Exploring and Assessing Intercultural Competence

Exploring and Assessing Intercultural Competenc

Intercultural Communicative Competence: A Necessary Ability for All

In today’s world, there is a growing need to promote intercultural communicative competence (ICC) due to increasingly multilingual and multicultural societies. Moreover, more people today have contact across cultures than ever before in human history. For these reasons, ICC has become a national and international imperative and a necessary ability for all. In response, many higher education institutions seek to internationalize curricula; however, often without a coherent plan to provide intercultural education to all students. ICC is promoted primarily through study abroad programs; however, only a small percentage of students participate. Similarly, civic aid organizations in various countries promote ICC through international service programs; however, only a small percentage of their populations participate. This paper explores these activities in the United States -- with references to other countries -- and proposes a definition of ICC that includes host language ability as a fundamental component. It then considers the benefits of ICC based on data from two research projects conducted in eight countries. These studies identify attributes attained by participants in intercultural exchanges, and assess their impact on the lives of participants. The positive benefits of developing ICC are cited including their contributions toward promoting tolerance, understanding, and respect for an increasingly diverse world

Exploring and Assessing Intercultural Competence

The Federation of The Experiment in International Living (FEIL) has now completed its first international research effort – a one and a half year project designed to explore and assess the impact of intercultural experiences provided through service projects conducted as part of the Federation’s Volunteers in International Partnerships program. This research project, titled Exploring and Assessing Intercultural Competence, involved two sending and one receiving Member Organizations: Great Britain, Switzerland, and Ecuador. The project was made possible through a funding grant obtained from the Center for Social Development of the Global Service Institute at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri

Multicultural Competence: Exploring and Monitoring Its Development

Educators engaged in international, intercultural educational programs are responsible for maximizing the benefits of these experiences for participants. This requires a clear focus on the development of multicultural (or intercultural) competencies (MCC) in participants if students are to deal effectively and appropriately across cultures. This session explores the development and assessment of MCC abilities. It is based on findings from an international research effort that examined a comprehensive construct of MCC, developed a tool for its assessment, and identified intercultural outcomes in participants as well as their hosts engaged in an intercultural exchange. The session also explores the nature of multicultural competence -- definitions, characteristics, components, developmental levels, and the important role of language proficiency -- and highlights the need for intercultural educators to explicitly address, develop, and monitor MCC abilities in their participants

Enhancing the intercultural effectiveness of exchange programmes: formal and non-formal educational interventions

This paper examines how the addition of intercultural interventions carried out throughout European credit-bearing exchange programmes can enhance sojourners’ development of intercultural competencies, and it explores how both formal and non-formal pedagogical interventions may be designed and implemented. Such interventions were conducted at a Portuguese university with 31 sojourners throughout one academic year, and their impact was assessed using a mixed methods research design. Sojourners included incoming students of the exchange programmes Campus Europae and Erasmus, as well as highly skilled immigrants. Findings confirm the positive impact of interventions on the development of intercultural competencies and, in turn, their contribution to internationalisation efforts. Implications for further research suggest a need to increase interventions and to develop a systematic approach for fostering intercultural competencies throughout the study abroad cycle

Youth Service in Comparative Perspective

Youth Service in Comparative Perspectiv

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©2 20 00 06 6 Q QS SR R V Vo ol lu um me e I II I I Is ss su ue e 1 1 w ww ww w. .q qu ua al li it ta at ti iv ve es so oc ci io ol lo og gy yr re ev vi ie ew w. .o or rg g 7 7 Q Qu ua al li it ta at ti iv ve e S So oc ci io ol lo og gy y R Re ev vi ie ew w Abstract Biographical approaches are increasingly being used with people who speak and write a range of languages. Even when an account is originally spoken, the final version usually ends up written in the language used by the majority of the population. Researchers have shown that adopting a language that is not the one an account was given in may change how someone is perceived. Yet little has been written by sociologists using biographical approaches about the implications of moving accounts across languages. Researchers within translation and interpretation studies are increasingly tackling issues of representation across languages and developing concepts that can usefully be applied in biographical research. They question the assumption that accounts can be unproblematically transferred across languages and argue for strategies and concepts that "foreignise" texts and challenge the baseline of the target, usually for these writers, English language. However, these concepts bring issues of their own. In this article I examine these developments and give an example from my own cross language research that show that these concepts can begin to open up debates about meaning and representation. Keywords cross language research; biography; narrative; translation; interpretation Introduction Before the armoured divisions have withdrawn from the city limits, while the soldiers are still patrolling the streets, English teachers will be facilitating the policies that the tanks were sent to impose (Julian Edge referring to the American led invasion of Iraq in 2003, quoted in Gaffey, 2005. Writers across a range of disciplines, including sociolinguistics, philosophy, biography, sociology and anthropology, argue that language matters in a multitude of ways (Foucault, 1972; points to the integral role of language in the formation of personal and distinctive cultural meanings and identity and to its economic and political role, as shown in the quote above. In this paper I argue that sociologists using biographical approaches across languages would benefit from work that has been done in the translation and interpretation literature. I begin with a brief examination of the epistemological debates within biographical research and translation and interpretation research, noting similarities in recent developments. I then relate some of the issues that come out of these debates to a research project that I worked on. This article is from the perspective of what translation and interpretation studies have to offer biographical approaches. There are many instances when the reverse applies and I point some of these out. The examples I give discuss interpretation and translation into English but the points made about representation apply whatever the original language used and the language of the target audience. I take as my starting point Roberts' (2002: 176) definition of biographical research as "research undertaken on individual lives employing autobiographical documents, interviews or other sources and presenting accounts in various forms (e.g. in terms of editing, written, visual or oral presentation, and degree of researcher's narration and reflexivity)". This definition has the advantage of being inclusive. There is no consensus on the boundaries between terms such as narrative, biography, life history or life story and researchers use the terms in overlapping and different ways. Roberts shows the benefits of including research that spans across differently labelled research to learn from the debates rather than to try to adjudicate between definitions of what constitutes a particular kind of research. He documents some of the debates that have been tackled by these exchanges. For example, he has shown how biographical research has benefited from multi-disciplinary approaches in areas such has the role of memory, the significance of time and concerns over representation and referentiality. Moreover, when carrying out research across languages or translating in order to enable a new audience to appreciate works they could not read themselves in the original language, it is counter-productive to prescribe definitions of what can be included as biography or life history or narrative. It would, in effect, be another form of closing down perspective and dialogue to understanding difference. Roberts points out that in many of the social sciences the result of the recent "cultural or linguistic turn" has resulted in an emphasis on language and representation and the detailed analysis of "texts". This he feels has "produced a diminution or disappearance of the creative, active role of individuals" (Roberts, ibidem: 4). This tendency is also evident within translation and interpretation studies but has been challenged by researchers who question the non-problematic acceptance of referentiality within written and oral accounts of lives and who go on to analyse the way language is used to create, challenge and change people's lives (see below). In this view language is more than text alone and the focus moves to discourse and how people create and describe their social worlds. Moreover, within cross language biographical sociology, concerns over language and representation have been under scrutinized in terms of the languages used and how accounts relate, if at all, to the lives of people who do not use the language of the target audience (see here also Fantini, 1995). Chamberlayne, Bornat and Wengraf (2000: 13) note the influence of translation within debates on biographical methods and acknowledge the effect that editing may have in "flattening out" cultural and philosophical differences. Authors within their collection of papers begin to address some of these concerns. For example, Andrew © ©2 20 00 06 6 Q QS SR R V Vo ol lu um me e I II I I Is ss su ue e 1 1 w ww ww w. .q qu ua al li it ta at ti iv ve es so oc ci io ol lo og gy yr re ev vi ie ew w. .o or rg g 9 9 Cooper's (2000) contribution directly discusses comparative biographical research and Corinne Squire (2000: 205) spells out the importance of foregrounding structures of language. In a similar way, Coupland, Some researchers within biographical research have directly tackled issues of representation and language (Riessman, 2004; Common ground? Epistemological debates within translation and interpretation studies and biographical sociology Debates within translation and interpretation on the status of research mirror similar debates within biographical sociology. This is evident in reading Roberts (2002), the edited collection by Schaffner (2004) and that by ….an analytic (not just descriptive) concern with the specifics of how we come to understand what we do, by locating acts of understanding in an explication of the grounded contexts these are located in and arise from. (p. 62) Elsewhere (Temple, 1997) this concept has been linked to the translation and interpretation field as a way of introducing reflexivity into cross language research. I position my biographical research within broadly defined interpretative/social constructionist/deconstructionist traditions of research as discussed for example by outside of your position in the social world. It does not mean that there is no reality. As Roberts (2002: 49) states, "while texts are not 'purely' referential, they are constructed within or mediate reality". Gee (1999) focuses on the importance of Discourses with a capital D rather than on written or spoken words out of context: …that is, different ways in which we humans integrate language with nonlanguage 'stuff', such as different ways of thinking, acting, interacting, valuing, feeling, believing, and using symbols, tools, and objects in the right places and at the right times so as to enact and recognize different identities and activities, give the material world certain meanings, distribute social goods in a certain way, make certain sorts of meaningful connections in our experience, and privilege certain symbol systems and ways of knowing over others. (p. 12-13) In relation to translation, writers such as The solutions to many of the translator's dilemmas are not to be found in dictionaries, but rather in an understanding of the way language is tied to social realities, to literary forms and to changing identities. Translators must constantly make decisions about the cultural meanings which language carries, and evaluate the degree to which the two different worlds they inhibit are 'the same'. These are not technical difficulties, they are not the domain of specialists in obscure or quaint vocabularies. They demand the exercise of a range of intelligences. In fact the process of meaning transfer has less to do with finding the cultural inscription of a term than in reconstructing its value. (p. 137-138) Within interpretation there are similar approaches (see However, just as some researchers using biographical methods still seek to position themselves as outside of the text they produce, much current interpretation and translation practice attempts to remain "faithful" to the language structures of the target audience and encourages the use of one baseline, usually for these writers English (see for example, Venuti's (1998) work on the domestication of text and the role of the academy and publishers in how translation is approached is relevant here: The popular aesthetic requires fluent translations that produce the illusory effect of transparency, and this means adhering to the current standard dialectic while avoiding any dialectic, register or style that calls attention to words as words and therefore pre-empts the reader's identification. As a result, fluent translation may enable a foreign text to engage a mass readership…. But such a translation simultaneously reinforces the major © ©2 20 00 06 6 Q QS SR R V Vo ol lu um me e I II I I Is ss su ue e 1 1 w ww ww w. .q qu ua al li it ta at ti iv ve es so oc ci io ol lo og gy yr re ev vi ie ew w. .o or rg g 1 11 1 language and its many other linguistic and cultural exclusions while masking the inscription of domestic values. Fluency is assimilationist, presenting to domestic readers a realistic representation inflected with their own codes and ideologies as if it were an immediate encounter with a foreign text and culture. (p. 12) Venuti (1995: 34) argues that translators should flaunt their partiality instead of attempting to conceal it. He calls for resistancy where the text is non-fluid or estranging in style and is designed to make the translator visible. His translation project seeks to emphasize identity and ideological stance. He states that "the point is to use a number of minority elements whereby one invents a specific, unforeseen, autonomous becoming" (Venuti, ibidem: 11). In a similar way, Spivak (1993) argues that standard translation practice obliterates the significance of language difference as everyone is portrayed as the same: In the act of wholesale translation into English there can be a betrayal of the democratic ideal into the law of the strongest. This happens when all the literature of the Third World gets translated into a sort of translatese, so that the literature by a woman in Palestine begins to resemble, in the feel of its prose, something by a man in Taiwan. (p. 399 -400) Spivak believes that the local context of production and the history of interaction of languages are important for the researcher (see also Roberts C., 2001: 331). Issues of representation are present in all research. However, these writers argue that in cross language research the languages themselves form part of the context of interpretation with hierarchies of representation between them. Spivak (1992) has shown that the relationship between languages forms part of the process of constructing meaning. This relationship, she argues, should form part of the debate about representation. Rather than respecting the norms and expectations of readers or listeners There are benefits for biographical sociologists in engaging with this translation and interpretation literature. As Fantini (1995: 152) argues "Those who have never experienced another culture or labored to communicate through a second language are, like the goldfish, often unaware of the milieu in which they have always existed". There are also benefits for the researchers within translation and interpretation studies in immersing themselves in developments within biographical sociology on inter-textuality and audience/readership (for example Roberts, 2002; Biographical researcher, interpreter and translator: lessons from a research project In the research described below, I use the concept of foreignization the interviews in the participants' preferred language. They provided translated transcripts of the interviews in English. The five minority ethnic groups were chosen to include a range of established and recent migrant views. Given these different migrant histories, each group had access to varying formal and informal networks of people who could act as interpreters. The approach in the research is narrative (Roberts, 2002; The project had a built in recognition of the active role of interpreters/translators who were employed as researchers on the project, particularly around the concept of intellectual auto/biography described above. They were briefed before the project began on its aims and trained in issues in interpreting and translation. Participants were asked to tell us about how they had come to England, why and about their lives in England. They were then asked questions about their use of formal and informal interpreters, their links to communities and how their views related to their experiences since arriving in England. Each interview was followed by a de-briefing session with the researcher, part of which included discussion of concepts/words that had caused difficulty or that the researchers felt potentially signalled different meanings across languages were discussed. After the research had finished each researcher was interviewed about their views on the topic and their social and political position within their language community, if any. This was in the spirit of reflecting on everyone's role is the research and discussing representations we were making in our research I carried out the narrative interviews in Manchester with Polish people who needed interpreters. The interviews were recorded and transcribed from Polish directly into English. In this article I give a few examples of my translation choices to point to the advantages and also to signal some of the issues in working this way. The first example is from an interview with Anita Topolska (name changed). She had originally arrived seeking asylum and then stayed as an economic migrant. She was in her thirties and lived with her three children in social housing. Her husband had recently left her. She described her life in Poland as one of poverty with no future. She had English lessons when she first arrived but found them impossible to fit in with her job in a residential home and looking after her children, especially during the holidays. She then described her experiences in England. Her narrative could be read in relation to discourse (see below) in the media concerning the "deserving asylum seeker". There were a number of newspaper articles that were widely discussed amongst Polish people that gave the impression that people seeking asylum were invading England and becoming a drain on health and social care services. There was also concern amongst Polish refugees who had arrived after the Second World War that recent arrivals from Poland were more interested in marriage and economic migration than fleeing persecution. Anita was aware that © ©2 20 00 06 6 Q QS SR R V Vo ol lu um me e I II I I Is ss su ue e 1 1 w ww ww w. .q qu ua al li it ta at ti iv ve es so oc ci io ol lo og gy yr re ev vi ie ew w. .o or rg g 1 13 3 these feelings were being expressed and set her account against this backdrop to try and persuade me that her claim was "genuine". She pointed out that she had tried to learn English and did work in England but has also had problems settling in here. Referring to her recent experiences in England she said: At first…at first…it was mixed. I work with English people. There are no people..yes…there is one lady at work who bothers me [dokucza -bothers, annoys, bullies, spites, torments?]. Because I don't know how to speak, read or write much English. There is one such lady. But everyone has a problem with her. My first translation of her words was: The beginnings…the beginnings were mixed. I work with the English. There is not that kind of people…yes…there is one lady at work…who bothers me [dokucza = annoys, bullies, spites, worries, vexes, torments?]. Because I don't speak, read, write much English …There is one lady…with that woman everyone has problems. I had chosen "bothers" because I felt that she was indicating that this woman at work did not particularly single Anita out and that in comparison with her experiences in Poland she saw those in England as less severe. The word "bother" as a translation of dokucza was also a result of the connections in my mind with the way it had been used when I was a child. Godard documents this connection between the experiences of the translator and the choice of words used in translation. She describes translation as an "ongoing appeal to memory" (quoted in Simon, 1996: 24). Developments in biographical research around memory discussed by Roberts (2002) could usefully be developed here in relation to the processes involved in trying to transfer meanings across languages. The choice of suitable word or concept equivalence is integral to interpretation/translation and is rooted in the experience of the translator/interpreter. It cannot be solved by technical manoeuvres such as back translation. A range of words can be chosen to translate dokucza into English. They could all be judged to be "correct" and readers can discuss whether they agree with my choice. However, in most translated texts they are not given any choices. The second example is from an interview with Irena Zielonska who was a Polish Roma seeking asylum. She was in her late 40s. She described why she came to England: They bullied us terribly all the time [can mean annoyed, worried or tormented but choose bullied when she described what they had done]. We were attacked [or assaulted] at home. My husband had his head cut open twice. He had his arms broken. This translation provided difficult for a variety of reasons. The first reason was the connotations that I felt dokucza has for me (see above) and the way I had translated previous interviews such as that of Anita discussed above. Could I use the same word to indicate experiences that differed so much? Also, I did not recognise the word she used initially to describe the boys she said were involved. She went on to describe them as "the bald ones", referring to the rise of nationalistic skinhead gangs in Poland who attacked Polish Roma. My knowledge of the Polish language is one that has developed by talking mostly with people who came to England after the First World War. There are differences in language use within the "Polish © ©2 20 00 06 6 Q QS SR R V Vo ol lu um me e I II I I Is ss su ue e 1 1 w ww ww w. .q qu ua al li it ta at ti iv ve es so oc ci io ol lo og gy yr re ev vi ie ew w. The choice of "bullied" here was made in part as a result of connecting this account with that of Anita's recent experience in England. My own memories of word use and my "translation history" have both been relevant to the final product. However, the relation of translation histories and the role of inter-textuality have rarely been the centre of attention in translation studies in the way that the experiences of researchers within biographical sociology have been. I have found Pavlenko and Lantolf's Thought is not merely expressed through words; it comes into existence through them. Every thought tends to connect with something else, to establish a relationship between things. Every thought moves, grows and develops, fulfils a function, solves a problem…Precisely because thought does not have its automatic counterpart in words, the transition of thought to word leads through meaning. (p. 85) However, meaning is not tied to a particular language and we cannot identify "Polish" and "English" traits and meanings within translations. Changing the language we speak may change how we see the world and the language we use is relevant to how we situate ourselves within our social worlds and within translations, but not in any deterministic exercise of meaning attribution. Biographers who translate or interpret other people's lives across languages have a difficult and often unrecognised balancing act between denying the importance of the language used and implying that language is tied to meaning in a deterministic way. This is the balancing act that Pavlenko and Lantolf (2000) attempt but which is neglected in cross language biographical research. It seems ironic that the research was with people who struggled to express what they needed

New ways in teaching culture

xii, 233 p.; 21 cm