The skill of natural interpreting in a trilingual child

The present work seeks to contribute to the fields of translation and bilingual acquisition focusing on the particular case of natural translation/interpreting of a single Slovak/English/German balanced trilingual child between 0;03 and 8;01 years. Natural interpreting is a strategy used by bilinguals whereby a message expressed in one language (source language = SL) is reproduced in another (target language = TL). Our study is based on two premises: 1. Translation in a bilingual child is an innate skill which can be acquired without formal training and is developed through guidance and practice (Harris, 1978); and 2. Natural interpreting can occur within different combinations of languages. We address the issue of bilingual competence and in particular the relationship that exists between linguistic competence and performance in the process of interpretation activity in the bilingual child. The first aim of the study is to reveal the social-academic context and the main sources of linguistic input, which had an important effect on the speech development of the child. The second aim of the study is to show that a trilingual child was able to become a sophisticated interpreter as she gradually moved through stages of pre-translation, autotranslation and transduction to more complex forms of interpretation (Harris and Sherwood, 1978; Harris, 1976 and 1978). The third aim of the study is to document the types of errors produced by the child and through error analysis and statistical data reveal whether these errors may hinder the communication of accurate meaning in the TL. The translation competence of the bilingual child is analysed via different types of spontaneous, elicited and experimental data gathered from the child’s longitudinal production recorded by the researcher in diary annotations, audio recordings and video recordings. Examples of the child’s interpretations presented in this paper are transcribed in the CHAT format. The results of our study demonstrate that a trilingual child acquiring three languages in a bilingual community with the bilingual-monolingual interaction strategy used by parents at home can become a competent interpreter by the age of 8;01 years and deliver messages quite accurately in the TL regardless of the directionality of interpretation. The results of error analysis show that the type of errors produced by the child in the process of interpretation are mainly morphological and occasionally syntactic or intrusion errors, which do not lead to misinterpretation of the meaning of original message in the TL.

The Somali-diaspora experience: a focus on Somali children as cultural brokers, and as ambassadors of language and culture

This paper examines the Somali-Canadian Diaspora experience, and in particular, focuses on the role children in immigrant families play as cultural brokers and as ambassadors of language and culture. Utilizing the literature on language acquisition, this paper’s aim is to include the Somali-Canadian Diaspora’s voice into the vast literature that exists, which examines the importance of bilingual children, who assist their families in integrating and settling in a host nation. The second component of this paper examines the role language has on identity, and utilizing cultural brokers’ language acquisition, investigates how cultural brokers’ identity is formed by their bilingualism. The paper posed two research questions: 1. In what ways do cultural brokers play a role as ambassadors of language and culture to assist their families in navigating the challenges of a new country? 2. In what ways do the cultural brokers’ bilingual abilities inform their identity? Keywords: Cultural Broker, Bilingual child, Acculturation, Familism, Biculturalism, Hyphen-identity, Somali-Diaspora

The Somali-diaspora experience: a focus on Somali children as cultural brokers, and as ambassadors of language and culture

This paper examines the Somali-Canadian Diaspora experience, and in particular, focuses on the role children in immigrant families play as cultural brokers and as ambassadors of language and culture. Utilizing the literature on language acquisition, this paper’s aim is to include the Somali-Canadian Diaspora’s voice into the vast literature that exists, which examines the importance of bilingual children, who assist their families in integrating and settling in a host nation. The second component of this paper examines the role language has on identity, and utilizing cultural brokers’ language acquisition, investigates how cultural brokers’ identity is formed by their bilingualism. The paper posed two research questions: 1. In what ways do cultural brokers play a role as ambassadors of language and culture to assist their families in navigating the challenges of a new country? 2. In what ways do the cultural brokers’ bilingual abilities inform their identity? Keywords: Cultural Broker, Bilingual child, Acculturation, Familism, Biculturalism, Hyphen-identity, Somali-Diaspora

The Expressive Language Skills of a Bilingual Child: A Case Study

This study attempted to explore the expressive language skills of a bilingual child from year to year. A qualitative method was used with the support of simple analysis of Mean Length Utterances calculation to answer the research question. The data was taken from the transcribed videos recorded intermittently from 2015 to 2020. Initially, the MLU score of the child was only 5.7 and it did not reach the standard score of6.88 for her age. However, the child’s MLU score for the following years rose even higher than it should be. The whole words of each utterance were counted then divided by the number of utterances. Based on the data, there was no significant improvement in 2019. This might be due to the fact that the data available in 2018 was of monologue type and that the subject was less willing to speak back then. Furthermore, based on the researcher’s observation, the English proficiency of the child, especially expressive language skills mastery, increased from year to year. Besides, the child was also shown to be more motivated. She kept practicing her English with her sister by watching and making English videos and acting as a professional YoutuberKeywords:The expressive language skills, Mean Length of Utterances, Bilingual child

Navigating Public Education in Japan for a Bicultural Child with Autism

When a bilingual child is diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum, their parents suddenly find themselves faced with a bewildering range of seemingly urgent choices which emerge from the central idea of What is best for my child? For example, they must decide which place or environment looks like offering the best support, whether or not they should change or give up their jobs, and whether bilingualism itself is even tenable. Even when these key issues have been resolved, there is still the matter of how to raise and educate the child, and how to navigate the various challenges of the educational path that is chosen. In this chapter I will use the experiences of my family to illustrate some examples of the choices families in this situation are required to make. We are a British-Japanese family, settled in Japan, and all of us are fluent in English and Japanese. It will cover the time period from the autism diagnosis of our son at the age of four, to the present, a time span of around six years. During this time, our son has been educated in the local Japanese kindergarten and elementary school.