Special Issue: Bridging the gap between research and language practice

The field of language practice has grown exponentially in Africa, with South Africa enjoying international acclaim in subfields such as translation, editing and audiovisual translation. Issues relating to language in higher education and language policy are also widely researched on the continent and in the country. 

Established language practices within communities are not always led by research. The latest issue of Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies aims to acheive this with Volume 39, Issue 1, 2021 being a special issue titled,  "Putting paper into practice: Bridging the gap between research and language practice."

Although the ideal will always be to implement practices, the reality is that policy will always influence whether and how this is possible. The first three articles in this special issue are proof of this and explore policy-related issues in higher education and in language revitalisation. In the first article, Yallew, Langa and Nkhoma investigate English language use in higher education and recommend that more attention should be given to strengthening the efficacy of using multiple theoretical perspectives to render the African contexts studied more intelligible.

Broadening the perspective but remaining in the field of education, Maseko examines teachers’ self-reported language ideologies and how they occasioned conflicting language practices with the top-down language-in-education policy in Zimbabwe. She argues that the mismatch between the top-down policy and bottom-up practices is mediated in part by a lack of broad-based considerations of the sociolinguistic, economic and political factors; and concludes that teachers’ views showed that translanguaging could be a welcome language management alternative to the ‘difficult to implement’ mother tongue instruction.

The issue also includes an article in the field of audiovisual translation where Matthew asks the critical question: Do additional visual elements in recorded lectures influence the processing of subtitles? He states that given the recent and sudden transition from classrooms to online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, more emphasis is being placed on providing the same classroom experience to students on an online (or e-learning) platform. To increase accessibility to online content, subtitles are sometimes added to videos, but this may come at a cost. The author continues to investigate whether the use of these subtitles are, in fact, contributing to accessibility.

De Vos and Nokele conclude the academic submissions to the special issue with an investigation into the role of translators in cross-language qualitative research in psychology. They argue that issues on the role of translators and information on translation processes in studies are often neglected or omitted in research reports, which may affect the trustworthiness of such studies. 

Have a look at this special issue online here.