Interpreting as a natural skill: From family interactions to educational settings

Abstract

Natural translation or natural interpreting (NI) – performed by bilingual speakers without formal training – has received little attention in bilingualism studies, as it is often unfairly considered a byproduct of linguistic competence development (e.g., Harris, 1980a, 1980b, 2013; Álvarez de la Fuente & Fernández Fuertes, 2015, 2024; Hornáčková Klapicová, 2021; Álvarez de la Fuente et al., 2019). Similarly, the field of translation has largely dismissed it, regarding it as non-professional and rudimentary (see Álvarez de la Fuente & Fernández Fuertes, 2012a for a review).

However, our paper presents a theoretical proposal that frames NI as a language-contact phenomenon playing an essential role not only in L1 bilingualism studies but also in those of L2 bilingualism. In fact, the way bilingual children acquire their two languages simultaneously in natural and family contexts has been recently drawn upon to offer a more accurate model for language production in fields such as language teaching (e.g., Marsh, 2000; Leonardi, 2010; Sneddon, 2012; García, 2013; Laviosa, 2019; González-Davies, 2020). The authenticity of family interactions presented in such bilingual acquisition contexts seems to provide better insights for the study of both language acquisition and teaching because they reflect how language naturally evolves. Therefore, our goal is to highlight that L1 NI studies can be extended to an L2 context. In this spirit, we offer an analysis of L2 NI cases following the framework of L1 NI to showcase the universality of NI and its pervasiveness in language interactions, whether in L1 or L2, within family or school settings.