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'Ofelia García (professor) is Professor in the Ph.D. programs of Urban Education and of Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures (LAILAC) at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. García’s extensive publication record on bilingualism and the education of bilinguals is grounded in her life experience living in New York City after leaving Cuba at the age of 11, teaching language minority students bilingually, educating bilingual and ESL teachers, and working with doctoral students researching these topics.

The work of Dr. Ofelia García-noted scholar, educator, and activist in bilingual education and critical sociolinguistics--has empowered people across geographical, linguistic, and disciplinary borders. Her work has prompted multiple generations of students and colleagues to reconsider traditional definitions of language, to reimagine more equitable and just forms of education, and to realize the power of multilingual communities around the world. Professor García is well known for her work in Translanguaging.

Translanguaging Translanguaging refers to the fluid, natural, and dynamic language practices of bilingual people, or “the deployment of a speaker’s full linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named languages” A translanguaging theory posits that bilinguals have one linguistic repertoire from which they select features to communicate effectively. That is, translanguaging takes as its starting point the language practices of bilingual people as the norm, rather than a monolingual perspective. Translanguaging views language as an action and practice, and not a simple system of structures and discreet sets of skills. Through a translanguaging lens, one views the language practices of multilinguals from an internal perspective instead of an external perspective.

The term translanguaging its origins in Cen Williams’ pedagogical approach in Welsh/English schools in Wales. Most recently, translanguaging pedagogy—an approach that leverages people’s translanguaging for learning, has been recognized as a strength-based approach to supporting emergent bilinguals and multilingual learners in diverse classroom settings. Ofelia García is the co-principal investigator of City University of New York-New York State Initiative on Emergent Bilinguals (CUNY-NYSIEB.org), an educational project that takes up translanguaging as a way to create more equitable learning environments for emergent bilingual students.