Multilingualism, translanguaging and transknowledging: Translation technology in EMI higher education

Kathleen Heugh, Mei French, Vandana Arya, Min Pham, Vincenza Tudini, Necia Billinghurst, Neil Tippett, Li-Ching Chang, Julie NicholsJeanne-Marie Viljoen

Abstract

Key findings, analysis and recommendations that have emerged from a research project, ‘Using Human Language Technology to enhance academic integrity, inclusivity, knowledge exchange, student diversity and retention’ at the University of South Australia conducted in 2019 are discussed in this article. The primary purpose of the project was to address some of the challenges and opportunities afforded by increasing student and teacher diversity at a predominantly English-medium Australian university through newly enhanced human language translation technology (HLT) also known as machine translation (MT). This technology is frequently used for the translation of human language, and it falls under the umbrella of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. From the institution’s perspective, key aims of the project were to contribute to the university’s Digital Learning Strategy priorities and core values embedded in a structural transformation of the university. These include integrity, accountability, diversity, social justice, engagement and collaboration. The researchers’ objectives focussed on multilingual pedagogies using HLT to support knowledge exchange (transknowledging), and translanguaging for all students. These disrupt inequitable hierarchies, and position bi-/multilingual students as valuable resources for monolingual staff and students.

Keywords:
Publication history
Table of contents

Over the last decade, a troubling positioning of the linguistic expertise of multilingual international and domestic students in English medium higher education in Australia has prompted a longitudinal series of small-scale reflexive classroom-based studies. These explore the relationship between students’ multilingual capabilities, the academic English required for successful completions, and students’ agency and wellbeing. At first it seemed that this was primarily a matter of linguistic diversity and language repertoire; however, it soon became clear that it related to what lay beneath language, and that the ways of knowing (epistemology), being (including wellbeing) and believing (including worldviews) are often obscured in conventional approaches to university teaching and learning. This is particularly within education systems built upon a belief that western/northern knowledge systems are those that carry most value, and that languages from Europe, particularly English, best serve all students. We found during this sequence of studies that the use of translation and knowledge exchange are two key cognitive and linguistic processes that increase students’ academic proficiency in their home language and English. More than this, they were consistently connected to students’ sense of identity as valuable carriers of knowledge that could enrich their own learning and that of their peers in higher education (Heugh, Li, & Song, 2017; Li et al., 2016).

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