MacDonald, Malcolm N. (2020) Editorial [in Language and Intercultural Communication]. Language and Intercultural Communication, 20 (6). pp. 507-512. doi:10.1080/14708477.2020.1840013

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Abstract

While shuffling the papers for this concluding issue of Volume 20, I have been struck by the prominence of the concepts of ‘translanguaging’, ‘transculturation’ and ‘translation’, which link together the four papers in the first half of this issue.

The first two of these concepts still appear relatively fresh within the discourse of intercultural studies. A cursory search of our publisher’s database suggests that the concepts of ‘transculturation’ and ‘transculturality’ were first introduced in the special issue of the journal guest edited by Tony Young and Peter Sercombe on Communication, Discourses and Interculturality (2010); and perhaps more surprisingly the first mention of ‘translanguaging’ in LAIC appears not to have taken place until 2013 (Shohamy, 2013). However, if these terms have only been incorporated quite recently in the discourse of intercultural studies, they have in fact been around for far longer. It is becoming increasingly widely known now that the term ‘translanguaging’ is an anglicisation of ‘trawsieithu’, a term which emerged during the 1980s to describe the intermingling of Welsh and English language within schools in North Wales, originally being being used by Cen Williams (1994) to describe the mixing of Welsh and English during a professional training course for deputy head teachers in Llandudno. The origins of ‘transculturation’ are even more complex. At a moment when ‘decolonising’ and ‘decolonisation’ are all the rage (e.g. Phipps, 2019), the term ‘transculturation’ seems to have in a fact been generated by the subaltern to challenge the hegemonic monoculturalism of the colonial power. ‘Transculturation’, or more appositely transculturación, was popularised as far back as 1940 by the Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz to describe the devastating cultural impact of Spanish colonialism on Cuba's indigenous peoples (1995). And the idea can be traced even further back to the theory and practice of translation practised by the Cuban writer and revolutionary José Martí the end of the nineteenth century, according to Laura Lomas, whose ‘theory and practice … transferring texts from a dominant to an imperial-turned-minority language …  generatively open concepts of the nation, of race, and of transnational formations such as diaspora to redefine them in terms of ethnic and linguistic heterogeneity’ (2011, p. 26).

Item Type:	Journal Item
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Centre for Applied Linguistics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Translating and interpreting -- Social aspects, Intercultural communication , Language and culture , Cross-cultural studies
Journal or Publication Title:	Language and Intercultural Communication
Publisher:	Routledge
ISSN:	1470-8477
Official Date:	11 November 2020
Dates:	Date Event 11 November 2020 Published 16 October 2020 Accepted
Volume:	20
Number:	6
Page Range:	pp. 507-512
DOI:	10.1080/14708477.2020.1840013
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights):	“This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Language and Intercultural Communication on 20/11/2020, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14708477.2020.1840013
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access
Description:	Free access
Date of first compliant deposit:	29 January 2021
Date of first compliant Open Access:	20 May 2022

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