By Giulio Serripierri

On May 27, TransCollaborate teamed up again with MITN (The Monash/Warwick Migration, Identity and Translation Network) to host a multilingual workshop for students in Monash University’s various language programs, as well as the Master of Interpreting and Translation Studies and the Translating Across Cultures undergraduate unit. The workshop was attended by over 100 participants in total, making it TransCollaborate’s largest event to date – which might be more remarkable considering it was held on Zoom!

Students worked with several different language combinations, including Chinese to French, Japanese to Spanish, and German to Italian,with all groups using the primary language of exchange. The translations continued for over an hour, after which students and facilitators had the opportunity to discuss the outcomes. Participants acknowledged the challenges encountered throughout the translation process itself, and the cultural exchanges that occur when working with languages that might share some similarities (in terms of vocabulary or grammar, such as the European languages) but also considerable differences.

By organising this event, TransCollaborate and MITN provided Monash students with the opportunity to experience firsthand the benefits of collaborative translation as well as understand how translation contributes to forging the identity of languages and cultures. The positive feedback we received suggests that we should expect more collaborations between TransCollaborate and MITN in the future. So stay tuned…