Dialogue interpreting: The point of contact between Translation Studies, Foreign Language Teaching, and Translation for Other Learning Contexts Jekaterina Maadla Tallinn University, Estonia A B ST RAC T This paper proposes dialogue interpreting tasks as a tool for introducing the use of the first lan- guage in language classes, and argues for integrating translatorial activities into foreign language teaching curricula. In order to test this idea six role-plays were carried out in two Estonian high schools, with Estonian as the language of instruction in one and Russian as the language of in- struction in the other. The results show that without prior instruction in interpreting, high-school students demonstrated the use of interpreting strategies during role-plays involving dialogue in- terpreting, which suggests they possess an innate capability to translate. The author argues that the introduction of dialogue interpreting in the foreign language classroom provides students and teachers with authentic examples allowing them to compare the languages used in the plurilingual societies in which they live and study. Keywords: language learning, translation for other learning contexts, mediation, plurilingualism, dialogue interpreting Dialoško tolmačenje na stičišču prevodoslovja, poučevanja tujih jezikov in prevajanja za druge učne kontekste I Z V L EČ E K V članku so predstavljeni raba dialoških tolmaških nalog kot orodje za uporabo prvega jezika pri jezikovnem pouku in argumenti v prid integraciji prevajalskih aktivnosti pri poučevanju tujega jezika. Uporabo prevajalskih aktivnosti pri pouku tujega jezika smo preizkusili v dveh estonskih srednjih šolah, eni z estonščino in drugi z ruščino kot učnim jezikom, kjer se je izvedlo šest iger vlog. Rezultati so pokazali, da so dijaki izkazovali uporabo tolmaških strategij brez predhodne izobrazbe iz tolmačenja, iz česar je mogoče sklepati o obstoju prirojene zmožnosti prevajanja. V članku zagovarjam stališče, da uvajanje dialoškega tolmačenja pri pouku tujih jezikov dijakom in učiteljem z uporabo avtentičnih primerov omogoča, da primerjajo rabo jezikov v večjezični družbi, v kateri živijo in se učijo. Ključne besede: učenje jezikov, prevajanje za druge učne kontekste, mediacija, večjezičnost, dia- loško tolmačenje 71Stridon. Journal of Studies in Translation and Interpreting, Volume 3 Issue 1, pp. 71–91 1. Introduction As an Interpreter Trainer and a teacher of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), I have long been interested in points of contact between Translation Studies (TS), Foreign Language Teaching (FLT), and Translation for Other Learning Contexts (TOLC). In this article, I aim to bring these disciplines together by showing how dialogue inter- preting tasks can be employed in FLT by exploiting the competences of plurilingual students. The important role of translation in foreign language acquisition for communica- tive purposes is recognized in TS, TFL and TOLC, but because applied translation studies and foreign language teaching pursue different aims in terms of the set of skills acquired by the learners (Colina and Angelelli 2017), the use of translation was traditionally restricted in intermediate-level language classrooms (see e.g. Malmkjær 1998). Similar attitudes could also be found among translator teachers, who fear that language learning activities might drive attention from teaching translation as such, which focuses not only on language competence but also on language performance (Colina 2002; Neubert 2000). As for language teachers, the fear of the dangerous first language interference has long been given as the reason for the restriction of transla- tion tasks in the language classroom. Exclusive target language use in language class- rooms, cherished by the proponents of Krashen’s comprehensible input hypothesis (Krashen, 1982), and the “monolingually biased” (Kachru 1994, 798) teaching par- adigm, have been criticized by Macaro (2001, 544), who emphasized the lack of any “causal relationship between exclusion of the first language and improved learning”. According to Kachru (ibid), monolingual bias puts instructors in a difficult position where they may encounter difficulties in adapting teaching strategies to the needs of students with multilingual identities because many mainstream applied linguists con- tinue to treat the acquisition of the English language as “an ideally hermetic process uncontaminated by knowledge and use of one’s other languages” (May 2014, 4). Monolingualism in foreign language instruction is being put to the test by globali- zation and migration. Teachers today frequently find themselves teaching speakers of many different first languages with varied cultural backgrounds in the same class- room, rather than idealized native speakers with the same first language (May 2014; Piccardo and Galante 2018; González Davies 2020). Consequently, a shift has oc- curred in foreign language instruction from the monolingual to the plurilingual par- adigm in language learning, which sheds light on the needs and strengths of speak- ers who already have several languages in their linguistic repertoire. And indeed, the plurilingual individual “possesses a linguistic capital (seen as a set of linguistic assets), which he or she operates according to the situation” (Coste, Moore, and Zarate 1997). 72 Jekaterina Maadla: Dialogue interpreting It has been argued recently that plurilingual competence could be explored and de- veloped within the TOLC approach to language learning. This is because TOLC uses mediating skills in areas other than professional translator training, and promotes the integration of the sociocultural aspect of plurilingualism into the language learning process (González Davies 2020). TOLC thus shares the intentions of the integrated plurilingual approach (IPA) to language learning, which favours “establishing con- nections to the students’ real linguistic repertoire and identities”, progressing towards “reimagining [Foreign Language] classrooms as translingual environments” (Ander- son 2018, 8). As González Davies (2020, 445) puts it, “TOLC speakers can be de- scribed as language users who can apply natural plurilingual practices in an informed way after acquiring translanguaging skills and strategies in formal contexts”. In the context of Estonia, linguistic communities have always been diverse. Up until now, however, foreign language teachers have not been much influenced by this as- pect of diversity, because schools use different languages of instruction: some accept Estonian L1 and others Russian L1 children. In 2024 full transition towards Estoni- an-only instruction will be implemented (Riigi Teataja 2022), and thus foreign lan- guage teachers will encounter more students with different first languages in their classrooms. In Estonia, the language policy is aimed at the preservation of the titular, i.e. Esto- nian language, but the sociolinguistic situation is quite complex. Estonian is pre- dominantly spoken within the borders of the country, and there is an inevitable need to learn other languages to communicate internationally (Lukk et al. 2017). In addition to this Estonia, which first gained its independence in 1918, and then again in 1991, has spent a long time under foreign control, and therefore bilingualism and the extensive use of foreign languages are widespread, even – and in fact especially – among younger population, with Estonian-English and Russian-Estonian bilin- gualism, and Russian-Estonian-English trilingualism being rather common (Ehala and Koreinik 2021). The Russian language predominated in the foreign language curriculum under Soviet rule, with English primarily restricted to a small number of specialist schools. The mandatory teaching of Russian was discontinued after Estonia regained independ- ence in 1991, and English replaced Russian as the most widely taught foreign lan- guage. Both the Estonian and Russian-speaking communities use English for employ- ment, leisure, and entertainment (Kruusvall 2015, 80) and its use is very widespread (Karpava, Ringblom, and Zabrodskaja 2021). Today, Russian is spoken as the first language by approximately 30% of the residents of Estonia (Statistics Estonia 2021), and although the Estonian education system is mostly Estonian-language based, some 73Stridon. Journal of Studies in Translation and Interpreting, Volume 3 Issue 1, pp. 71–91 state schools still offer education with Russian as the main language of instruction. This duality of the school system has existed for about seventy years. However, the percentage of high schools using Russian as the language of instruction has been steadily decreasing in recent years (Ivanova and Zabrodskaja 2021). The dilemma as to whether the first language use should be allowed in EFL classroom has become a significant topic of debate since Estonia decided to use unified curric- ula, according to which students from both Russian and Estonian as first language backgrounds are supposed to study together. In this article, I argue that dialogue in- terpreting tasks can be employed in EFL classrooms to enhance plurilingual com- petence and plurilingualism as a natural form of communication for linguistically diverse societies like Estonia. This can be achieved by building on the competence of “natural translators” (Harris 2017), who have always been present in the country with a long history of foreign occupation and significant migrant population. The distinction between translation tasks aimed at developing the competences of professional translator and Translation for Other Learning Contexts (TOLC), as pro- posed by González Davies (2012) and intended as a tool for learners to “become com- petent plurilingual speakers as they progress from the natural to the expert transla- tor level” (González Davies (2020, 447), inspired me to explore dialogue interpreting role-play as a task in FLT. I propose to answer are two main research questions. First, how can dialogue interpreting role-play help learners to raise plurilingual awareness within the practice of “natural translation” skills as well as raise their agency as speak- ers of different languages (Piccardo and Galante 2018)? Second, how can we use trans- latorial activity to promote “identifying, analysing, teaching, learning and assessing particular practices within a wider spectrum of operating across and within several linguistic codes” (Koskinen and Kinnunen 2022, 12)? The hypotheses I aim to test with the case studies presented in this article are that us- ing dialogue interpreting role-play in the foreign language classroom gives language learners an opportunity to demonstrate and compare various linguistic and sociolin- guistic aspects of their first and foreign languages, as well as experience the process of interpreter-mediated communication and the use of particular interpreting strategies. In this scenario, the task of the teacher is to find the most effective way of teaching the language while considering the linguistic diversity and range of abilities of the students. Dialogue interpreting role-play in the foreign language classroom may give students an opportunity to use their first language, interpret each other’s statements through a common language, and later analyse their performance. Furthermore, re- cordings or notes taken during the task can provide the teacher with authentic mate- rial for class discussions about the differences and similarities between the languages 74 Jekaterina Maadla: Dialogue interpreting in general, and the meanings of particular words and phrases in a particular speech act context. Such analysis could raise learners’ awareness about the reasons for com- munication barriers (Laufer and Girsai 2008, 697) and help them uncover the ways of building rapport with an interlocutor. 2. Dialogue interpreting tasks in the foreign language classroom The data presented in this article are based on my MA research (Maadla 2022), which focused on dialogue interpreting tasks as a way of using two plurilingual learning strategies, code-switching and interpreting, in foreign language teaching. Such tasks fall into the category of “translanguaging”, where students carry out specifically de- signed tasks to develop plurilingual, pluricultural and communicative skills through language mediation (Koskinen and Kinnunen 2022). The CEFR companion volume (Council of Europe 2020) mentions mediation skills and intercultural competence, and points to translation as a key skill for achieving language learning goals by deal- ing with languages in contact. However, the mediation skills used in foreign language teaching do not involve just employing translation in classroom, but also entail a broader perspective that aims to create the conditions for students to learn how to mediate, without requiring them to demonstrate interpreting skills (Koskinen and Kinnunen 2022). Dialogue interpreting is defined by Mason (1999, 147) as “interpreter-mediated com- munication in spontaneous face-to-face interaction”. Rebecca Tipton and Olgierda Furmanec (2016, 6) outline the importance of the mutual openness of the interloc- utors within the process of interpreter-mediated dialogic interaction that promotes “equal, balanced and respectful communication”. While the use of interpreting tasks in the language classroom has not yet been researched extensively, some studies have been made. For example, Prieto Arranz (2002) gave an account of the use of dialogue interpreting tasks within the fourth year English language groups in English Philolo- gy at the University of Oviedo, in Spain. In addition to promoting respectful communication, dialogue interpreting tasks also provide learners and teachers with authentic course material, which could be used for investigating the interactional aspects of L1 and L2, and for analysing the use of L1 and L2 in specific contexts depending on the communicative task and the roles of the participants in interaction. Dialogue interpreting tasks thus help the students see the gaps between L1 and L2 and identify instances where mediation could be needed to promote understanding. The value of authentic materials has been widely recognized (Kramsch 1993; Nunan 2012; Celce-Murcia et al. 2014) within the communicative 75Stridon. Journal of Studies in Translation and Interpreting, Volume 3 Issue 1, pp. 71–91 paradigm of language learning, where learners engage in tasks that are viewed as “a goal-oriented communicative activity with a specific outcome where the emphasis is on exchanging meanings, not producing specific language forms” (Willis 1996, 36). With the use of authentic material learners are provided with exposure to the lan- guage as it is used in real-life situations. Moreover, and especially in the multicultural context of Estonia, the use of dialogue interpreting tasks in FLT could develop plurilingual communicative skills, described by González Davies (2017, 125) as “an appropriate use of natural plurilingual practic- es (e.g. translation, code-switching or an informed use of the L1) to advance inter-lin- guistic and intercultural communication”. To test this claim, a production-based case-study was conducted in which learners were encouraged to engage in dialogue interpreting tasks in classroom settings. After being presented with prompts with dif- ferent pieces of information, the students were asked to interact with each other in different languages in order to complete the tasks. 3. Case study 3.1 The study To answer the research questions, I analysed the overall performance of students who were engaged in dialogue interpreting as a TOLC activity in a plurilingual classroom, and assessed the suitability of the task as a way to introduce authentic material in the classroom and use it for class discussion on issues related to inter- preter-mediated communication. I was particularly interested in whether students would use their natural plurilingual practices, in particular students who have not received any prior training in dialogue interpreting. The latter thus fall in the cate- gory of “natural translators”, described by Harris (2017) as individuals who trans- late without any formal training and rely on their intuition instead of adhering to established translation norms and strategies. Specifically, I looked for instances of strategies typical for interpreting such as compression, explicitation, coordinating communication and self-repair, as well as instances of translation errors, interaction- al code-switching, and mediation through the pragmatic features of concession and politeness. Schmidt’s “noticing hypothesis” (1990, 1992) draws attention to the im- portance of developing L2 learners` ability to recognize the pragmatic aspects of lan- guage (L1 and L2) and provide them with the analytical tools they need to arrive at their own generalizations concerning contextually appropriate language use. These activities are designed to make learners consciously aware of differences between the native and target language speech acts. The rationale for this approach is that such 76 Jekaterina Maadla: Dialogue interpreting differences are often ignored by learners and go unnoticed unless they are directly addressed (Schmidt 1992). With regard to the choice of interpreting strategies, I re- lied on my own experience as an interpreter trainer. 3.2 Student population The study was conducted among 12 eleventh grade students (i.e., approximately 17 years old) of two Tallinn schools with Estonian as the medium of instruction (role- plays 1, 2, 3, and 4), and six eleventh grade students with Russian as the medium of instruction (role-plays 5 and 6). In the school with Estonian as the medium of in- struction, the students had started learning English in the second grade as their first foreign language and had four lessons of English a week. In the school with Russian as the medium of instruction, English as a first foreign language was introduced in the first grade along with four lessons a week of Estonian as the second language. The linguistic repertoire of the students was not tested for the purposes of this study due to the exploratory nature of the work and, more importantly, because I did not want to influence the students’ use of a particular language when performing the task by preliminarily discussing or surveying the students’ competence in any of the lan- guages. Table 1, below, describes the system of language instruction in both schools. Table 1. System of language instruction in the schools where role-plays were conducted. Language of instruction Second language First foreign language Second foreign language Estonian - English Russian Russian Estonian English 3.3 Method After discussing the experiment with the teacher in charge of the class activities, the following main aims in the lesson plan were defined: 1. to practice language mediation, 2. to take different roles in conversations. After the warm-up activities the students were invited to participate in the role-play, where they could choose between three roles: • the “parent” or the “teacher”, who do not share a language, • the “interpreter” who would enable communication. 77Stridon. Journal of Studies in Translation and Interpreting, Volume 3 Issue 1, pp. 71–91 After choosing their role, the students received a prompt with the description of their role in the conversation. The “teacher’s” role-play prompt told the student to conduct a tactful meeting with the parent. The “parent’s” prompt, in contrast, encouraged the student to quarrel with the “teacher” and read: “You think that your kid is perfect, and the teacher is wrong”. Students were not restricted in their choice of language used in the role-play, in order to promote first language use. The lesson was organized following a lesson plan with the overarching aim of practis- ing language mediation through dialogue interpreting, while simultaneously address- ing the socio-pragmatic aspect of politeness or tactfulness. The only language used by the teacher throughout the session was English. The students were asked to form groups and to voluntarily take the roles of “interpreter”, “teacher” and “parent”. The role of the “interpreter” was previously introduced by showing a short video about in- terpreters, created under my supervision as part of the LIFE project at Tallinn Univer- sity (available at https://elu.tlu.ee/en/projects/synergy-between-interpreter-and-pub- lic-official). Malmkjær (1998, 6) suggests that translation would be far more beneficial in language teaching if the activities students engage in during their class were similar to those performed during the actual practice of translation. In the light of this, a parent-teacher study conference was selected as the setting for the task in order to maximize the authenticity of the context and provide students with a recognizable role to act out during the role-play. The students were asked to pretend that neither of them understood each other’s language. This instruction helped us highlight how the “interpreter’s” input was instrumental to the success of communication. If the “interpreter” was fluent in both languages, the students were free to speak either of the languages they studied. The students were handed the prompts for their chosen role of “teacher” or “parent”. The “interpreters” did not receive a prompt. The prompts included topics to be addressed during the conversation. It was separately stated that the “teacher” should remain polite and tactful, and that the “parent” was supposed to express disagreement with the “teacher’s” statement. This instruction was meant to check whether the student “interpreters” would take the role of a neutral agent or the role of mediating facilitator of communication (Koskinen and Kinnunen 2022, 14). After giving the necessary instructions, the session started, and the interpreter-medi- ated conversations were audio-recorded. Students recorded the role-play using the Vocaroo online-recording software (www. vocaroo.com) and sent the links after the sessions. Recordings were transcribed and analysed manually to find evidence of the following: 1) interpreting strategies of compression, explicitation, coordinating communica- tion and self-repair, and instances of translation errors; 78 Jekaterina Maadla: Dialogue interpreting 2) interactional code-switching; 3) mediation of pragmatic features of concession and politeness. The main unit of analysis of the students’ speech were conversational turns. 4. Results The results are presented according to the features typical of dialogue interpreting outlined above. Gloss translations of utterances in Estonian and Russian were done by the author of the article and are provided in italics. 4.1 Interpreting strategies With the exception of one turn, in all of the 43 turns students followed the instruction of giving the “interpreter” an opportunity to interpret even if the interlocutors understood the message. The languages chosen by the students for the role-plays were Estonian, Russian and English, which is not surprising given their linguistic backgrounds and the spread of foreign languages in the country. However, it was interesting that one group from the school with Estonian as the language of instruction chose to talk in Russian (parent) and English (teacher). The turns by the Russian-speaking “parent” were most- ly grammatically and stylistically erroneous, though understandable. The “interpreter” also struggled to interpret the English-speaking “teacher” because of the poor use of language. Three other groups from the same school chose Estonian and English as the language medium. It is also notable that in the school with Russian as the main language of instruction one of the two groups chose to speak in three languages: Russian-speak- ing “parent” talked to an Estonian-language “teacher” through an English-speaking “in- terpreter”. The “interpreter” was able to produce clear statements despite the stress of using a foreign language to mediate between two other foreign languages. The “interpreters” compressed their turns by omitting adjectives (little, some, well), prepositional phrases of location (at school) and discourse organizing markers (next question). Professional interpreter training always includes exercises on compression, where trainee interpreters are taught “how to identify the most relevant parts of a speech and sum up its main arguments and macrostructure” (Kalina 2019a, 74). In- terpreters are also taught to use the translation strategy of explicitation, which is an attempt by the interpreter to explain incomprehensible items of conversation or those lacking an equivalent in the target culture (Kalina 2019b). Moreover, Gumul (2006) claims that explicitation in interpreting is often an unconscious procedure. This was evident from the observed role-plays, because in several turns, as exemplified in 79Stridon. Journal of Studies in Translation and Interpreting, Volume 3 Issue 1, pp. 71–91 Example 1, the “parent” provided additional explanations in their translation, thus assuming the role of explicitator-mediator and trying to shift the focus away from criticism of individual personalities towards blaming the generalized institutional en- vironment of the school for the misfortunes of the student. Example 1 Parent: Ee Anton on väga energiline poiss ja ma iga päev teen kindlaks et ta läheb õigel ajal magama nii et ma ei selline asi ei tohiks juhtuda ja Anton on väga tähelepanelik minu teada nii et ma olen kindel et ee probleem on teiepoolne. Ee Anton is a very energetic boy and every day I make sure he goes to bed on time so I know this kind of thing shouldn’t happen and, as far as I know, Anton is very attentive so I’m sure the problem is on your side. Interpreter: Aa ee the parent insists that Anton is a very energetic boy and he makes sure that he goes asleep at the right time ee every day in… also that he is very attentive and so she or he should not have trouble in school, which means that problem comes from the school not from the house. The interpreter is traditionally seen as an “invisible link” who is not supposed to alter the discourse, genre, or register of the text they are interpreting (Torikai 2009; Ozolins 2016). Therefore language teachers who intend to use dialogue interpreting tasks in their classroom are advised to familiarize themselves with the position of the inter- preter as a language mediator (Bazani 2019, 5). The role-plays clearly highlighted the importance of prior instruction about the interpreter’s role, and of the norm instruct- ing the “interpreters” to interpret in the first person. For example, one of the partic- ipants in the study made the following comment: “The role of the interpreter was challenging – does the “interpreter” have his or her own ‘voice’ and describes what has been said, or do they use the first person when delivering translations?” (Maadla 2022). A specific difficulty also originated from the gender neutrality of the Estonian language, where one pronoun is used to identify both genders. The interpreters at- tempted to clarify their delivery by adding the name of the person referred to, as in Example 2, making a repair preceded by the word no (ei in Estonian). Example 2 Teacher: Well, yes but there are also some other difficulties that I noticed with her while she is in school though for example she works a lot slower 80 Jekaterina Maadla: Dialogue interpreting compared to everyone else not saying that she is not smart but compared to everyone else she works very much slower Interpreter: Ok. põhimõtteliselt et ta näeb nagu teist probleemi, et Anna siis töötab natukene aeglasemini, kui teised õpilased et ta ütleb et ta ei Anna ei ole tark aga et lihtsalt töötab natuke aeglasemalt Ok. Basically that he/she sees as another problem that Anna then works a bit slower than the other students that he/she says he/she no Anna is not smart but that just works a bit slower. A similar strategy is used by another “interpreter” who does not speak in the first person, but uses reported speech. Example 3 Teacher: Let’s talk about it in mail like through mail lets like at, yeah. OK Interpreter: Õpetaja soovib teile pärast sõnumina sellist seda teemat eda- si arutada The teacher would like to discuss this topic afterwards via messaging Sometimes students used the self-repair strategy, common in L2 production. In In- terpreting Studies the criteria of fluency include variables such as repairs, pauses, self-correction, fillers, hesitation, and repetition (Lee 2015). Repairs may be overt or covert (Levelt 1983), signalling the correlation between working memory capacity and cognitive load. However, in the present research the amount of repairs was mini- mal and the only instance is presented below. Example 4 Interpreter: How she getting fives without no extra help? With no extra help. Teacher: … Are you? Ehm do you know about it? According to Wadensjö (1998), interpreters are involved in coordination of commu- nication by performing “interaction- orientated” translation. This occurs when they translate according to contextual information, and their translation influences anoth- er turn the interlocutors are making. Alongside this process, interpreters manage the turn system by asking for clarification, stopping the participants to let them translate if the amount of input is too great, or something needs clarification. Hale (2007, 11) 81Stridon. Journal of Studies in Translation and Interpreting, Volume 3 Issue 1, pp. 71–91 suggests that interpreters need to consider “features additional to propositional con- tent, such as markers of register variation, hesitations, discourse markers, repetitions and backtracking”, and argues that “if the interpreter aims to maintain such features, then the speakers will be given the opportunity to react to the message as it is present- ed to them, rather than receive a censored or edited version from the interpreter”. In the following examples (5 and 6), the “interpreter” interfered to help the “parent” find a word to describe the situation. The “interpreter” also started her next turn through interfering with a longer utterance. Evidence shows that students switched roles and helped each other in finding suitable words and expressions. Example 5 Parent: Aga minu meelest Anna ongi see on selline laps kellele meeldib väljendada oma … (pause) But I think that Anna is such a child who likes to express her… Interpreter: (interferes) Arvamust? Opinion? Parent: Arvamust (laughs) ja see ongi selline see ekstravertse inimese omadus et ta ta grupis võtab selle liidri rolli ja räägib teiste ees ja minu arust on minu laps on ikkagi nagu perfektne. [Vabandust aga …] opinion (laughs) and this is such a quality of an extravert person that he he takes this role of the leader and speaks in front of others and I think that my child is still like perfect [I´m sorry but …] Interpreter: [She is sorry] but she thinks that her daughter is perfect the way that she is and is like her thing to be like extravert aa and be the ruler of the group In the next case the “interpreter” is also helped by another participant who whispers the word he forgot. Example 6 Teacher: (Laughs) She doesn’t listen attentively in class so that she often misses the point of my speech and other important announcements Interpreter: она не слушает меня внимательно ээ а также она (laughs) не не ловит не 82 Jekaterina Maadla: Dialogue interpreting She does not listen to me attentively ee and also she (laughs) does not not get not Teacher: (Whispers) улавливает суть (Whispers) get the essence Interpreter: улавливает суть моих э э get the essence of my 4.2 Interactional code-switching According to Gumperz (1982), interactional code-switching discourse functions include quotations, addressee specification, interjections, reiteration, and messag- es. Saville-Troike (2003) distinguishes eight different functions of code-switching: softening or strengthening requests or commands, intensification/elimination of ambiguity (repetition), adding humour, using direct quotations and repetitions, making ideological statements, addressing lexical needs, excluding other listeners, and strategies of avoidance and repair. Not all of these strategies were found in the analysed case studies. Instances of interactional code-switching were found in the Estonian-Russian mediation (see examples 7, 8 and 9) in the school with Estonian as the main language of instruction. It was evident that a lack of linguistic resources in Russian as a foreign language compelled the student to repair the delivery with insertions in Estonian. Example 7 Parent :Ну что такое ну что такое я нее хочу uskuda тебя не хочу этоо это не как это может быть Анна такая нет яая я не taha uskuda So what’s wrong so what’s wrong I don’t want to believe (in Estonian) I don’t want that that it’s not like it can be Anna so no I don’t want to believe (in Estonian). Example 8 Interpreter: Но она ничего не думает в классе и-э она не ээ keskendu- ma ээ в классе и-э ээ ээ она не ээ ээ да But she doesn’t think anything in class and-eh she doesn’t eh pay attention (in Estonian) eh eh eh eh eh yes 83Stridon. Journal of Studies in Translation and Interpreting, Volume 3 Issue 1, pp. 71–91 Example 9 Interpreter 1: Ты надо учить на –аа to be et olla дорогая человек и-ээ käima в школа You have to learn to be (in English) to be (in Estonian) darling man ee to go (in English) to school Discourse markers included “okay”, “like”, and “well”. There were no instances of Es- tonian or Russian discourse markers inserted into English turns, but “okay” is clearly used as a discourse marker in Estonian and English speech. “Hy” (well) was used as a coordination marker in Russian-language turns by the Russian-English “interpreter” in the EFL classroom. 4.3 Mediation through pragmatic features of concession and politeness The “interpreters” resorted to mediation several times, for instance in Example 10, where the “interpreter” attempted to soften the illocutionary force of the original ut- terance. Mason (2019) explains this mitigation as the desire of interpreters to save their professional face when they are in danger from distancing, indirectness or ag- gression, and as their wish to ensure rapport-management within the conversation. Example 10 Teacher: Okay then we have nothing else to talk about. Get out of this class! And take your child with you Interpreter: Meil ei ole enam mitte midagi arutada. Palun lahkuge klas- sist ja võtke oma laps endaga kaasa. We have nothing more to discuss. Please leave the class and take your child with you. … Teacher: Get out! (laughs) Interpreter: Lahku palun Please leave The perception of politeness in communication between adults in Estonian and Russian is reflected in the use of the formal (teie, вы) or non-formal (sina, ты) sec- ond-person pronoun in communication. In the Russian-English role-play exemplified 84 Jekaterina Maadla: Dialogue interpreting in Example 11 it is clear that this feature of social interaction in the Russian-speaking community is unknown to both the Russian-speaking “parent” and the mediating “interpreter” from the Estonian-language school, as the “parent” constantly uses the non-formal ты instead of the formal вы, which would be considered inappropriate for a teacher-parent conversation in Russian culture. The conversation that starts with the polite здравствуйте seems to be unconsciously copied by the parent, who also later fails to use the polite form of address, the same as the “interpreter”. Example 11 Teacher: So eh your daughter isn’t eh very good eh in her eh schoolwork? Interpreter: Твоя дочь очень плохо учИтся. Your [informal] daughter is doing very poorly in school. In the Estonian-English role-plays, the formal you (teie) in Estonian is mostly used in the interpretation. The signal of a polite request (please) is sometimes lost, howev- er, in most cases it is translated. In the next example the “interpreter” uses would to translate the polite form of address into English, where there is no lexical distinction between the formal and informal second person pronoun as it is in Russian. The Eng- lish-speaking “teacher” attempts to smooth the communication, which is an impor- tant aspect of politeness, using downgraders that could alter dispreferred speech acts by expressing the negative meaning indirectly through expressions like just, just in case, a bit, a few, one thing, rather, scarcely, a little, and others. There were cases where such markers were omitted, but also instances when the intent to smooth communi- cation was expressed (Example 12) by the use of the downgrading Estonian marker nagu, which is specific to Estonian-language discourse. Example 12 Teacher: So I myself like always overview what the other students are do- ing and I’ve noticed that people who are with them in the groups or with Ana in the group are always a little bit down and kind of feel like Ana is taking too much control Interpreter: Ee (laughter) inimesed kellega ta siis ühes samas grupis on tunnevad annavad endale palju kontrolli olukorra üle ja nad tunnevad hästi nagu välja jäetuna. The people he’s in the same group with feel like they’re giving themselves a lot of control over the situation and they feel well like left out. 85Stridon. Journal of Studies in Translation and Interpreting, Volume 3 Issue 1, pp. 71–91 In the case of English-Estonian, English-Russian and English-Russian-Estonian me- diation in EFL classroom, the students displayed an intuitive ability to use interpret- ing strategies (without prior instruction) without negative L1 transfer or intrasen- tential code-switches. However, in the cases of English-Estonian mediation, students struggled with understanding the role of the interpreter, and were largely unaware of the norm of using the first person in interpreting. The students taking the role of in- terlocutors and “interpreters” mostly successfully demonstrated the ability to produce as well as interpret politeness and concession markers. In some cases, however, the illocutionary force of the utterances was mitigated. As seen in all the above examples, it can be concluded that the role-play provided the students and the teachers with authentic material that could be used to investigate inter- actional aspects of L1 and L2 and the use of interpreting strategies. Furthermore, the task was received positively by the learners, as laughter was rather common: the “interpreter” laughed in 17 turns, the “teacher” in nine and the “parent” in six. However, it is also pos- sible that laughter was a coping strategy, which was not specifically assessed in this study. 5. Conclusion Having analysed the instances of the use of the interpreting strategies of compres- sion, explicitation, coordinating communication and self-repair, the results show that the chosen role-play provided sufficient conditions to get authentic material into the foreign language classroom, which stimulated further discussions about barriers to communication stemming both from differences in language systems and the context of communication. It also provided the students with different ways of overcoming these barriers with the use of interpreting strategies. Through the role-play and the subsequent discussions the students’ awareness about plurilingualism was raised, as was their agency as speakers of foreign languages. The role-plays, as presented above, showed that translatorial activity may be used to promote a different approach to classroom activities by enabling the students to use different languages within the same activity. The students proved to be “natural trans- lators”, and the “interpreters” in the role-plays clearly demonstrated the use of inter- preting strategies. Assessment of both the self-repairs and the use of pragmatic mark- ers showed that the students could intuitively identify differences in sociolinguistic or socio-pragmatic conventions and adjust their communication accordingly. It is inter- esting that in one instance the students chose to mediate between three languages that they were proficient in, using English, Estonian and Russian (reflecting the trilingual context of the Estonian capital), and were able to perform successfully. 86 Jekaterina Maadla: Dialogue interpreting The limitations of the study include the failure to consider learners’ agency, and it remained unclear whether they used the interpreting strategies consciously or uncon- sciously. Moreover, the learners were not individually tested for language proficien- cy levels. Pre-testing could add an insight into the influence of possible bilingualism on interpreting performance and enable us to identify “natural translators” and bet- ter-performing “interpreters”. However, as stated before, in this experiment I wanted to create conditions for spontaneous interaction and give the students an opportunity to voluntarily choose the roles they played. Another limitation was that several stu- dents decided to read the phrases from the prompts they were provided with, which was a restrictive factor for authentic language production. It is not my intention to contest the widely accepted distinction between approaches used in language pedagogy and those in interpreter training. Nevertheless, the oppor- tunity to create a dialogue between the fields of professional language practice in trans- lation and educational language practice in foreign language learning should not be neglected. It is my sincere belief that using both fields in an interdisciplinary way is crit- ical to overcoming the monolingual bias of language classrooms and foster intercultural awareness among plurilingual language learners (and teachers!), while simultaneously steadily developing mediation skills through tasks that provide the learners with an op- portunity to investigate their own language production comparatively in L1 and L2. The common misconception “I know languages, therefore I can translate” (Zlatnar Moe, Mikolič Južnič, and Žigon 2017) can be overturned by introducing dialogue interpret- ing tasks into the foreign language classroom, providing that the teachers get acquainted with the notions of “translation” and “mediation” as scaffolding tools in L2 learning, and learn how to use interpreting strategies in interpreter training. Dialogue interpreting tasks, as shown in this research, could offer a basis for analysing and appreciating the differences and commonalities of the languages that students learn or use in their daily lives in multilingual states in multilingual Europe. The use of dialogue interpreting in FLT also highlights the undoubtedly important role of interpreters as professionals with a distinctive skill-set and knowledge about the languages and cultures they mediate. References Anderson, Jason. 2018. “Reimagining English Language Learners from a Translingual Per- spective.” ELT Journal 72 (1): 26–37. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccx029. Bazani, Antigoni. 2019. “Translation and L2 Teaching’s Relationship Status: From Former ‘Friends’ and ‘Enemies’ to Current ‘Strangers’.” In Translation and Language Teaching: Continuing the Dialogue, edited by Melita Koletnik and Nicolas Frœliger, 3–22. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 87Stridon. 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Wadensjö, Cecilia. 1998. Interpreting as Interaction. London: Longman. Willis, Jane. 1996. A Framework for Task-Based Learning. Harlow: Longman. Zlatnar Moe, Marija, Tamara Mikolič Južnič, and Tanja Žigon. 2017. “I Know Languages, Therefore, I Can Translate?: A Comparison between the Translation Competence of For- eign Language and Interlingual Mediation Students.” In Benjamins Current Topics, edited by Sonia Colina and Claudia V. Angelelli, 83–102. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Ben- jamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.90.05moe. About the author Jekaterina Maadla holds an MA in Conference Interpreting, an MA in Teaching Eng- lish as a Foreign Language from Tallinn University, and is currently a PhD student in Studies of Cultures. Her research topic is Public service interpreting in crisis settings. Jekaterina has been working as an interpreter for public and private institutions for more than ten years and has trained interpreters for four years. Her professional ex- perience as an interpreter and language teacher offers her a unique comparative per- spective and a practical insight into her research interests, which mainly focuses on interpreter-mediated communication in public settings and points of contact between Interpreting Studies and Foreign Language Teaching. 91Stridon. Journal of Studies in Translation and Interpreting, Volume 3 Issue 1, pp. 71–91