Abstract At the core of using languages other than English in higher education in South Africa lies the processes of translation/mediation and the mediators themselves. Within the framework of the descriptive theory of translation, this paper offers a critical consideration of the people and processes at the heart of one such project at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa: the mediators who must either translate lecture material or lend their voices to the aural versions of such materials. The paper shows the processes involved in translating part of a lecture in English into varieties of Afrikaans and isiXhosa, and making these available in both reading and listening format. In addition, the paper examines interview responses of five of the mediators involved in the project, as well as some student responses to the material. Apart from showing the interdependence between the different stages of mediation in this project, we concluded that discipline-specific mediation is best done by subject specialists themselves. The findings also showed that most students felt that the informal, localised translations in the oral format offered the greatest epistemological access to the course content.

中文翻译：

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一个大学模块中的多语言和多模式调解：相关人员和流程

摘要在南非高等教育中使用英语以外的其他语言的核心是翻译/调解过程以及调解员本身。在描述性翻译理论的框架内，本文对南非西开普大学这样一个项目的核心人员和过程进行了批判性考虑：必须翻译演讲材料或借用他们的调解员对此类材料的听觉版本表示声音。本文展示了将英语授课的一部分翻译成南非荷兰语和isiXhosa并以阅读和听力两种形式提供的过程。此外，本文还考察了参与该项目的五个调解员的访谈回复，以及一些学生对该材料的回复。除了在该项目中显示调解不同阶段之间的相互依赖性之外，我们得出的结论是，特定学科的调解最好由学科专家自己完成。调查结果还表明，大多数学生认为口头形式的非正式，本地化翻译为课程内容提供了最大的认识论途径。