Empowering young translators

Find here below all the materials prepared by the NEW ABC partners who first came up with this pilot action. You can find some particularities, the handbook prepared to explain the whole implementation process, and templates and specific materials produced for carrying out some activities.

This handbook proposes activities to explore the social, cultural, emotional and well-being aspects of young people who translate and interpret for peers, family, and the local community.

Wrap-up of the action

Testing country
United Kingdom

Type of action
At-school and out-of-school activities

Children age
11-18 years

Download the handbook to learn how this pilot action was implemented

Activities you will find in this handbook:

  • Running a taster session
  • Let’s talk about safe research: Ethics & ground rules
  • Who is a young translator?
  • What is care and non-care?
  • Working towards your mini project
  • Reflection & Celebration
  • What next? Impact and dissemination

Click here for material and resources related to the activities

  • HOW TO… set out your own Club session

Template to set out your own Club session (editable Word document)

The template in PDF (non editable)

 

  • HOW TO… receive feedback from participants

Template to collect participants’ feedback after sessions (editable Word document)

The template in PDF (non editable)

 

  • CHAPTER 1. Running a taster session

Template to collect participants’ feedback after the taster session (editable Word document)

The template in PDF (non-editable)

 

  • CHAPTER 3. Who is a young translator?

Printout for the Young translator bingo (editable Word document)

The template in PDF (non-editable)

 

  • CHAPTER 5. Working towards your mini project

Template to create a storyboard (editable Word document)

The template in PDF (non-editable)

 

Poster advertising the storyboard competition (editable Word document)

The template in PDF (non-editable)

 

  • CHAPTER 6. Reflection & Celebration

End-of-project feedback card (editable Word document)

The template in PDF (non-editable)

 

  • CHAPTER 7: What next? Impact and dissemination

Advice leaflet -to read version (non-editable)

 

Advice leaflet -to print version (editable Word document)

The to-print leaflet in PDF (non-editable)

 

Feedback card for impact-related presentation activities

The template in PDF (non-editable)

Find here below all the materials prepared by the NEW ABC partners who replicated this pilot action. The second pilot of the action was adapted from the first pilot, after taking support and inspiration from the partners previously implementing it. You can find some data about the particularities at which these activities were conducted, you can download the handbook prepared to explain the whole implementation process, and finally, you can get access to the templates and specific materials produced for carrying out some activities.

Wrap-up of the action

Testing country
Italy

Type of action
Out-of-school activities

Children age
6-11 years

Download the handbook to learn how this repilot action was implemented

Activities you will find in this handbook:

  • Warming up and activation: Setting the stage; Games as a tool for exploration; Circle time
  • Exploring the role of young translators: Role-play; Vignette interviews; Peer interviews; Field trip; Multilingual Song
  • Digital storytelling: What the i-Theatre is and how to use it; Meeting the expert; Creating the story and drawing the characters and context; Character animation and digital story creation
  • Final Event
  • Team meetings

NEW ABC wants to share some tips to make it easier for you to adapt the activities to your own context. Click on each of them to see a longer explanation with examples and further details.

Evaluate the most suitable way to approach linguistic and cultural diversity

Feel free to adapt the activities included in this action according to your context and participants. For example, the focus might not be the same if you are working on linguistic and cultural diversity with local or long-time settled migrant communities, or if your participants are recently arrived refugees, who might need a different approach to discover the linguistic and cultural heritage of the host community.

Plan with flexibility and avoid frustration if activities do not go as expected

Instead, allow pupils to lead and eventually transform the activities according to their needs and interests. For example, children might be interested in using the proposed activities to discuss other related experiences and concerns or to use other ways to express their points of view. Thus, when planning your activities, try to provide different options and spaces for pupils’ decision-making, and don’t get stressed in the face of unexpected changes, as this is part of co-creation.

Do not pre-define what languages, cultures and other key concepts are

Following principles of co-creation and collaboration, avoid imposing pre-established definitions of the action’s key concepts and allow children to express and build their own understandings of languages and cultures according to their repertoires and life experiences. Keep an open mind and consider that starting from what is relevant for them will probably make your action more meaningful and engaging.

Explore the neighbourhood where your action will be developed before going out with pupils

This will allow you to identify potential opportunities and challenges for children’s exploration during the field trip activity so that you can better promote and support their reflection about the cultural and linguistic landscapes around them. Having a previous idea of what can be found in their local context can also be helpful in deciding how many groups to create for the outing and how many adults will be needed to watch them over, as well as how many sites to document per group and which areas might be more convenient to explore.

Identify some engaging resource(s) that might work as a trigger to start your action

This could be for example a music video, a short, animated film, or any other resource from child/youth popular culture that might serve to introduce the topic of linguistic and cultural diversity in an attractive way and to encourage pupils to talk about their related experiences. Using an engaging ‘hook’ on your first session might make a big difference in children’s disposition towards deeper reflection in the upcoming activities. You can also use this resource to open the room for pupils’ own preferences.

Give voice and recognition to pupils’ multiple experiences, languages, cultures, manners and ways of behaving

Many of the things that children know and do in their daily lives are not usually visible or acknowledged at school, including the languages that they know and use at home, as well as other features and skills. Look for opportunities to let these practices emerge and be praised within this action, so that children know that their whole linguistic and cultural repertoires are valued. For example, you can encourage pupils to use their home languages in the activities and to teach some key concepts to their peers and adult facilitators, or to bring in and include their cultural knowledge into the activities.

Allow children to use multiple forms of participation

It is well known that embodied and arts-based approaches allow pupils to express feelings and ideas that do not always emerge through other channels. Use your imagination when planning the activities and encourage pupils’ participation through multiple and creative forms that go beyond typical school dynamics, usually based on oral or written expression. For example, you can include spaces for drawing as an alternative to writing for those children who are not yet fluent in the school language, or encourage the use of role-plays, games, singing, dancing and other ways of expression that might broaden everyone’s chances for participation.

Give space to local artists to allow children to come into contact with diverse forms of expression

An engaging way to open spaces for pupils’ creativity and participation in this action is by inviting one or more local artists to share their work and engage the pupils in a collaborative artistic performance. This exchange might help pupils to get to know different forms of artistic creation that might be available for them to perform and their affordances for self-expression.

Be a model and be part of the reflection

Use this action to reflect on your own linguistic and cultural experiences, and share your story with pupils. For example, create your own autobiographical account and share it with pupils, explaining your life trajectory in relation to languages, varieties and cultures. Along with being a model for their reflections, you might be surprised by your own findings!

Carefully guide the activities, so that sensible issues that might emerge can be discussed and critically revised

Don’t be surprised if the intended reflection around linguistic and cultural diversity leads children to express their opinions or concerns around other sensible topics, such as racism and other forms of discrimination. It might also be the case that during the activities they express their own linguistic and cultural prejudices and stereotypes about certain languages, accents or communities. Rather than avoiding these topics, try to be prepared and use them for critical reflection.

Be ready to redirect the discussion of pupils back to the main points

So far, we have recommended to be flexible and let pupils’ interests guide the action. However, there might be times when their initiative leads them far from the main topics and objectives of the proposal, into directions where they might lose the opportunity to reflect on the linguistic and cultural diversity around them. If this is the case, you can have some strategies prepared to bring them back to the topic, for example by sharing a personal experience and asking for their opinion, or by displaying some engaging audiovisual resource that might promote group discussion.

Involve families and other members of the school or the community as much as possible

When planning your activities, think of possible ways to involve pupils’ families and the wider community both in the action processes and in the final outcomes. This can be done by asking pupils to explain or to implement some of the activities at home (for example, they might create the linguistic biography of a family member) and bring some feedback back to the sessions. And, of course, family involvement can be promoted by organizing some type of final presentation for parents, siblings, friends, and the rest of the school and out-of-school community, as we did in our action.

Save some time after each activity and at the end of the project for collective reflection

This might be an important space for connecting the work done and the experiences lived during each session with the main objectives of the action. As in previous tips, you can also be creative here and propose diverse and dynamic forms of critical reflection, so that everyone finds a way to participate. If there is not much time in every session for a proper collective reflection, you can use some sort of ‘exit pass’, asking pupils to share one word or brief comment about that day before leaving the room.

It is important to implement this pilot because…

increases in migratory mobilities means that young people who migrate to new countries are frequently called upon to translate and interpret both outside and inside of school. They translate for family members, peers and the local community. School is one of the most frequent and important sites where the practice of young translating takes place. Sometimes the role of young translators within school is formalized but in many instances, young people’s role as young translators works on an ad hoc basis in ways that can be both advantageous and burdensome. Existing programmes to support young translators in schools focus on pragmatic language skills but pay little attention to the cultural, social, emotional wellbeing elements.

The aim of this pilot action is…

to work with young people who translate and interpret for peers, family and the local community to develop and design resources to improve the cultural, social, emotional and wellbeing elements of being a young translator. This pilot action will take place in a culturally diverse secondary school whose pupils range from 11 – 18 years of age.

The team will collaborate with the school partner to promote and organise the Young Translator Club. Young translators will be trained as young researchers as part of the Young Translator Club, and then use those skills to co-develop, co-design and then evaluate resources aimed at improving understanding of young translating as a caring practice. As part of their young researcher training, they will learn about traditional social science methods such as interviewing. Alongside this, they will also learn about participatory approaches such as arts-based methods (e.g. animation, digital filmmaking, photography etc). They will also be invited to contribute towards evaluation and dissemination processes (e.g. co-authoring paper or blog about research experience), ensuring meaningful participation across all pilot action stages.

This pilot will contribute to address some or all of the following objectives:

  • To improve understanding of young people’s translating as a caring and compassionate practice.
  • To design materials and resources that open up a space for considering the emotional engagement and wellbeing of the translator.
  • To develop resources to raise awareness of the practice of young translating across the whole school.
  • To create resources for both the young translator and those who connect with them during interactions, to build feelings of trust, value, belonging and acceptance.

Presentation of the repilot Empowering young translators

Presentation of the pilot Empowering young translators

Conversations on the Empowering Young Translators pilot action

Multimedia gallery

Materials by the NEW ABC UNIBO team

Videos

Images of the repiloting labs of the “Empowering young translators” action

Materials by the NEW ABC UK team

Leaflets

Videos

Images from the Young Translators Club sessions