Exploring Multilingualism

Linguistic diversity is a fact of human life – as is the imbalance in status between languages.

In the current context of globalisation, this imbalance is manifesting itself most strikingly in the rise of ‘global’ English as the universally recognised lingua franca, and the pressure this in turn puts on other less globally ‘useful’ languages.

The features in this section will present findings from our evolving research on the interaction between multilingualism and creativity, but also address aspects of the context in which our research is taking place. From the difficulties and opportunities of Modern Languages in schools to insights into the impact Brexit will have on languages and their status in the UK, we will be looking at social and political issues to better understand how we can make linguistic diversity more visible, valued, and vibrant.

Slanguages, hip-hop, a Russian play, Punjabi poetry and Oxford University

This blog was originally posted on RaveetaWrites.

Oxford University hosted ‘Poetry in Motion’ last month at Wolfson College to academics, students, artists and creatives as part of their four-year-long research project Creative Multilingualism.

The Cave: a multilingual, multimedia opera

The Cave (1993), a multimedia opera by composer Steve Reich and video artist Beryl Korot, tells the story of the life of Abraham as it is given in religious texts and how it is interpreted by modern accounts given by individual members of three different religious and cultural backgrounds – Israeli, Palestinian, and American.

Performing Languages: overview film

The Performing Languages Conference in February 2019 saw academics, artists, performers and cultural practitioners come together to watch, discuss and debate what it means to perform languages.

In the words of one conference participant, “What I liked most about the conference is that it didn’t simply advocate for creative multilingualism; it made it happen, there and then”.

Babel competition for schools: winning stories

As part of the exhibition Babel: Adventures in Translation at Bodleian Libraries, we ran a competition to encourage pupils of all ages to engage with creative translation.

Pupils were able to choose from 3 tasks:

A) Magical Translation

Create a modern version of Cinderella in a language and medium (text, audio or video) of your choice with a typed English prose translation.

B) Fabulous Translation

Artificial Intelligence in the World of Languages: funded projects

Earlier this year, Creative Multilingualism held a funding call for projects linked to Artificial Intelligence in the World of Languages. We were particularly interested in projects which linked to the following themes:

Artificial Intelligence and Linguistic Diversity
Artificial Intelligence, Languages and Schools
Artificial Intelligence and Translation
The Creative Industries, Languages and Artificial Intelligence

The following projects have been awarded funding:

Giovanni Pietro Vitali working on Prismatic Jane Eyre maps

Mapping Jane Eyres across the world

In April, Prismatic Translation’s Associated Researcher in Digital Humanities, Giovanni Pietro Vitali, stayed in Oxford to work with me on mapping the global diffusion of translations of Jane Eyre. Giovanni Pietro’s trajectory has taken him from Pisa to Perugia, Nancy and Leipzig (where he trained in Digital Humanities); he is now a Marie Curie Fellow attached to Cork, Reading, and NYU.

Doctoral students funding call: funded projects

Earlier in the year, we launched a funding call for doctoral students for projects which resonate with our programme emphases of ‘Languages and Creative Identity’ and ‘Languages and Performance’. Grants of up to £1,500 were available to support students in their development as modern language advocates.

We're delighted to announce that the following projects have been awarded funding:

Welsh-language community engagement project

Babel: Adventures in Translation

Babel: Adventures in Translation is running at Bodleian Libraries until 2 June 2019. The exhibition explores translation and the important, often invisible, role it plays in our everyday lives. It celebrates all sides of translation, from the practical and creative to the divine.

Key themes of the exhibition include:

Multilingual Shakespeare: Merely Players

Earlier this year, professional theatre-makers and students from Birmingham came together to produce an immersive, multilingual collage of Shakespearean plays – MERELY PLAYERS – at the Eagle & Ball pub on Creative Multilingualism partner Birmingham City University’s campus.

68 ways to say ‘plain’: translating Jane Eyre

It has been a busy time for Prismatic Translation's Prismatic Jane Eyre project. I spent March mainly in Pisa, working on fifteen Italian translations with a group of graduate students and early career researchers co-ordinated by our collaborator in the project there, Professor Alessandro Grilli.

Lunch at the Creative Power of Metaphor conference

The Creative Power of Metaphor: conference highlights

29 March 2019 was destined to sear itself on the collective memory as Brexit Day, being the official date when the UK was due to leave the EU. Instead, 29–30 March will be remembered – at least by the Creative Multilingualism team – as the springtime weekend when 120 conference delegates converged on Oxford from five continents to engage in some blue sky thinking and luxuriate in a veritable sea of metaphors.

Research update: Linguistic creativity in the language classroom

Over the last 18 months our classroom-based research project has been exploring the impact of using poems and authentic texts (on such themes as love, death, migration) and different teaching approaches (‘creative’ versus ‘functional’) on 14 year-old language learners’ language development and attitudes towards languages.