EDITORIAL

Abstract

If I had had to write this editorial three or four years ago, I would have taken my thick dictionaries (dictionary and encyclopaedia of English usage) off the bookshelf, sat down at my desk and tried to compose an appropriate English text. It would have taken a lot of time and effort, frequent consultation of dictionaries and a great deal of self-doubt before I finally finished the text. Because although I have been writing academic texts in English for several decades – initially out of necessity, as opportunities to publish in my native language became increasingly limited – I still find it difficult. And even today, my writing style reveals that English is not my mother tongue. However, since AI-based translation programmes have reached a level that was hardly imaginable a few years ago, my work has become easier. I also wrote this text in German first, then had it translated, and finally corrected the translation and sent it to print. In order to produce English texts, I don't have to constantly check and improve my English skills. Why am I telling you all this?

Because the journal Sustainable Multilingualism is committed to a principle that it sees as complementary, which, despite the ubiquity of English not only in academia and the advances in digital technology, upholds the validity of the concept of multilingualism and/or plurilingualism. Servet Çelik and Aurelija Daukšaitė-Kolpakovienė demonstrate how it has done so since its first publication in 2012 in their article A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF SUSTAINABLE MULTILINGUALISM: INSIGHTS FROM 25 ISSUES (2012–2024).  The other articles in the current issue confirm the findings in their breadth.

Zsófia Fülöp, Zahia Flih, Beyza Nur Gürses and Szilvia Batyi provide an interesting insight into the usefulness of a much-discussed theoretical model in their article THE APPLICABILITY OF SPOLSKY’S TRIPARTITE MODEL IN THREE CONTEXTS. This study applies Spolsky's tripartite model of language policy—beliefs, practices, and management—to minority groups in Europe, examining Algerians in France, Hungarians in the UK, and Turks in Hungary across national, community, and family domains.  They conclude: While the model proves useful in capturing key dimensions of language policy, the findings reveal its limitations in addressing the complex socio-political and economic influences and the fluid nature of multilingual identity.

In her essay LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY AND WAGE PREMIUMS: A REVIEW OF ANALYTICAL MODELS WITH REFERENCE TO LITHUANIA, Milda Kiškė aims to show how wage differentials related to language skills can be analysed using different statistical methods, referring primarily to the Lithuanian labour market.

The study by Nemira Mačianskienė and Vilma Bijeikienė ARE LITHUANIAN HIGHER EDUCATION TEACHERS READY FOR THE PLURILINGUAL APPROACH? is extremely interesting because the findings they collected for Lithuania are likely to apply to other countries as well. They begin by stating that higher education institutions are becoming more multilingual and multicultural, and that educators are expected to develop competences in linguistic sensitivity and plurilingual practices and then ask how institutions are responding to this challenge. The findings suggest that Lithuanian higher education institutions are making progress toward greater linguistic and cultural inclusiveness but also make it clear that the language teaching offered by universities is not yet really able to meet the changed demands.

Badriyah Ulfah, Utami Widiati, Sri Rachmajanti and Utari Praba Astuti take an individualised approach in their article THE LANGUAGE IDENTITY OF AN ENGINEERING PROFESSOR: A NARRATIVE INQUIRY INTO MULTICULTURAL AND MULTILINGUAL EXPERIENCES. Their study investigates how language transitions shape academic identity by examining the linguistic and cultural experiences of an engineering professor who has worked in Indonesia, England, and Malaysia. Using a qualitative narrative inquiry, it reveals that language adaptation involves emotional, cultural, and professional dimensions, highlighting the complex interplay between global exposure, local identity, and the need for greater awareness of language transitions in non-language academic fields.

In her contribution MEDIATION STRATEGIES IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASSROOM TO BUILD STUDENTS' SOCIO-EMOTIONAL COMPETENCES, Daiva Pundziuvienė addresses a highly practice-oriented problem and provides valuable assistance for concrete language teaching. Oleksandr Kapranov and Oksana Voloshyna promise similar insights in their contribution THE ACQUISITION OF DISCOURSE MARKERS BY ESP UNDERGRADUATES: UNCOVERING SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES IN DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY WRITING.

Xinyu Hou, Deyan Zou and Shuhan Zhang once again draw attention to a widely known problem, particularly in literary translations, namely that while the translator employs adaptive strategies such as literal translation, free translation, and paraphrasing to balance linguistic, communicative, and cultural demands, this often enhances fluency at the cost of some cultural depth. They illustrate this with an analysis of the translation of culture-loaded terms in the Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, a 1995 novel by Chinese author Yu Hua that chronicles the life of a man named Xu Sanguan who repeatedly sells his blood to provide for his family during difficult times in Mao's China, through the lens of eco-translatology's three-dimensional transformation theory.

Giedrė Pranaitytė draws attention to another problem of translation, the connection between translation and censorship in less free societies or those characterised by a strong narrative, in her essay INTERSECTIONS OF FREEDOM, EXPRESSION OF CHRISTIAN FAITH AND CENSORSHIP IN TRANSLATED LITERARY WORKS: THE CASE OF HARRIET BEECHER STOWE'S NOVEL ‘UNCLE TOM'S CABIN’. She takes up Nicol Doerr's approach in her book Political Translation. How Social Movement Democracies Survive (2018) and uses the history of the translation of Uncle Tom's Cabin into Lithuanian to illustrate the role of censorship in the translation of literary works in Soviet-occupied Lithuania.

The conclusion is an examination of intratextual code-switching, illustrated by Akvilina Cicėnaitė's 2022 novel Anglų kalbos žodynas [A Dictionary of English]. Rūta Eidukevičienė and Kristina Aurylaitė, who have been working on this topic for some time, attempt in their contribution ‘WOR(L)D’: AESTHETIC AND EXPERIENCED MULTILINGUALISM IN AKVILINA CICĖNAITĖ'S NOVEL ‘ANGLŲ KALBOS ŽODYNAS’ / ‘A DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH’ (2022) to show how strongly multilingual aspects now also shape the aesthetic processing of the present.