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The purpose of this paper is to break the silence surrounding the politics of translation that influence cross-language/cultural accounting research. It gives due consideration to the ways in which translation gaps are produced and re-produced in qualitative interdisciplinary accounting research (IAR).

First, the authors discuss backstage insights and the authors’ own life experiences vis-à-vis translating cross-cultural/language research. The authors provide a critical self-reflection on the process as non-Western female researchers publishing in English-language accounting journals. Second, the authors carry out a content analysis to examine reported translation practices in three long-established interdisciplinary accounting journals from 2015 to 2017. The conclusion integrates these analyses to discuss the reproduction process of the translation gap in accounting research and its outcomes.

The study identifies inherent contradictions in IAR and its emancipatory agenda, where translation gaps are structural outcomes of overlaps between the politics of translation and the politics of publishing IAR. The study highlights the IAR community’s lack of awareness regarding political and methodological sensitivities in dealing with particularities in cultural contexts. The authors argue that this reflects the institutional norms for publishing in IAR, which contributes to neutralising cultural diversity and complex translation processes in the name of objectivity. This could ultimately lead to further marginalisation of non-Western cultural knowledge and values, while producing academic “elites” within the IAR community, meanwhile missing opportunities for innovation.

By opening the “black box” pertaining to translation gaps in the context of cross-language/cultural accounting research, the study calls for IAR scholars to help raise awareness of their role and identity as “cultural brokers”.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the gap in reading literacy of young immigrant children in Italy and examine if this gap is significantly influenced by pupils’ length of stay in Italy and country of origin.

The author estimate a standard education production function where student test performance in language is modelled as a function of the native vs immigrant first- and second-generation status and a set of additional variables that control for students, schools and catchment area characteristics. In the analysis the author use the 2010-2011 school-year data for four stages of schooling: second and fifth grade/year of primary school, sixth grade of lower secondary school and tenth grade upper secondary school.

Results confirm the presence of a significant gap between natives and immigrants students in school outcomes for all grades, with first-generation immigrants showing the largest gap. Further, comparing the results between first- and second-generation immigrant students suggests that the average significant gap observed in the first generation is mainly due to the negative performance of immigrant children newly arrived in Italy. That is, for first-generation students, closing the gap with second-generation ones seems to be, for the most part, a matter of time. At the same time, the gap between natives and second-generation immigrants remains significant in all grades. Finally, when the author compare the results across the different years, it turns out that interventions at younger ages are likely to be more effective.

Despite the availability of a rich set of controls, endogeneity issues may play a role in the analysis.

Results suggest that if the foreign children’s late arrival is the result of national migration policies on family reunification, the authorities need to carefully compare the possible benefit of delaying immigrant family reunification against the possible costs of students’ lower school performance.

Among economist, only few recent studies address the important question of whether the age at arrival and the length of stay in the host country matters for immigrants’ educational achievements. Moreover, while according to PISA 2009 results, Italy has some of the largest native-immigrant school performance gaps among OECD countries there are no studies that investigate this issue.

This paper aims to outline the misguided underpinnings of the “word gap” concept promoted by Hart and Risley (1995). This concept posits that a “30 million word gap” between children of poverty and those from affluent households accounts for widespread academic disparities. Based on this premise, there has been a recent surge in educational programs that are based on a deficit view toward the language patterns of families from economically impoverished backgrounds.

This paper is a discussion piece to debunk the “word gap” concept.

Describing the language patterns of families in poverty as inferior is linguistically false and culturally insensitive. The aim of this paper is to explain why this is and suggest alternative approaches for supporting students who live in poverty.

This paper is an original look at the so-called “language gap” and suggests strategies for helping students who might otherwise struggle to reach their potential.

In this chapter, the authors provide an introspective account of how teachers in mainstream classrooms can use questioning to more effectively differentiate literacy instruction for English learners across subject areas. The authors offer a rationale for constructively responsive questioning and share tools and strategies for adapting levels of questioning to students’ English proficiency and grade levels with the goal of strengthening instruction and promoting student engagement in learning.

Accurate information is the basis for well-informed decision-making, which is particularly challenging in the dynamic reality of a pandemic. Search engines are a major gateway for obtaining information, yet little is known about the quality and scientific accuracy of information answering conspiracy-related queries about COVID-19, especially outside of English-speaking countries and languages.

The authors conducted an algorithmic audit of Google Search, emulating search queries about COVID-19 conspiracy theories in 10 different locations and four languages (English, Arabic, Russian, and Hebrew) and used content analysis by native language speakers to examine the quality of the available information.

Searching the same conspiracies in different languages led to fundamentally different results. English had the largest share of 52% high-quality scientific information. The average quality score of the English-language results was significantly higher than in Russian and Arabic. Non-English languages had a considerably higher percentage of conspiracy-supporting content. In Russian, nearly 40% of the results supported conspiracies compared to 18% in English.

This study’s findings highlight structural differences that significantly limit access to high-quality, balanced, and accurate information about the pandemic, despite its existence on the Internet in another language. Addressing these gaps has the potential to improve individual decision-making collective outcomes for non-English societies.

Refugees’ access to psychotherapeutic care is insufficient in Germany. One factor particularly contributing to hindering their access to adequate therapeutic care is a lack of provision of language mediation. This paper aims to explore the institutional system in which the financing of language mediation in the context of the medical treatment of asylum seekers in Germany is located. It examines why the language barrier problem resulting from a lack of financing is not being solved, even though it has been well known for years as a structural problem of day-patient health care to refugees and migrants in Germany.

The financing of language mediation is analysed against the background of theories of the so-called “shunting yard”, in which public responsibilities for the assumption of costs are shifted from one level and actor to the other, thus preventing sustainable solutions being achieved. A mix of qualitative methods including the evaluation of official documents, reports and secondary literature, and of 23 expert interviews was used.

The financing of language mediation is a perfect example of the “shunting yard” phenomenon, with responsibilities being shifted between federal government, health insurance bodies and the municipalities in Germany. This paper argues that the specific financing structure in the German federal system can be viewed as a reason for the non-solution of the language barrier that hinders refugees’ access to health care.

The problem of the financing of language mediation in the context of health care has been rarely treated from a social sciences perspective. This paper contributes to addressing this gap.

Hearing loss impacts language and communication, a building block for relationships and society. Most teachers and professionals rarely have a young child with hearing loss in their classroom. The “unknown” can be a source of stress for the professionals and the families alike. Understanding the characteristics of this population of students, the diagnostic process, the possible early intervention supports, and practices to use with young children with hearing loss may help teachers and professionals approach students and families with more confidence. This chapter will outline each of the aforementioned with an emphasis on understanding parental perspective.

There are many beliefs about how additional languages are learned, several of which have informed some of the most tenacious pedagogical constructs. In this chapter, additional language teachers working with additional language students in high schools are asked to challenge some widely accepted beliefs about language learning and methods of teaching language, and consider a technique that better aligns with constructivist theories of learning and the inquiry-based learning (IBL) approach. This chapter includes a brief discussion on IBL, its constructivist roots, and its many permutations. It also explores some constructivist-based additional language teaching approaches and discusses to what extent they align with IBL. Also provided is a six-step inquiry language-learning process, specifically designed to teach additional languages, with discussion on how each stage builds upon the other, optimizing language learning. In addition, a series of lessons are described which show how the inquiry language-learning process can be employed to teach additional languages to students who are not yet fully proficient in the school’s language of instruction. The chapter concludes with a discussion on some of the challenges of using IBL with additional language students, citing some of the psychological, cultural, and cognitive needs often present in these students. The chapter ends with a call for further research into the use of IBL to teach additional languages.