ABSTRACT
The concept of intercultural citizenship brings together theory of the intercultural speaker in foreign language education and theory of citizenship education, in particular the notion that the latter should lead to critical thinking about societal issues and “action in the community”. With intercultural citizenship, the action in the community takes place after reflection and joint action with learners from another society and language, so that action in the community has an international perspective. Intercultural citizenship can also lead to processes of mediation, as learners work with their language competences to help those who might not otherwise be able to communicate and consider their roles as intercultural and international citizens. This chapter presents this framework of concepts and theories and illustrates it with examples from a project involving language learners in universities in England and Argentina. We demonstrate with empirical data how students overcame conceptual difficulties through the use of a variety of mediation activities and strategies underpinned by their democratic values, one of them being the use of translation for social justice. The chapter contributes to our understanding of how language learners can use translation as a tool to engage in collective political action for the promotion of human rights.
