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Hello everyone,

I've found the NISE Net translation guide to be very helpful, thanks to
that project for the useful document. As most of my work with bilingual
approaches has been with Spanish/English, I'll focus on that area.

The bilingual approach is complicated and depends very much on the
institution, its audiences and why they are including
experiences/offerings in other languages. This can certainly come from a
perspective of need/access - certain groups may not be able to access
the content or experiences if they are not in their native language.
There is also a perspective of feeling valued - that the institution
cares enough about me, my group and my culture to include information in
my native tongue. In my own evaluation and research work with bilingual
Spanish/English audiences, I have found that the two are often
intertwined, and that the access issue depends a good bit on the
composition of the group. In a single Hispanic/Latino group there may be
some individuals who are fully bilingual, some who are Spanish-dominant,
while others are English only. 

I know hearing this from an evaluator isn't going to be shocking, but
knowing who your visitors are, their ability to speak both Spanish and
English, and their preferences for engaging with one or both languages
is very important. And having a clear institutional plan for including
bilingual approaches is important, so that everyone is on board or if
you're not in agreement you at least knows what direction you're heading
in and why. If the bilingual approach is more disjointed and not
consistent, then this will be obvious to your bilingual audiences. And
the decisions about how much to translate/include and how to graphically
include another language is complex, as those of you who use bilingual
approaches are all too familiar with. However, I've found from the
Spanish-speaking visitors that I've talked to that having any
signage/text in Spanish in museums is almost always welcome and is still
going to put you ahead of the curve. Remains to be seen how long
including any signage bilingually puts us ahead of the curve.

While we don't have anything to share at the moment, a group of us
(Cecilia Garibay, Nancy Owens Renner, Carlos Plaza, and I) are in Year 2
of an NSF ISE funded pathways/planning grant about better understanding
bilingual Spanish/English interpretation in ISE institutions:
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=1010666 . We
have completed in-depth interviews with a number of ISE institutions to
understand their thinking about and use of bilingual Spanish/English
exhibits, programs and signage, and some of you probably talked to us
(thank you!). In the coming year will do some basic exploratory research
across a small number of ISE institutions about what the bilingual
Spanish/English experience is like from the perspective of
Spanish-speaking visitor groups. While some evaluation and research has
been done about the bilingual experience in Spanish/English, much of it
has been very project- or institution-specific, so we hope this project
can add to a broader understanding about trends and patterns across ISE
institutions. We'll have a lot more to share in the coming year or so.

If you're also interested in the broader topic of engaging
Hispanic/Latino audiences in ISE (which obviously includes and is
related to the bilingual topic we're discussing) I suggest looking at a
collection of short briefing papers put together for a conference in
2009. Here is the link:
https://custom.cvent.com/31CAE59B86B34D008A931B151B002A5C/files/d0b4f0e2
2d204191a434374ffc2e289b.pdf  

This is an interesting thread, and I hope to learn about even more
resources! Thanks,

Steve



Steven Yalowitz, Ph.D.
Senior Research Associate
Institute for Learning Innovation
3168 Braverton St., Suite 280
Edgewater, MD 21037
Tel: 410-956-5144
Fax: 410-956-5148
Cell: 831-224-3085
www.ilinet.org 
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