Transnationalizing Modern Languages: Global Challenges

The project stems from Transnationalizing Modern Languages (TML), one of three large grants awarded under the AHRC's Translating Cultures scheme. TML's established group of Modern Languages experts has conducted research revealing the centrality of a variety of language practices, ranging from multilingualism to translation, in migration contexts and multicultural societies. An important part of TML has been to develop methodologies aimed at embedding awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity within educational practices, from primary to higher and adult education.

TML has cemented links with The Phoenix Project (http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/phoenix-project), led by Prof. Judith Hall, that links Cardiff University and the University of Namibia (UNAM) and which supports the Welsh Government's International Development Wales for Africa initiative, promoting mutual capacity building and sustainable collaboration.

The aim of the project is to take the expertise and practical knowledge acquired within TML to Namibia by working closely with The Phoenix Project and its educational partnerships. Methodologies developed in TML will be adapted and refined to co-produce with researchers from UNAM and local practitioners materials tailor-made for the Namibian context. The new research seeks to facilitate educational and professional development through multilingual education in the local environment, identifying the school and health systems as key areas of social wellbeing and economic development.

The promotion of multilingual education has been identified as a key target with social and economic benefits for Namibia with clear connections to a number of UN sustainable development goals. Issues relating to languages and communication affect the country's ability to grow economically; they are central to successful healthcare provision; they have a clear impact on poverty, income disparity and gender and generational inequality; they impact upon capacity building and access to job markets; they are relevant to conflict resolution as well as to the promotion of human rights; and they are clearly related to issues of cultural heritage and memory.

The project concentrates on two specific areas: supporting multilingualism and translingual practices and their embedding in school education; and sensitizing health specialists to the role played by multilingual communication, including translation and self-translation, in their professional practice. In both cases, the focus is on co-research practices, mutual learning and capacity building. The aim is to achieve enduring impact through curriculum development, the production of teaching resources, and the creation of a transnational mentoring network that will amplify the effects of the project throughout the country and beyond.

By promoting awareness of the impact of language capabilities and translation practices in Namibia's multilingual environment, the project aims to support sustainable action regarding cultural heritage and cultural memory (in education and the media), produce new research insights on the impact and sustainability of language and translation practices in a variety of locales and landscapes, and promote more efficient communication within health and medical practices (working with multilingual teams in multiple local contexts), all of which involve complex interactions among indigenous, colonial and post-colonial linguistic and cultural heritages.

By engaging with creative practices of translation and language learning in Namibian schools and by building on an on-going project between Cardiff University's Phoenix Project and UNAM in health education, the project will make an enduring contribution to educational provision and access to healthcare for excluded sectors of the population as well as to the conservation of cultural memory and intangible heritage in Namibia through the validation of indigenous tongues as languages of education and information.

This extension of the Transnationalizing Modern Languages (TML) project aims to contribute to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on Education ('Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote life-long learning opportunities for all') and on Health ('Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all'). It pursues these objectives by undertaking collaborative work with researchers, educators, trainers and professionals in Namibia, a country whose complex linguistic landscape makes the achievement of such SDGs particularly challenging.

The project brings together the TML team, its established partners, Cardiff University's Phoenix Project, and the University of Namibia (UNAM). The collaboration will raise awareness of the role of multilingualism and translation in accessing education and health services; develop resources which promote efficient interlingual communication among professionals, including teachers and health workers; and support Continuing Professional Development through the creation of an online mentoring network. By developing educational resources reflective of Namibia's linguistic and cultural diversity, we will provide tools for the effective implementation of recent policies aiming to maintain linguistic capability in the indigenous mother tongues while also maximizing access to English as a medium of instruction. By extending our work into medical care, we will facilitate accurate and user-appropriate multilingual health education and communication.

TML's experience in delivering multilingual and cross-cultural education in the UK and Italy will make a significant contribution to addressing the current and future economic, social, health, and cultural needs of Namibia, developing human and material resources in the country to sustain the activity of this initial period. This work will benefit both policy-makers and practitioners in the fields of education and health in Namibia. In the longer term, these benefits will extend across the wider population of Namibia through impact upon the multilingual awareness and competence of diverse sectors. This impact in turn offers yields in terms of social cohesion and economic productivity by improving access to healthcare, delivered initially through UNAM's new M.Med. in Anesthesia, but then extended to areas such as HIV care and prevention.

These aims will be achieved through consultation between researchers and practitioners in Namibia and the UK, disseminating and building on the existing expertise of partners. Bilateral collaboration leading to the production of resources will extend beyond the project's formal conclusion. By setting up an international online mentoring network based at UNAM we will ensure future-oriented and sustainable structures of support and skill exchange. These will constitute an essential element of the project's legacy, providing a sustainable and incrementally scalable resource across Namibia and beyond.

We will build on TML expertise to co-produce new materials with UNAM fellows and other project participants. This will result in the creation of an open resource, essential for the diffusion of project outputs. Resource development will be carried out simultaneously on different platforms and media. Given potential issues linked to uneven access to web-based resources, we will also produce hard-copies to be distributed locally.

Resources supporting the promotion of flexible multilingual education will make an enduring contribution to educational provision and access to healthcare for excluded sectors of the population as well as to the conservation of cultural memory and intangible heritage in Namibia through the validation of indigenous tongues as languages of education and information. The final conference will secure legacy by bringing together key stakeholders from Namibia, the UK, and elsewhere and allowing resources to be adapted across other African countries as well as Europe.