Sites of Translation
What Multilinguals Can Teach Us about Digital Writing and Rhetoric
Laura Gonzales
ISBN 978-0-472-07403-7
A groundbreaking study of the inventive intellectual work performed by multilingual communicators who translate information in academic and professional spaces—Winner of the 2016 DRC Book Prize!
Winner of the 2016 Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative Book Prize
Winner of the 2020 CCCC Advancement of Knowledge Award
Sites of Translation illustrates the intricate rhetorical work that multilingual communicators engage in as they translate information for their communities. Blending ethnographic and empirical methods from multiple disciplines, Laura Gonzales provides methodological examples of how linguistic diversity can be studied in practice, both in and outside the classroom, and provides insights into the rhetorical labor that is often unacknowledged and made invisible in multilingual communication. Sites of Translation is relevant to researchers and teachers of writing as well as technology designers interested in creating systems, pedagogies, and platforms that will be more accessible and useful to multilingual audiences. Gonzales presents multilingual communication as intellectual labor that should be further valued in both academic and professional spaces, and supported by multilingual technologies and pedagogies that center the expertise of linguistically diverse communicators.
“This is a timely, and fantastically nuanced, project, one that spans multiple lines of inquiry (comparative studies, multilingual studies, and digital rhetorics). Gonzales has crafted a text that is at once polyvocal and accessibly written.”
— Melanie Yergeau, University of Michigan
“Absolutely beautiful. Sites of Translation makes a number of outstanding contributions: it offers new methods; new conceptual notions that researchers, scholars, and educators can use to rethink the language work individuals do in multilingual settings; and a rich repository of data.”
— Juan Guerra, University of Washington, Seattle
“Offers an important contribution in a heretofore underresearched area. The substantial and significant data (nearly 3,000 translations and nearly 5,800 second-tier codes) provides an excellent example for analyzing larger data sets that connect with ethnographic storytelling. Insightful analysis from experiences that often go overlooked.”
—Cruz Medina, Santa Clara University
Laura Gonzales is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Writing Studies at The University of Florida.
Cover art: Alexis Ruiz, Printmeikiando, El Paso, TX