TRANSLATION Bringing global voices into schools
What do climate justice, anti-racism, language learning and translation all have in common? Maybe to most people, not much. But to me – they're all linked by empathy. Empathy with people beyond our immediate world. And the vehicle that gets us there: storytelling, reading, and listening.
I'm a translator and have been for over 20 years. But I'm unusual in that I've also been a language teacher all that time – fluctuating between one and the other as contracts come and go. In recent years, with Brexit, the rise of immigrant scapegoating, and the shocking racist violence in the UK this summer, I've felt an urgent need to bring these threads together, and combine these roles by bringing translation, and translated books, into schools. To go beyond my role of translating stories from beyond our borders, and to ferry these stories a step closer to their readers, by running workshops and giving assemblies in schools advocating for international reading and reading in translation.
I tend to call it "global reading" in the sense of reading our way around the world, but I'm conscious that in an education context "global reading" means something else. Globally inclusive reading, perhaps. What I mean by it – and what we advocate at World Kid Lit and other organisations like Outside In World and Global Literature In Libraries – is an approach to buying books, to designing curricula, and to choosing what stories to read together at the end of the day that asks: how are we bringing the world into our children's lives? How is the diversity of the world as a whole, of the global majority, being reflected in our children's experiences? What opportunities are our children getting to experience the universality of values, of feelings, of aspirations the world over?
It's with all this buzzing in my mind that I stood before about 200 eager junior school children on Tuesday, sharing with them the reasons why I learn languages, why I translate, and why I read stories from around the world. As always I begin – before saying anything about myself – with hellos in Arabic, in Ukrainian, in Māori, (in whatever comes into my head when I launch nervously into my public speaker mode!), and asking them what languages they speak at home and in the classroom or in the playground?
Like so many linguists, I welcomed the move a few years ago to bring second language teaching into primary schools, but it saddens me that so often it is French without any context or rationale. The reasoning tends to be pragmatic – more teachers can rustle up some French than anything else, because it's most likely the language they were taught at school. But the enthusiastic responses I always get asking children what languages they live with and share with their family here and abroad always reminds me why I go into schools: to carve out a space, no matter how small and rare, where all languages and identities are valued. Where children bring that very personal and sometimes confusing part of themselves into a celebratory space, rather than always having to leave it at the door when they step into the monolingual classroom.
And to me it is no wonder that interest in language learning wanes in secondary education, when languages are packaged as "MFL" – foreign languages, functional only for some hypothetical future transaction when we might or might not – probably not, in most cases – visit some barely imaginable foreign country. Instead, we should be celebrating and finding ways to encourage pupils to explore their own – and their peers' – living languages. Home languages. Here and now languages. And to see them not as some transactional, communicative tool at some unlikely point in their future life, but as a tool for creativity right now, as a route into storytelling, as a code to break and a way to decode songs, poems, stories. For young people to see themselves as translators and as multi-lingual, multi-talented and culturally inclusive creative writers.
It's not practical, I know, for any primary teacher to impart meaningful learning experiences of the multiple languages spoken in every classroom (around 19% of primary school pupils speak another language besides English). But the stories we bring into the classroom and the ways that we talk about books' and stories' routes across the world to reach us, can create a positive space for pupils to reflect on their own languages as a key to sharing culture as well as a personal asset. As a spark for storytelling. A superpower to connect to others and their stories.
I often start my assembly with a map of the world, hinting that we're going on a world journey in the next 20 minutes. Then I show a slide with Miffy, Lego and Pokemon, and I ask the children what they think these things have in common. They're fun. They're for kids. They're for playing with. They're in books. And films! And with a bit of prompting – and a reminder of what I'm here to talk about and the map we just looked at – we hit upon the core message of these assemblies: that so many of the stories we treasure come to us from other countries and other languages, and it's thanks to translators and people working across languages that we have them here in English and in the UK, too. And all too often we don't even realise because we are so focused on US and UK cultural output, and assume that all the books we read are probably written by someone who speaks English like we do.
My talks always end with talking about languages as a superpower. If you speak or read or understand another language – what can you do? As with all the questions I put to the children, dozens of hands go up. Dozens of ideas. Listen to songs. Read things that other people can't! Travel to other places. Make friends. And we can do so many of those things without leaving home, in the outward-looking and inclusive embrace of school. We can welcome newcomers to our community. We can travel the world through books and stories. I hope the children come away with a feeling that we can all be translators: we can all help connect those voices and stories that we need to hear in a globalised world, where our fates are interlinked. We share a global environment: the action we take here in Europe impacts others on the other side of the planet. And we share a cultural environment too, with our culture being enriched by the stories and perspectives that reach the UK from around the world.
Besides translating, besides teaching Arabic in schools, I work for a non-profit organisation called World Kid Lit. We're just about to start applying for funding to begin a new programme of bringing global stories – books from every continent of the world – into primary schools, together with assemblies and workshops about what translation is, how stories travel, and how we can travel through stories.
If you're a translator, or a poet, writer or illustrator with an interest in any of the topics mentioned here, and with some knowledge of another language besides English, please get in touch and register your interest in becoming a World Kid Lit school speaker.
Thanks for reading. And happy reading wherever you travel by book.
* Header illustration: credit World Kid Lit
* Other image: credit Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp
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Thank you for sharing so much good and useful information. jacksmith
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