Volume 2018, Issue 251 - Special Issue: Translation policies and minority languages, Issue Editors: María-Sierra Córdoba Serrano and Oscar Diaz Fouces

This article examines the status of translation policy as it relates to public service interfaces between the dominant Spanish-speaking sectors of society and speakers of some of the many indigenous languages of Latin America. The article focuses on Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay, and Peru is used as a case study based on recent first-hand research. Translation policy is inherently bound up with language policy, where the latter exists. However, there is variation from state to state as to whether language rights legislation has been passed, whether it is implemented through policy, and the extent to which translation policy is part of the legislative framework. The case of Peru illustrates the need for translation and interpreting (T&I) services following conflicts and painful human rights infringements. Across the board, T&I have hitherto been ad hoc practices, giving rise to translation policy de facto. Formalized T&I training initiatives and legislative processes are now underway in Peru, and may give rise to explicit translation policies evolving there and elsewhere in the region in the future.

Catalonia is well known for being a bilingual region with language policies that give full support to promoting Catalan. More recently, the number of languages spoken in Catalonia has risen significantly due to immigration flows, while immigration policies encourage all citizens living in Catalonia to be able to communicate in Catalan with the public Administration. The same immigration policies, however, also acknowledge that interpreting (or intercultural mediation) may be necessary to facilitate immigrants’ rights to access public services during the first few years they are living in Catalonia. This article analyses the relationship between a minoritized language (Catalan), a dominant language (Spanish) and a group of recently arrived languages (Standard Chinese and other Chinese varieties) from the perspective of public service interpreting. It discusses some of the results of an empirical qualitative research which included: (a) interviews with public service interpreters and intercultural mediators working with Chinese living in Catalonia, (b) interviews with managers and coordinators in charge of interpreting or mediation services, and (c) questionnaires answered by Chinese users of public services in Catalonia. This research depicts a complex reality: it not only reflects interpreters’ and managers’ biases towards Spanish or Catalan, often motivated by their place of origin or life experience, but also the challenges when dealing with linguistic variation, i.e. the variety of languages (geolects and mutually unintelligible dialects) included under the umbrella term of Chinese.

Translation can be an overt feature of public policy, typically in situations where there are status planning regulations that prescribe the use of two or more languages that then enable the development of translation infrastructure. In New World countries, one language, usually that of a former colonial power, is the de jure or de facto official language and seldom does translation feature as a national policy in its own right. Accounts for the provision of translation in a country such as Australia are to be found elsewhere. This article adopts a “looking sideways” approach to account for the provision of translation in a range of settings – healthcare, welfare, court/police, etc. In these areas, and since the introduction of multiculturalism in the mid-1970s, linguistic diversity of the Australian populace has been a component of policy formulation and the provision of translation has become a means for policy to be implemented. A national policy on languages that expressly includes translation does exist in Australia. However, it is the cross-portfolio convention of addressing language barriers in the provision of government services and beyond that accounts for translation. It is here conceptualized not so much as a cultural-linguistic value, but as a means for service delivery.

There are two types of intralingual translation in contemporary China: diachronic and synchronic. While the former involves rewriting older texts in the modern tongue, the latter involves translation between Putonghua and local/regional Chinese dialects. Two modes of intralingual translation – dubbing and subtitling – will be examined in this article, in terms of their use in TV serials produced in China since the 2000s. The evidence (largely Cantonese dramas in Guangdong) shows that the use of a control-resistance paradigm to understand the relationship between the national language and Chinese dialects is fraught with problems. The paradigm has often been used, albeit in different ways, by researchers of China’s central-local relations, scholars of dialect films, and theorists of minority language translation. However, to characterize dubbing into Chinese dialects as “resistance”, and subtitling into Putonghua as “control”, is nothing less than a simplification of sociolinguistic realities that reveals a lack of awareness of how translation mediates between the different speech varieties in a diglossic society.

In order to better understand the features and purposes of translation in multilingual states, this study looks at nineteenth-century translation policies in Belgium, a young state (founded in 1830) with liberal ambitions and a multilingual population. More specifically, it deals with the parliamentary debates on the translation into Flemish of the Bulletin des Arrêtés, Bulletin Officiel and Moniteur belge , the consecutive official journals for the publication of new legislation. Until now, language history and language policy researchers have paid too little attention to the key role played by translation and the many aspects of translation policies to consider (such as spelling, timing, translators … ), matters that go to the heart of identity issues in politics and that, consequently, aroused great emotion in some Members of Parliament (MPs).

In Japan, translation of important information for foreign residents into community languages has occurred for many years mainly at the local government level rather than the national, largely because the national government has been slow to acknowledge Japan’s increasing diversity given the enduring national belief in ethnolinguistic homogeneity. In recent years, however, this has begun to change: although the bulk of the translation activity for foreign residents still occurs at grassroots level through the agency of local government and private organizations, the national government has begun to view such residents as seikatsusha ‘people making their lives in Japan’ rather than as visitors passing through. This article examines the provision of translated multilingual information to newcomer foreign residents in Japanese communities by both local and national government in order to examine this change.

Despite the human rights principle of no discrimination, the growing numbers of imprisoned linguistic minorities around the world face multiple inequalities related to communication barriers: from cultural and social isolation to lack of equal access to facilities and services. This international survey of prison language policies shows that, in general terms, the protection of prisoners’ language rights responds to non-binding international provisions and scarce broadly-defined national ones. At the individual level, however, prison systems can be grouped according to two distinctive factors: (a) the comprehensiveness of their prison language policies, and (b) the type of policy instruments used to provide for language issues. This article describes the content and extent of language, translation and interpreting policies in forty prison systems around the world, placing a final focus on California and England and Wales, which emerge as examples of good practice that could potentially inspire other systems.

Most current language maintenance and shift research has focused on investigating immigrants’ experiences and attitudes in their host countries only. Recent research has shown that additional insights can be gained from a multi-perspective approach to language maintenance that includes “spatio-temporal” frames. Transit experiences (representing extra spaces and multiple phases) offer important information which has been overlooked in most language maintenance and shift research. Drawing on a data set of 30 semi-structured interviews with Wellington Iraqis and 13 with Iraqi refugees preparing to move to New Zealand from their transit point in Jordan, this article argues for the significance of transit experiences to language maintenance research. Analysis of the data suggests the significance of transit experiences in explaining the variations in Iraqis’ linguistic preferences and competencies and elucidates differences in language ability, use and attitude between older and younger generations. The data provides evidence for the importance of transition as a focus within language maintenance and shift study.