Recognizing the role of collaboration and multilingual literacy as 21st-century skills, the authors used design research methods to present, analyze, and refine a strategic reading approach for bilingual students. The collaborative translation strategy involves reading an academic text, translating key passages, and evaluating these translations. Discussions provide a rich context to support thoughtful connections to textual concepts. The authors describe the development and refinement of a domain-specific instructional theory that informs collaborative translation. Findings suggested the promise of the strategy for increasing engagement and providing a central instructional role for heritage languages.