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Abstract

The paper, titled “Wikis as Third Space for Diversifying Access for Technical Communication,” introspects the process of building a wiki site that represents the translanguaging practice of the author who is a translingual—uses Bangla and English simultaneously. In response to recent calls for a social justice approach for the field of technical communication, it details the site’s translanguaging features—as such discussions are few and far between in the field. Seamless movement between languages as displayed in the wiki site demonstrates the everyday reality of translingual people. The wiki site’s different pages document a smart Bluetooth speaker that introduces the product and details the setup process. The site also features a users’ lounge page where new and old users of the device can share their experiences and thoughts. For the visual aspects of this translingual wiki site, the author argues to also manifest its transcultural aspect as it serves a reminder of the fact that languaging practices influence cultural thinking. The resulting combination, the author explains, morphs a person holistically, instilling a metalinguistic awareness in them. In conclusion, the paper demonstrates the dynamic and transformative nature of languaging and argues these conversations regarding diverse language practices and their powerful effects and meanings should take place in technical communication more often especially since it aligns with its urge to turn to social justice approach.  

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Recently Natasha Jones (2016) urged the field of technical communication to reinforce the social justice turn in the field with rationale that cannot be denied. At the heart of her arguments for the field to take the social turn was the urge to ensure more inclusivity. She invites technical communicators to “consider ways to critique, intervene in, and create communicative practices and texts that positively impact the mediated experiences of individuals” (344). I interpret Jones’ call for this kind of “intervention” and also “creation” encouragement for creating texts that explicitly connect to everyday experiences of people. One such experience is translanguaging—plainly put, mixing two or more languages simultaneously while a multilingual person speaks. These translingual texts can be considered part of the ways in which technical communication can manifest its social justice approach is, as Jones notes, to adopt a “humanistic perspective” as this further “legitimizes” the field. Jones connects a humanistic perspective with a focus on “how individuals experience the world in which they live” and an understanding that because people and communication are situated, technical communication is inherently “political and imbued with values” (345). This perspective, as she argues, simply “allows TPC to make a difference in the lived experiences of others.” (345). Individual experiences and lived experiences of many in the current world we live in is not living in one language but often in two or more and combining (read “translanguaging”) them often.  

Similarly, Godwin Agboka (2013) calls for the field to adopt a “social justice” paradigm that is more expansive and includes disenfranchised sites such as “third” or even “fourth world” nations (30). He thus advocates for participatory design that relies on a “social justice” approach to investigate the unexplored cultural practices of people from disenfranchised nations who possess adequate contextual knowledge that is unavailable to global producers of communication devices. Creating translingual texts through translanguaging is a rather underexplored area of research in technical professional communication. 

In this article, I take up these calls. First, I review literature in technical communication that rejects monolithic approaches to culture and language, and then I connect those conversations with a brief review of literature on translanguaging and translingualism. I argue that attention to translanguaging practices in documentation remains underrepresented in our field, and I offer as a case study my rhetorical experience of re-developing a product documentation wiki site in translanguage—using Bangla and English at the same time. I share my experience of using these two languages simultaneously as I rebuild a wiki site, and I retell the story of how this site became the rhetorical “third space” for me—a space and place where I expressed myself freely and fully. I offer this case study as an invitation to the field to continue sharing and centering translanguaging practices in technical communication. However, first I want to contextualize and discuss in detail what the term “translanguaging” entails. 

Defining Translanguaging and Translingualism

Before I delve fully into the literature of translingualism and what the term itself entails, I will shed light on the fluid nature of literary resources multilingual possess—a quality that Rebecca Lorimar (2014) calls “rhetorical attunement.” Rhetorical attunement of multilinguals makes it possible for them to navigate different languages and, more importantly, differences of languages and cultures in their common yet unique ways as “Their rhetorical attunement is honed by their discursive navigation of difference, which allows them to act with language in distinct, but powerfully common ways” (243). Her point about this fluidity of movement of the multilingual community across their linguistic landscape underlines the translingual nature of the languages they live which scholarship on translingualism discusses in detail. For example, Suresh Canagarajah (2006) calls this fluidity of movement “shuttling.” To him, it not one static movement but one that goes back and forth in between two or more languages the multilingual person may have access to, and “Needless to say, to adopt this orientation to multilingual writers, we have to study the same writer composing in multiple languages, shuttling between one language/ context/discourse and another” (591). This “rhetorical attunement” and “shuttling between” languages are experiences that I personally relate to and will return to later in the article.  Next, I trace a brief history of the terms translanguaging and translingualism. 

The term translanguaging was first coined in Welsh by Cen Williams as “tranwsiethu” and later translated by Baker to note “pedagogical practices that Williams observed in Welsh revitalization programmes where the teacher would try and teach in Welsh and the pupils would respond largely in English” (Wei 2018, 15). However, the term was popularized by Ofelia Garcia and Li Wei (2014). They define translanguaging as “the enaction of language practices that use different features that had previously moved independently constrained by different histories, but that now are experienced against each other in speakers’ interactions as one new whole” (21). This definition of translanguaging sounds like a contact zone where users of different languages come in contact and reinvent languages (their uses) and communicative practices. Later in their book, Garcia and Wei do reaffirm this emancipatory nature of the term— “translanguaging is transformative and creates changes in interactive cognitive and social structures that in turn affect our continuous languaging becoming” (42). It is evident from this definition and stance on this way of language practice that translanguaging is continuous and never just one thing. 

Zhaozhe Wang (2018) argues that the “role” of translingualism which is “ideological” in inquiring about monolingual languages policies “while valuing linguistic heterogeneity as resources in multilingual writers’ written products” (3). Dissecting Wang’s view of translingualism’s role then gives us a characteristic of it—it values linguistic differences and sees it as a resource. While elaborating on translingual approach, Min-Zhan Lu and Bruce Horner (2013) hold that they advance a framework through this approach that takes into account the multiplicity of languages, languages users, their contexts, and their common and unique language usages. They underline the dynamic nature of this approach especially when they add “Thus, instead of treating these [language, its users, their contexts, users’ usages etc.] as discreet, preexisting, stable, and enumerable entities, a temporal-spatial frame treats all of them as always emergent, in-process (a state of becoming), and their relations as mutually constitutive” (587). Lu and Horner here makes it abundantly clear that languaging is always changing and it is not one static thing— “a state of becoming” as they indicate the ever-evolving nature of it.   

In synthesizing this brief literature review on translanguaging and translingualism, I argue that translanguaging is not just about meshing two different languages together, but it is also about seeing the difference as the norm as no two people speak or write languages in the exact same way. Translingualism accepts that there will always be differences in languages and differences in language usage as Anis Bawarshi (2016) reminds us, “translingualism is a fact of all language use. We are always translingual” (245). At the same time, however, it is important to remember that, as Keith Gilyard (2016) warns, in embracing a difference-as-norm orientation, we must also avoid assuming a “sameness-of-difference model” for all writers, because “not all translingual writers are stigmatized in the same manner” (287). Gilyard points out that even stigmatization happens in varied forms.  

The issue that I raise in this article is that even though translanguaging–the act of moving between languages—is a reality and part of the diverse nature of people, it remains underrepresented in the field of technical communication. I propose in this context that product documentations can be a medium where translingual presentation surfaces because product documents are done largely keeping languages separate and thus show the trait of monolithic views of language and culture. I argue here the lack of translingual representation in product documentations not only make them monolithic but misrepresentative as well because this practice excludes the linguistic reality of multilinguals. Documentations of different products include major languages like English, French, German, Arabic etc. but leaves out other languages which are spoken and lived by millions of people. Translingual product documentation not only has the potential of being more inclusive but also expanding the documents’ accessibility from a linguistic perspective. Before I advance my argument, I want to clarify the terms I use in the paper frequently–translanguaging, translingualism and translingual. In this paper, I use the term translingualism as a theoretical framework within which language differences and diversities can be examined. The “ism” suffix in the term helps it be seen as a theory even though a clear-cut definition of the theory is few and far between in the scholarship. Translanguaging—another term that I use here as a verb—refers to the action the multilinguals engage in. Also, translingual is the adjective form of the action word translanguaging. 

I argue that, for translingual context, it is critical to create translingual documentation, at least in digital spaces. This can be a start towards that end as digital spaces testing grounds for diversifying the concept of access in the field. Thinking about access in divergent ways is also kairotic because scholars in the field of technical and professional communication (TPC) are already calling for ways to “consider ways to critique, intervene in, and create communicative practices and texts that positively impact the mediated experiences of individuals” (Jones 2016, 350).  We need more scholarship in the field that engages with languages in documentation specifically and in more nuanced ways than in brief references such as, “The user’s relationship to the language of the manual (a first, second, or even third language as well as the level of syntactical complexity)” (Waren 2002, 119). Warren’s assertion reminds us that all languages, no matter the number we assign to it, should be accounted for when consider probable users.   

Scholars in the field, as I discuss below, already reject the monolithic view of culture. Their opposition to monolithic view of culture not only paves the way for arguing the same for language but also contextualizes my main argument that translanguaging and translingual texts should be encouraged in the field and there should be more research regarding this diverse language practice because of its emancipatory nature. 

Rejections of Monolithic Approaches to Culture in Technical Communication

Scholars like Godwin Agboka (2012) and Kirk St. Amant (2002, 2015) argue that monolithic views of culture and language should not be accommodated in the field of technical communication.  Agboka (2012) argues that individual human experiences should not be disregarded at the expense of collective views of culture.  Agboka asserts that “large culture” views in the field of technical communication overshadow individual cultural experiences. He defines “large culture” as the conceptualization that disenfranchises the small group of people who may hold different cultural views than larger ones, explaining that “Unfortunately, these ‘large cultures’ do not account for cultural practices and values within less comprehensive groups within culture” (161). He shares his personal story of encountering a reductive definition of culture and interrogating this definition through his personal experiences (165). 

Agboka (2012) also shares his worry that cultural labeling from such a reductive perspective could be used to put people from other cultures “boxed into containers” (164) by neglecting “the individual” (165). He further argues that due to frequent cross-cultural contacts in recent times and these contacts shaping individuals constantly, an individual may have multiple and simultaneous cultural identities. Therefore, big culture labels such as “German,” “Western,” “Eastern,” and “South American,” to name specific groups of people based on their geographical location and origin of nationality, as Agboka holds, not only manifest a “monolithic” notion of culture but also a rather “obsolete” notion. Further, Agobka reminds the field the simple truth which seems to be ignored often: “cultural identity—either group or individual—is unstable as well” (171). By the word “unstable,” he means the changing nature of one’s identity these days. He argues for the dynamic nature of cultural identity by giving an example of any person who is born in one country but has lived in another for a long period of time. This person, as Agboka argues, may even be very mobile because of his profession. He holds because of changing places and being in different situations while interacting with many other individuals, this said person’s cultural identity may as well be mobile; for example, “Today, someone could be born in China, but live his or her adult life in Canada, the United States, or France, and therefore be shaped by different cultural, economic, and socio-political forces. Such an individual can assume different cultural identities, due to the many influences that characterized his or her growing up” (167-168). Agboka argues that changing of geographical locations contributes changing of identification for the person—with each location and place contributing to the make-up of that person’s thinking and behavioral pattern. More importantly such persons can “assume,” therefore choose, to identify as they like—they have the freedom to do so. 

Kirk St. Amant (2015) similarly emphasizes that cultures can be not only “intercultural” but also “international” (12). Quite in line with Agboka, he also underscores the non-monolithic nature of culture as “no culture is monolith” and how this fact complicates “the ideas of design and use” (10). He details the cultural differences in this piece. For example, he notes that in terms of image design for an intercultural technical communicator, variations with regards to what is considered “appropriate” or “credible” needs to be taken into account (9). St. Amant seems to be advancing the contextual considerations that Agboka advocated for in his piece as “The central issue here is that different contexts require the communication designer to account for and address different factors” (11). In his other work, St. Amant (2002) furthers the details of nuanced differences within the same language—English—implying the places of origin contribute to this. He urges communication designers to exercise caution regarding language use. Even if the language appears to be the same, its use can be quite different because “Also, different dialects of English are used around the world” (206). St. Amant makes it clear here that a language is never just one thing because dialectal varieties make it different in different places—so, contexts, geographical or otherwise, matter. 

However, even though the issue of culture and the way it is viewed has had extensive attention in the field of technical communication, the issues of languages and their nuances apparently have not received the same amount of attention. Scholars in the field do talk about translanguaging, but the conversation regarding language practices need to gain more momentum. For example, Laura Gonzales (2019) connects her work to document Spanish-English translanguaging with accessibility practices like captioning. She explains how she needs to pay attention to her research documentation decisions because her participants translanguage as they speak and write (38). She details her thoughts about the complexities of documenting two simultaneously happening languages (English and Spanish)—translanguaging in action. Gonzales recommends technical communications researchers to “further engage with issues of accessibility and language diversity in digital publishing” (39). My product documentation on Sony BSP60—a Bluetooth speaker—on a wiki site accounts for this call where translingual users (of the product) can engage in trials and tribulations for their respective linguistic accessibility and diversity. I detail below my story of finding a third space in wikis with reference to relevant literature.   

Finding a Third Space in Wikis

Primarily, this article looks at a Google wiki site that features translingual traits in terms of product documentation and information. I argue wiki sites and such digital spaces offer a venue where different languages can be mixed, and multilinguals’ lived experiences can come alive. Thus, wiki sites, to me, embody a “third space”—one that makes inclusive and emancipatory practices possible. To contextualize this theory of wikis as “third space,” I discuss theories of “third space” briefly in terms of what it is and how it is situated in the light of this paper. 

Theories of “third space” are introduced by Homi K. Bhabha (1994) and later expanded by Edward Soja (1996). From a post-colonial perspective, Bhabha (1994) considers this “third space” as the meeting place between the colonizer and the colonized—one that poses some possibility at the least, a place that offers a “cutting edge of translation and negotiation” between the two parties (the colonizer and the colonized) (38).  Soja (1996) seems to expand this possibility that Bhabha introduces, “In its broadest sense, [third space] is a purposefully tentative and flexible term that attempts to capture what is actually a constantly shifting and challenging milieu of ideas, events, appearances, and meanings” (2). Both the common ground between Bhabha and Soja in identifying “third space” as one that accommodates new possibilities and, at the same time, encourages constant metamorphosis. In essence, the “third space” here rejects the static form of things rather than projects the changing nature of things that alludes to their endless possibilities. Initial theories of third space establish it to be the breeding ground of things to come and things that are possible. Situating theories of third space in classroom contexts, Kris Gutiérrez (2008) sees third space as a “transformative space where the potential for an expanded form of learning and the development of new knowledge are heightened” (152) Seen from this angle, “third space” grants agency to the people that may lack agency. Looking at the wiki site as a third space, I wanted to utilize it to create a product documentation and information guide—one that will be done through translanguaging. I first developed this wiki site for a doctoral graduate class I took back in the maiden semester of my doctoral studies at a mid-west university. However, later I wanted to enmesh my own linguistic and cultural ways—my translanguaging experience—one that I live with on a daily basis. The rest of this paper describes the wiki site in detail—section-wise. I also record my personal thought processes during revising and redesigning it through translanguaging.         

Translanguaging in a Wiki: A Case Study

Goals

The key area of focus here was to develop a translingual product documentation and information—unique of its kind as it is created using Bangla and English language together. Translanguaging happens more while a translingual person speaks, and I notice it, too, but it felt a bit of a daunting task for me to develop this site as a translingual one because it felt like visualizing how I use language. Also, a major thought that I had while redeveloping this wiki site is that in terms of product information and documentation, not only languages are kept separate and more importantly Bangla is not even considered to be included in most electronic products even though it is the sixth most-spoken language in the world by the size of its speakers (“Summary by Language Size” 2019). I must add here, too, that I grew up speaking Bangla for the most part and using English only when I wrote for school education. I was born and raised in Bangladesh but lived these two languages all my life—the major rationale why I consider myself a translingual person. I have also wanted to see these two languages side by side interchangeably for a long time. I saw this site redevelopment as an opportunity to do so. Therefore, I was inspired to mesh these two codes together in this context—namely Bangla and English—in the same product documentation, so I created this translingual product wiki.  Wikis of this translingual kind provide an avenue for multilingual communicators to not only practice their competence but also to utilize their full linguistic repertoires. The audience for this wiki is people who can access both the languages even though knowing just one of these languages will not exclude the site visitor to get the most out of it because I crafted it in a way that enables a person who may not be familiar with Bangla fonts/characters to understand the content regardless.   

Product

Before I turn to the wiki site, I just want to say a few words about the product it covers. It is a Sony BSP60 Bluetooth speaker. The literature inside the product box was a little too minimal. There was only a few pieces of papers and descriptions regarding its usage were very little, as seen in picture (figure 1.1) below: 

I was fascinated by the product and was initially very confused regarding the how-tos of using it or getting started with it. Therefore, I decided to take this as a project opportunity to develop a product manual for it. The unique nature of it is that it will be translingual in terms of linguistic characteristics. Below I use a series of screenshots from the wiki site and describe its translingual nature.   

Home (Welcome/Shagotom) Page

The image above, titled as figure 1.2, features the home page of the site along with the menu on the left. The menu lists the pages on the wiki site. Right from the beginning, the menu and the homepage demonstrate the mingling of two languages—the trans-ness is apparent between the two languages—Bangla and English. 

The first line is in Bangla that also uses English words. Words like “site,” “comment,” “open” appear in Bangla fonts but these words are identifiable by a translingual person or any multilingual or anyone who is knowledgeable about technology because there is no authentic Bangla translation or word for them. This is how codes are meshed and translanguaging happens in real time. Border crossing happens frequently, and the notion of linguistic border gets blurred automatically. For example, even when a Bangladeshi person speaks in such contexts, they would use the English word “site” or “website,” as if it is just part of Bangla. Also, notable in the homepage is the juxtaposition of Bangla and English with the word— “welcome”—the Bangla for which is “shagotom.” As mentioned earlier, while I describe the wiki here, I also describe my thought process—the kind of meta-awareness that accompanied me during the process of developing this wiki site—the third space. I really thought about the word “Home”—I wanted to add a Bangla word for it—in other words, I wanted to translanguage but could not because there is not a word that I could think of that would carry the same meaning. 

Where to Buy/Kothay Kinbo Page

Figure 1.3 describes the next page on the site—the purchase places for the device. This page is part translation and part translanguaging/code-meshing. For example, “where to buy” is literally translated as “kothay kinbo?” using Bangla characters as that seemed more fitting in this case. This translation is done also in part for the sake of juxtaposing the two languages even though codes are not quite enmeshed here. Next, it states that “Unfortunately it is not possible to order Sony BSP60 from Sony’s official website.” Translanguaging happened almost naturally here because many words and phrases are English here like “order,” “Sony’s official website,” “possible” for the same reason mentioned earlier—these words became part of Bangla language because of a lack of their Bangla substitute. Another notable feature here is its extension as an informational site rather than just a product documentation one. As part of this, I also hyperlinked Amazon and eBay pages where this speaker can be found.  

Instructions for New Users/New Userder Jonno Instruction Page

The next page (figure 1.4) that I add below is one about the new users that characterizes the information such users might need—the setup information to begin with, for example. This page contains step-by-step instructions to setup Sony BSP60—the Bluetooth speaker. The title of the page features Bangla and English fonts. It reads “New Userder Jonno Instruction,” which is the Bangla for “Instructions for New Users.” From the title and the English translation of it, the translingual features are evident in word-level. Words like “new,” “user,” and “instructions” remain in English but are written using Bangla fonts because most Bangla speakers would use these words even when they speak Bangla. This title, however, is accompanied by Romanized Bangla like “jonno” which is the word for the English preposition “for.” Because I am doing this translingual wiki site for the first time, the linguistic pattern is not symmetrical, and I wanted to try out new ways of presenting translingual transcription here.

Next, the page features the pre-setup instruction that the device needs to be charged fully before it is ready to be set up. This piece of instruction, too, features translingual characteristics. For example, the instruction that says, “Before you turn on your device the first time, charge it to the full”—the Bangla for which is “prothombar turn on korar aage, tomar deviceti fully charge kore nao”—even though I just used the Romanized Bangla here, but the website has it in Bangla fonts. 

One can easily see the usage of English words like “turn on,” “device,” “fully,” and “charge”. The translanguaging that is happening here is transparent and natural for anyone who can just read the Romanized Bangla. The instruction has four steps to get started with the Bluetooth speaker. Primarily it helps new users to get the device connected with their smartphone. Once the device is connected with the phone, it can be controlled from there. The steps—each of them linguistically aligns with the general linguistic features of the website—are translingual. Especially notable for the set of instruction, though, is the amount of English used here— “Google play store,” “download,” “install,” “open,” “hold,” “pair,” “NFC,” “set up”—the list just goes on, and it is clear the Bangla words and fonts are clearly outnumbered by English words. I could still use the Bangla fonts for them, but I thought I’d keep them this way to visualize the disparity clearly.   

Users’ Lounge/Adda Page

Figure 1.5 features that last page on this Google wiki site—the page is dedicated for users who have had the device for some time. Along with using translingual text, the page uses some Bangladeshi cultural tones with use of words and such. I’ll elaborate on that a bit later.

First let’s look at the title of the page— “Users’ Adda” and in parenthesis I added the word “Lounge” which is not a literal translation of the phrase/title “Users’ Adda” but still captures the essence here. Adda is a Bangla word that means hanging out. However, adda means a bit more than hanging out—it is a hangout for people who share some sort of commonality and have known one another for some time. I personally wanted to convey the message here that this page would accommodate people who know the device and may even go so far as to bond over their shared likings for it even if they may not have known one another for long. 

The transcultural feature here is the use of the phrase “veteran users” and also the very popular YouTube jingle “asen asen, boisha jan” which was popular a few years back. First, let’s discuss the use of the phrase “veteran”—even though it would not directly translate to Bangla. For my English audience for this article, I do not think I need to elaborate what this word (veteran) entails. The Bangla word that would come close to the word “veteran” would be buro (usually means old people)—people who are seasoned with using the device, but that would not do the job of translating the idea well enough. Also, I reminded myself that I am making a translingual wiki site as a third space where I can exercise the liberty of displaying my translingual self—one that is transcultural as well—living Bangladeshi and American culture at the same time. Next, the popular jingle comes from a viral YouTube video from Muslim cleric who during a religious congregation uttered these words which translates to “come, come, sit down.” Viewers not only found this and the tone with which these words were uttered hilarious, they liked this person as he lightened up the mood of such a religious gathering. This went viral and took Bangladesh by storm. Internet sites there are flooded with memes on this. Any Bangladeshi person will recognize this phrase/meme and will get a laugh out of it. The inclusion of this phrase here was my particular way of relating to any translingual/transcultural person who is of Bangladeshi descent or origin. The rest of the first line on that page also exhibits translingual features with words like “share” and experience as it asks the viewers/visitors of this site to come, sit down (“asen asen, boisha jaan”), and share their experience with this smart Bluetooth device. There is also a comment section where anyone can comment on random topics regarding the device as a way to get the ball of discussion rolling on this. This last section ends my discussion on the wiki site. 

Implications

Translanguging, apart from digital spaces, can also be used in other contexts such as classroom teachings, document designs, and also in research planning to encourage inclusivity and enhance accessibility. In classroom contexts, for example, translanguaging can be incorporated into syllabus and parts of instructions. Students can translanguage in written and oral assignments, especially for written translingual texts the translingual students create in a classroom which can be a site for two-way communication both for the students and the teachers. For example, a student who speaks English and Spanish can create a translingual text combining both English and Spanish. Even though the teacher may not know Spanish, the student can teach the teacher the Spanish part of the text, explaining what particular words mean and the ways to pronounce them. That way, the student is not only learning from the teacher, but the teacher also learns—communication is being ensured both ways in this way. Creating translingual texts may be beneficial for the students as that may help students develop their metacognitive awareness (Canagarajah 2011, 415). For everyday day-to-day scenarios, too, translanguaging can be leveraged. For example, translingual documents can be the ways in which translanguaging is manifested. Part of a document can be in one language and the other parts be in another language.        

Conclusion

The above narrative of creating this wiki site is based on my translingual practice. The process of going back to the wiki site recreated the memories and looking back to it and writing about it—all created a meta-linguistic awareness about the translingual nature of the site. There is no hiding of the fact that writing about it was even harder than creating the translingual wiki site—I especially felt the divide between written form and spoken form of translanguaging—one that I do not experience much as I translanguage way more while I speak than I write. I live my translingual speaking self so much that I am not aware of it—but seeing it in action, in the form of this product documentation plus information wiki site—is like looking at a new mirror. This is new in the sense that it is one that I am not used to looking at. At the same time, no matter what I am unused to, it is one that is true and one that I relate with more. 

Angela Haas (2012) stresses on the need to create works in the field that are more “culturally responsive” (281). While thinking about culture and language these days, we should not think about them monolithically. There are cultures within culture and languages within languages, as we are reminded by Agboka arguments against large culture labels. Also, there is that trans-ness of things that must be kept in mind. Not one culture or language but some from each (culture and language) and many people live in between—they “shuttle.” The trans-ness of their lingual or cultural identity should be represented and they need a voice; more importantly they need access. Third spaces like these wikis definitely extend “access” to these people who are underrepresented to say the least. In context of this article, I use the word “access” in the simple sense that it grants “power to do” for people who do not have the power to make the changes they want to see. “Access” in the context of this paper also means it gives freedom to people to freely express themselves. Even though I am not sure the number of people this wiki site will reach, I still see value in it because it gives me access to unleash my true translingual self no matter how uneasy I felt along the way of creating this wiki site.      

In their piece, Natasha N. Jones, Gerald Salvage, and Han Yu (2014) denote that “real diversity” happens when the field “merges with” (134) the underrepresented instead of vice-versa (underrepresented groups of people merging with the field). In context of my work here in this wiki site, I took the liberty to create something that is different from standard practice—the result was this unfamiliar kind which many may find weird overall. However, this wiki site is one whole third space that holds on to its sporadic and seemingly separate halves together—a mediated experience perhaps for many translingual people. I hope this example translingual wiki site that I discuss here elaborately not only helps my audience comprehend the complexities surrounding diverse languaging practices but also kindles interests and starts conversations in technical communication field regarding translanguaging and related works and thus adds to the representation of underrepresented groups of people.  

References

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—.2013. “Thinking About Social Justice: Interrogating the International in International Technical Communication Discourse.” Connexions: International Professional Communication Journal 1(1): 29–38. 

Anisur, Rahman. Wiki Site on Sony BSP60. https://sites.google.com/site/sonybsp60wiki/home?authuser=1

Bawarshi, Anis. 2016. “Beyond the Genre Fixation: A Translingual Perspective on Genre.” College English 78(3): 243-49. 

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Gonzales, Laura. 2019. “Designing for Intersectional, Interdependent Accessibility: A Case Study of Multilingual Technical Content Creation.” Communication Design Quarterly Review 6(4): 35-45.

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