New to the idea of multilingualism? Enjoy this dialogue between Johanna Domokos and Sabira Ståhlberg, two leading scholars of multilingualism. You can find out more about their work here: https://langueflow.eu
For many years before meeting, Johanna Domokos (DoJo) and Sabira Ståhlberg (SaSt) studied and worked with similar topics, and lived in or visited the same scholarly fields and countries. After discovering each other at the beginning of the 2010s, they have arranged over fifty conferences, roundtables, and seminars, and published dozens of scholarly and literary works together. Their collaboration has also developed into the international scholar group LangueFlow, today one of the global leaders in literary, creative and multimodal multilingualism research.
DoJo: Many of the seeds of my later multilingualism and research were planted early in my life. Being born into a minority community under Ceauşescu’s dictatorship introduced me at a young age to multiple languages and the “clash of cultures”. At the same time, I belonged to a very fortunate generation who could begin learning English in nursery school from the age of three, and my English teacher was a gentle and inspiring woman.
My parents wanted to root me in the trilingual tradition of our region, so I attended also German classes. They were taught by a theologian who had studied in Vienna. A Finnish librarian who spoke excellent Hungarian regularly visited my mother’s library where I spent many of my afternoons. I had no idea as yet that Finland would one day become important in my life as well. Instead, I dreamed of following in the footsteps of the famous traveler to Asia, Sándor Kőrösi Csoma (1784–1842) who had studied at University of Göttingen. The mentor of many young people in our small town spoke about him with such enthusiasm that he became one of my early role models.
When I later had the opportunity to study Finnish as part of a Hungarian–German double major, I developed a strong desire to immerse myself in Finno-Ugric and Altaic studies as well. I was fortunate to pursue parallel degrees at Babeş-Bolyai University and University of Szeged. During my university years, I took the advanced Turkish language exam at the TÖMER Summer University in Istanbul and later spent first an academic year and then additional shorter stays at the universities of University of Helsinki and University of Oulu on CIMO scholarships.
Before I turn to the thread that eventually led me to you, Sabira: how did you first become interested in Kőrösi Csoma, and how did you eventually end up in Germany?
SaSt: Sándor Kőrösi Csoma became my historical “friend” very early, because everything connected with Asia fascinated me. My Tatar father read and talked a lot about history, culture, and languages of Inner Asia (the landlocked area of Asia). Aged twelve, I lectured about the Mongol Empire at school; at fifteen, I started to learn Japanese, and at sixteen I travelled through Mongolia to China on the Trans-Siberian railroad. Entering university a year later, I discovered a rich and exciting library full of books about all kinds of languages and cultures. Although officially focusing on East and Central Asia formy MA degree, I read copiously and studied widely different topics and disciplines, including also Finno-Ugric studies and Hungarian.
Looking for a place to do a PhD in Central Asian studies, I went on an inter-rail trip through Europe and talked with professors and teachers at various universities. University of Bonn was the most promising for my topic, and I moved there directly after I graduated from the University of Helsinki. Three and a half years later, I defended my thesis in German (Latin was the other available option). Those years in Germany were very intense, as I had to learn a new scholarly language in order to write my thesis, as well as how to manage daily life and the academic world in Germany. But how did your interests bring you to Finland, Johanna?
DoJo: A year after an student visit to Turku University, I was able to return to Finland a whole year. While in Helsinki, I was already writing poetry, so I turned my attention to Sámi poetry and the Tatar minority. I was struck by the fact that Finland-Swedish writers appeared equally with Finnish writers, while other historical minorities surfaced only occasionally, or not at all. At that time, the Sámi had just begun their demonstrations in the capital asking for education in their mother tongues, protests in which I also took part.
As for the Tatars, I could find no literary representation but I met some Tatars and recorded linguistic materials. I learned that there was a Tatar publisher who produced beautiful publications, yet only on other topics. Much later, when I was already deeply interested in literary multilingualism I received information that this publisher had in 2006 brought out your novel written parallel in Finnish (Pilvivaeltaja) and Swedish (Molnvandraren), in German Wolkenwanderer (2014). That is the moment when I contacted you, Sabira. What led you to begin multilingual literary activity?
SaSt: I have been reading and writing in many languages ever since I remember. During my school years, I spent many hours every day at the library; I wanted to become a librarian, because then I would be able to spend all day among books. I wrote poetry from the moment I learned how to write, and I was determined to become a writer. But when I read about researchers who travelled to interesting places, I wanted to become a scholar. Nobody believed me then, but both decisions became fulfilled several years later. Instead of staying at a university,I chose to bean independent scholar in order to be free to explore whatever interests me. Reading all kinds of books and texts, travelling, and studying various fields help me now to write scientific works and fiction in multiple languages, and within a wide range of disciplines from linguistics and literature to history and ethnobiology. In my writings,I also often discuss environmental topics, like in the poem Seahorse.
Thanks to you and your research into multilingualism, Johanna, I found terms with which I could describe my many realities. My first polyglot poetry collection, Polyglotta Sabirica (2015, in English 2017; German translation by Gruppe Bie, published by Hochroth Bielefeld in 2017) was followed by Wan Sun (2021) about the Anthropocene, and the mixed-genre work MoonSoon mišmaş(2023) about the multilingual writer’s brain as an ocean. But how did you develop your multilingual research and activities, Johanna?
DoJo: After finishing my PhD on the translatability of the multilingual Sámi literature I turned my attention to migrant and minority writers in German and Finland. By this time I was already living in the vibrant city of Berlin, first studying semiotics, and following it teaching Sámi at Humboldt-UniversitätzuBerlin while performing poetry with the multilingual writers’ group Neue Literaturgesellschaft and my own performance group. Visiting Finland regularly, I was scanning the literary field for books addressing interculturalism and multilingualism.
In 2013, one of the two dozen translated authors in the double volume Finnek? Finnek! (Finnish? Finnish!) was Sabira (the novel excerpt was translated by Laura Baba, while I translated your poems). This pioneering anthology was followed shortly afterwards by the German anthology Invasion Paradies containing multilingual literature from Finland, as 2014 Finland was the guest country at the Book Fair in Frankfurt. The translations were done by the student Translation and Book Production Laboratory Gruppe Bie (Bie refers to Bielefeld University) established in 2013, where both of us are among the founding members.
Our collaboration has led to numerous joint projects through which we mapped the linguistically invigorated modern literary field in Finland, among others the anthology and multilingual reader Maailma kotona ‘The World at Home’ in 2016. In 2021, we established the international LangueFlow multilingualism research group, today with five core team members, lots of activities, and multiple joint publications. Where do we stand now?
SaSt:The strength of our collaboration lies in the fact what we research is what we experience daily:exploring meanings, language play, puns, and other kinds of language fun. We constantly think of the significance of words or expressions, translate between languages, and discover many-layered uses of languages…
As academics, we share a vision of scholarly research being more interesting when more people talk &walk,and work together, and we are actively promoting the broadening and deepening of multilingualism research into languages and areas less commonly studied in order to enrich the field. We are constantly on the lookout for new perspectives. At the same time, we are writing multilingual poetry, often inspired by our and other scholars’ research, and vice versa. Multilingualism research profits immensely from our creative work. One example is my poem Balalar of imperier – Children of Empires which was written on the basis of your, Johanna,and LangueFlow co-founder Marianna Deganutti’s proposal for a framework of code-switching degrees.
This multidimensional approach to research and writing engages and inspires, and at LangueFlow meetings where all scholars interested in multilingual literary and arts research are welcome, we always have muchto converse about. Today LangueFlowisa serious actor in the field of multilingualism research, but we do not stop there. We continue to grow, explore, and develop, and we produce from time to time also multilingual poetry videos which can be watched online. Educational materials are published, and every year LangueFlow team members meet your Bielefeld students, Johanna, for stimulating discussions and activities.
DoJo: At the Interweaving Languages: Multilingualism in Art and Education conference in Budapest last year, we read from our multilingual poetry books, while Dorijan Hajdu, a core team member of LangueFlow, accompanied us on the guitar. As a poet, how do you experiment with multilingualism when writing? Why is it important to make multilingual creative writing visible, and to draw the attention of educators to it?
SaSt: Multilingual poetry is an extension of our polyglot daily lives – we talk and think and write in multiple languages every day. I think a lot about language and word choices, often selecting a word in a specific language because of the topic, sound or rhythm. Some poems like Garmoniya (Harmony) are almost completely musical. I mix everything, also scripts, and explore new languages or invent my own words to express what I want to say. Sometimes a word in a language can open up a whole new world, and I discover that it expresses something I did not know I had within me. Having a vocabulary comprised of multiple languages makes my life rich in thoughts, emotions, insights, and impressions, and every new discovery adds a further gem to my cognitive treasure chest.
In a world where publishers mainly prefer monolingual manuscripts but people increasingly read in more than one language, it is important to acknowledge the expanding multilingualism in society, and to encourage discoveries in various languages also at universities. Working with several languages simultaneously improves the students’ vocabulary, language awareness, and language learning, and it activates the brain in multiple ways, which in turn motivates and stimulates students to explore more languages, cultures, and the world in general.
During extensive research for my books aimed at non-academic readers about languages and multilingual topics, I realized how important it is to activate the linguistic resources of the brain through multilingual work, and I mapped out various methods in Multicoloured language (2020). In Multicoloured book(2018), I explored levels of Easy Language as language learning tools.Both books appeared in English in2020; the German translation was made by Gruppe Bie in 2024 (Buntes Buch and Bunte Sprache/).
DoJo: In contrast to your highly complex polyglot writings, you have been active in the Easy-to-read (E2R) / and Easy Language field for more than 25 years now. Your more than two dozen original Finland-Swedish works published by Bokpil have also appeared in other languages, but not yet in German. This is why I decided to incorporate Easy Language into translation and language classes for students in Bielefeld. The students were very motivated and increased their language awareness tremendously. By now we have translated six of your E2R books. Why was it important for you to work with Easy Language, which is a simplified form of Standard Language used in society?
SaSt: My grandfather had reading difficulties, so when I learned about Easy Language and Easy-to-read I knew it was very much needed. Maria Viitasalo, a childhood friend, teacher, and educational expert,joined as illustrator. Together we have invented and introduced many innovations into the E2R field, and our books are used in schools and at universities in several countries. I have also written a blog and abook, Easy-to-read Inspiration to explain our ideas and experiences. It is important that students learn about Easy Language, because training in expressing themselves clearly helps them discover new dimensions in their languages. Translating an Easy-to-read text encourages students also to think deeply about their own language uses, what is actually easy or difficult, how they talk and write, and how well messages they send when speaking or writing come across to the receiver, especially if the receiver has limited knowledge of the language.
For those students who want to become (language) teachers, it is important to learn how Easy Language functions, because that will help them understand what difficulties their learners have when studying a new language. For me as a writer, lecturer and scholar, working in multiple languages and creating Easy Languages for languages where this concept is previously unknown, continues to be a great adventure, and the heightened language awareness has immensely improved my writing, both academic and fiction, as well as poetry.
DoJo: We are often asked about our upcoming projects. I am especially enthusiastic about our experiment with a collaborative multilingual poetry collection on trees. Coming from Transylvania (literally “beyond the woodland”), and having spent my summers taking daily walks through the primeval forests surrounding the heliothermic salt lakes of my birthplace, I feel deeply connected to trees and woodland landscapes. But we also have other projects: a volume on multilingual creative writing aimed at teachers and students, with practical advice on how to integrate multiple languages when writing.
SaSt: Trees play an important role in my life, too. As a child during summers in the countryside, I used to climb trees and sit on a branch, just watching the world while listening to birds, or reading a book (see my poem Winging it ). Forests are the place where I breathe and where inspiration lives. It is inspiration and freedom in language use and writing we want to convey in our volume on multilingual creative writing. The workshop at Bielefeld in July 2026 on multilingual creative writing presents the contributors and their various approaches, and I hope both the insights from the workshop and the published volume will find many uses and inspire both teachers and students in school and university classrooms.
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