Introduction

This research investigates the translanguaging and trans-semiotizing practices of Professor Liu (a pseudonym), a mathematics education professor from mainland China, during his presentation at a tertiary mathematics education seminar in Hong Kong. Because of the international background of the university, the majority of the audience was Chinese professors and students in mathematics education, but there were also some international students who did not understand Chinese. Among the Chinese audience, some were Hong Kongers who speak Cantonese and read and write in 繁体字 (complex Chinese characters), whereas others were mainland Chinese who speak Putonghua and read and write in 简体字 (simplified Chinese characters). This formed a linguistically complex community, since there are conspicuous discrepancies between the two languages in both oral and written communication (Li & Zhu, 2013). For instance, the Putonghua pronunciation (pinyin) of the concept ‘variation’ in Professor Liu’s presentation is bian shi, while its pronunciation in Cantonese is bin sik; and the simplified version of the characters of the term in mainland China is 变式, whereas the traditional complex version of the characters of the term becomes 變式. Although some characters remain the same in both simplified and complex versions, like 式, others can be very different, like 變 and 变. Such a complicated linguistic background might hinder the communication between Professor Liu, who came from mainland China and delivered the presentation mainly in Putonghua with simplified Chinese characters in his PowerPoint slides, and the audience, who were international non-Chinese students or local Hong Kong professionals who did not have much exposure to Putonghua or simplified Chinese characters in daily life. To tackle the linguistic barriers in the bi/multilingual multimodal mathematics presentation, Professor Liu tried to facilitate meaning making by translanguaging and trans-semiotizing between diverse semiotic resources such as Chinese and English, mathematics symbolisms, PowerPoint slides, blackboard layouts, pictures, graphic organizers and gestures.