Navigating linguistic discordance has often been challenging for new migrants, impacting their experiences living in a host country. For many LGBTQ+ people, migrating to societies that offer greater acceptance and protection against sexual and gender identity-based discrimination, criminalization, threats, and violence is often seen as a crucial step towards ensuring their safety and wellbeing (UNFE, 2021). However, LGBTQ+ migrants may face unique intersectional obstacles beyond the communicative challenges faced by other new migrants. These include difficulties in expressing their identities, experiences, and needs through language mediation services such as interpretation and translation. The success of such interactions often depends on two key factors: the service provider’s level of awareness and their proficiency to engage the migrant in a respectful and inclusive manner, alongside the interpreter or translator’s ability to adeptly bridge the often-present linguistic disparity specific to the LGBTQ+ lexicon across the languages of the migrant and the host country. At the intersection of migration and sexuality, ensuring culturally safe, respectful, and inclusive communication for LGBTQ+ individuals is a fundamental act of social justice and a recognition of human rights.
In the humanities and social sciences, the literature on communicating LGBTQ+ concentrates largely on the interfaces between queer sexuality and queer textuality (e.g., Baer, 2020; Grambling, 2018), discourses of sexuality and political discourse (e.g., Savci, 2021), queer activism and translation (e.g., Baldo, Evans, & Guo, 2021; Baer & Kaindl, 2018), and queer translation, colonialism, and globalization (e.g., Epstein & Gillett, 2017). Little attention has been paid to the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ community members who uproot themselves to an adopted country, and to how they navigate the communication of their identity and needs in accessing public services, such as in the healthcare and legal domain, in the host country language or through linguistic mediation assistance (i.e., translation or interpretation). This Research Topic intends to highlight this under-researched area by calling on researchers and practitioners working in fields such as sexual and general health, legal and human rights, and translating and interpreting to shed light on intra- and interlingual challenges manifested in their research and practice in their interactions with LGBTQ+ community members, so as to increase the visibility of this hidden area of communication and identify measures to strengthen the support required for mediating the linguistic discordance these community members experience.
Contributions of original research and commentary pieces are welcomed. We particularly welcome insights into the linguistic disparity in LGBTQ+ areas between host country and native languages, how language mediation manifests in interlingual communication involving sexually and gender diverse individuals, the impacts of language discordance experienced by these people in their adopted country, and lessons learned by service providers in countering heteronormality.
Keywords:
language mediation, intersectionality, translating/translation, interpreting/interpretation, host country, migration, cultural safety, LGBTQ+
Important Note:
All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
Navigating linguistic discordance has often been challenging for new migrants, impacting their experiences living in a host country. For many LGBTQ+ people, migrating to societies that offer greater acceptance and protection against sexual and gender identity-based discrimination, criminalization, threats, and violence is often seen as a crucial step towards ensuring their safety and wellbeing (UNFE, 2021). However, LGBTQ+ migrants may face unique intersectional obstacles beyond the communicative challenges faced by other new migrants. These include difficulties in expressing their identities, experiences, and needs through language mediation services such as interpretation and translation. The success of such interactions often depends on two key factors: the service provider’s level of awareness and their proficiency to engage the migrant in a respectful and inclusive manner, alongside the interpreter or translator’s ability to adeptly bridge the often-present linguistic disparity specific to the LGBTQ+ lexicon across the languages of the migrant and the host country. At the intersection of migration and sexuality, ensuring culturally safe, respectful, and inclusive communication for LGBTQ+ individuals is a fundamental act of social justice and a recognition of human rights.
In the humanities and social sciences, the literature on communicating LGBTQ+ concentrates largely on the interfaces between queer sexuality and queer textuality (e.g., Baer, 2020; Grambling, 2018), discourses of sexuality and political discourse (e.g., Savci, 2021), queer activism and translation (e.g., Baldo, Evans, & Guo, 2021; Baer & Kaindl, 2018), and queer translation, colonialism, and globalization (e.g., Epstein & Gillett, 2017). Little attention has been paid to the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ community members who uproot themselves to an adopted country, and to how they navigate the communication of their identity and needs in accessing public services, such as in the healthcare and legal domain, in the host country language or through linguistic mediation assistance (i.e., translation or interpretation). This Research Topic intends to highlight this under-researched area by calling on researchers and practitioners working in fields such as sexual and general health, legal and human rights, and translating and interpreting to shed light on intra- and interlingual challenges manifested in their research and practice in their interactions with LGBTQ+ community members, so as to increase the visibility of this hidden area of communication and identify measures to strengthen the support required for mediating the linguistic discordance these community members experience.
Contributions of original research and commentary pieces are welcomed. We particularly welcome insights into the linguistic disparity in LGBTQ+ areas between host country and native languages, how language mediation manifests in interlingual communication involving sexually and gender diverse individuals, the impacts of language discordance experienced by these people in their adopted country, and lessons learned by service providers in countering heteronormality.
Keywords:
language mediation, intersectionality, translating/translation, interpreting/interpretation, host country, migration, cultural safety, LGBTQ+
Important Note:
All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.