Multilingualism, translation, interpreting and linguistic inequality

Description: This project examines interpreting practices in marriage fraud investigations conducted by Belgian authorities, in which a complex chain of interviews and reports results in the decision whether a transnational couple's marriage application is genuine or fake. Both professional and non-professional interpreters are relied on to interpret the statements and answers given by the applicants not proficient enough in Dutch or French during an interview with a municipal officer and later on with a police officer. During the interpreter-mediated interaction, a written statement and interview report is noted down by the interviewer. The project focuses on the role of the interpreter in the entextualised codification of spoken evidence. The project's final, applied objective is to increase awareness of the significant role and complexities involved in interpreter selection and entextualisation in marriage fraud investigations by Belgian authorities.
Promoter(s): Mieke Vandenbroucke , Bart Defrancq
Researcher(s): Sari Goukens
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Period of time: 2023 - 2026

Description: In defiance of an increasingly hostile rhetoric and political climate towards migration, there has been a surge of online audio/visual platforms where immigrants come together to highlight their ethnic identities. In the context of transit migration in Mexico, this project explores transnational identity formation among Latinx migrants, looking at how they translate their lived experiences to a digital space through audiovisual self-representation. Combining theories and methods of Translation, Migration and (Digital) Media Studies, this research aims to analyse how a sense of identity and belonging emerges on migratory routes and in digital spaces where information circulates and transnational communities are forged. Youtube channels, Facebook, Whatsapp groups, etc. about and by Latin-American migrants are treated in this project as new forms of translation whose discourse can be defined through their contexts, actors, and practices.
Website research project: https://research.ugent.be/web/result/project/f7873505-674d-11ee-b1ad-3dd08fb7752a/details/bof-sta-202309-006-belonging-in-translation--the-audiovisual-transfer-of-latinidad/en
Promoter(s): Alexandra Sanchez , July De Wilde
Researcher(s): Elisa Robbe
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy , Faculty of Political and Social Sciences
Period of time: 2023 - 2027

Description: EUWEBPSI aims to develop and test an innovative EU-wide WEB portal for information exchange and online collaboration between stakeholders involved in providing and using quality webcam public service interpreting. EUWEBPSI wants to tackle a double challenge: (1) the lack of a unified framework of minimal standards for PSI services leads to unequal access to basic services across the EU and across types of public services; (2) the mismatch between interpreter supply/demand requires more flexible solutions to enhance interpreting capacity, in particular in situations of urgency and for languages of lesser diffusion (LLDs). EU-WEBPSI is an EU-AMIF project with partners from Belgium (PI), UK, Austria, Greece and France.
Promoter(s): Katrijn Maryns , July De Wilde
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Period of time: 2022 - 2025

Description: The purpose of this PhD is to investigate narratives in multilingual children with and without voice disorders to detect clinical markers for language impairment. Secondly the effect of language training on narrative skills will be investigated in multilingual children with and without a developmental language disorder.
Promoter(s): Evelien D'haeseleer , Kristiane Van Lierde , Ellen Simon
Researcher(s): Julie Daelman
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences
Period of time: 2017 - 2024

Description: Due to current political and demographic developments, multilingual psychotherapy for refugees and migrants is becoming increasingly relevant. Interpreters are often indispensable in bridging the language barrier between patient and therapist. Their presence is, however, not without consequences: the dyadic relationship between therapists and patients becomes a triad. In this project we analyze how therapists, patients and interpreters co-construct the therapeutic relationship over the course of a therapy, which takes, on average, 12 sessions. Focus is on verbal and non-verbal communicative means to display trust and empathy. We combine three methods: interviews, a questionnaire and interactional anlaysis of recorded sessions. This research is ocnducted by a transdisciplinary team combining expertise from the fields of psychology, interpreting studies and linguistics.
Promoter(s): July De Wilde , Claudio Scarvaglieri
Researcher(s): Peter Muntigl
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Period of time: 2023 - 2025

Description: Multilingualism plays a critical role in asylum and refugee encounters. Often, migrants and refugees have a hard time expressing themselves because they do not get adequate language support. So far, research has focused on the multilingual challenges of adult migrants and refugees, but little attention has been paid to communication with unaccompanied refugee minors (UAM). This research project aims to fill this gap through a sociolinguistic ethnography of how linguistic diversity is managed in the guidance trajectory of UAM, focusing on the interaction between UAM and legal guardians. More specifically, the project will examine the multilingual strategies selected by UAM and their guardians and their impact on (a) disclosure and performance of personal experiences, (b) negotiation of complex procedural knowledge and (c) building of a relationship of trust, with a view to increasing knowledge of the interactional management of these encounters and an improved guidance and care of UAM.
Promoter(s): Katrijn Maryns , Ilse Derluyn , Floor Verhaeghe
Researcher(s): Lotte Remue
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Period of time: 2022 - 2026

Description: In this ethnographic research project, we examine the implementation and application in Belgium of EU Directives 2010/64/EU and 2012/29/EU on the right to oral and written language assistance in criminal proceedings. We examine (1) how these directives were transposed into Belgian national law, (2) how the police, the correctional court and the public prosecutor's office in Ghent apply the right to language assistance in practice and (3) what role lawyers play in facilitating language assistance for their clients.
Website research project: https://research.flw.ugent.be/nl/projects/language-assistance-criminal-proceedings-belgium
Promoter(s): Sarah Van Hoof , Katrijn Maryns
Researcher(s): Sara Delva
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Period of time: 2021 - 2026

Description: Acquisition of sociolinguistic variation is increasingly considered essential for L2 speakers. At the same time it poses challenges, especially for late language learners. This project focuses on the acquisition of sociolinguistic variation by late starting learners in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. Flanders offers a fascinating context for this project, because the linguistic landscape is strongly dominated by non-standard language variation (mainly Colloquial Belgian Dutch), while Standard Dutch still occupies a superior position ideologically (also in L2 education). More specifically, the following questions are focused on - What are L2 speakers' attitudes towards Standard and Colloquial Belgian Dutch? - To what extent do L2 speakers incorporate non-standard language variation into their L2 system? These questions will be answered by compiling and analyzing a corpus of sociolinguistic interviews with L2 speakers and informal conversations between L2 and L1 speakers.
Promoter(s): Chloé Lybaert , Anne-Sophie Ghyselen
Researcher(s): Pauline Verhelst
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Period of time: 2023 - 2027

Description: With this project, we aim to develop an open source prototype of a multilingual messaging system that can translate and forward simple messages via an existing messaging application (e.g. WhatsApp). The messaging system will be developed in cooperation with Fedasil, the Belgian federal agency for the reception of asylum seekers. The messaging system will allow asylum reception centre staff to convey practical messages and instructions to centre residents (e.g. inform centre residents about an activity or technical problem), including for so-called 'language of lesser diffusion'. For translation, the messaging system relies on both a context-specific translation memory and on machine translation.
Website research project: https://research.flw.ugent.be/en/projects/matias-machine-translation-inform-asylum-seekers
Promoter(s): July De Wilde , Katrijn Maryns , Lieve Macken , Arda Tezcan
Researcher(s): Ella van Hest , Michaël Lumingu
Faculty / Faculties: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Period of time: 2023 - 2025