Words that don't translate: investing in decolonizing practices through translanguaging

PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARYThis article describes the pedagogical value of having students use their different languages to explain how a word in their first language can have no exact equivalent in another. In this study, English majors enrolled in a communications course in a Hong Kong university were tasked to create a YouTube video to discuss a Cantonese word that cannot be translated into English. To achieve this goal, students used Cantonese, English, Mandarin, and other multimodal resources to discuss the differences of these languages, and how they reflected cultural differences. The study showed that this task not only enabled an awareness of how language works, but also stimulated different emotions and encouraged specific practices and ideas about their identity and culture. It enabled them to rethink the privileged position of English as a colonial language and as a language of instruction. They drew on pop culture and other non-traditional sources of information to develop their ideas. By talking about their own language and culture, students were able to position themselves as knowledgeable experts who had the authority to speak confidently about their mother tongue, Cantonese, while the non-Cantonese speaking instructor became learner and listener. Thus, through this pedagogical task, the learners were able to challenge colonial ideas and representations, introduce new ways of thinking, and assert their identities as multilingual speakers. Drawing on the pedagogical framework of critical multilingual language awareness, this article demonstrates how the production of a YouTube video explaining lexical gaps can help language learners construct a translanguaging space and invest in decolonizing practices. Based on a study examining the language and literacy practices of university students in Hong Kong, it explores how English majors enrolled in a communications course created three-minute videos explaining Cantonese words that do not have equivalent terms in English. By explaining these translational gaps, learners were able to not only reflect on their languages and cultures, but also articulate a cognitive and affective awareness of the way language works. They were able to initiate translanguaging practices that displaced the privileged position of English and enabled them to resist colonial ways of knowing. Learners reframed their identities as knowledgeable experts who had the authority to speak confidently about their L1, while the non-Cantonese speaking instructor became learner and listener. By reconfiguring relations of power, learners were able to initiate and invest in decolonizing practices that asserted their identities as legitimate, multilingual speakers and enabled them to claim the right to speak.