While translation is often assumed to be the transformation of words from one language to another, this lecture and workshop will consider definitions of translation broadly, including transforming information across languages, contexts, and audiences. The translation is defined here as an academic, community, and pedagogical practice that pushes communicators to adapt their thoughts and ideas to meet the needs and expectations of various audiences and rhetorical situations. Translation can encompass multiple activities, including researching different topics, learning about cultural preferences and ideologies, and collaborating with various stakeholders to make rhetorical decisions about how to adapt language.

Dr. Laura Gonzales is a community-engaged researcher, teacher, and practitioner who highlights the value of language diversity in community, classroom, and industry contexts. She is the author of Sites of Translation: What Multilinguals Can Teach Us About Digital Writing and Rhetoric (the University of Michigan Press, 2018), which won the 2020 CCCC Advancement of Knowledge Award and the 2016 Digital Rhetoric Collaborative Book Prize, Designing Multilingual Experiences in Technical Communication (Utah State University Press, 2022), and the co-editor of Latina Leadership: Language and Literacy Education Across Communities, which won the 2023 CCCC Outstanding Book Award. Dr. Gonzales is the Vice President of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW) and the editor of Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric.

Agenda

11:00 — 12:30

Translation as a Framework for Designing Inclusive Programs and Curricula

In this presentation, Gonzales will argue that multilingual students, through their experiences with translation, have important strengths and experiences that should be centralized in the development of all writing programs. Drawing on ethnographic research with multilingual communicators, Gonzales will demonstrate how the work of multilingual communities, such as translating, collaborating, and advocating, can inform pedagogies (in both writing courses and beyond) focused on social justice. Since multilingual communities are in the practice of making information accessible to various audiences, multilingual frameworks for rhetorically navigating communication can be useful avenues for teaching within and beyond the University. Centralizing translation as a tool for making information accessible and engaging in conversations about how meaning is negotiated across contexts can be useful to faculty and students across fields and disciplines, including the sciences and humanities.

14:00 — 15:30

Translating Assignment Sheets to Engage in Rhetorical Negotiation

In this interactive workshop, attendees will apply translation frameworks and strategies, such as collaboration and negotiation, to the design and interpretation of writing assignment sheets. Using translation as a framework to understand how students interpret writing tasks can help writing instructors to better understand how the language we use to describe writing tasks can have multiple different interpretations. By centralizing translation as a regular classroom practice for all students, writing instructors can both make their classrooms more accessible for multilingual students and encourage all students to ask important questions about how writing-related concepts can take on different meanings based on rhetorical situations.

Free!

Registration