rewriting the classroom and the city: a curriculum in translation and linguistic landscape for l2...

Rewriting the classroom and the city

Translation and linguistic landscape for second language

and literacy development

Princeton University20 April 2017

David MalinowskiYale Center for Language Studydavid.malinowski@yale.edu

Translation as action in and on the linguistic landscape Conceptual beginnings

What is linguistic landscape? (and why is it “a thing”?)

“The language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government building combines to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region or urban agglomeration”

Landry & Bourhis (1997)

What is linguistic landscape? (and why is it “a thing”?)

What is linguistic landscape? (and why is it “a thing”?)

January 10, 2004: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/10/nyregion/ethnic-friction-over-signs-that-lack-translations.html

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Residential colleges, Yale University, 2016

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Yale University, February 11, 2017

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• LL is an “independent variable” contributing to a group’s “ethnolinguistic vitality” (Landry & Bourhis, 1997)

• Linguistic landscape reveals much about the culture, history, and politics of people in places

• The LL “signals what languages are prominent and valued in public and private spaces and indexes the social positioning of people who identify with particular languages (Dagenais et al., 2009, p. 254)

• Linguistic landscape is one way that people mark territory, actively including some people while excluding others

So, why is LL “a thing”?

“The language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government building combines to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region or urban agglomeration”

“The layers of linguistic landscapes need to be understood not so much in terms of static physical emplacements, but rather as the mobilization of history through everyday practices” (Pennycook & Otsuji, 2015, p. 155).

What is linguistic landscape, again?

“The language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government building combines to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region or urban agglomeration”

“The layers of linguistic landscapes need to be understood not so much in terms of static physical emplacements, but rather as the mobilization of history through everyday practices” (Pennycook & Otsuji, 2015, p. 155).

What is linguistic landscape, again?

Language learning in the LL as site of transformative action

• Uta Papen, 2012, “Commercial discourses, gentrification, and citizens' protest: The linguistic landscape of Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin”

• Rani Rubdy & Selim Ben Said (Eds.), 2015, Conflict, exclusion, and dissent in the linguistic landscape

• E. Dimitris Kitis & Tommaso Milani, 2015, “The performativity of the body”

• Amiena Peck & Christopher Stroud, 2016, “Turbulent linguistic landscapes and the semiotics of citizenship”

• Jackie Jia Lou & Adam Jaworski, 2016, “Itineraries of protest signage: Semiotic landscape and the mythologizing of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement”

• Luisa Martin Rojo, 2016, Occupy: The spatial dynamics of discourse in global protest movements

Cenoz, J., & Gorter, D. (2008). The linguistic landscape as an additional source of input in SLA. Int’l Review of AL in Language Teaching, 46(3).

Rowland, L. (2012). The pedagogical benefits of a linguistic landscape project in Japan. Int’l Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 16(4).

Burwell, C. & Lenters, K. (2015). Word on the street: Investigating linguistic landscapes with urban Canadian youth. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 10(3).

• Chern, C. -l., & Dooley, K. (2014). Learning English by walking down the street.

• Chesnut, M., Lee, V. & Schulte, J. (2013). The language lessons around us: Undergraduate English pedagogy and linguistic landscape research

• Dagenais, D. et al. (2009). Linguistic landscape and language awareness.

• Malinowski, D. (2015). Opening spaces of learning in the linguistic landscape.

• Sayer, P. (2009). Using the Linguistic Landscape as a Pedagogical Resource.

Language learning in the LL as site of transformative action

Dongdaemun, Seoul, 1999 – my ‘first sign’ as a Korean learner

Dongdaemun, Seoul, 1999 – my ‘first sign’ as a Korean learner

Let’s loveobj.trees/bushes

UC Berkeley Suwon U., 2005 – extra-credit E/K telecollaboration

Translation…as paradigm joining LL & L2 teaching

“since translation is often the process through which any documentation comes to taken on a new linguistic form, translatedness is an issue closely related to linguistic landscape research.”

Kaisa Koskinen, 2012. “Linguistic landscape as a translational space: The case of Hervanta, Tampere.” p. 79

…as a pervasive linguistic phenomenon characterizing LL objects & processes

...as a lens with which to approach the cultural and historical lives of cities

…as a resurgent constellation of L2 learning approaches and practices

…as transdisciplinarity in practice (AppLx [SLA], Spatial & multi-literacies, SLx of Globalization, etc.)

Translation…as paradigm joining LL & L2 teaching

…as a pervasive linguistic phenomenon characterizing LL objects & processes

...as a lens with which to approach the cultural and historical lives of cities

…as a resurgent constellation of L2 learning approaches and practices

…as transdisciplinarity in practice (AppLx [SLA], Spatial & multi-literacies, SLx of Globalization, etc.)

Translation…as paradigm joining LL & L2 teaching

“Despite the sensory evidence of multilingualism in today's cities, the proliferation of scripts on storefronts, the shouted conversations on cellphones, there has been little more than casual reference to language as a vehicle of urban cultural memory, or of translation as a key in the creation of meaningful spaces of contact and civic participation.”

Sherry Simon, 2012, Cities in Translation: Intersections of Language and Memory, p. 7, 6.

…as a pervasive linguistic phenomenon characterizing LL objects & processes

...as a lens with which to approach the cultural and historical lives of cities

…as a resurgent constellation of L2 learning approaches and practices

…as transdisciplinarity in practice (AppLx [SLA], Spatial & multi-literacies, SLx of Globalization, etc.)

Translation…as paradigm joining LL & L2 teaching

Community translation is “translation intended to ensure communication with all citizens and residents and empower minority language speakers by giving them access to information and enabling them to participate in society […] It is a professional activity which is closely related to community engagement, social action and social change.”

Mustapha Taibi & Uldis Ozolins, 2016. Community Translation. p. 9, 11

…as a pervasive linguistic phenomenon characterizing LL objects & processes

...as a lens with which to approach the cultural and historical lives of cities

…as a resurgent constellation of L2 learning approaches and practices

…as transdisciplinarity in practice (AppLx [SLA], Spatial & multi-literacies, SLx of Globalization, etc.)

Translation…as paradigm joining LL & L2 teaching

…as a pervasive linguistic phenomenon characterizing LL objects & processes

...as a lens with which to approach the cultural and historical lives of cities

…as a resurgent constellation of L2 learning approaches and practices

…as transdisciplinarity in practice (AppLx [SLA], Spatial & multi-literacies, SLx of Globalization, etc.)

Translation…as paradigm joining LL & L2 teaching

Translation is “…a living, moving activity, not a dead one to be pinned down in a museum. It is this dynamism which can make it so interesting and so stimulating, not only to linguists and translators, but to teachers and students too.”

Guy Cook, 2010. Translation in Language Teaching, p. xix

…as a pervasive linguistic phenomenon characterizing LL objects & processes

...as a lens with which to approach the cultural and historical lives of cities

…as a resurgent constellation of L2 learning approaches and practices

…as transdisciplinarity in practice (AppLx [SLA], Spatial & multi-literacies, SLx of Globalization, etc.)

Translation…as paradigm joining LL & L2 teaching

“Translating as an activity—when approached in a particular social fashion—could augment, if not transform, advanced language learners’ stance vis-a-vis their own translingual and intercultural being”

David Gramling & Chantelle Warner, 2016. “Translating and the futurity of foreign language learning,” p. 82

…as a pervasive linguistic phenomenon characterizing LL objects & processes

...as a lens with which to approach the cultural and historical lives of cities

…as a resurgent constellation of L2 learning approaches and practices

…as transdisciplinarity in practice (AppLx [SLA], Spatial & multi-literacies, SLx of Globalization, etc.)

Translation…as paradigm joining LL & L2 teaching

A transdisciplinary framework in SLA “seeks to integrate the many layers of existing knowledge about the processes and outcomes of additional language learning by deriving coherent patterns and configurations of findings across domains and ‘over many different levels of granularity and timescale’”

Douglas Fir Group, 2016. A Transdisciplinary Framework for SLA in a Multilingual World, p. 20

…as a pervasive linguistic phenomenon characterizing LL objects & processes

...as a lens with which to approach the cultural and historical lives of cities

…as a resurgent constellation of L2 learning approaches and practices

…as transdisciplinarity in practice (AppLx [SLA], Spatial & multi-literacies, SLx of Globalization, etc.)

…as a pervasive linguistic phenomenon characterizing LL objects & processes

...as a lens with which to approach the cultural and historical lives of cities

…as a resurgent constellation of L2 learning approaches and practices

…as transdisciplinarity in practice (AppLx [SLA], Spatial & multi-literacies, SLx of Globalization, etc.)

Translation…as paradigm joining LL & L2 teaching

“How are the dynamically moving elements of social systems and distributions, including people themselves and all manner of resources for learning as well, configured and reconfigured across space and time to create opportunities to learn?”

Leander, Headrick & Taylor, 2010. “The changing social spaces of learning: Mapping new mobilities,” p. 329

Translate New HavenBackground

Translate New HavenAn educational design experiment and initiatve in applied language studies, encouraging students and residents in New Haven, CT to imagine and create a more multilingual city through translation of signage and other language resources.

Through this project, participants will:

1. Build awareness of the rich history and contemporary diversity of languages and cultures in New Haven

2. Develop symbolic competence in a second or heritage language through translation—a suite of approaches for understanding and expressing linguistic, cultural, and social relations between people whose lives intersect

3. Produce tangible resources to enrich New Haven’s civic life, including multilingual public signs, community maps, and neighborhood tours

Participants, April-May 2017

New Haven Public High School students from Yale University World CLASS foreign language program, offering weekly classes in Arabic, German, Italian, Japanese, KiSwahili, Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian, and Urdu

SeeClickFix

Translate New HavenOutline & Materials

Project outline (curriculum)

1. Warm-up activities

2. Local language awareness-building

3. Learning to read language in place

4. Field trip #1: Surveying a neighborhood

5. Exercises in translation

6. Field trip #2: Listening to the neighborhood

7. Going public

8. Field trip #3: Sensing the neighborhood

9. Production and Emplacement

1. Warm-Up Activities

Classroom activities designed to get students thinking and talking about everyday relationships between language and place

a) “Body languages”

b) Mental mapping activity: Picture New Haven

a) “Body languages” warm-up activity

a) “Body languages” warm-up activity

English

Español?

a) “Body languages” warm-up activity

English

Español

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a) “Body languages” warm-up activity

English

Español

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한국어

b) Mental mapping activity: Picture New Haven

Take 15 minutes and draw a mental map of your New Haven. Think about:

• where you go every day, and what you do• where you used to go (when?), and where you might go in

the future (why?)• your favorite places, and your least favorite • where your family members and friends go• places you want to show to a visitor• places you’ve only heard about

(Challenge: Label your map in the TL)

Then, present your map to your classmates (in TL, to the degree possible).

2. Local language awareness-building

Classroom and home activities designed to build awareness and discussion around the diversity of linguistic resources in students’ home, neighborhood, school, and town environments

a) Peer survey: Home and school languages

b) Knowledge building: New Haven’s many languages

a) Peer survey: Home and school languages

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2. Local language awareness-building

Classroom and home activities designed to build awareness and discussion around the diversity of linguistic resources in students’ home, neighborhood, school, and town environments

a) Peer survey: Home and school languages

b) Knowledge building: New Haven’s many languages

3. Learning to read language in place

Activities that attune students to the diversity of voices and meanings present in already-familiar linguistic landscapes of school, home, and city

a) Hands-on activity: Moving signs in your classroom

b) Reading audiences, identities, and meanings in New Haven’s signs

c) At-school mini-field trip: Who’s on our walls?

d) Wrap-up discussion: Many voices in one place

a) Activity: Moving signs in your classroom

a) Activity: Moving signs in your classroom

a) Activity: Moving signs in your classroom

a) Activity: Moving signs in your classroom

a) Activity: Moving signs in your classroom

a) Activity: Moving signs in your classroom

a) Activity: Moving signs in your classroom

b) Reading audiences, identities, and meanings in New Haven’s signs

1. Have you seen this sign before? Where? How do you feel about this message? Why?

2. Who do you think likes or responds well to the message? Who doesn’t? Why?

3. Who is saying what to whom? And how do you know? What other signs are like it? Or opposed to it?

4. If you could change what this sign says, would you? What would you have it say? Why? If you could change where this sign was located, would you? To where? Why?

A sequenced introduction to reading signs in familiar places in New Haven that seeks to first engage students’ subjective response to the signs, and then gradually introduce elements of analysis, critique, and agency:

b) Reading audiences, identities, and meanings in New Haven’s signs

1. Have you seen this sign before? Where? How do you feel about this message? Why?

2. Who do you think likes or responds well to the message? Who doesn’t? Why?

3. Who is saying what to whom? And how do you know? What other signs are like it? Or opposed to it?

4. If you could change what this sign says, would you? What would you have it say? Why? If you could change where this sign was located, would you? To where? Why?

b) Reading audiences, identities, and meanings in New Haven’s signs

1. Have you seen this sign before? Where? How do you feel about this message? Why?

2. Who do you think likes or responds well to the message? Who doesn’t? Why?

3. Who is saying what to whom? And how do you know? What other signs are like it? Or opposed to it?

4. If you could change what this sign says, would you? What would you have it say? Why? If you could change where this sign was located, would you? To where? Why?

b) Reading audiences, identities, and meanings in New Haven’s signs

1. Have you seen this sign before? Where? How do you feel about this message? Why?

2. Who do you think likes or responds well to the message? Who doesn’t? Why?

3. Who is saying what to whom? And how do you know? What other signs are like it? Or opposed to it?

4. If you could change what this sign says, would you? What would you have it say? Why? If you could change where this sign was located, would you? To where? Why?

b) Reading audiences, identities, and meanings in New Haven’s signs

1. Have you seen this sign before? Where? How do you feel about this message? Why?

2. Who do you think likes or responds well to the message? Who doesn’t? Why?

3. Who is saying what to whom? And how do you know? What other signs are like it? Or opposed to it?

4. If you could change what this sign says, would you? What would you have it say? Why? If you could change where this sign was located, would you? To where? Why?

3. Learning to read language in place

Activities that attune students to the diversity of voices and meanings present in already-familiar linguistic landscapes of school, home, and city

a) Hands-on activity: Moving signs in your classroom

b) Reading audiences, identities, and meanings in New Haven’s signs

c) At-school mini-field trip: Who’s on our walls?

d) Wrap-up discussion: Many voices in one place

4. Field trip #1: Surveying a neighborhood

A first neighborhood field trip in which student groups record the visible and audible language in public space in a partner neighborhood, business/community organization, or other locale and identify possible language for translation.

a) Preparation for the field trip Observing and recording signs Practicing respect in the community

b) Field trip

c) Classroom discussion and map-making

a) Preparation: Observing & recording signs

Place observed

Sign recorded

Languages on sign

Prominence of langs

Comments

a) Preparation: Observing & recording signs

Place observed

Sign recorded

Languages on sign

Prominence of langs

Comments

a) Preparation: Observing & recording signs

a) Preparation: Observing & recording signs

Place observed

Sign recorded

Languages on sign

Prominence of langs

Comments

a) Preparation: Observing & recording signs

Backhaus (2006) definition: “A sign was considered to be any piece of written text within a spatially identifiable frame”

How many signs do you see?

a) Preparation: Observing & recording signs

Place observed

Sign recorded

Languages on sign

Prominence of langs

Comments

a) Preparation: Observing & recording signs

How do you define “language”?

4. Field trip #1: Surveying a neighborhood

A first neighborhood field trip in which student groups record the visible and audible language in public space in a partner neighborhood, business/community organization, or other locale and identify possible language for translation.

a) Preparation for the field trip Observing and recording signs Practicing respect in the community

b) Field trip

c) Classroom discussion and map-making

c) Discussion & collaborative map-making

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c) Discussion & collaborative map-making

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5. Exercises in translation

Classroom exercises and activities that develop students’ appreciation of, and capacities for, translation as re-authorship and identity work in contingent, locally appropriate, and politically consequential meanings

a) “Where did THAT come from?”: Getting to the bottom of ‘funny’ mistranslations

b) Virtual neighborhood visits for TLL1 translationc) “Getting beyond Google”

a) Translating beyond words, across modesb) Retranslating and questioning the already-bilingualc) Bottom-up localization

d) Group translations of FT1 neighborhood signs, preparation of materials documenting multiple translations for FT2

a) Getting to the bottom of ‘funny’ mistranslationsAn exercise with examples of TLL1 and L1TL mistranslations in which students reconstruct what must have or could have happened to produce unexpected results

5. Exercises in translation

Classroom exercises and activities that develop students’ appreciation of, and capacities for, translation as re-authorship and identity work in contingent, locally appropriate, and politically consequential meanings

a) “Where did THAT come from?”: Getting to the bottom of ‘funny’ mistranslations

b) Virtual neighborhood visits for TLL1 translationc) “Getting beyond Google”

a) Translating beyond words, across modesb) Retranslating and questioning the already-bilingualc) Bottom-up localization

d) Group translations of FT1 neighborhood signs, preparation of materials documenting multiple translations for FT2

b) Virtual neighborhood visits for TLL1 translationDepending on ability level and class goals, students: find examples of English; find familiar words and expressions; compare social discourses; give a guided tour to classmates

b) Virtual neighborhood visits for TLL1 translationDepending on ability level and class goals, students: find examples of English; find familiar words and expressions; compare social discourses; give a guided tour to classmates

5. Exercises in translation

Classroom exercises and activities that develop students’ appreciation of, and capacities for, translation as re-authorship and identity work in contingent, locally appropriate, and politically consequential meanings

a) “Where did THAT come from?”: Getting to the bottom of ‘funny’ mistranslations

b) Virtual neighborhood visits for TLL1 translationc) “Getting beyond Google”

a) Translating beyond words, across modes (Audio Description)b) Retranslating and questioning the already-bilingualc) Bottom-up localization

d) Group translations of FT1 neighborhood signs, preparation of materials documenting multiple translations for FT2

5. Exercises in translation

Classroom exercises and activities that develop students’ appreciation of, and capacities for, translation as re-authorship and identity work in contingent, locally appropriate, and politically consequential meanings

a) “Where did THAT come from?”: Getting to the bottom of ‘funny’ mistranslations

b) Virtual neighborhood visits for TLL1 translationc) “Getting beyond Google”

a) Translating beyond words, across modes (Audio Description)b) Retranslating and questioning the already-bilingualc) Bottom-up localization

d) Group translations of FT1 neighborhood signs, preparation of materials documenting multiple translations for FT2

5. Exercises in translation

Classroom exercises and activities that develop students’ appreciation of, and capacities for, translation as re-authorship and identity work in contingent, locally appropriate, and politically consequential meanings

a) “Where did THAT come from?”: Getting to the bottom of ‘funny’ mistranslations

b) Virtual neighborhood visits for TLL1 translationc) “Getting beyond Google”

a) Translating beyond words, across modesb) Retranslating and questioning the already-bilingualc) Bottom-up localization and “finding the untranslatable”

d) Group translations of FT1 neighborhood signs, preparation of materials documenting multiple translations for FT2

5. Exercises in translation

Classroom exercises and activities that develop students’ appreciation of, and capacities for, translation as re-authorship and identity work in contingent, locally appropriate, and politically consequential meanings

a) “Where did THAT come from?”: Getting to the bottom of ‘funny’ mistranslations

b) Virtual neighborhood visits for TLL1 translationc) “Getting beyond Google”

a) Translating beyond words, across modesb) Retranslating and questioning the already-bilingualc) Bottom-up localization and “finding the untranslatable”

d) Group translations of FT1 neighborhood signs, preparation of materials documenting multiple translations for FT2

6. Field trip #2: Listening to the neighborhood

A second field trip to the same neighborhood that student groups visited in FT1. An ‘expert guide’ proficient in the TL leads the students on a walking tour in which local histories, everyday activities, and significant landmarks are viewed and discussed. Students solicit expert guide’s views on their proposed translations, generate additional translations

a) Preparation for the field trip

b) Field trip

c) Classroom discussion and applied activity

6. Field trip #2: Listening to the neighborhood

Questions Your notes

Who is your guide(s), and how do they know the neighborhood?

According to your guide(s),what are some key parts of the neighborhood’s identity?

How do people from outside the neighborhood tend to see it? Why?

6. Field trip #2: Listening to the neighborhood

Questions Your notes

What places in the neighborhood does your guide take you? What are your impressions there?

What languages are spoken in the neighborhood? By whom, and where?

If you and your guide could design some new signs for the neighborhood (in any language(s)), what would they be? And where would you put them?

6. Field trip #2: Listening to the neighborhood

Questions Your notes

Sketch a picture of your sign(s) here:

What colors, size, materials, and other factors would the city have to take into account to make and place the signs?

Make a plan for a follow-up meeting with your guide, and get your guide to sign off on your notes.

Meeting times: ________________________

Signature: ________________

7. Going public

Students take further steps toward “community translation” by engaging in one or more local action projects entailing public discussion and debate:

a) Mock-ups of translation proposals

b) Inviting public discussion of translation proposals

a) On-site in-person focus group

b) Online discussion forum

Visualization: Photoshop + JuxtaposeJS (Knight Lab)http://davidmalinowski.info/2016/10/27/juxtaposejs-experiment/

www.seeclickfix.com/

8. Field trip #3: Sensing the neighborhoodA third field trip to the neighborhood that student groups visited in FT1 and FT2, focused on a particular locale, corner, or venue.

a) Preparation for the field trip

b) Field trip

c) Classroom discussion and applied activity

9. Production and emplacement

Public discussion about translation proposals culminates in a vote by stakeholders and production of signs by the City of New Haven

a) Registered online and in-person voting

b) Student field trip to New Haven Department of Transportation, Traffic and Parking

c) Ongoing curation of visual/narrative sign collection foregrounding discussion around translation

…as a pervasive linguistic phenomenon characterizing LL objects & processes

...as a lens with which to approach the cultural and historical lives of cities

…as a resurgent constellation of L2 learning approaches and practices

…as transdisciplinarity in practice (AppLx [SLA], Spatial & multi-literacies, SLx of Globalization, etc.)

...as...

Translation…joining LL & L2 teaching

Rewriting the classroom and the city

Translation and linguistic landscape for second language

and literacy development

Princeton University20 April 2017

David MalinowskiYale Center for Language Studydavid.malinowski@yale.edu