Language(s) and Translanguaging in Interpretation Groups: Reflections From a Linguistic Group Ethnography

Nadja Thoma, Giorgia Andreolli, Safà El Koura, Kristina Savic and Rebecca Weckenmann
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Nadja Thoma: Faculty of Education, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Giorgia Andreolli: Institute for Applied Linguistics, Eurac Research, Italy
Safà El Koura: Faculty of Education, University of Innsbruck, Austria / Institute for Applied Linguistics, Eurac Research, Italy
Kristina Savic: Faculty of Education, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Rebecca Weckenmann: Faculty of Education, University of Innsbruck, Austria

Social Inclusion, 2026, vol. 14

Abstract: This article explores how our diverse linguistic repertoires interact with one another and with ethnographic materials during group interpretation sessions. Building on research about interpretation groups, translanguaging, and reflexivity, we focus on preparing and interpreting multilingual ethnographic material for a linguistically diverse team, the role of human and AI‐assisted translation, and the relationship between English and translanguaging. In doing so, we make the analytical process more transparent and adopt a critical reflexive approach that closely connects language practices to researchers’ biographical experiences, encouraging biographical reflexivity and challenging methodological nationalism. Our findings illustrate how biographical and professional knowledge on language shape how data is interpreted and understood, and the need for critical reflection on language practices and the relations between linguistic repertoires in a research group. They further show that multilingualism and translanguaging are not merely objects of analysis but represent lived experiences, sites of negotiation, tension, and meaning‐making. Moreover, we reconstruct how our engagement with AI‐based translation and transcription tools became a hybrid communicative site where linguistic boundaries are negotiated, reconfigured, and contested. Finally, we explore how English functions as an architectural scaffolding that opened a space for translanguaging and English‐specific ambivalences in the context of group communication and knowledge construction.

Keywords: AI translation; English as a lingua franca; group ethnography; interpretation groups; linguistic ethnography; multilingualism; reflexivity; researching multilingually; social research; translanguaging (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:socinc:v14:y:2026:a:10907

DOI: 10.17645/si.10907

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