Introduction
Children translating for their families – or “child language brokering” (CLB) – is a vastly common yet often overlooked aspect of migration, describing the myriad ways children and adolescents work to support parents, peers, and other community members in navigating a host culture’s language and norms (e.g., Antonini 2022). Although CLB is not limited to individuals from migrant backgrounds, the vast majority of research focuses on this demographic; this entry will focus on families from migrant backgrounds.
CLB is a frequently used, flexible solution people employ in the absence of professional interpreters and publicly available translations. It can occur in diverse contexts, encapsulating experiences public and private, casual and formal, age-appropriate and less so, and trivial and inexplicably high stakes (Crafter and Iqbal 2022).
Partially due to the diverse contexts surrounding CLB, research...
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Gorstein, M.P., Fisher, A.R. (2024). Children Translating for Their Families in Family Therapy. In: Lebow, J., Chambers, A., Breunlin, D.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15877-8_1166-1
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