Translatological trilingualism: challenges and perspectives

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Globalisation places us before multiple tasks, teaching us to make quick and flexible solutions. This dynamic process allows us selecting the best algorithms in education, training specialists who can adapt to our rapidly changing world and effectively cope with the problems.

Translation studies hold a special place in the field of professional training. This process is a necessary requirement for a successful communication in the age of globalisation and is of particular importance in the era of extremes, when oral and written communication provides both the speed of reaction and effective solution making.

Thus, under the “extremes” we may consider the rapid technological progress, resulted in the exploding increase in the volumes of information and the speed of its exchange. Such extreme changes led to invention of the artificial intelligence and spread of machine translation technologies.

In this case, we are able to measure these “extremes” depending on how unexpected a phenomenon is, how well-prepared we are, and the volume of new information. And while globalisation, equitable multilingualism and artificial intelligence are accelerating these transformations, the pandemic is not only impeding the innovations, but is also a ‘combat shakedown’ for many trends emerging today.

This is particularly important in relation to the increasing role of a human being and his significant role in the era of globalisation. The process of “anthropologisation” has had an impact on approaches to both theory and practice of translation.

This article explores the ways to respond to these challenges.

Extreme phenomena led to development of innovative approaches toward teaching oral and written translation in the modern era, which imply a specific level of consistency and flexibility in teaching that substantiates the relevance of this article.

One of such innovations is the increasing role of translatological trilingualism in cross-cultural interaction, language teaching and translation studies.

Nowadays, while implementing new approaches, two goals need to be maintained: the first one is a particularly high degree of sustainability of innovations in teaching; the second one is training students to perform their professional duties while taking higher risks. Attempting to provide such qualities, the authors set a goal to research innovative practices of trilingualism in a language combination of “English/ Russian/Tatar” and others.

The term ‘trilingualism’ was introduced to linguistics and education in the 21st century, though situations when people could speak three languages in their lifetime were previously known.

One of the most striking examples in Europe is trilingualism practiced in Luxembourg, where people speak French, German and Luxembourgish (West Frankish) in different life situations.

Apparently, the study of trilingualism in the 21st century is a representation of gradual overcoming of a long-standing idea about the negative influence of interference between several languages when learning them. It was based upon the observations of bilingual environments (where there is always a certain degree of linguistic interference), and the results of such observations were often interpreted negatively.

The process of globalisation accompanied by a decreasing number of monolingual communities and environments while evidencing the increasing number of polylingual communities with no hegemony of one particular language, has profoundly changed the ways information is perceived and the vectors of lingual development are assessed. For instance, purism – the practice of keeping a language intact from foreign influence and free of loanwords – has practically become instinct. Of course, the replacement of mandatory language regulations with advisory ones, and the increasing opportunities for the use of languages in all of the information environments which are the part of the modern life: mobile communications, the Internet, etc., also played a vital role.

What are modern researchers mostly focused on in terms of trilingualism?

M.M. Fomin, whose publications are often cited by many of the successive researchers, does not specify any term for trilingualism in his monograph on learning foreign languages in the context of multilingualism, apparently considering it a variety of multilingualism [Fomin, 1998]. It is also mentioned as ‘triglossia’ by the authors of a recent publication on teaching a foreign language (i.e. English) in a multilingual environment at a higher school [Sabirova, Kondrateva, 2020, p. 8]. The authors state their own opinion on multilingualism, which they describe as “the acquisition of more than three languages” [Sabirova, Kondrateva, 2020, p. 8]. Thus, the authors identify trilingualism as a niche between the common bilingualism and the much rarer multilingualism. However, this niche substantiates the most common Russian phenomenon in those regions, where two languages (local and Russian) coexist on an equal basis.

L.G. Fomichenko is one of the first researchers in Russia to conduct a profound research into bilingualism [Fomichenko, 2005]. Her work is focused on the problem of prosodic accent in English speech of trilingual persons. In particular, regarding linguistic manifestations of trilingualism, she cites: “trilingualism, being a special variety of multilingualism, has its own pronunciation model” [Fomichenko, 2005].

In subsequent works, there is an emphasis on observations of daily communication – as, for instance, in the publication by A.A. Tereshchuk [Tereshchuk, 2015], who discusses sociolinguistic aspects of Russian/Spanish/Catalan trilingualism. It is worth noting that in his recent work – as well as in this publication – children take part as test persons.

The major part of articles published in recent years primarily analyse the didactic potential of trilingualism, and this is predictable, since it is this particular sphere that has a large number of models built on the basis of trilingual complexes, which are so important for both Russia and rest of the world. The list of these works includes the number of publications, where authors adopt the role of unbiased observers – two of these authors, A. Font, E.D. Tovar-Garcia, compare the achievements of students from one of rural regions in Russia with 3 languages spoken: Chuvash, Tatar and Russian [Font, Tovar-Garcia, 2018]. The students were either bilingual or trilingual. The authors did not find any differences in students’ achievements. Seemingly, since there are no differences, the conclusion should be negative. However, this conclusion is very important: if the level of ‘educational achievements’ (the term employed by the authors) do not decline because of 3 languages spoken at home (this very hypothesis was not confirmed by the authors), then trilingualism could serve, on the contrary, a valuable resource – the main reason for that being that the command of all three different thinking algorithms inherent to different cultures is a positive phenomenon.

Among the works related to education, the article by O.N. Ivanova and V.P. Starostin [Ivanova, Starostin, 2018] is worth being noted. This publication examines the particular case of teaching students of an agrarian university. The students at this university learn how to read in a trilingual environment: they are bilingual by birth (Yakut/Russian), and they become trilinguals by acquiring their first foreign language. The authors identify the additional didactic opportunities for teaching a foreign language to a bilingual person, emphasizing the universality of the model with one regional language-Russian or Russian-regional language

+ English (the case-study of Yakut, Russian – English is presented in the article). At the same time, the authors find positive and negative characteristics of trilingual audience, concluding that further research is necessary.

Another article by A.N. Likhacheva [Likhacheva, 2020] is of particular interest among the publications by Russian authors. This article deals with the linguistic core of trilingualism and its didactic potential: trilingualism is analysed as a methodological technique for formation of cognitive skills when acquiring the second foreign language with the emphasis on its educational and psychological aspects. The author sets the goal for preparing the effective method of trilingualism as an optimising factor for teaching a second foreign language. The configuration of languages is somewhat different to the previous article: it is focused on teaching the first and the second foreign languages ‘simultaneously with the native one’ [Likhacheva, 2020, p. 2].

Regarding the research activities related to trilingualism carried in other countries, it can be stated that the first results were published at the beginning of the 21st century. Traditionally, they were devoted to linguistic, sociolinguistic and educational aspects of children’s trilingualism. First of all, we should mention the monograph by Charlotte Hoffmann and Jehannes Ytsma [Hoffmann, Ytsma, 2003]. It contains the description of trilingual persons from all around the world – Asia, America, Africa and Europe. Both authors have a number of separate publications. C. Hoffmann studies children’s trilinguism as a special way of adaptation to the world, as well as trilingual competences, etc. While Jehannes Ytsma has his own subject which is familiar to him since childhood: he studies trilingual school education in Friesland. Both authors are trying to describe the way the community consisting of trilinguals functions. They find more than a few interesting aspects to cover.

Also, there is a number of works related to linguistic strategies implemented with children of preschool and school age. The conclusions provide evidence that trilingual children learn several of the monolingual strategies and successfully improve in all of their three languages (with a different degree of linguistic dominance) (see: [Poeste, Müller, Gil, 201 9]). It is clearly demonstrated that the family is more important for development of trilingual skills than kindergartens and schools (see: [Gil et al., 2021].

Thus, the specialists recognize trilingualism as a special variety of multilingualism, identifying it as a mechanism for formation of linguistic and social personality, applying and shaping its educational, psychological and didactic potential. However, we would like to point out to yet another variety of trilingualism, which is often disregarded as there are no substantial publications on the subject.

Until now, the researchers have focused their efforts on (if such definition is acceptable) usual trilingualism, i.e. the peculiarities of simultaneous speech in three languages by native speakers. The anthropological component, which takes into account both sociolinguistic and sociocultural aspects, is clearly identified here. But there is a cultural sphere where trilingualism is represented by the same text in three different languages. This is the field of literary translation, i.e. translation of works of fiction from one language (L1) to another (L2) through an intermediate language (L3). The presence of an intermediate language (L3) makes this algorithm trilingual. At the same time, the definition of an ‘intermediate language’ does not cover its functions as a cultural mediator. V.A. Vinogradov offered a dictionary definition of the term: ‘An intermediate language is a lingua franca – a language which functions as a tool for international or interethnic communication. This could be either a natural language (for example, Russian in the USSR or Swahili in East Africa) or an artificial one (Esperanto, for example). The secondary languages developing as different dialects of the same language or different languages form a special variety of an intermediate language (Koine, pidgins)’ [Vinogradov, 1978].

In the 21st century we faced the necessity to review the role and distribution of living languages in cross-cultural communication, identifying and forming their productive resources. The research as part of new paradigms allows developing a broader matrix of scenarios of how living languages can be applied. Meanwhile, the role of previously dominating languages is being revised. It happened that Russian is one of such languages. It needs to be mentioned that Russian is one of those languages that were tasked with difficult but noble mission of cultural mediation. In the history of humanity, Latin played a similar role throughout the Middle Ages, and later French – during the Enlightenment period. But Russian was not only an intermediate language throughout the 21st century, but also contributed to creation of world literature fund in different languages. It offered the best works in different genres and created a preliminary level of primary selection, shaping that fine literary taste and popularizing the value of literarism. The significant role of the Russian language as a cultural mediator was developing in Soviet and post-Soviet periods. There is no doubt this role will be the key one in the future being a tool for conflict resolution as the humanity face new challenges. Also, it is a tool aimed at eliminating risks appearing due to the insufficient humanitarian assessment of rapid technological and information progress. That is why, in the present circumstances, it is extremely important to investigate both the process itself and its consequences.

While we do not lack works devoted to the aspects of cultural interaction (including V.V. Kabakchi’s school of thought represented by such key works as: Kabakchi, V.V. “Russian Culture Through English Language” [Kabakchi, 2009], and many others), in particular in the field of literary translation, the definition of an ‘intermediate language’ was normally considered as part of history and culture, as a necessary evil, rather than as a source of additional cultural intent. An informative collection on Russian-German relations through translation in the 20th and 21st centuries is one of the examples that considered mixing of two source languages is as a specific problem [Engel, Menzel, 2011, pp. 299– 319]. However, the role of an intermediary language in translation has not been revealed at all (see: [Engel, Menzel, 2011]).

In fact, the role of the Russian language as a cultural mediator in literary translation has never been the subject of any profound research, although it has been previously mentioned in publications on history of literature, and mainly considered in terms of the role of the Russian language when discussing and comprehending texts in a national language while translating them into European languages (see, for example: [Dildabekova, 2017; Nurtdnova et al, 2021]). The role of a text translated into Russian language as an intermediate variant when working on a final text translated into national languages has never been evaluated. Most of the materials on this topic is obsolete, dating back to the Soviet times, thus cannot be considered.

Not only the material, but the concept of the productive role of the Russian language as a cultural mediator itself, as well as the role of a text translated into Russian as an intermediate variant of the final text translated into one of the national languages has the novelty quality. The novelty also lies in the process of cultural and linguistic modelling, which subsequently allows transferring the identified model to other language combinations of cultural mediation, such as, for example, English-Russian-Kyrgyz or English-Russian-Uzbek.

Methodology

The general methodological basis includes the works by C. Hoffmann and J. Ytsma, N.K. Garbovsky, V.V. Kabakchi. In order to discuss the methodological potential of trilingualism for training translators and interpreters, we should mark a distinction between two types of trilingualism: a) bilinguals (2A languages) translating from/into foreign language B and b) monolinguals (1A language) translating into two foreign languages (B and C). In the first case, a translator can learn the techniques of translation in the A1–B language combination and apply those techniques to A2–B language combination.

Translation competences in the field of literary translation imply a wide range of knowledge in various fields and specific skills that allow conveying the full meaning of the original text. At the same time, knowledge of the source language and the target language is a starting point; the key competences are professional, background, textual, communicative, technical, as well as the personal traits of a translator. In this sense, bilingualism and trilingualism in literary translation have their own advantages and disadvantages.

On the one hand, bilinguals and trilinguals speak more than a single mother tongue, which is a great advantage. In translation, it means that the most important problem – understanding the source text – is solved. What is particularly valuable here is that the linguistic and cultural components of the text do not require additional decoding; they are familiar to translators from their early childhood and can be adequately perceived. However, knowing a language and understanding a source text do not automatically ensure the ability to translate. It is often the case with multilinguals that the problem of finding an equivalent is particularly acute, as they switch from one language to another rather than translate, which does not always contribute to a faster translation process. A translator must be theoretically and ‘technically’ equipped, i.e. have an ability to analyse the source material, master techniques and methods of translation, ‘consciously’ use the language sources (lexical, stylistic, etc.). In addition, one of the languages may be the dominating one, and depending on which language is active at the moment, the dominating one has a greater influence on all the others. Cross-lingual interference in bilingual and trilingual environments can be a vivid example of violation of norms (lexical and grammatical), so interference can occur in any of languages.

Results and discussion

The experiment based on the first option (see above) was carried out at the St. Petersburg Higher School of Conference Interpreting and Translation twice in 2014–2015, when students from Kazakhstan (11 students in 2 years) took a full one-year course at the school. All of them were bilinguals and, when they started working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan, they were able to transfer their skills to their second language (Kazakh). This is the option that can be applied in bilingual regions of Russia.

The second option is practicing all over the world in training translators and interpreters, when translation from and into two foreign languages is being mastered simultaneously, which is a widespread approach developed at many international schools. In this case, more hours of practical training are required for translation from/into B language (according to international rules – the language of active communication, classified as the first foreign language in Russia), so students develop their skills in A–B language combination, transferring those skills to A–C language combination (the so-called language of passive communication, or the second foreign language in Russia). For example, this is how the skill of interpreter’s note-taking, necessary for consecutive interpretation, is being mastered; the simultaneous interpretation skill is being developed in the same way, although the methodology itself is somewhat more complicated.

A wide number of examples can be given being the evidence that trilingualism provides great assistance in mastering interpreting skills. We suggest that the same approach can be effectively applied in written translation as well.

The didactic potential of trilingualism can be analysed through the case study of the master’s programme “Translation Theory, Cross-Cultural and Cross-Lingual Communication”, which has been implemented at the Higher School of Foreign Languages and Translation Studies at Kazan Federal University since 2014.

The first students enrolled for the programme were trained in accordance with the general concept of traditional training at Russian schools – all the students were Russian native speakers and had previously obtained a bachelor’s degree in linguistics. However, a year after a certain trend started shaping that would have been difficult to predict before which was the increasing number of international students. Since 2015, the number of international students has become equivalent to the number of local students, which has prompted the need to reconsider the existing approaches. When analysing the major challenges we faced working with international students, we made a decision to develop a new approach to teaching international master’s students based on the following principles:

– the trilingual model of “mother tongue – Russian – English”, where Russian acts as an intermediary language assisting in developing translation competences;

– studying in mixed groups, where groups of students are not formed on the basis of a single mother tongue (now students who are the native speakers of Chinese, Arabic, French, Kurdish and Vietnamese languages study in the same academic group at the same time);

– teaching translation rather than a language: following the idea of trilingualism, when both Russian and English are not native languages for the students, there is an objective risk that the educational process could be reduced to teaching languages, which contradicts the aim and goals of the master’s programme. For this reason, the idea of “language learning through translation training” has become fundamental, which implies a shift to development of professional competences, such as mastering the methods of pre-translation text analysis, which facilitates the accurate perception of the original text, preparation for translation, mastering the methods aimed to achieve equivalence in translation and the ability to apply adequate translation techniques, ability to perform written translation in compliance with lexical equivalence, grammatical and stylistic norms, stylistic editing skills in translation, including literary translation, etc.

Considering the reasons presented above, the training of international master’s students in a trilingual environment was focused on development of professional competences related to namely written translation, as this particular type of translation activity implies a more careful, detailed selection of translation strategies, which also contributes to the successful implementation of the “language learning through translation training” concept.

To test this didactic model, we are currently developing a training programme for translators and interpreters aimed at creating an innovative educational ecosystem developed on the principles of personalised, competence-based and project-oriented learning. The educational translatological ecosystem based on the innovative matrix principle of St. Petersburg Higher School of Conference Interpreting and Translation includes the nuclear cluster of the matrix, mandatory for all students, and occupies the maximum study load in the first two years, as well as the clusters of the professional environment, which include courses on various types and aspects of translation and are offered as elective clusters after mastering the nuclear component of the matrix. In addition to the above components of the educational matrix, students will be able to choose the elective courses independently, aimed at deepening translation or other, e.g. soft skills and competences, as well as at expanding their knowledge in specific subject areas. The inclusion of an Interactive Interlinguocultural Module (V.V. Kabakchi) is suggested as a compulsory component of this educational ecosystem.

The translatological ecosystem described above, will, in our opinion, ensure that future translators are well-prepared for the everchanging world; they are able to adapt and be flexible in their professional environment.

An analysis of literary translations by bilingual/trilingual translators (the Strategic Centre for the Development of Translation Training in Russia 2017–2020 translation seminars held in Yakutia, Buryatia, Tuva, Chuvashia and Tatarstan) revealed that semantic errors associated with understanding the source text (omission, addition, replacement, and inaccurate transmission) were virtually non-existent. However, at the level of translation results, several main categories of errors can be identified [Buzaji, 2009; Garbovsky, 2007; Shevnin, 2008]: violation of norms and language usage (spelling/punctuation/ grammatical errors, violation of stylistic norms, inaccurate interpretation of the author’s idea), pragmatic errors (errors in communication task transmission), factual errors. A detailed examination of the translated texts reveals the translation problems related to compatibility and inaccuracy of variant correspondences, use of colloquial syntax, government errors, and stylistic abruptness. It means that most of the errors can be explained by interlingual interference. These errors indicate that the target language is not the active language for bilingual translators, so certain deviations from the norm are noticeable in the texts.

As for the didactic potential of the trilingual model, the idea of the mediator’s language itself is sometimes used in literary translation workshops. For example, in 2013 a large workshop for 30 participants – translators who translate German literature into Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek and Turkmen languages, organized under the auspices of the Goethe Institute in Almaty (Kazakhstan) by two translators – Rosemary Titze (Germany) and Irina Alekseeva (Russia), where the Russian language was not only the main means of communication, but all translators translated German texts first into Russian (serving as a cultural mediator), discussed the stylistic features and other potential difficulties of the original text, and then split up into groups depending on a final target language, and worked further on translation from Russian into the respective languages. After everyone gathered and discussed the differences in interpretation of the original cultural and aesthetic phenomena by different cultures.

The revision of traditional approaches to training of professional interpreters and translators has led to a subsequent revision of methodological principles of working with students. In the context of trilingualism, the methodological and educational bases of teaching represent a wide synergetic field, where selection of principles and teaching methods are mainly substantiated by the complexity of the tasks themselves. Those of them that are aimed at increasing the language proficiency in Russian and English can be achieved by integrating the principles of teaching Russian as a foreign language, namely: the principle of visibility with an extended toolkit of visual aids, including graphic images, audio and video content; the principle of concentrism, which, in particular, is implemented by introducing a minimum of the most frequent vocabulary for each thematic area (which is an opposite task compared to training of bilingual translators and interpreters); the principle of feasible complexity and some others. The methodological basis is a set of related techniques that are widely used both when training translators and interpreters and in the process of teaching foreign languages – Russian (as a foreign language) and English; namely, the associative method (in order to establish the relationship between individual definitions, facts, objects, phenomena, when the mention of one object evokes the memory of another one, associated with it); situation-based modelling (in order to familiarize students with the real circumstances, relationships between communicants, speech intentions, etc.); grammar-translation method (inorder to teach how to work with the context, as well as analyze the lexical and grammatical difficulties); suggestopedic approach (aimed at mastering foreign languages through language immersion); as well as project-based methods, where translation process is considered a project, a team task, which requires mobilizing the forces of all members of a project group (working in small and large groups formed according to the principle of presence/absence of a single native language (depending on the task goal)). In fact, it is the process of the sustainable three-vector methodological complex formation.

Systematization and substantiation of the accumulated empirical data, as well as the further development of the presented didactic and methodical model, are based on the principles of translatological trilingualism. It aims at teaching bilingual students (Tatar/Russian speakers) and training professional interpreters and translators as a multilingual and a multicultural personality with a certain system of values related to their native culture and native language, and an understanding why it is important to preserve them for future generations.

When teaching literary translation, which is not a priority at colleges, students develop extra skills. Along with the ability to analyze a literary text and perform translation analysis of the text, future translators must identify and convey aesthetic information, time distance, features of the literary direction, the individual style of the author. An important skill for a literary translator, which must be developed separately, is the ability to work with poetic texts. Fluency in several languages, which is the most important advantage of bilingual/trilingual translators, cannot fulfil all the requirements for a translator of literary texts. In addition, it is precisely this category of translators who need to activate their ‘non-working/non-primary’ native language, counteract interlingual interference (eliminating macaronic language and discrepancies in grammatical structures), while keeping the lingual and cultural competence active. Bilingualism/trilingualism does not guarantee the innate capacity to translate. Translation of literary texts, carried out by a multilingual translator, as well as by any other translator, presupposes a certain amount of knowledge, a number of translation “techniques” and constant training.

Regarding trilingualism as a cultural exchange in the field of literary translation, the study revealed a complete lack of profound research in this field. At the same time, the analysis of the socially significant and communicatively important role of the Russian language as a cultural mediator for formation of the literary fund translated into the languages of the peoples of Russia and the cultural and linguistic modelling of this process is an area that will give the mankind an opportunity to rise to a new level of anthropological self-understanding. Such a model may be valuable for expanding the functions of artificial intelligence, while creating machine translation algorithms based on a trilingual model, where L1 and L3 are the languages with a large amount of data, and in L2 solutions will be made taking into account the translation patterns of L3.

We suggest that cultural and linguistic modelling is a guarantee of the full-fledged strategic development of Russia, where fundamental activity aimed at deep exploring the present situation with languages and cultures, and offering specific proven models of cultural interaction, and thus working ahead of the curve, ensuring the country’s preparedness for major challenges.

Conclusions

In this article we made an attempt to reveal the essential features of trilingualism, placing the special emphasis on its didactic application. It turned out that the environment of three active languages is a fertile one, where each monolingual vector can support the other two vectors: providing cultural exchange and transmitting cultural values (trilingualism in literary translation); supporting and developing the skills acquired in the other two languages (trilingualism for training translators and interpreters); implementing a three-vector methodological complex (when teaching bilinguals a foreign language); forming a model for artificial intelligence (so far this is just a hypothesis).

However, the range of methodological tasks possibly solved by trilingualism is, of course, much wider – and it will broaden when the phenomenon of trilingualism itself is studied properly – in theory and practice. After all, it has enormous potential for fundamental and applied research, including interdisciplinary ones. That is why today we pose more questions in this publication than provide answers.

Many important discoveries are ahead of us, which will certainly assist in improving communication skills teaching process in the broadest sense of the word.

As we have already noted, the era of extremes requires the increased level of flexibility, interactivity and versatility of studying strategies. We understand that digital support of distance learning algorithms is particularly important; but, nevertheless, it is a human being who is still in the core (the anthropological component).

NOTE

1 This paper has been supported by the Kazan Federal University Strategic Academic Leadership Program.