This synopsis is based on the full paper available here: paper.
Stories are a key component of human lives and have been for a very long time. The anthropologist Tim Ingold (2011) argues that we live in a “storied world” in which “any thing – caught at a particular place and moment – enfolds within its constitution the history of relations that have brought it there”, so that we understand the nature of things “only by attending to their relations, or in other words, by telling their stories” (p. 160). Stories enable us to make sense of the world and share personal knowledge with others in compelling and immediate ways. From a translational standpoint, translating stories across languages enables them to reach new audiences, and share cultural elements in the process. New connections can be built this way between individuals from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This study focuses on the potential of multilingual storytelling practices as tools for both individual development and for building connections in an urban setting.
We present the results of practice-based research carried out with multilingual individuals in two different settings on the island of Ireland (Galway and Belfast) between October 2023 and May 2024. This research was carried out as part of a wider collaborative project on urban intercultural encounters funded by the Higher Education Authority’s North-South research programme, comparing intercultural communication approaches in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. For this strand of the project, two teams of researchers based in Galway and Belfast respectively conducted multilingual storytelling workshops with diverse groups of migrants (including refugees and asylum seekers), following consultation with local cultural actors such as libraries, and with professional storytelling performers. These workshops were co-designed by all authors, but followed slightly different structures in Galway and Belfast, focusing on different themes based on researchers’ expertise and participant group composition.
The workshops had the goal of creating a multilingual space of solidarity through the arts (Evans, 2019) where participants and facilitators could help each other develop techniques to share different cultural practices and languages. The workshops created spaces that were translational in many ways. The participants translated back and forth between English and several languages, adapted storytelling conventions, transposed narratives across media (e.g., from printed book to oral storytelling to written storyline on a whiteboard), and reframed different parts of their own cultural identities to different audiences.
The study builds on recent research on creative practices and intercultural communication, placing it in conversation with recent developments in translation studies. It is based on the premise that creativity is an inherent part of multilingual contact (García & Wei, 2014; Swann & Deumert, 2018; Baynham & Lee, 2019). In the last few decades, several researchers have focused on multilingual art practices as ways of building creative connections in migration contexts. Art practices involving migrants may build a “more complicated and ‘messy’ understanding of community and society that is rooted in notions of interdependence” (Evans, 2019, pp. 49–50). Art forms employed in similar projects may vary from theatre, to dance, to storytelling, each with its own expressive advantages and challenges.
Creative and artistic endeavours can become part of individuals’ processes of becoming in a world where they interact with various cultures and languages: processes that can become joyful when individuals embrace the “multiplicity and messiness of identity formations” and when “the movement and sensual nature of real-life encounters heralds a new understanding of intercultural subjectivities or vibrant identities” (Ros i Solé et al., 2020, p. 400). Translation is often part and parcel of such practices, taking place in multilingual settings with individuals who have to negotiate between different ideas and conceptualizations of art. The role of translation, however, is often understudied, including by linguists who have focused on multilingual creativity. We aim to add a translation-based perspective to the debate, within the framework of emerging intersections between the study of multilingualism in context and the study of translation as a tool of community building (Baynham & Lee, 2019; Flynn, 2023; Simon, 2019). Here we understand ‘community’ not as a concrete or static entity but as a social and discursive construct that is continuously made and remade or ‘built’ in relation with others (Cohen, 1985; Anderson, 2006; Back, 2009).
Our findings contribute to the conversation by outlining the creative/translational potential of storytelling. In Galway, where the team focused on folktales, participants worked to share and translate storytelling conventions from the different languages in the room. The resulting conversation stressed differences and similarities across languages, and enabled participants and researchers to “find joy in difference” (Ros i Solé et al., 2020). The Galway workshops also concentrated on retellings of folktales that resulted in participants adapting the same narrative into different settings from their own backgrounds. This sometimes resulted in completely new narratives, that not only adapted the stories to local audiences but also created unexpected perspectives on the source texts.
In Belfast, the team and participants worked on participants’ personal stories of language learning and interlingual and cross-cultural encounter, particularly on narratives detailing the participants’ engagement with the English language and local culture during their stays in Northern Ireland. This led participants to share stories of mistranslation (of words, cultural norms, soundscapes) that marked their encounters with the Northen Irish context. They could also share stories of successful negotiations with others, and transformations of the self. Considering the risks of isolation that are inherent with being a newcomer in a certain context, storytelling can become an important tool for mutual recognition and support.
In conclusion, the storytelling workshops established a translational space and a translational ethos for the brief space of an encounter. This does not only refer to the linguistic component of translation—although that figured heavily both in Galway and Belfast. It referred most importantly to the work of building a common understanding, of working through misunderstanding, and of accepting being influenced by different cultures and languages. The workshops in this sense underlined an important component of translation, that is to say, its potential to act as a creative force by carrying meaning across linguistic and cultural borders (Brownlie, 2022), and in so doing create spaces for people to express themselves and perform their cultural identities.
