Language mixing by migrants in the process of acquiring a new language is often treated as a symptom of their linguistic deficit, a stage to be overcome on the way to full bilingualism. Yet language mixing is also a creative process, a way to build community, maintain the transnational family, and restore cultural capital lost in migration. The cultural representations of the lives of post-EU accession Polish migrants in the UK discussed in this article -in an advertisement for an online shopping website, a novel for teenagers in English and Polish translation, and a series of illustrations with captions -use different strategies to tell stories of language acquisition and loss. I argue that ten years after Joanna Rostek and Dirk Uffelmann asked "Can the Polish Migrant Speak?" it is time to ask how the Polish Migrant speaks, and to offer an answer with more nuance than "in Polish" or "in English" by taking code-switching and translanguaging into account.
Many Russian writers have been eager to demonstrate their intense childhood attachment to the novels of Charles Dickens. This essay focuses on the narrative strategies used by Vladimir Korolenko (1853-1921) and Nelli Morozova (1924-2015) in their autobiographies to convey the importance of reading Dickens in their formation as writers. It argues that David Copperfield offers a useful model for understanding how Korolenko and Morozova write about reading, and that, rather than distancing Dickens and his characters from their global readership, translations increase proximity and facilitate empathetic readings. Dombey in Zhitomir, Pip in Taganrog: Reading Dickens 'as if for life' in Russia It is not surprising that authors describe their early immersion in fictional worlds as positive and even therapeutic in their autobiographies. This essay examines three autobiographical texts, from England, the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union, focusing on the narrative strategies used to write about childhood reading. In David Copperfield (1850), Charles Dickens describes Davey's early interaction with novels as an experience both escapist and comforting. 1 Vladimir Korolenko's short autobiographical story, 'My First Acquaintance with Dickens' (1912), portrays his first encounter with a translation of Dombey and Son as a catalyst in his development as a reader. 2 Nelli Morozova structures her entire
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