Activities 5: Interpreting as mediation?

The essay deals with translations during educational activities. Translations are important because children display a strongly differentiated competence in understanding and speaking English as a lingua franca. In villages, adults’ translations are frequently instrumental to the achievement of assigned tasks, while promotion of children’s active participation is scarce. Consequently, translations are often adults’ disempowering monologues and, during their translation activity, adults tend to strategically reduce renditions of translated turns and to avoid possible conflicts. Nevertheless, during the translation activity, dyadic interactions in the first language may be useful in promoting children’s active participation, and adults may also highlight the possibility to change decisions and reopen discussions. Finally, dialogic mediation seems to be more likely in adolescents’ occasional translations for their mates in summer camps.