What is TRANSLANGUAGING and 9 compelling reasons why it is important

In the present age of globalisation, where a multitude of media sources are readily accessible, languages and dialects that were once perceived as foreign and distant have become increasingly prevalent.

Consider, for instance, the widespread popularity of the Korean drama “Squid Game”. A mere exposure to this show entails around 12 hours of passive language immersion in Korean. This means that even if we inhabit a locale where Korean speakers are rare, we can still acquire some knowledge of the Korean language.

On the other hand, we might also argue that we use social media exclusively in English. Yet, it’s intriguing to note that we might have unknowingly exposed ourselves to a plethora of English language varieties. Such is the norm, that we may be more bilingual than we have previously surmised. 

As Professor Antonella Sorace, Founder of Bilingualism Matters and Professor of Developmental Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, says it: “Everyone speaks another language!”.  Let’s ask ourselves: are our learners also somewhat bilingual or multilingual?

Making a difference in language education, one sip at a time. Support my work with a coffee?

3. Our learners and our tendency to carve out TRANSLANGUAGING spaces is stronger than we think.

With an abundant supply of linguistic resources in many societies today, even in traditional places perceived to be highly monolingual, there are subtle changes to the ways we could be using language. Arguably, those practices were present even when we were “monolinguals” (if that is ever a valid statement), and become more prominent when the bilingual space is enlarged. We have a large space of experimentation. We could play more with languages and engage in more practices such as code-switching, translation and borrowing.

If we were to place a child in a playroom, where there are a wide range of toys, from cuddly soft toys to generous supply of Lego building blocks, from Disney and Nickelodeon character figurines to different textures and sizes of bouncing balls, we would observe that the child would harness the use of the various kinds of resources he or she can to attain his/her personal definition of fun. No doubt there would be the toys the child may tend to use more due to natural inclination and familiarity, there would also be the ones that the child would experiment with and be enchanted with due to the novelty.

This is somewhat the natural tendency of bilinguals, to use TRANSLANGUAGING. We can observe our language learners closely, especially second language learners who might have two or more languages in their repertoire. We probably would not be too surprised that they would engage in TRANSLANGUAGING, in abundance or in defiance (in response to our classroom language policy).  

4. What is TRANSLANGUAGING? It first emerged as an educational concept in the classroom and evolved to be recognised as our daily bilingual / multilingual experience.

The origin of the term “TRANSLANGUAGING” is generally traced back to a pedagogical approach of language education in Wales, which allow students to use one language to receive input and another to produce output (e.g. reading in English and writing in Welsh).

This approach was conceived by Cen Williams, where the original term is “trawsieithu” and was translated to TRANSLANGUAGING by Colin Baker, Emeritus Professor of Education at Bangor University, author of the widely cited and read book on bilingualism and bilingual education. The key purpose of the approach is to enable engagement of the content through both languages systematically, to develop deeper understanding of the subject matter as well as reinforcement of literacy practices of the bilingual students in both target languages.

Beyond the original inception, the concept of TRANSLANGUAGING has been expanded beyond the classrooms to denote actual dynamic language practices of bilinguals. This has been widely popularised by academics such as Ofelia García (Professor Emerita, City University of New York) and Li Wei (Professor of Applied Linguistics, University College of London – Institute of Education) in various publications since 2009.

To them, TRANSLANGUAGING refers to “new language practices” of bilinguals (whether emergent or mature) “that make visible the complexity of language exchanges among people with different histories, and releases histories and understandings that had been buried within fixed language identities constrained by nation-states”. To further clarify, this is what they say:

TRANSLANGUAGING differs from the notion of code-switching in that it refers not simply to a shift or a shuttle between two languages, but to the speakers’ construction and use of original and complex interrelated discursive practices that cannot be easily assigned to one or another traditional definition of a language, but that make up the speakers’ complete language repertoire.

García, O., & Li, W. (2014)

5. TRANSLANGUAGING is also a distinct concept that is different from the traditional conceptualisation of bilingualism.

Our traditional conceptualisation of bilingualism contradicts the premise where TRANSLANGUAGING takes place. We do not usually represent bilingualism as a melting pot or blended drink. For the unsuspecting individual without a background in linguistics, a bilingual person usually refers to a person who is able to speak more than one language (let’s just assume that bilingual refers to those with more than one language and not be entangled in terminology debates on multilingual, polyglots etc).

However, “speaking more than one language” is usually considered on a separate basis, in the sense of  “separate monolingualisms” where the individual is expected to use the languages in silo and each with a high level of proficiency. Essentially, the bilingual is compared to two monolinguals and expected to perform like them, essentially as two monolinguals in one person.

In some areas, people even coined the description “effectively bilingual” for this group of people, while presupposing another group which is less effective. In that sense, languages are perceived to be separate entities to be kept segregated with unseen boundaries.

For teaching and learning within formal institutions, this is also usually the practice of language and communication. Languages are generally learned in silos, some as a single subject while some may be deployed as the medium of instruction with compartmentalisation of the languages as a rule of thumb (e.g. only a single language in use at any time). That is usually the case even in systems where bilingual education is the pronounced system in place (e.g. two-way immersion).

6. Examples of TRANSLANGUAGING are classic manifestations of bilingualism.

However, as mentioned earlier, when bilinguals are observed in their natural use of languages, it is generally the case such deliberate language separation ceases to exist. Multiple languages can exist in examples such as follows:

• in the home language practices of a bilingual family, we may see parents conversing in one language while children use another between them or with their parents;
• in the internet activity of a bilingual, where one may be searching for an item in different languages to compare prices and reviews; or
• in a media programme, where the host may be speaking in one language and responding to different languages used by interviewees or switch from one language to another for humour or for demonstration of unique linguistic identities.

Li (2018) also shared vivid examples of how languages are “meshed” with creativity to coin new terms and phrases such as “smilence” (“smiling in silence” to describe how Chinese typically smile in silence during social interactions), “democrazy” (to describe how democracy has resulted in crazy manifestations of human behaviours in some parliaments where physical fighting become normative, and how certain legislation can take place, from the perspectives of Chinese) and “give you colour see see” (a literal translation of the Chinese expression of “I will teach you a lesson”). **

These examples generally depict one aspect of TRANSLANGUAGING where bilinguals deploy their language resources as a holistic repertoire to negotiate meaning and express themselves in natural settings. They are fundamentally, doing TRANSLANGUAGING, according to the scholars. In such a light, TRANSLANGUAGING involves the reframing of bilinguals’ language practices as an activity in process, one which challenges the traditional boundaries of languages as we know them.

7. TRANSLANGUAGING reinstates the identities of bilinguals and multilinguals.

To TRANSLANGUAGING scholars, named languages (languages with names such as Spanish and English) are artificially constructed by humans for a range of social and political purposes, and TRANSLANGUAGING behaviours transcend those boundaries and reinstate the organic communicative instincts of bilinguals.

Through such behaviors, the bilingual identities that are expressed are deemed to be exponentially larger than a simple addition of identities bounded by the named languages and the nation states they represent. An English-Mandarin bilingual is not just a simple linear sum of “English identity + Chinese identity”, but a whole world of possibilities that come through the interaction of the identities and cultures, that can manifest in the TRANSLANGUAGING activity depending on the degree of creativity and criticality of the bilinguals.

8. TRANSLANGUAGING challenges the traditional framing of languages.

TRANSLANGUAGING scholars also argue that the act of TRANSLANGUAGING has the potential of challenging the construct of “language”. We know that there are different definitions of language. Notwithstanding such, TRANSLANGUAGING scholars tend to reject defining language as a “simple system of structures that is independent of human actions with others” (García and Li, 2014: 8). To them, language is neither a system of structures nor a cognitive or linguistic object, but a communicative activity in progress (e.g. an “action and practice”). 

** Otheguy, García & Reid (2015) argued that traditional named languages cannot be defined linguistically, and we have discussed similar issues in another article. They went on further to suggest that the “languages” (including named languages and varieties) which linguists have been analysing and presenting are essentially “idiolects”, a term used to describe the individualised ways and forms of how language is used. **

The argument that “idiolects” are able to be recognised and be labelled as a certain language are essentially due to the preset sociocultural or sociopolitical labels (e.g. Spanish or English or Mandarin) given to them. To them, there is not anything linguistically inherent about the “idiolects” that could be thus exclusively defined as those named languages.

“Linguists couldn’t discover (and they certainly have not discovered) the features that constitute the ‘Spanish language’ or the ‘English language’, or any other language, by starting from scratch”..

Otheguy, R., García, O., & Reid, W. (2015)

Fundamentally, this is also the reason why they propose TRANSLANGUAGING to be different from code-switching.

9. TRANSLANGUAGING and code-switching are epistemologically different.

The difference of TRANSLANGUAGING in contrast to code-switching is emphasised at the epistemological level, where TRANSLANGUAGING posits that bilinguals employ a full linguistic repertoire (all available linguistic resources – some scholars even include all semiotic resources in the repertoire) when they are engaging in their communicative acts; while codeswitching still presupposes the existence of named languages or varieties in compartments; the communicative act of “code-switching” is merely a structured way of shuttling or alternating from one language system to another.

Let me frame this understanding from a different perspective for clarity: the actual observed behaviour of TRANSLANGUAGING can be very much like code-switching, and the main difference lies in the underlying cognitive processes where TRANSLANGUAGING scholars explain the behaviour as a manifestation of creatively employing resources from one complete linguistic and semiotic repertoire, whereas code-switching scholars unpacked that behavior as a structured movement between identified languages or varieties (“codes”).

Notwithstanding that, sociolinguists interested in systemic functional linguistics and code-switching may not totally agree with such a framing, as the process of languages gaining their names are much more complicated than just attributing it to artificial inventions, power struggles and linguists’ deliberation. Furthermore, to scholars of code-switching, “codes” are not necessarily limited to named languages per se, and have also included a wide variety of unnamed “codes”.

It is also important to emphasise this: while TRANSLANGUAGING as a theory has allowed a framing of language, language use and language learning to be empowering alongside new doors of possibilities, there are other scholars that have also cautioned on the over-zealous subversion of other approaches to language that may be ideologically different, including discourses on traditional named languages and code-switching. The massive amount of research based on these earlier approaches have shed light on the view of bilingualism as a resource and talent, as opposed to a deficit from monolinguals’ perspective. The concern is current efforts to negate them may be counter-productive to the understanding of bilingualism.

Nevertheless, TRANSLANGUAGING scholars do acknowledge that bilinguals are aware of the boundaries between languages in reality. We grow up learning about languages and the identities they index, as part of our socialisation process. Bilinguals are aware when those boundaries are breached, whether deliberately or subtly. 

As such, bilinguals are generally capable of performing as “monolinguals” when the contexts call for it to be so, even though that may be contradictory to the degree of freedom they may yearn to enjoy in their communicative practices.

Conclusion: TRANSLANGUAGING PEDAGOGY possible?

In this article, we elaborated on what is TRANSLANGUAGING and explained why it matters to language education. We are now operating in a world more connected than ever, and our exposure to various language and varieties have become more extensive. We also acknowledge the arguments put forward by scholars that our learners may have strong inclinations for TRANSLANGUAGING. **

That being said, we may still be wondering about how TRANSLANGUAGING may be managed in our classrooms. Should language teachers adopt TRANSLANGUAGING pedagogy for language learning? Will learners improve their language proficiency if we allow learners to use all their languages in the classroom? You can follow the next article for more insights to these critical questions.

Thank you for reading! If you like what you are reading, do subscribe to our mailing list to receive updated resources and tips for language educators. Please also feel free to provide us any feedback or suggestions on content that you would like covered.

Making a difference in language education, one sip at a time. Support my work with a coffee?