intercultural translation, multilingualism, writing research, equivocation

How to Cite:

Borge Janetti, G., (2019) “Intercultural Translation in Classroom-based Multilingual Educational Research”, Critical Multilingualism Studies 7(1), 64–84.