Category Archives: Multilingualism

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Linguistic (in)justice, global migration and social work

Dr. Kristina Gustafsson, Associate professor and senior lecturer in Social Work, Linnaeus University, Sweden

A social worker and a recently arrived young mother from Syria meet at a social services office in Sweden. An interpreter is there to facilitate communication. The school principal had reported concerns about the
wellbeing of the mother’s daughter to the social services. This situation had become rather frequent in Sweden when, in February 2022, social events evidenced a collapse in confidence between social child
care and protection services and families with migration experiences. Parents shared their desperation in public demonstrations about their children being targets for forced legal restraints, international organizations directed threats towards Swedish social services, spreading disinformation about how these
authorities kidnapped migrant children and sold them as slaves to pedophiles. How do we look at these events? My presentation will use a linguistic justice framework to discuss the intersections among (1) social work as multilingual work; (2) the monolingual national framework and legacy of the Nordic
countries, and (3) the increase of multilingual clients in social work due to global migration. Power asymmetries within social work will be revealed and exclusion and oppression as well as inclusion and emancipatory practices will be highlighted. An emphasis will be placed on the need for linguistic
awareness and for developing multilingual competences at all levels of social work, including education, policies, practices, and research.

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Artificial Intelligence at the service of inclusive language policies: the case of the E- MIMIC Project

Rachele Raus & Tania Cerquitelli

University of Bologna & Politecnico of Torino, Italy

Panel: Language as a means of inclusion in educational and institutional settings

Chair: Maria Margherita Mattioda, Università di Torino, Italy

It is well known how artificial intelligence (AI) learning from big data can contribute to the reiteration of gender bias and forms of exclusion due to the dissemination of stereotyped discourses on minorities, such as migrants and disabled people (Bartoletti 2021, Marzi 2021, Savoldi et alii 2021). The Empowering Multilingual Inclusive comMunICation (E-MIMIC) project led by the Polytechnic of Turin and the University of Bologna, in partnership with the Jean Monnet Centre of excellence Artificial Intelligence for European Integration, aims to promote inclusive communication in real- world scenarios by eliminating non-inclusive language forms in administrative texts written in European countries, starting with those written in Italian and French. The application uses AI algorithms to identify non-inclusive text segments and propose inclusive reformulations. The project starts from the assumption that supervising machine learning through linguistic and discourse criteria can contribute to achieving better quality results. The methodology proposed to identify these criteria rests on the principles of discourse analysis “à la Français” (Dufour, Rosier 2012: 5). In this sense, an attempt is made not to reiterate the non-inclusive ideology present in current discourses (in France and Italy). The application highlights inappropriate segments or words, thus contributing to spreading awareness of discrimination and non-inclusion in language. Moreover, the application suggests possible reformulations, so that the user can choose from the proposed solutions. The AI exploited by the application thus becomes an element in support of linguistic policies that aim at the development of metalinguistic awareness capable of counteracting the circulation of erroneous discursive and linguistic frames, also in the perspective of an eco-critical analysis of discourse (Stibbe 2014). The first tests carried out on the application are encouraging and allow us to extend its implementation to other European languages in addition to Italian and French, taking into account the diatopic variants of the languages analysed.

References

Bartoletti, I. (2021). An Artificial Revolution. On Power, Politics and AI. Edimbourg: Indigo.

Dufour, F., Rosier, L. (2012), Héritages et reconfigurations conceptuelles de l’analyse du discours ‘à la française’ : perte ou profit ?. Langage et Société, 140, 5-13.

Marzi, E. (2021). La traduction automatique neuronale et les biais de genre : le cas des noms de métiers entre l’italien et le français. Synergies Italie, 17, 19-36. http://gerflint.fr/Base/Italie17/marzi.pdf.

Savoldi, B., Gaido, M., Bentivoglio, L., Negri, M., Turchi, M. (2021). Gender Bias in Machine Translation, Transactionsof the Association for Computational Linguistics, 9, 845-874.

Stibbe, A. (2014). An ecolinguistic approach to critical discourse studies. Critical discourse studies, January 2014, DOI: 10.1080/17405904.2013.845789.

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Promoting multilingualism and inclusiveness in educational settings in the age of AI

Alessandra Molino, Ilaria Cennamo, Lucia Cinato, Marita Mattioda

Università di Torino, Italy

Panel: Language as a means of inclusion in educational and institutional settings

Chair: Maria Margherita Mattioda, Università di Torino, Italy

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems for natural language processing, which increasingly permeate people’s daily life, offer undeniable advantages in terms of speed and efficiency, but also raise social and ethical questions about how AI may undermine socio-cultural and linguistic equality. This paper presents the activities of the panel “Linguistic rights and language varieties in Europe in the age of artificial intelligence”, discussing the role of education in helping new generations recognize and challenge practices that may affect linguistic, social, and gender inclusiveness.

We report on initiatives within the panel aiming at raising awareness among university students, in particular foreign language learners, of the socio-cultural and linguistic implications of neural machine translation (NMT). NMT software such as Google Translate, DeepL, or Reverso is in large use among current, digital native students (Jiménez-Crespo 2017), who may not be fully aware of the risks of such digital resources for the development of their language skills and translation competence, as well as for broader social issues. Through theoretical discussions and translation-related activities, students were encouraged to reflect on the massive presence of certain languages online and the lack

of visibility of others, a situation that may have a negative impact on inclusive access to digital technologies (Ranathunga et al. 2021), multilingualism and, ultimately, the fundamental goal of European integration. The uncritical use of NMT systems may also lead to a progressive phenomenon of language flattening at the levels of register and sociolects, thus affecting the preservation of linguistic diversity. Finally, students were also made aware that current NMT systems are still far from guaranteeing adequate treatment of gendered language (Attanasio et al. 2021). The widespread inability of generating gender-inclusive content may reinforce stereotypes and inequalities.

Preliminary results of the impact of our pedagogic activities will be presented in this paper, making special reference to the initiatives conducted at the University of Turin (Italy).

References

Attanasio, G. & al. (2021). E-MIMIC: Empowering Multilingual Inclusive Communication. 2021 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data), 2021, 4227-4234, doi: 10.1109/BigData52589.2021.9671868.

Humbley, J., Raus, R., Silletti, A., Zollo, D. (eds) (forthcoming), Multilinguisme et variétés linguistiques en Europe à l’aune de l’intelligence artificielle. De Europa, Special Issue 2022. http://www.deeuropa.unito.it.

Jiménez-Crespo, M. (2017). The role of translation technologies in Spanish language learning. Journal of Spanish Language Teaching, 4, 181-193.

Ranathunga, S., Lee, E.A., Skenduli, M.P., Shekhar, R., Alam, M., & Kaur, R. (2021). Neural Machine Translation for Low-Resource Languages: A Survey. ArXiv, abs/2106.15115.

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The UNITA project on Intercomprehension: inclusive multilingualism in educational settings

Sandra Garbarino

UNITA, Universitas Montium, EU

Panel: Language as a means of inclusion in educational and institutional settings

Chair: Maria Margherita Mattioda, Università di Torino, Italy

In order to be inclusive, multilingual language education must embrace all the levels of the vertical curriculum, also – and above all – the highest one: that of the university and its actors.

Training current and future protagonists of the research world in multilingual communication through intercomprehension (IC) also means allowing for and encouraging a more complete and holistic dialogue between disciplines, in a perspective that considers diversity not only a controversial issue but an epistemological, political and ontological principle (Castellotti et al., 2016: 49). Disciplines often convey complex knowledge through specific terminology, which is sometimes difficult to translate into other languages even when they come from the same Latin matrix. The IC approach will enrich disciplinary understanding and communication.

Within the UNITA alliance, the benefits of an IC approach are already beginning to emerge after a year of experimentation, in both quantitative and qualitative terms. The preliminary results tell us that, to date, several syllabi have already been implemented for the IC training of students at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature and Modern Cultures; of students who are about to participate in the Erasmus exchange programme; of language teachers who are training in IC teaching; and of content teachers who welcome foreign students into their classrooms. 

This paper will illustrate initial qualitative results obtained within the project, stressing the inclusive value of the activities, which fostered the enhancement of personal linguistic profiles and the creation of a global and international communicative environment.

References:

Bonvino, E., Jamet, M.C. (2016). Intercomprensione: lingue, processi e percorsi, Venezia : Edizioni Ca’ Foscari.

Capucho, F. (2012). L’Intercompréhension – un nouvel atout dans le monde professionnel [online]. Degache, Ch., Garbarino, S. (éds.) Intercompréhension: compétences plurielles, corpus, intégration, Actes du colloque IC2012 (Grenoble, 21-23 juin 2012). http://ic2012.u-grenoble3.fr/OpenConf/papers/67.pdf (2013-11-11).

Carrasco Perea, E.,  De Carlo, M. (2019).  «¿Cómo implementar una educación plurilingüe y evaluarla? El ejemplo de la Intercomprensión». Lenguaje y Textos, 50 (28 diciembre 2019), 75–85. https://doi.org/10.4995/lyt.2019.12004.

Garbarino, S. (2019). Sviluppare competenze in intercomprensione di livello avanzato. Il contributo dei descrittori del REFIC. EL.LE, 1, Vol. 8/2019.

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Linguistic justice in the justice sector: Legal multilingualism management in Canada during COVID-19

María Sierra Córdoba Serrano

In a multilingual – but officially bilingual – country like Canada, translation (understood broadly) has often been conceptualized as a cultural-linguistic value. However, I have argued elsewhere for the need to move away from a model of multilingualism management that is primarily predicated on identity arguments and toward a broader framework based on the idea of access and human rights, a minimum threshold that, once defined, would apply to any language group. The state would develop a policy framework that guarantees accommodations for all language groups beyond official languages in well-defined “high-risk” situations in which fundamental human rights could be compromised (i.e., when accessing justice, healthcare, or education).

Building on the idea of “risk” and the fact that crisis settings can be placed at the high end of the spectrum of high-risk situations, I will focus on legal multilingualism management during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, and I will analyze the existing translation policies and practices within the Abitibi judicial district of Quebec.

The impact of the pandemic on access to justice in Canada has been disproportionate, affecting certain segments of the population more than others, especially marginalized individuals, including speakers of official and non-official minority languages (Action Committee, 2021, online). Adopting a top-down approach, I will begin by analyzing relevant language policy instruments to determine if they contemplate emergency situations, and then move to other documents related to the courts’ emergency preparedness planning to see whether language needs are contemplated. Through interviews with key stakeholders, I will then analyze the language management practices within the district in question.

Ultimately, I want to illustrate how lessons learned from managing legal multilingualism in crisis settings in Canada can inform the development of a policy framework and best practices for the provision of language access services in high-risk situations beyond crises.

Keywords: legal multilingualism management, Canada, crisis translation.

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Multilingualism and the role of translation and interpreting in Kosovo (1999-2021)

Arben Shala

Translation has been widely used as an intermedium to implement and promote linguistic policies in Kosovo throughout the period of international administration and the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government in Kosovo (PISG) (1999–2008), as well as in the years after Kosovo’s declaration of independence (2008). The presentation discusses translation and interpreting activity in Kosovo in terms of the legal framework governing multilingualism in administration and legal proceedings, the difficulties and challenges inherent in implementing linguistic rights, and the impact of multilingualism on fostering trust in administration, particularly in the security sector.
Kosovo’s population, which was largely bilingual or even trilingual in the 1970s (Vickers, 1998, p. 171), is now almost monolingual; as a result, the language gap between Albanians, the Serbian minority, and other ethnic groups has continuously increased, while English has become the dominant ethnically neutral medium of communication. Thus, translation and interpreting contribute to the alleviation of ethnic tensions and the development of trust in local institutions. The latter encountered quality challenges, partly as a result of international organisations absorbing all skilled interpreters and translators, and partly due to a lack of translators and interpreters with experience in legal texts and terminology. Following the reduction in size and revision of the mandates of the missions (UNMIK and EULEX), the local government and judiciary institutions have steadily increased their language staffing.
The analysis of documents revealed that despite repeated funding and staffing constraints, recommendations made by experts from international and independent organisations and institutions (OSCE, IOM, OIK, etc.) have been appropriately addressed or have been or are currently being implemented at the local and central levels. Substantial efforts, however, are required to implement multilingualism, particularly in monoethnic municipalities (with either an Albanian or Serbian majority), to improve the quality of translations and to increase the number of translators and interpreters.

Keywords: multilingualism, linguistic rights, translation quality, trust, neutral language.

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Providing information to refugees through digital technologies: opportunities and challenges 

July De Wilde

Digital technologies in general, and mobile phones in particular, have become essential tools for accessing information and resources during transit journeys and processes of refugee (re)settlement. Parallelly, organisations working with refugees in host societies increasingly use digital tools to provide effective and efficient information.

The wider study of this presentation evaluates the use and effectiveness of fedasilinfo.be. The website, managed by the Belgian reception authorities, aims to provide seekers of international protection (IP) and service providers involved in their reception, with relevant and reliable information on 8 central themes in 14 different languages. For the evaluation of the website, we used a mixed-methods approach and collected three different datasets: (1) an online survey amongst 174 collaborators, (2) interviews with 31 refugees and (3) screen capture recordings (N=26) users while searching for information about their asylum procedure.

This presentation focuses on the varying challenges that exist for persons who do not have (full) access to the provided information and are therefore potentially more vulnerable. Members of small(er) language groups are excluded from the information because their language is not available, others are being erroneously assimilated to speakers of regional variants and therefore lack information. For some languages, only written text is available, while other seekers of IP can access information through both text and audio. Likewise, low levels of digital literacy hinder the abilities of some seekers of IP to manage the provided information efficiently.

Our discussion shows that the development of a multilingual website, praiseworthy as the initiative may be, also urges a range of questions about (i) digital literacy practices, (ii) the different values ascribed to language (variants), (iii) the practical challenges that are involved in providing information in ways that aim for rationality of decision, fairness, or equality and (iv) language rights.

Keywords: digital communication, refugees, access, multilingual website.

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The EU Master’s Degree Network in Translation and Lesser Used Languages. A step forward in the recognition of linguistic rights

Carmen Valero-Garcés

Universidad de Alcalá, FITISPos UAH

Multilingualism is a foundational part of the EU. Nevertheless, it is a ‘mutilated’ multilingualism as it is restricted by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (1998), which explicitly states that «regional or minority languages» refer to languages that are traditionally used in each territory of a State by the nationals of that State, and «[…] does not include […] the languages of migrants». And yet, it is currently impossible to speak of multilingualism in the EU without considering the lesser-used languages (also called ‘minority languages,’ ‘languages of migration,’ or ‘languages of lesser diffusion’ (LLD, from here onwards). 23 million people (5.1 %) of the 447.3 million people living in the EU on 1 January 2020 were non-EU citizens (Eurostat Statistics Explained 2021). Addressing the great variety of languages and cultures that are used in our cities requires rethinking current language policies and placing more emphasis on social justice and human rights (Monzó-Nebot & Wallace 2020).  Incorporating translation and interpreting in LLD as an element of debate at the intersection between inclusion policies and language policies is a step forward. The EU DGT EMT network could be a starting point. The aim of my proposal is to present the results of research carried out by the PSIT Working Group of the EMT network (PSIT WG). The project’s main aim was, first, to ascertain which LLD the EMT MA students know, then, to analyse their language skills and how and where students use the LLD they knew to train them as future liaisons in LLD between institutions and users, instead of resorting to family or friends without training or quality guarantees (Foulquié-Rubio et al 2018, López 2021, Valero-Garcés 2021). The project was based on a mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology. Data were obtained through surveys and open-ended questions. Preliminary results indicate a considerable percentage of students with non-EU family backgrounds who know LLD, who could be trained in these languages as bridges of communication, thus guaranteeing the linguistic rights of those newly arrived who do not know the language of communication.  

Bibliographic references  

Eurostat Statistics Explained 2021 In: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Migration_and_migrant_population_statistics #Eurostat #StatisticsExplained 

Foulquié-Rubio, Anna et al. (eds.) (2018). Panorama de la traducción y la interpretación en los servicios públicos españoles: una década de cambios, retos y oportunidades. Granada: Comares. 

López, David (2021). Inmigración. Cuestión de justicia social. Una triste realidad. The Economy Journal, October, 25, 2021. <https://www.theeconomyjournal.com/texto-diario/mostrar/591609/inmigracion-cuestion-justicia-social-triste-realidad>. 

Monzó-Nebot, Esther & Wallace, Melisa. (2020). New societies, new values, new demands. Mapping non-professional interpreting and translation, remapping translation and interpreting ethics. Translation and Interpreting Studies 15:1, 2020, pp. 1–14 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.00046.int. 

Valero-Garcés, Carmen. (2021). A place for the human factor in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a way of introduction. FITISPos IJ, Vol8, 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.37536/FITISPos-IJ.2021.8.1.289 

Keywords: language policies, inclusion policies, EMT network, translation and interpreting. 

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Making multilingualism work in the European Union: Analysing a parallel corpus of waste management regulations

Tereza Afonso

The European Union (EU) is a supranational and intergovernmental organization that develops policies and enacts legislation for 27 Member States. Since its inception, which dates back to the 1950s, multilingualism has reflected the EU’s unique approach to fostering cultural and linguistic acceptance while pursuing common economic, political, and social objectives. Equality of all 24 official languages and respect for linguistic diversity—embodied in the motto «United in Diversity»—it’s proven to be a compromise between the idyllic and the pragmatic. To ensure the smooth functioning of EU institutions, procedural languages are reduced to English, followed by French and, to a lesser degree, by German. In this context, translation is key to facilitating communication, easing interinstitutional negotiations, unveiling interdependencies, and contributing to the reconciliation of multiple legal cultures. Known as Eurolects, foreignizing varieties of national legal languages have emerged. Despite the set-up of a Eurolect Observatory and other relevant research activities, according to our knowledge, there are no studies concerning the EU variant of Portuguese. Considering English and French Eurolects as source languages and bearing in mind the EU role in the introduction of new concepts and distinctive terminology, we have compiled a parallel corpus composed of 78 regulations drawn up between 1993-2019 in the domain of waste management. Regulations are directly applicable and binding in their entirety upon all Member States, natural and legal persons. Environmental law is a dynamic, multidisciplinary, young branch of law, which aims to tackle present-day problems. Based on a five-step hierarchy, waste management promotes waste prevention, reuse, recycling, recovery, and disposal. This sets the starting point for describing the pragmatic, semantic, and lexico-grammatical characteristics of eventive specialized phraseological units (SPU) in waste management regulations translated from the main working languages into Portuguese, and studying the phenomena derived from the contact of language systems at the supranational level.

Keywords: European Union, Regulations, Eurolects, Waste Management, Eventive SPUs, English, French, Portuguese.

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Towards a multilingual modus operandi in the EU

Alice Leal

Associate Professor of Translation and Interpreting Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg

Multilingualism is one of the pillars of the European Union, enshrined – however precariously – in its treaties and indirectly celebrated in its motto, “united in diversity”. Its 24 official and working languages enjoy the same status, at least de jure, and so do all language versions of any given text (authentication of translations). 

Yet multilingualism no longer has its own portfolio in the Commission, having been systematically downgraded and now being under the auspices of the Directorate-General for Translation, a directorate which nevertheless does not have a unit dedicated to the fostering – or the very least the monitoring – of linguistic diversity in the EU. Moreover, with the rise of English as the EU’s unofficial lingua franca, increasingly more material is produced in English and not translated at all, and the vast majority of the legally binding documents that do get translated into all official languages are drafted in English – a fact that often goes unnoticed due to the authentication of language versions.

Therefore, we should ask ourselves whether the EU’s de facto linguistic and translation regimes are not at odds with the treaties – including the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Drawing together transdisciplinary threads from translation studies, linguistics, political science and philosophy of language, this paper places emphasis on models of linguistic justice (e.g. Grin, Van Parijs), language rights (e.g. Shohamy, Skutnabb-Kangas) and language policy (e.g. Johnson, Ricento) to propose a new linguistic modus operandi for the EU, grounded on (1) a renewed appreciation of language and linguistic diversity, (2) an increased translation output and a more transparent translation regime, and (3) de facto multilingualism through intercomprehension, translation and interpreting. It reflects and expands the findings recently published in English and translation in the European Union: Unity and multiplicity in the wake of Brexit (2021, Routledge).

Keywords: multilingualism, translation, English as a lingua franca, intercomprehension.