People

Katharina Brizić 

Translating into the unspeakable. How students gain audibility through interpreting

In my talk I will introduce two empirical examples of interpreting activities performed by students in multilingual school contexts in Germany. Each of the examples provides a snapshot of non-professional interpreting activities. They are conducted to and from highly stigmatised languages, with their speakers looking back on histories of persecution, and with professional interpreting services continuing to be largely unavailable to date. 

The two school contexts, however, bring about quite contrary results: While in the first case all students’ languages are supported as a resource for learning, the stigmatised language is still avoided at all costs by the interpreting student. In the second case the school lacks awareness and support for multilingualism; and yet, the context not only brings about interpreting activities inclusive of the stigmatised language, but also results in high appreciation for the interpreting student.

The aim of my talk is to gain a better understanding for how histories of languages and speakers still reverberate in the presence; how various institutional dichotomies potentially hinder, or enhance, interpreting activities inclusive of non-prestigious languages; and how the audible and valued presence of these languages can entail institutional – or even societal – effects (not only) for the students and teachers in class. 

Katharina Brizić is a professor of multilingualism studies at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Her research interests include language and power, (forced) migration, language biographies, language and trauma, educational inequities, social justice, and multilingual cultures of remembrance. Her quantitative study Multilingual Cities Vienna was the first quantitative home language survey in a central-eastern capital. As part of a multinational consortium she heads the Berlin section of the EU HORIZON project „Strategies to Strengthen European Linguistic Capital in a Globalised World“ (https://multilx.com/project-team/).