Language mediation as meaning-making, access, and institutional practice

Abstract

This editorial examines language mediation as a situated practice through which meaning, access, participation, and institutional relations are negotiated. It synthesises recent literature across four interrelated areas: intercultural mediation, multilingual mediation, mediation as a resource for learning and meaning-making, and mediation as access, power, and institutional practice. The discussion argues that mediation involves interpretative, relational, ethical, pedagogical, technological, and political work rather than neutral transfer between languages or contexts. It considers how translators, interpreters, teachers, learners, institutions, and technologies participate in the reformulation and circulation of meaning, while also shaping what becomes intelligible, legitimate, and accessible. The editorial then relates this conceptual discussion to the articles in issue 25.1 of Traduction et Langues, which is organised around translation studies and intercultural mediation; language teaching, pedagogy, and educational practices; language, discourse, and cultural representations; and language policy and institutional transformations. The issue’s contributions examine topics including Vietnamese endearment terms, Qur’anic reciprocal ellipsis, audiovisual translation, multilingual dubbing, AI-assisted translation of greeting formulae and diplomatic texts, educational reform, classroom meaning clarification, culturally responsive literacy, teacher development, English-medium instruction listening strategies, Business German, gender representation in literary discourse, written text on cinema screens, and Algeria’s shift from French to English in higher education. These studies show that mediation operates across translation, pedagogy, discourse, technology, and policy as a process through which language practices are adapted to particular audiences, purposes, histories, and institutional conditions. The editorial positions mediation as both enabling and ambivalent: it can widen participation, foster intercultural understanding, and support access to knowledge, but it can also obscure loss, reproduce asymmetry, reinforce institutional priorities, or constrain whose meanings are recognised.