Multilinguality in Academic Research and Publishing

Maria Josua in Conversation with Diana Abbani, Souhir Zekri Masson, Maxine Rubin, and Andreas Ufen

At MECAM’s second Publication Workshop held from 17-19 June 2026 at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg, a roundtable brought together members of the MECAM network and editors from the GIGA journal family under the topic Diversify­ing Publication Languages – Bridging Academic Traditions. Scholars working with and on the world regions in the Global South face a dilemma of doing fieldwork and researching in local languages and then publishing results in international outlets dominated by the English language. In this conversation based on the roundtable, we reflect on this tension navigating the requirements of academic publishing and career-related issues, and regional and local academic traditions in Southeast and West Asia as well as the African continent.

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Maria Josua (MJ): In the world region you are working on, what is the status of English versus other languages?

Maxine Rubin (MR): I am one of the co-editors of Africa Spectrum, which is an African studies journal that looks at the politics, social and cultural dynamics, and development economics of Africa as a continent (including North Africa). There are several major languages across the African continent that are shared across many countries at the sub-regional level – in part because of a colonial past. English is one especially for southern and eastern Africa, but central and western Africa is largely francophone, and northern Africa is Arabic speaking. There are other vernaculars that are important – such as West African Pidgin and Swahili – although they get less attention perhaps because they are not “global” languages.

Souhir Zekri Masson (SZ): English in Tunisia is gaining more and more ground compared to French for example. Young Tunisians use it in their social media interactions, gaming, and especially in modern jobs like web designing, etc. However, the oral skills are more developed than the written ones.

Andreas Ufen (AU): Southeast Asia is extremely diverse; in the whole region a few hundred different languages are spoken. The status of English is very high in countries with a British or US American colonial past, such as in Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. In these countries the standard of English at universities is generally high. This is less the case in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

MJ: In your own personal and professional experience as a scholar, translator, or editor, what role does multilinguality play?

Diana Abbani (DA): For me, multilinguality is a practical skill and an essential part of how I do research and how I write. I work on the history of music, sound recordings, and entertainment and cultural life in Beirut and the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as silences in the archives and forgotten voices. One thing I notice all the time is that different languages often tell different stories. Arabic sources show one perspective, French sources another. English scholarship often frames the region differently again. Sometimes the same event, artist, or recording looks completely different depending on the language you read.

In my field, English is the main language of academia. It is the language of international journals, grants, conferences, and career development. At the same time, most of the historical and cultural material I work with is in Arabic, and many important conversations are still happening in Arabic. For me, this creates a constant tension. English helps ideas travel internationally, but it can also create distance between researchers and the societies they study. Some concepts simply do not translate easily. They carry different histories, emotions, and political meanings.

I also work in science communication and editing, so I often think about audience. Who are we writing for? Who gets access to knowledge? And who is left out when most academic publishing happens in one language? This is especially visible in Middle Eastern studies. Many scholars from the region are expected to publish in English if they want international visibility, while work published in Arabic often receives much less recognition. As a result, many of us spend a large part of our careers translating not only our words but also our concepts, archives, and ways of thinking into English, even though these ideas were never created in English in the first place. At the same time, some of the most exciting intellectual debates are still taking place outside English.

That’s why I don’t see multilinguality as a problem to solve. It is one of the biggest strengths of our work. Moving between languages also means moving between different intellectual traditions, different audiences, and different ways of understanding the world. For me, that is one of the most rewarding parts of research and publishing.

AU: In my work as editor, multilinguality does not play a role. We only publish in English.

MR: I’ll highlight three considerations around language policies. One is the intended audience of the journal, another is the political economy of publishing, and the last is more normative: how should African studies scholarship be represented in an academic journal?

As an author, you might carefully consider who the main audience is for your research. For example, if an author writes an article aimed toward policymakers or local organisations, then writing in a foreign language may preclude these audiences (academic jargon aside). If one is seeking international recognition then English would be a suitable, possibly preferable, publication language because the academic market consuming English journals is vast. Many authors will consider that the mainstream international academic context privileges English. The highest ranked journals are typically published in English, and there is generally a lot of pressure to publish in these to excel in one’s academic career. English also acts as a bridging language across many contexts – often it is the second language spoken by many academics, although I must say that my perception of this is influenced by the fact that I am English-speaking and so in English-medium conferences and spaces.

The political economy of publishing in English can re-produce existing exclusions and marginalisations from academic publishing – less-resourced institutions are less able to provide translation and English language editing services. This means that better resourced scholars (and native English speakers) are most likely to see their articles accepted and published. Generative AI is changing the game a bit – it can enable access to language editing and assist with translations. However, access to reliable models that are not trained on your data is also a matter of resources at the end of the day.

Lastly, the point about representation. A fundamental point of departure for the editors at Africa Spectrum is an acute awareness that knowledge production is asymmetrical in favour of the US and Europe. Furthermore, the area studies field has historical baggage in Europe and Germany and is embedded in extractive and colonial legacies. Adding to this, Africa Spectrum is a German-based and -funded journal, led by three editors living in the Global North (although I am from South Africa). We felt that as one of the top African Studies journals, we had a responsibility to improve the journal’s connection with Africanist scholars, ideally still based on the continent.

SZ: In my personal life, I have a rather complicated relationship with French, it’s an emotional connection transmitted by my parents. One can be shamed in Tunisia for using French, now even more because of a strengthening of Tunisian identity language-wise. I used to write creatively in French, all the time, I even wrote an unpublished novel (too personal to be read by anyone for now) but with time English has become my second language, it took me a while before I could write comfortably and I can write in the three languages now. I also write a lot about my experience as a mother in a journal of Medical Humanities, and I reflect a lot on the various words and their meanings in different languages.

Tunisian and fuṣḥa are very important and I strive to preserve and develop them, particularly for my son who is half French. I can’t tolerate for him to live in a country where he can’t at least read signs or write an official document in Arabic. I remember when I was asked on his first day at school what his mother tongue was and I was embarrassed because I was his mother but he spoke only French at the time…

Multilinguality plays a crucial role in my professional life. As a scholar, writing articles in English has become very comfortable for me thanks to my love of reading and writing. Writing is a basic need for me, it’s become a habit and I can’t live without it, so it’s not problematic for me to write in English. I always think of Conrad who was Polish and wrote a masterpiece in his third language. I also wrote a few articles for The European Journal of Life Writing (based in the Netherlands) and they always ask for an abstract in the author’s mother tongue so I translate my abstracts in Arabic. I think it’s good for my articles’ accessibility.

With my MECAM project, I have to interview traditional singers who don’t necessarily speak other languages, so I do my interviews in Tunisian and then I translate them into English. I have kept some words in their original shape to preserve their cultural value and impact. I recently started supervising translation MA theses and even if Arabic is my “bête noire”, I face it and even rediscover a passion for nuances, precision and accuracy. French still helps a lot with translation.

As a literature teacher, I translate situations from American or English novels into Tunisian contexts/settings for my students. They need it to better understand and memorise the lesson. I used to think of myself as too “francophone” for an English teacher, I used to feel it as a weakness or a serious issue, but now I rather see it as a strength.

MJ: Do you use different languages for different things?

SZ: Languages have different uses in my personal life. I get angry in Tunisian most of the time, then it may move towards French because of my family. My husband only speaks French, so my French anger has evolved quite well… Moral lessons in my family, even when I was a child, were dispensed in French. It’s a very paradoxical love-hate relation that I have with this language…

DA: In my own work, I use different languages for different reasons. I do most of my research in Arabic and French. I publish in English when I want to join some international academic debates. I write in Arabic when I want to reach readers in the region or address local academic debates. These are different languages, audiences and conversations.

Sometimes I write about exactly the same topic in both English and Arabic, but everything changes. The audience is different, the references are different. Even the questions I ask can be different. When I write in English, I sometimes must explain historical and cultural references that would need no explanation in Arabic. In other places, I choose to keep Arabic terms in an English text because translating them would remove part of their meaning. In that sense, language shapes how we communicate knowledge and the knowledge we produce.

MJ: In the era of AI-assisted translations, do boundaries between languages still exist? Do you see promises or pitfalls in AI translation tools?

AU: The pressure on scientists to publish in English in refereed journals has been growing enormously. The Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs receives more than 500 submissions per year, mostly from Southeast Asia. Many papers are desk-rejected because of qualitative problems, but because of the usage of AI the standard of English has been improving in recent years. I see AI in this respect rather as an opportunity for Southeast Asians to publish.

MR: The answer depends on the languages involved due to training biases, but we’ve seen a huge improvement for English-French translations, which I suspect is true for Spanish, too. However, I would imagine AI models are less able to reliably translate more regionally specific languages, like isiXhosa, for example. In this way, we could see an expansion of the major global languages, including Arabic and Mandarin, but still see the marginalisation of more local languages.

Personally, I rely a lot on translations in my daily life and it really helps close gaps even if imperfect. For academia, I would not be confident to rely entirely on AI translations. At the journal, we have a quality step with human supervision of an AI translated abstract.

SZ: I think boundaries between languages exist because human intervention is needed, AI assists translation but does not guarantee understanding or allow progress in a certain language.

The promises of AI-assisted translation are mostly time-related, it is also very useful when it comes to the different mechanisms of various languages (syntax in Arabic is totally different from other European languages). BUT practice makes perfect… I feel guilty and unethical to use this type of translation tool because I don’t feel like I’m learning, only proofreading texts.

DA: When it comes to AI translation, I see some opportunities and limits. AI can help us access material much faster and remove some language or academic barriers. It is useful for first drafts, summaries, or getting the general meaning of a text. But language is much more than information. AI still struggles with context, historical references, bias, humor, irony, and cultural nuance. As a historian working with songs, archives, and oral traditions, I know how much meaning can disappear when language is treated simply as words instead of culture. So for me, the question is not whether language barriers still exist. They do. The real question is how we build better bridges across them without losing what makes each language unique.

MJ: What can MECAM, GIGA, or other institutions do to diversify publishing languages? Alternatively, how can we build bridges to the academic traditions of your world region?

MR: This question might be more acute for GIGA’s Institute for Middle East Studies or MECAM than for the GIGA Institute for African Affairs because of how far English goes on the African continent. I’m not saying only English is appropriate, but MIASA, MECAM’s sister organisation, can quite comfortably use English as its medium in Ghana.

The problem is that publishing in multiple languages requires financial and personnel resources that the GIGA cannot always offer. In my experience, GIGA has made a lot of effort to help finance translations before we could rely on Generative AI for a first draft, but it was very expensive. There is scope to work more closely with our regional partners to try and improve translations and ensure that publications are appropriate not just to the international and German audiences, but also to our research partner’s main language.

The journal has taken a few measures, but I’ll focus on the language policies due to the focus of this panel. In 2009, Africa Spectrum moved to publishing exclusively in English after a history of being predominantly German-medium. This caused quite a lot of controversy within Germany but opened Africa Spectrum to a broader Africanist scholarship from where it started. When my co-editor Martha Johnson and I took over Africa Spectrum in 2023, we began accepting French submissions with the hope we could then become more accessible to Francophone Africanist scholars. For these submissions, the peer review process is conducted in French and we translate the article into English – mainly done by my co-editor Martha Johnson. All abstracts are published in French and English, and authors have the option to upload an abstract in a third language. We then rely on our associate editors to assist with language inputs on the third abstract and we accept submissions in other languages on an ad hoc basis – determined by the availability of our associate editors to manage a manuscript in the language.

Many top ranked journals can be very picky about the quality of articles that they accept for peer review. This often means that manuscripts with weaker English are desk rejected. We have consciously given articles with strong content a chance despite some English language weaknesses especially if they are from authors based on the continent or emerging scholars. Once through peer review, we send that article to the copyeditors at the GIGA, who kindly provide a free language editing service to the author in question. The quality of the article is still guaranteed by the peer review process, but given a chance at desk where other top journals might decline. Admittedly, we are hoping that access to Generative AI will help with language editing.

So, our measures are not a golden bullet, but we believe they are appropriate for our journal’s main audience, and a step toward improving representation and trying to balance some of the political economy constraints faced by some of our authors, keeping in mind the significant resource constraints that we have at Africa Spectrum.

SZ: Diversifying languages works through diversifying people, whether native or non-native speakers. There could also be a collaboration to establish common publishing traditions beyond linguistic differences or organising language and translation workshops. And, of course, requiring abstracts to be translated into various languages is a good strategy.

DA: Institutions can play an important role in supporting publishing in different languages. They can recognise translation as valuable scholarly work, creating more spaces for publishing in Arabic, French, English, and other languages, while encouraging real dialogue across academic traditions instead of assuming that everything has to happen in English.

However, another part of multilinguality is for me accepting that some things will always stay difficult to translate. Some words, concepts, and experiences carry histories and meanings that belong to a particular language and place. I think it is important to acknowledge those limits and be comfortable with them. Working across languages also means listening, accepting that we will never fully capture everything, and caring enough to leave room for other ways of understanding the world. In the end, multilinguality is about much more than language. It is about access, power, visibility, and making sure that different intellectual traditions can speak to one another on more equal terms.

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About the Authors

Diana Abbani is MECAM’s Science Communication Coordinator and works at Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin. She received her doctorate in Arabic Studies from Sorbonne University with a dissertation entitled “Music and Society in Beirut during the Nahḍa Period”. During the academic years 2018/19 and 2019/20, Diana was a Fellow of Europe in the Middle East – the Middle East in Europe (EUME). 

Maria Josua is Research Fellow at the GIGA Institute for Middle East Studies and MECAM’s Publication Manager. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Tübingen. She edits the MECAM Paper series and is Managing Editor of MECAM’s book series “Perspectives on the Maghreb” with Routledge. Her research focuses on legitimation and repression authoritarian politics in North Africa and the Middle East.

Souhir Zekri Masson is Assistant Professor of English Literature at the Higher Institute of Digital Engineering of Tunis, University of Tunis. She holds a PhD in English Studies from the University of Strathclyde. She was MECAM Fellow in 25-26 and also works as translator for the MECAM Paper series. Her latest book Metaphors of Motherhood in Marina Warner’s Fiction has been published with Routledge.

Maxine Rubin is Research Fellow at the GIGA Institute for African Affairs. She currently serves as co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Africa Spectrum; and is a former Assistant Editor of the South African Journal of International Affairs. She earned her PhD from the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Her research focuses on the International Criminal Court as well as Africa’s International Relations and agency.

Andreas Ufen is Senior Research Fellow at the GIGA Institute for Asian Studies and lecturer at the University of Hamburg, where he earned his PhD and habilitation. He is the Editor of the Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs. His research focuses on democratization, political parties, civil society, and digital repression in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia and Malaysia.

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Citation: Maria Josua in Conversation with Diana Abbani, Souhir Zekri Masson, Maxine Rubin, and Andreas Ufen, Multilinguality in Academic Research and Publishing, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 28.07.2026, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/66844.

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