Embodied and experiential immersion into transculturality: learning Italian thorough ethnography and translation

Abstract

How can educators contribute to heightening the understanding of Italian culture? How can they improve students’ acquisition of the Italian language? How can they increase opportunities for experiential learning? This chapter aims to answer these questions by discussing Transcultural Devon, a project undertaken by students and educators at the University of Exeter as a case study. It also aims to bring to the fore strategies devised to incorporate the interplay between ethnography and translation in the multilingual classroom. Special emphasis is placed on the importance of working collaboratively with local communities and, at the same time, turning community engagement into an opportunity for in-class and out-of-class reflection on the making of cultures, the production of knowledge and the translator’s role. Critical attention is devoted to translation as a method for embodied, experiential learning within the broader framework of Modern Languages as a multidiscipline.