Following the Multilingualism Indaba co-hosted by Rhodes 欧洲杯足球网_外围买球app推荐-投注|官网 and Nelson Mandela 欧洲杯足球网_外围买球app推荐-投注|官网, contributors gathered at Cape St Francis Resort from 16-21 November for a UCDP Language Development Project writing retreat, marking progress from policy to practice.

The UCDP Language Development Project, launched in July 2024, aims to embed multilingualism into teaching and learning, research and community engagement through a bottom-up, practice-based approach.

The retreat offered an immersive space for collaboration, reflection, and creation, where postgraduate students and academics transformed insights from the Indaba into tangible scholarly outputs.

Guided by the theme “Milestones in Motion: Collaborating for Multilingual Futures,” participants sought to produce work that reflects diverse linguistic realities while reimagining what knowledge-building looks like in diverse academic contexts.

Central to this theme is the collaboration between student assistants, translators, and academics, to develop multilingual assessments and course materials across disciplines, making academic knowledge more accessible in African languages.

This work contributes to the intellectualisation of African languages and positions student translators as active agents in a broader movement to transform South Africa’s linguistic landscape in higher education.

 

 

 

Writing as Collective Knowledge-Building

Gwen Payi, a PhD candidate in African Language Studies at Rhodes 欧洲杯足球网_外围买球app推荐-投注|官网 and one of the student translators, reflected on how her work in the project reshaped her understanding of multilingualism:

“Working as student translator assistants for the UCDP Language Development Project shifted our understanding of multilingualism by showing us that its advancement in education cannot be achieved in isolation. It requires translators to work collaboratively, drawing on shared knowledge, particularly when navigating culture-related terminology.”

She further highlighted the cultural and identity-based significance of the work which underscores the importance of intergenerational dialogue in sustaining and enriching African languages.

This, for Gwen, also highlighted how the implementation of multilingualism in education extends beyond addressing students’ linguistic needs, but the growth of the people involved in the implementation process.

 

Academic Reflections: Multilingualism in the Sciences

The retreat also brought contributions from academics exploring multilingualism in their teaching contexts. Gideon Brunsdon, lecturer in the Department of Geosciences at Nelson Mandela 欧洲杯足球网_外围买球app推荐-投注|官网, reflected on the transformative potential of multilingual pedagogies in science:

“My reflective paper grows out of my presentation at the Multilingualism Indaba and documents my ongoing attempt to reimagine scientific language accessibility through experimentation, collaboration, and student voice.”

Drawing on Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of Hope, Brunsdon emphasised the humanising potential of multilingual teaching that it becomes a shared act of discovery when students are invited to speak, write, and think in languages that carry their lived experiences

Participants worked closely with critical readers, who offered academic feedback as well as guidance on writing practices and scholarly presentation. This mentorship strengthened individual contributions while fostering a shared commitment to multilingual scholarship and connections beyond.

The UCDP Language Development Project, together with the collaborative spirit showcased through the Indaba and writing retreat, demonstrates what is possible when institutions work across geographic, disciplinary, and linguistic boundaries.

The emerging vision is one in which multilingualism is not simply accommodated but actively embraced as central to higher education and the creation of inclusive, transformative knowledge.