The Routledge Handbook of

Translation and Globalization

This is the first handbook to provide a comprehensive coverage of the main approaches that
theorize translation and globalization, offering a wide-ranging selection of chapters dealing
with substantive areas of research. The handbook investigates the many ways in which trans-
lation both enables globalization and is inevitably transformed by it.
Taking a genuinely interdisciplinary approach, the authors are leading researchers drawn
from the social sciences, as well as from translation studies. The chapters cover major areas of
current interdisciplinary interest, including climate change, migration, borders, democracy
and human rights, as well as key topics in the discipline of translation studies. This handbook
also highlights the increasing significance of translation in the most pressing social, economic
and political issues of our time, while accounting for the new technologies and practices that
are currently deployed to cope with growing translation demands.
With five sections covering key concepts, people, culture, economics and politics, and
a substantial introduction and conclusion, this handbook is an indispensable resource for
students and researchers of translation and globalization within translation and interpreting
studies, comparative literature, sociology, global studies, cultural studies and related areas.

Esperança Bielsa is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, Universitat

Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. Her research is in the areas of cultural sociology, social the-
ory, translation, globalization and cosmopolitanism. She is the author of Cosmopolitanism and
Translation and The Latin American Urban Crónica, and co-author of Translation in Global News.

Dionysios Kapsaskis is Senior Lecturer at the University of Roehampton, UK, where he

teaches translation theory and audiovisual translation. His interests and publications are in
the areas of comparative literature, translation and film. He is also a specialized translator and
film subtitler into Greek.
Routledge Handbooks in Translation and
Interpreting Studies

Routledge Handbooks in Translation and Interpreting Studies provide comprehensive over-

views of the key topics in translation and interpreting studies. All entries for the handbooks
are specially commissioned and written by leading scholars in the field. Clear, accessible and
carefully edited, Routledge Handbooks in Translation and Interpreting Studies are the ideal
resource for both advanced undergraduates and postgraduate students.

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Philosophy

Edited by Piers Rawling and Philip Wilson

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Pragmatics

Edited by Rebecca Tipton and Louisa Desilla

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Technology

Edited by Minako O'Hagan

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Education

Edited by Sara Laviosa and Maria González-Davies

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Cognition

Edited by Fabio Alves and Arnt Lykke Jakobsen

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism

Edited by Rebecca Ruth Gould and Kayvan Tahmasebian

The Routledge Handbook of Translation, Feminism and Gender

Edited by Luise von Flotow and Hala Kamal

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Globalization

Edited by Esperança Bielsa and Dionysios Kapsaskis

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Ethics

Edited by Kaisa Koskinen and Nike K. Pokorn

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-

Handbooks-in-Translation-and-Interpreting-Studies/book-series/RHTI.
The Routledge Handbook
of Translation and
Globalization

Edited by Esperança Bielsa and Dionysios Kapsaskis

First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Esperança Bielsa and Dionysios
Kapsaskis; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Esperança Bielsa and Dionysios Kapsaskis to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bielsa, Esperança, 1971– editor. | Kapsaskis, Dionysios, editor.
Title: The Routledge handbook of translation and globalization /
edited by Esperança Bielsa and Dionysios Kapsaskis.
Description: London; New York: Routledge, 2020. |
Series: Routledge handbooks in translation and interpreting studies |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020029690 | ISBN 9780815359456 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781003121848 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Translating and interpreting. | Translating and
interpreting—Social aspects. | Globalization—Social aspects.
Classification: LCC P306.2 .R67 2020 | DDC 418/.02—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020029690

ISBN: 978-0-815-35945-6 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-12184-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by codeMantra
 Contents

List of figures ix
List of tables x
Notes on contributors xi

Introduction: the intersection between translation and globalization 1

Esperança Bielsa

PART I
Key concepts 11

1 Translation encounters and the histories of globalization 13

David Inglis and Christopher Thorpe

2 Multiple and entangled modernities, cosmopolitanism and translation 27

Gerard Delanty

3 The individuality of language: internationality and transnationality 39

Naoki Sakai

4 Translation and inequality 55

Paul F. Bandia

5 Translation and geography: the globe and the Western spatial imagination 71
Federico Italiano

6 Translation and climate change 85

Michael Cronin

7 The internationalization of translation studies 99

Jorge Jiménez-Bellver

v
Contents

8 Transnational and global approaches in translation studies:

methodological observations 113
Mattea Cussel

PART II
People 129

9 Translation and the semiotics of migrants’ visibility 131

Moira Inghilleri

147

161

176

190

202

PART III
Culture 217

219

230

251

265

vi
 Contents

278

293

306

PART IV
Economics 321

323

337

351

363

375

391

406

PART V
Politics 425

427

441

vii
Contents

455

469

­ 483

498

513

Conclusion: paradoxes at the intersection of translation and globalization 528

Dionysios Kapsaskis

Index 535

viii
 Figures

11.1 Representation of the model of analysis 163

16.1 Top five source languages 232
16.2 Distribution of the six UN languages as source languages (SL) 234
16.3 Top five target languages 235
16.4 Respective shares of the six UN languages (TL) 235
25.1 The ecosystem of language services and technology 365
26.1 Different areas of research in localization studies 380
28.1 Screenshot from TM town page ‘10 reasons to upload your prior work to TM town’ 408
28.2 T WB – In the words of our volunteers 409
28.3 Words translated counter on TWB’s homepage 412

ix
 Tables

16.1 Top 20 source languages 232

16.2 Speakers of the world’s languages (L1) 2017 233
16.3 Top 20 target languages 234
16.4 Translating country and subject of books translated from English to French 236
16.5 Origin of French to English translations 237
16.6 UN languages (TL): subjects 238
16.7 Non-European supercentral languages (TL): subjects 239
16.8 Origin of translations from Turkish (SL) 240
16.9 Hindi and Urdu 240
16.10 Malay 240
16.11 Malay (TL): subjects 241
16.12 Swahili and Hausa 241
16.13 Russian translations into swahili: subjects (1979–1991) 242
16.14 Russian (TL): subjects before and after 1991 242
16.15 Mandarin SL (1979–1989) 243
16.16 Mandarin (SL) to minority languages of China (1979–1989) 244
25.1 Changing ecosystem demographics that will drive language industry growth 367
25.2 Technology platform changes that will drive language industry growth 369
25.3 Challenges faced by the language sector 372

x
 Contributors

Elisa Alonso  is Lecturer and Researcher in Translation Studies at the Universidad Pablo
de Olavide, Seville, Spain, where she currently teaches at undergraduate and postgraduate
levels. Her research interests include the impacts of technology on sociological aspects of
translation and on translator training.

Brian James Baer is Professor of Russian and Translation Studies at Kent State University,
USA. He is founding editor of Translation and Interpreting Studies and co-editor of the book
series Literatures, Cultures, Translation. His recent publications include Translation and the
Making of Modern Russian Literature and Queer Theory and Translation Studies.

Mona Baker is Professor Emerita of Translation Studies at the University of Manchester,

UK and Director of the Baker Centre for Translation  & Intercultural Studies, Shanghai
International Studies University. She is co-coordinator of the Genealogies of Knowledge
Research Network, author of Translation and Conflict and editor of Translating Dissent.

Paul F. Bandia is Professor of Translation Studies in the Department of French at Concordia

University, Montreal, Canada. His interests include translation history and theory, orality,
post- colonialism, decolonization, interculturality, transmigration, literary heterolingualism
and multilingualism. He also studies linguistic, literary and cultural encounters between the
Global South and the Global North.

Salah Basalamah is Associate Professor at the School of Translation and Interpretation, Uni-
versity of Ottawa, Canada. His fields of research include the philosophy of translation, trans-
lation rights and ethics, social and political philosophy, postcolonial, cultural and religious
studies. He is the author of Le droit de traduire. Une politique culturelle pour la mondialisation (2009).

Esperança Bielsa  is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, Universitat

Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. Her research is in the areas of cultural sociology, social the-
ory, translation, globalization and cosmopolitanism. She is the author of Cosmopolitanism and
Translation and The Latin American Urban Crónica, and co-author of Translation in Global News.

Michał Borodo  is Assistant Professor at the Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz,

Poland. He has published on various topics in translation studies and his main research in-
terests include translation in the context of globalization and glocalization, the translation
of children’s and young adults’ literature, the translation of comics, and translator training.

xi
Contributors

Annie Brisset  is Professor Emerita of Translation Studies at the University of Ottawa,

Canada. Her research focusses on sociocriticism and the sociology of translation. A former
consultant to UNESCO on translation-related projects, she is a founding member and past
president of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies and a
member of the Royal Society of Canada.

M. Teresa Caneda-Cabrera is an Associate Professor at the School of Philology and Trans-

lation and Interpreting of the University of Vigo, Spain. Her research focusses on translation
in relation to socio-political and intellectual frameworks vis-à-vis the concept of cultural
mobility, and on transnationalism, foreignness and silence in Modernism and contemporary
Irish fiction.

Raúl E. Colón Rodríguez has a PhD in Translation Studies and is a part-time professor

at the University of Ottawa. With complexity theory as the main theoretical approach, his
research centres around three topics: translation of theories, collaborative activist translation
and world translation flows.

Michael Cronin is 1776 Professor of French at Trinity College Dublin and Director of the
Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation. He is an elected Member of the Royal
Irish Academy, the Academia Europaea and is an Honorary Member of the Irish Translators
and Interpreters Association. He is editor of the Routledge New Perspectives series in Trans-
lation and Interpreting Studies.

Mattea Cussel is Teaching Fellow and Predoctoral Researcher at the Department of Trans-
lation and Language Sciences of Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She has studied Latin American
Studies and Translation Studies and is currently researching a PhD on US Latina/o migration
stories and their translation and reception.

Gerard Delanty is Professor of Sociology at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK. His
most recent publication is Critical Theory and Social Transformation ( Routledge, 2020). Other
publications include: The Cosmopolitan Imagination (2009), Formations of European Modernity,
2nd edition (2019), Community, 3rd edition (2018), and The European Heritage: A Critical Re-
Interpretation (2018).

Donald A. DePalma is the founder of CSA Research, a market firm in localization and
globalization. Prior to CSA, he co-founded Interbase Software, was vice president of corpo-
rate strategy at Idiom Technologies and analyst at Forrester Research. Don holds a doctorate
in Slavic linguistics ( Brown University) and is the author of Business Without Borders (2004).

Tine Destrooper is an Associate Professor at the Human Rights Centre of the Faculty of
Law and Criminology at Ghent University. Her research focusses on the contextualization
of human rights norms, particularly in post- conflict settings. Together with Sally Merry, she
recently edited the volume Human Rights Transformation in Practice.

Nataša Ďurovičová edits the book series and electronic publications of the International
Writing Program at the University of Iowa, and teaches in the MFA programme in Literary
Translation there. She has also co-edited World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives (2010) and
At Translation’s Edge (2019).

xii
 Contributors

Federico M. Federici  is a Professor of Intercultural Crisis Communication at the Cen-

tre for Translation Studies, University College London. His research currently focusses on
translators and interpreters as intercultural mediators, online translated news and the study
of translation in crises.

Fruela Fernández is Lecturer in English Studies at Universitat de les Illes Balears, Spain.
He is the author of Translating the Crisis: Politics and Culture in Spain after the 15M (Routledge)
and Espacios de dominación, espacios de resistencia ( Peter Lang), as well as co- editor of The Rout-
ledge Handbook of Translation and Politics.

Paola Gentile is a postdoctoral researcher and adjunct professor of Dutch at the University
of Trieste. She holds a MA in conference interpreting and in 2016 she obtained her PhD in
Interpreting and Translation at the University of Trieste. Her research interests are: the so-
ciology of translation and interpreting, the reception of translated literature and imagology.

Leah Gerber is a senior lecturer in the Translation and Interpreting Studies programme at
Monash University. Her research concentrates on literary and cultural translation, with a fo-
cus on Australian children’s texts and their translation into German. Leah is also the current
Editor of the literary translation journal The AALITRA Review.

Moira Inghilleri is Professor of Translation and Interpreting Studies at the University of

Massachusetts Amherst. Her research interests include translation and migration, sociolog-
ical approaches to translation and interpreting research, ethics, and translation and conflict.
She is the author of Interpreting Justice: Ethics, Politics and Language (2012) and Translation and
Migration (2016).

David Inglis  is Professor of Sociology at the University of Helsinki. He writes in the

areas of cultural sociology, the sociology of globalization, historical sociology, and social
theory, both modern and classical. He has written and edited, most recently, An Invitation
to Social Theory (2nd edition), The Sage Handbook of Cultural Sociology and The Globalization
of Wine.

Federico Italiano is Senior Researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and lecturer
in Comparative Literature at LMU Munich. His recent publications include Translation and
Geography (Routledge, 2016), Grand Tour (with Jan Wagner, Hanser, 2019) and The Dark Side
of Translation ( Routledge, 2020). An Italian poet and translator, Federico has published five
poetry collections.

Rada Ivekovic’, philosopher, born in Zagreb, Yugoslavia in 1945, taught at the Philosophy

Department of Zagreb University, at the Universities of Paris-7, Paris- 8, and the Collège
international de philosophie, Paris ( Programme director 2004–2010). She works on political
philosophy (nation, state, gender, migration, violence, partition, ( post)colony), Indian phi-
losophy, feminist theory and translation.

Jorge Jiménez-Bellver is a PhD candidate at the University of Ottawa. He earned his BA

in English and his MA in Translation and Interpreting from the University of Alicante. He
also earned an MA in Comparative Literature ( Translation Studies Track) from the Univer-
sity of Massachusetts Amherst.

xiii
Contributors

Miguel A. Jiménez-Crespo is a Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese,

Rutgers University. He is the author of Crowdsourcing and Online Collaborative Translations:
Expanding the Limits of Translation Studies ( John Benjamins) and Translation and Web Localization
( Routledge). He has been the editor of the Journal of Internationalization and Localization ( JIAL).

Dionysios Kapsaskis is Senior Lecturer at the University of Roehampton, London, where

he teaches translation theory and audiovisual translation. His interests and publications are
in the areas of comparative literature, translation and film. He is also a specialized translator
and film subtitler into Greek.

David Katan is Full Professor of English Studies and Translation at the University of Salento
(Italy), and Visiting Professor at the University of South Africa. He is currently combining
his experience in tourism translation (museum panels and tourist guides) with his research on
cultural mediation, insider- outsider asymmetries and transcreation.

Alice Leal is Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies at the University of Vienna. Her recent
publications include chapters in the Routledge Handbook of Translation and Philosophy and in the
Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. Her new book, English and Translation in the EU
after Brexit, is coming out in 2021 ( Routledge).

Joss Moorkens is an Assistant Professor at Dublin City University and Funded Investigator
at the ADAPT Centre. He has authored over 50 articles, book chapters and conference papers
on translation topics, is General Co-Editor of Translation Spaces and sits on the board of the
European Masters in Translation network.

Robert Neather is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Translation, Inter-
preting and Intercultural Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. His research interests in-
clude museum translation and collaborative translation, particularly in the Chinese context.
He has published in a variety of venues including Meta, Semiotica and The Translator.

Siri Nergaard teaches at the University of South-Eastern Norway, and at the University of

Florence, Italy. In addition to numerous articles, Nergaard is the author and editor of several
books in Italian on translation studies. Forthcoming is the book Translation and Transmigration.
Nergaard is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Translation: A Transdisciplinary Journal.

Lucas Nunes Vieira is a Lecturer in Translation Studies with Technology at the University
of Bristol. He researches the use of machine translation in human translation practices and
how this affects processes, products and attitudes.

Marc Orlando is Associate Professor and Director of the Translation and Interpreting pro-
gramme at Macquarie University. His work focusses on practice-led research applied to the
training of translators and interpreters and on the synergies between academic research, pro-
fessional practice and T&I didactics. He is an active conference interpreter.

Attila Piróth is a freelance translator and the coordinator of Solidarités International’s trans-
lation internship programme. He has translated works of Albert Einstein, Noam Chomsky
and Howard Zinn into Hungarian. He is the founder and director of Théâtre le Levain, a
small independent theatre in Bègles, France.

xiv
 Contributors

Naoki Sakai is Goldwin Smith Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at
Cornell University. He has published in comparative literature, intellectual history, transla-
tion studies, and so on. His publications include Translation and Subjectivity (1997), Voices of the
Past (1991) and The End of Pax Americana and Inward-looking Society (in press).

Claire Scammell is a translator/editor with ten years’ professional experience. Her doctoral
research, sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and completed at King’s
College London, examined readers’ responses to translations in global news. She is the author
of the book Translation Strategies in Global News: What Sarkozy Said in the Suburbs.

Christopher Thorpe is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Exeter. His areas of

expertise include classical and modern social theory and cultural sociology. His forthcoming
monograph with Routledge is entitled British Representations of Italy: A Cultural Sociological
History.

Ira Torresi is Associate Professor in the Department of Interpreting and Translation ( DIT)
of the University of Bologna at Forlì. Her main interests are advertising translation, Child
Language Brokering, James Joyce in translation, gender and advertising, all approached
through visual and social semiotics as well as translation studies.

Maria Tymoczko is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Massachusetts

Amherst. She is a leading theorist of translation and an expert in translation studies. Her
research areas also include Medieval Studies and Modernism including the work of James
Joyce.

Mª Carmen África Vidal Claramonte  is Professor of Translation at the University of

Salamanca, Spain. She has published 14 books, 12 anthologies and over a hundred essays on
translation theory, post-colonialism, gender and geo-politics. She is a practising translator
specialized in the fields of philosophy, literature and contemporary art.

xv
 Introduction
The intersection between
translation and globalization1

Esperança Bielsa

Globalization is no longer the magic buzzword that at the turn of this century suddenly
seemed indispensable to grasp the contemporary world and its challenges, although few peo-
ple quite knew how to specify or define. The concept was in everybody’s mouth ( politicians,
journalists and activists, not just academics, embraced it), and this ubiquity, as well as its
wide-ranging but imprecise meanings, led some to remark that globalization was in dan-
ger of becoming the cliché of our times (Held et  al. 1999: 1). It was this very dynamism
that fostered the booming of interdisciplinary globalization theory and the constitution of a
now firmly established new research domain: global studies. Overly economistic approaches
that viewed globalization largely in terms of the liberalization of world markets were soon
complemented with more multi- d imensional accounts that identified a complex of distinct
social, cultural, economic and political aspects; studies of these objective characteristics of
globalization were joined by research that focused on its subjective dimensions; early views of
globalization as homogenization were challenged by more nuanced accounts that identified
the significance of widespread processes of localization and hybridization; a long history of
globalization that went back to at least the great empires of antiquity was investigated, and
the methodological nationalism that prevailed in social scientific and humanistic disciplines
was exposed.
As we enter the third decade of the t wenty-first century, the dynamism that once nour-
ished new understandings of the global seems to have vanished, as self-reflexive accounts of
our lack of understanding gain ground. Some of the most interesting recent approaches to
globalization precisely elaborate on the increasing opacity of the global as one of its funda-
mental features. For Chris Rumford, globalization leads not only to the realization that we
live in a smaller, deeply interconnected world but also to an increasing sense of strangeness,
as the social world becomes unrecognizable in many ways and familiar reference points are
eroded ( Rumford 2013). Ulrich Beck elaborates in his last, posthumously published book an
attempt to describe how the world has metamorphosed into a substantially new reality we
no longer understand ( Beck 2016). Moreover, in contemporary politics globalization and
globalism have become the object of widespread opposition and rejection, most visible in
the Trump government and the new right, an a nti-g lobalism that in time will prove to be

1
Esperança Bielsa

as misplaced as the contrasting optimism that lead to beliefs of globalization as the end of
history in the 1990s.
What has recently been described as a globalization backlash (Crouch 2019) has led glo-
balization theorists to reexamine the significance and character of globalization processes
that not so long ago seemed unquestionable. Thus, attempts have been made to respond to
current deglobalization claims by providing explanations of why and how globalization con-
tinues to matter even when the world has come to doubt its purpose and relevance (Steger
and James 2019: 19). In their book, Manfred Steger and Paul James tackle new global chal-
lenges such as populism and the current political and cultural dimensions of climate change
while reaffirming the continuing significance of intensifying globalization processes. It is not
just that deglobalization arguments that show a relative decline in the movement of people
and objects across the world miss the growing significance of ‘disembodied globalization’,
defined as the extension of social relations through the movement of immaterial things and
processes (Steger and James 2019: 122) – or what Jan Aart Scholte differently approached as
new forms of ‘transworld simultaneity’ and ‘transworld instantaneity’ to designate the large-
scale spread of supraterritoriality in contemporary globalization (Scholte 2005: 60– 64). In
fact, the very position that allows the articulation of deglobalizing perspectives presupposes
intensifying globalization and the internalization of globality to such a high degree that it be-
comes no longer visible. An interruption of the now so much taken for granted and assumed
normality of global interconnectedness, relationality and mobility, such as that created by
the pandemic of Covid-19 in 2020, challenges its invisibility and suddenly awakens us to the
pervasiveness of this existing reality.
A somewhat similar argument can be made with respect to the significance of theoretical
and empirical approaches to globalization in translation studies. Michael Cronin’s seminal
book Translation and Globalization (2003) was soon followed by other contributions that tack-
led the intersection between globalization and translation from an interdisciplinary perspec-
tive and empirically examined some key areas such as news or political violence ( Bassnett
et  al. 2005; Bielsa 2007; Bielsa and Bassnett 2009; Bielsa and Hugues 2009). However, if
globalization theory was seen to have mainly ignored the key mediating role that translation
plays in global connectivity and the movement of people and information around the world
( Bielsa 2005), it must also be said that translation studies has remained rather unconcerned
about relevant developments in global studies. But this relative lack of interdisciplinary en-
gagement should not blind us to the deep transformations that current understandings of
globalization have brought about in the field of translation studies. Contemporary global-
ization has changed how we approach translation and the work of translation scholars pro-
foundly. Within the so-called cultural turn ( Bassnett and Lefevere 1990), characterized by
the emergence of new concerns to investigate the social and cultural contexts that condition
translation and are inevitably transformed by it, it has contributed to a renewal of the disci-
pline and added a wealth of new topics and viewpoints to translation research, of which this
handbook seeks to offer a representative sample. Such a reorientation is a precondition for
the much expected translational turn ( Bachmann-Medick 2009) in the humanities and the
social sciences.
The present conjuncture is precisely what makes the production of this handbook pos-
sible as a first but already feasible attempt to bring together the wealth of scholarship that is
currently investigating the effects of globalization on all forms of translation and conceptu-
alizing the role of translation in a global context. In the two last decades, globalization has
become an inescapable aspect of all areas of translation research. Globalization has become
normal. By explicitly identifying and describing how it has shaped translation in the most

2
 Introduction

diverse social contexts, from tourism and migration to politics within and beyond the state,
this handbook shows the contribution of translation studies to globalization scholarship and
debate. Moreover, in the present phase of globalization, variously approached by scholars
as the uncertainty phase ( Robertson 1992: 59) or ‘the great unsettling’ (Steger and James
2019: 157–162), translation is bound to increase its significance, as abstracted or disembod-
ied connectivity comes to play a bigger role when compared to more traditional forms of
movement of people and objects across world space. As Steger and James point out, ‘the
defining dominant condition of contemporary globalization is the movement of abstracted
capital and culture  – including words, images, electronic texts, or encoded capital and
cryptocurrencies – through processes of disembodied interchange’ (Steger and James 2019:
255). Many of these forms of disembodied connectivity are only made possible by the shared
languages and linguistic competencies that are a key, if sometimes forgotten, infrastructure of
intercultural communication and interaction ( Held et al. 1999: 345). In this context, and in
face of the homogenizing ambition of English and of the idiom of neoliberalism, the question
of translation acquires a new urgency ( Venn 2006: 82), not just for translation scholars but for
the humanities and the social sciences more widely.
There is a need to specify the complexities involved in negotiating cultural and linguistic
difference and to examine the centrality of translation in constantly producing and reproduc-
ing the global reality that shapes our lives. This handbook emerges from the combined effort
to account for the role of translation in making possible global connectedness and to chart the
disciplinary changes that a global focus brings to translation studies. With respect to the first
objective, it offers w ide-ranging interdisciplinary perspectives on the phenomenon of trans-
lation, incorporating accounts from authors in other disciplinary fields in the social sciences
and the humanities on some key topics that include the history of globalization ( Inglis and
Thorpe), multiple modernities and cosmopolitanism ( Delanty), literature (Caneda- Cabrera),
cinema ( Ďurovičová), human rights ( Destrooper), democracy ( Bielsa) and the politics of
translation (Iveković), as well as contributions from translation scholars that examine areas of
interdisciplinary interest like geography ( Italiano), migration ( Inghilleri), world translation
flows ( Brisset and Colón), authorship ( Basalamah), museums ( Neather) or the EU ( Leal).
With respect to the second objective, that is, that of charting significant changes in trans-
lation studies brought about by a consistently global focus, it gathers contributions that ap-
proach translation primarily from a transnational perspective, rather than a national one. A
transnational perspective emphasizes interconnections across existing borders and illuminates
translation’s key role in mediating between different localities and between the local and the
global. While only a few chapters extensively focus on this significant dimension, most nota-
bly, Naoki Sakai’s approach to internationality and Mattea Cussel’s critique of methodological
nationalism, the transnational perspective informs all the chapters gathered in this volume.
Both interdisciplinarity and the transnational perspective are essential to the contribu-
tion that this handbook seeks to make to current scholarship on the intersection between
translation and globalization through a coherent general approach that provides a common
framework for all chapters, in spite of the diversity of authorial contributions and thematic
scope. In addition, we wish to draw attention to the following significant issues that animate
current scholarship, and which we have sought to represent in this volume, described below.

A plurality of understandings of both translation and globalization

Both translation studies and global studies are home to lively debates on how to define
the very basic concepts from which they originate. In translation studies, more traditional

3
Esperança Bielsa

definitions of translation as interlinguistic transfer can be contrasted with views that seek
to foreground translation as a social relation with otherness that leaves neither the text nor
the translator unchanged. On the other hand, the concept of cultural translation has been
developed to underscore the significance of the wider cultural relations involved in transla-
tion and is used especially by authors in other disciplines (who implicitly take translation to
signify a strictly linguistic process in more narrow terms), but has also had some repercussion
within the field of translation studies itself. There is always something that seems to defy a
comprehensive grasp of translation as a research object, a quality of translation that remains
obdurately evasive, and it is precisely from this fact that fruitful speculations about the signif-
icance of metaphors of translation originate.
It is important to note that similar debates regarding the concept of globalization and its
basic periodization have characterized the field of global studies since its inception, a fact to
which translation scholars have tended to remain oblivious. David Inglis and Christopher
Thorpe’s chapter describes the widespread disagreements concerning what globalization is
and when it began, and their attitude of keeping ‘an open mind about such matters’ is echoed
in the more general position of this handbook with respect to fundamental disagreements
about the basic concepts of translation and globalization. Inglis and Thorpe’s chapter also
brings into focus the significance of translation in the early history of globalization, while
Paul Bandia traces the historical relations between the global South and the global North in
the context of colonialism, postcolonialism and neo- colonialism.

Translation in its most diverse forms and contexts

Globalization reveals the existing diversity of forms and types of translation, as well as its
widespread significance in different social domains. Moreover, this is not just a contemporary
feature, but one that is deeply ingrained in the role of translation through history. Since an-
tiquity, uses of translation as a means of cultural appropriation coexist with the intervention
of translation in processes of conquest and religious conversion. Contemporary globalization
has greatly aided to the growing visibility of widely significant forms of translation in the
media, which have led to the development of new subfields and areas of specialized research
in translation studies, such as audiovisual translation and news translation.
This handbook seeks to represent the existing diversity of forms of translation in all types
of social connections and relations across linguistic borders and to analyze its intervention
in contemporary culture, economics and politics. With respect to culture, the translation of
literature (chapters by Brisset and Colón, Caneda- Cabrera), global news (Scammell) and cin-
ema ( Ďurovičová), as well as translation in museums ( Neather) are examined. In economic
terms, while translation has become a major global industry ( DePalma) and tourism, adver-
tising and promotional translation have flourished alongside global trade ( Katan, Torresi),
widespread localization processes ( Jimenez- Crespo, Scammell) illustrate the local-g lobal dy-
namics that are an inherent feature of globalization, which not only penetrates localities from
the outside but is also deeply shaped at the local level, a process well captured by the notion
of glocalization. Economic aspects of translation and employment conditions of translators
and interpreters are also inextricably bound with major political and technological develop-
ments, such as the impact of neoliberalism (Moorkens) and the rise of the platform economy
( Piróth and Baker). Perhaps the topic that has received more critical attention beyond trans-
lation studies is the growing visibility and significance of translation for politics beyond the
state (see, for instance, Santos 2005; Balibar 2006; Doerr 2018). In this light, the handbook
contains chapters on democracy ( Bielsa), human rights ( Destrooper), the EU ( Leal), political

4
 Introduction

activism ( Fernández) and feminist ethics (Iveković), which address how translation relates to
the new political landscapes brought about by globalization. At the same time, the continu-
ing significance of nations ( Baer) and borders ( Vidal), as well as constitutive and mounting
gender, ethnic and national violence (Iveković), are also distinctive features of the present
where translation is called to play a key political role.
Globalization has also impacted on the nature of the discipline, confronting mainly
Western views of translation with other conceptualizations and leading to what Jorge
Jimenez-Bellver describes in terms of the internationalization of translation studies. This is a
dimension that is also explored, in different ways, in chapters by Maria Tymoczko and Paul
Bandia, who coincide in noting the paradox that emerges when globalization opens up new
understandings of translation while, at the same time, enforcing and augmenting fundamen-
tal asymmetries and inequalities.

The role of technology

In addition to the diversity of understandings concerning the very basic terms that define
them as academic disciplines, as indicated above, translation studies and global studies have
another interesting similarity: the need to account for the central role of technology in mak-
ing possible the current phase of globalization, which differs from earlier forms in significant
ways, and the widespread changes that translation has undergone in recent decades.
Arguably, one of the best approaches to the role of technology in contemporary glo-
balization is Manuel Castells’s groundbreaking conception of informational capitalism. For
Castells, contemporary globalization is linked primarily to the revolution in information
technologies of the 1970s, which became the motor for the expansion and rejuvenation of
capitalism at the end of the twentieth century, just as the steam engine was the motor of the
first industrial revolution. Informationalism, based on knowledge, is for Castells the base of
the socio- economic restructuring of the 1980s that gave rise to the network society. Signifi-
cantly, Castells distinguishes between the notions of ‘ information society’ and ‘ informational
society’. While the former underlines the role of information in society,

in contrast, the term ‘ informational’ indicates the attribute of a specific form of social
organization in which information generation, processing, and transmission become the
fundamental sources of productivity and power because of new technological conditions
emerging in this historical period.
(Castells 2000: 21)

Castells thus uses ‘ informational’ in a similar manner as ‘ industrial’: an industrial society

refers not just to a society where there is industry, but to a society where the social and tech-
nological forms of industrial organization permeate all spheres of activity.
The information technology revolution in the last quarter of the twentieth century pro-
vided the indispensable basis for the creation of the new economy, informational capitalism,
where there is a historical linkage between the k nowledge-information base of the economy,
its global reach, and its network-based organizational form. In this new technological par-
adigm, information itself has become the key product, the raw material upon which tech-
nologies act as they become the new base or material foundation of the network society. In
previous technological revolutions information acted on technology; in the current context,
fundamentally, technology also acts on information (2000: 70). As Castells explains, the in-
formational economy does not oppose the logic of the industrial economy, but rather takes

5
Esperança Bielsa

it to a completely new level through technological deepening in all processes of material

production and distribution (2000: 100). A key aspect of this transformation is the constitu-
tion of a global economy, which is a historically new reality. If a world economy had existed
for centuries through transatlantic networks of commodity production and exchange estab-
lished in the early modern period of Western expansion, a global economy, which Castells
defines as ‘an economy with the capacity to work as a unit in real time, or chosen time, on
a planetary scale’ (2000: 101), was only made possible by the new infrastructure provided
by information and communication technologies. It is thus its supraterritorial character that
determines this historically novel aspect of contemporary globalization.
Yet if, as Castells argues, in the t wenty-fi rst century information has become the new raw
material, the confrontation of human translators with machine translation today resembles
the struggle of workers against machines that took place during the industrial revolution, as
described by Karl Marx in the nineteenth century, in some fundamental ways. First, infor-
mational capitalism has turned translation, which had until recently remained a persistently
artisanal activity, into an industry of massive scaling possibilities. An illustration of the dy-
namics that shape the shift from artisanal, to industrial, to platform economy is found in
Attila Piróth and Mona Baker’s analysis of the case of Translation Without Borders. Second,
this process is characterized by the devaluation of human labor, in this case the labor of trans-
lators and interpreters in the informational economy. ‘The devaluation of the human world
grows in direct proportion to the increase in value of the world of things’, indicated Marx in his
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1992: 323–324, original emphasis). The mature Marx
would analyze in Capital the concrete effects of machine production on workers in terms of
the incorporation of women and children into factory work, the prolongation of the working
day and the intensification of labor. In this volume, chapters by Joss Moorkens and Piróth and
Baker describe the worsening of working conditions for translators, with reference to the still
largely unregulated reality of freelancing and crowdsourcing that is an important feature of
the new translation economy. Third, automatic or machine translation hides its social ori-
gins, the fact that both the translations that are pooled as sources and the technologies them-
selves are made by human beings. This is what Marx approached in terms of commodity
fetishism, referring to the mysterious character of the commodity, which ‘reflects the social
characteristics of men’s own labour as objective characteristics of the products of the labour
themselves, as the socio-natural properties of these things’ (1990: 164–165). Finally, a new
quality of contemporary globalization that Marx could not have foreseen is the geographical
dispersion that coexists with the highest level of capital concentration, which is made possi-
ble by the new information and communication technologies. If Marx’s workers could meet
and organize themselves in the factories to fight for their collective fate, today’s professional
translators largely constitute a more evanescent, though no less significant, networked virtual
crowd (Cronin 2010). Widely underpaid, isolated and called to compete with the transparent
instantaneity of automatic translation, but also commanding over a never before envisaged
range of resources through computer-a ssisted translation tools, they are one of globalization’s
most paradoxical faces.
Nevertheless, from a more heterodox materialist perspective it becomes possible to illumi-
nate the potential of new technologies to be used in radically different ways and, more gener-
ally, to reflect on how technology has fundamentally altered the nature of all culture. Today’s
widely significant activities of different types of volunteer, fan and activist t ranslators – the
blurring of the boundaries between producers and consumers that is often alluded to with
the notion of ‘prosumer’ – a re prefigured in Walter Benjamin’s examination of the dynamics
that turn viewers into experts and readers into writers, erasing the very distinction between

6
 Introduction

author and public (1992, 2005). Furthermore, his perspective is not limited to a consideration
of production but also theorizes new forms of perception and reception, made possible not
just by the new technical means which facilitate the collective appropriation of works in a
state of distraction (most significantly in cinema), but also by the increased participation of
the masses in cultural life (Benjamin 1992; Bielsa 2016: 80). Mechanical reproduction allows
the emancipation of art from ritual and the politicization of art. It is not a coincidence that
Benjamin turned his attention to widely undervalued cultural activities, such as photography
and translation, in order to reexamine and critique still dominant notions of cultural authen-
ticity and uniqueness.
In this volume, Donald DePalma describes the translation industry in terms of technology-
driven language services of outsourced business processes, while Miguel Jimenez- Crespo
approaches the dynamics of localization. Chapters by Moorkens, Alonso and Nunes Vieira,
and Piróth and Baker explore the social consequences of technological innovations that have
become key for translators and translation. Paola Gentile deals with interpreters’ growing
concerns on the effects of information and communication technologies for their profession,
while Michal Borodo describes different types of grassroots translation projects initiated by
fans and activists, as well as top- down crowdsourcing as an increasingly significant area of
non-professional translation practice.

Subjective globalization and translation in ordinary people’s lives

Globalization does not just refer to increased connectivity in all aspects of social life. As
Roland Robertson already observed, ‘Globalization…refers both to the compression of the
world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole’ ( Robertson 1992: 8).
However, as Steger and James argue, the subjective dimensions of globalization have received
far less attention than the objective phenomena of time-space compression in the globaliza-
tion literature (2019: 78). Subjective globalization goes beyond consciousness and reflexivity
and involves the most intimate dimensions of our self-perception, as well as our perceptions
of others and of the world. It is intricately related to what Ulrich Beck approached in terms
of globalization of biography and, later, cosmopolitanization of biography. Globalization of
biography indicates generalized mobile individual existence, a transnational life that stretches
across frontiers, or what Beck refers to as place polygamy: people are wedded to several
places at once ( Beck 2000). This means that global contradictions are not only outside, but
have also become part of people’s own lives, even without being actively sought or con-
sciously reflected upon. Cosmopolitanization is defined by Beck as ‘internal globalization’,
‘globalization from within the national societies’ ( Beck 2002: 17, original emphasis), calling
attention to the fact that globalization does not only involve interconnections across borders,
but also causes fundamental transformations inside national societies. Cosmopolitanization
of biography similarly emphasizes the internalization of difference, ‘the clash of cultures
within one’s own life’ and ‘the co-presence and coexistence of rival lifestyles, contradictory
certainties in the experiential space of individuals and societies’ (2006: 89).
Significantly, ‘place polygamous ways of living are translated biographies: they have to be
constantly translated both for oneself and for others’ ( Beck and Beck- Gernsheim 2002: 25)
while cosmopolitan competence, as a fact of everyday and of scientific experience, is forcing us
‘to develop the art of translation and bridge-building’ ( Beck 2006: 89; Bielsa 2016: 6). Indeed,
a focus on language and translation can precisely reveal significant trends toward internal
globalization and cosmopolitanization in relation to both individuals and societies. Translated
lives question taken for granted notions about the separateness of languages (or what Sakai, in

7
Esperança Bielsa

this volume, refers to as the individuality of language) that have prevailed in methodological
nationalism and what can be described as the monolingual vision ( Bielsa, this volume).
Part 2 of this handbook foregrounds ways in which translation has become a key fact of
cosmopolitan competence as well as a fertile resource of individual and collective imaginar-
ies. Moira Inghilleri examines interactions and entanglements between diverse groups in the
context of the building of the transcontinental railroads in the United States in the nineteenth
century by Irish and Chinese migrant workers. A focus on the conflicts and contradictions
that emerge in these translations between disparate cultures and languages can complicate
the clearly defined ‘we’ and ‘they’ narratives on which the politics of multiculturalism rests.
The subjective experience of living in translation in the context of global asymmetries and its
consequences for notions of identity and belonging are analyzed by Siri Nergaard (and, from
a border perspective in a different part of the book, by África Vidal). Gentile examines how
public service interpreting developed in the second half of the twentieth century to assist
growing numbers of migrants in accessing services in host countries, while its more presti-
gious double, conference interpreting, served the increase in international organizations and
growing needs for global governance. Interpreters’ perception of their profession is a major
concern in this chapter. The role of language and translation is also coming to the fore in
crisis and risk communication in multilingual contexts, and Federico Federici discusses how
poorly served multilingual needs widen existing vulnerabilities and become global risks.
Translation is also a prominent task in the activities of other professionals, such as journal-
ists (Scammell), or in those of non-professional translators ( Borodo) or activists ( Fernández)
who, for a host of different reasons, engage in a wide variety of types of translation. Although
this is not in itself a new phenomenon (Inglis and Thorpe refer to the translating and inter-
preting work of traders, business people, soldiers, diplomats and others as unacknowledged
actors of globalization), its growing significance and visibility both attest to the key medi-
ating role of translation in contemporary globalization and pose new economic and ethical
challenges to professional translators and interpreters. A focus on the effects of globalization
on translator and interpreting training in higher education (Orlando and Gerber) identifies
the demands and expectations, as well as the new pressures that the translation profession
faces in the twenty-first century.

Reflecting on the most pressing social and political issues of our time
Examining how translation intervenes in the most pressing social and political issues of our
time has become unavoidable. This handbook seeks to contribute to this task by offering
approximations to key areas and topics of current research the interest of which goes beyond
purely scholarly debates, such as migration, climate change, and the changing meaning of
borders. In all of these areas, a consideration of how translation is present in any response
to the global risks that humanity faces becomes a necessary reflection not just in globaliza-
tion research or translation studies and the intersections thereof, but also in socio-political
domains and discourses beyond the academy. In turn, these wider socio-political discourses
and debates animate the renewal of academic disciplines and the development of new areas
of interdisciplinary interest.
In addition to other substantive areas that have already been discussed in this introduc-
tion, such as the globalization of biography or the social role of technology, we wish to call
attention to two particularly significant topics in this respect that are approached in different
chapters of this handbook: the issue of climate change, and the role of English as global lingua
franca in relation to debates concerning multilingualism, translation and democratic politics.

8
 Introduction

Even as climate change and the destructive impact of human activity on our planet have
been a known reality for decades, there has been a certain tendency to consider that the sub-
stantial overcoming of territorial geography would somehow be accompanied by the domesti-
cation of nature. Globalization has brought into view the alarming rate of species destruction,
the shrinking of the ozone layer and the ensuing rise of world temperatures, the pollution of
air and water and the unstoppable growth of waste of all kinds, as well as the terrible conse-
quences of human-caused accidental disasters at least since Chernobyl. But such realities, as
somber as they are, have not still fundamentally challenged the view that we are in charge of
development, that we can change the course of events, or come up with new technologies to
face unwanted consequences. The climate emergency should awaken us to the fallacy of this
approach and make us aware of the existence of a hostile nature as a powerful force that puts
human life in danger. Tsunamis easily efface kilometers of coastlines taking hundreds of thou-
sands of human lives, fires can burn through entire continents and, at the time of writing this
introduction in March 2020, the global spread of a new virus is unswervingly bringing the
world to a halt. What is slowly becoming visible is that we cannot even comprehend, let alone
control, the profound changes that the human species has unleashed in nature. Beck had this
in mind when he proposed the term metamorphosis to capture the radical transformation
of the world ( Beck 2016). Michael Cronin argues in this volume for a terracentric approach
that can identify areas of translation practice that are complicit in cultures of unsustainable
resource extractivism. Indeed, thinking about translation as a scarce resource calls for a differ-
ent perspective on the global translation industry and a new ethics for translation technology
that, instead of serving toward endless commercial growth, could be deployed for other, more
socially responsible aims in the provision of health education, public services for migrants
(Gentile), or in crisis and risk communication in multilingual contexts (Federici).
Contemporary globalization has witnessed, for the first time, the emergence of English
as a global lingua franca among elites ( lingua francas of the past, such as Latin, only ever
achieved regional status). In spite of some neo-babelian designs, such as Castells’s approach
to the significance of a new digital language that can connect deterritorialized workers and
managers around task and performance (Castells 2000: 212; Bielsa and Bassnett 2009: 25–26),
the global use of English has not led to a diminishing significance of translation, but rather
placed new demands and pressures on translation and translators. In this volume, Gentile
relates it to a decline in the prestige of the interpreting profession.
However, in the case of the European Union, it can be argued that the use of English, as the
EU’s unofficial lingua franca, is what allows the viability of one of the most multilingual politi-
cal institutions of the world or, as Alice Leal puts it, the EU’s de jure multilingualism is enabled
by its de facto monolingualism. It is too early to analyze the impact of Brexit on the language
regime of the EU but, as Leal also notes, the predominance of English is ‘controversial in terms
of democratic representation as it is neither a widely spoken language nor a neutral language
that “ belongs” to no one’. In this context, it is important to realize that it is not English but
rather translation that is the basic medium for the creation of a transnational public sphere in
a democratic sense, the ‘common’ idiom of its citizens ( Balibar 2006: 5– 6, see Bielsa in this
volume). A fascinating approximation to what this involves can be found in Tine Destrooper’s
approach to the travel, translation and transformation of human rights across the world.
The uncertainty of the present urges us to consider translation in all its forms in connec-
tion with the most diverse aspects of reality, animating and revitalizing academic fields and
interdisciplinary debates. This handbook seeks to represent an exciting variety of research
approaches from the intersection between translation and globalization that relate translation
to the most pressing cultural, social and political issues of our unsettled times.

9
Esperança Bielsa

Note

References
­

Balibar, É. (2006) ‘Strangers as Enemies : Further Reflections on the Aporias of Transnational Citi-
zenship’, Globalization Working Papers. Université de Paris-X Nanterre and University of California, Irvine
(06/4).
Bassnett, S. et al. (2005) ‘Global News Translation’ (Special Issue), Language and Intercultural Communi-
cation, 5(2), pp. 105–187.
Bassnett, S. and Lefevere, A. (1990) Translation, History and Culture. New York: Pinter.
Beck, U. (2000) What Is Globalization? Trans. P. Camiller. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Beck, U. (2002) ‘The Cosmopolitan Society and Its Enemies’, Theory, Culture & Society, 19(2), pp. 17–44.
doi: 10.1177/026327640201900101.
Beck, U. and Beck- Gernsheim, E. (2002) Individualization. Trans. P. Camiller. London: Sage.
Beck, U. (2006) The Cosmopolitan Vision. Trans. C. Cronin. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Beck, U. (2016) The Metamorphosis of the World. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Benjamin, W. (1992) ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in Benjamin, W.
(ed.), Illuminations. Trans. H. Zohn. London: Fontana Press, pp. 211–244.
Benjamin, W. (2005) ‘The Author as Producer’, in Jennings, M. W., Eiland, H., and Smith, G. (eds.),
Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings Vol. 2. Trans. R. Livingston. Cambridge, MA. and London: Belk-
nap Press, pp. 768–782.
Bielsa, E. (2005) ‘Globalisation and Translation: A Theoretical Approach’, Language and Intercultural
Communication, 5(2), pp. 131–144.
Bielsa, E. (2007) ‘Translation in Global News Agencies’, Target, 19(1), pp. 135–155.
Bielsa, E. (2016) Cosmopolitanism and Translation: Investigations into the Experience of the Foreign. London
and New York: Routledge.
Bielsa, E. and Bassnett, S. (2009) Translation in Global News. London and New York: Routledge.
Bielsa, E. and Hugues, C. W. (eds.) (2009) Globalization, Political Violence and Translation. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Castells, M. (2000) The Rise of the Network Society, 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.
Cronin, M. (2003) Translation and Globalization. London and New York: Routledge.
Cronin, M. (2010) ‘The Translation Crowd’, Tradumàtica: Tecnologies de la traducció, 8, p.  1. doi:
10.5565/rev/tradumatica.100.
Crouch, C. (2019) The Globalization Backlash. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Doerr, N. (2018) Political Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Held, D. et al. (1999) Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Marx, K. (1990) Capital. Volume 1. Trans. B. Fowkes. London: Penguin.
Marx, K. (1992) Early Writings. Trans. R. Livingstone and G. Benton. London: Penguin.
Robertson, R. (1992) Globalization. Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage.
Rumford, C. (2013) The Globalization of Strangeness. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Santos, B. de S. (2005) ‘The Future of the World Social Forum: The Work of Translation’, Development,
48(2), pp. 15–22. doi: 10.1057/palgrave.development.1100131.
Scholte, J. A. (2005) Globalization: A Critical Introduction, 2nd ed. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Steger, M. B. and James, P. (2019) Globalization Matters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Venn, C. (2006) ‘Translation: Politics and Ethics’, Theory, Culture & Society, 23(2–3), pp. 82–84. doi:
10.1177/026327640602300214.

10
 Part I
Key concepts
 1
Translation encounters and the
histories of globalization
David Inglis and Christopher Thorpe

Introduction
Understanding the nature of translation practices in relation to globalization processes nec-
essarily involves careful historical consideration of both. This is a challenging endeavour,
because there is no generally shared understanding either of what ‘globalization’ entails, or
of its history. But no matter how one defines globalization, with however many phenomena
and whatever types of processes it is assumed to involve, and however long one thinks its
history is, it is certainly the case that translation must be regarded as central to globalization
dynamics (Cronin 2003; Bielsa 2014, 2016).
The term ‘globalization’ in one way or another refers to processes of connectivity, whereby
some people in some places are brought into new forms of connection with other people in
other places. In any specific case, there is a good chance that each group will not speak or read
the same language as the other. Hence processes of translation are crucial for globalization,
because they allow connections to happen in the first place, and then can profoundly shape
how those connections develop over time (Chanda 2007).
In this chapter we will not adopt any one viewpoint on what globalization is or when it
began, but we will instead keep an open mind about such matters. This is so that the broadest
possible analysis can be offered of globalization/translation interfaces, as these have occurred
over the centuries in different places, and in so doing have brought different places and peo-
ple into new forms of connectivity and interaction.
We will first set out the various possible answers to the interconnected questions what is
globalization and when did it begin? Then we will consider how translation activities are bound
up with globalization processes, first in terms of the actions of the human actors who do
the translations, and then the locations where translations are carried out. Finally, we will
illustrate the general points raised in these earlier sections with some illustrative examples
drawn from Eurasia from ancient times until the start of the modern era. In this way we will
attempt to map out the connections between historical modes of globalization and forms of
translation practices, in ways that to our knowledge no- one has yet attempted.

13
David Inglis and Christopher Thorpe

Defining globalization and its history

Among scholars today, there is no consensus as to what ‘globalization’ entails, or what its his-
tory involves. The definitional and historiographical aspects are deeply intertwined: how one
defines globalization entails specific understandings of its history, and vice versa. Narrating
the history of ‘globalization’ involves making a series of assumptions – about what the term
refers to, which processes it encompasses (and which it does not), how the various processes
can be understood to connect with each other, and, crucially, when globalization is meant
to have ‘ begun’. Opinions on the latter issue vary greatly, from positions which see global-
ization as a very recent set of phenomena – perhaps dating from about the time of the fall
of the Berlin Wall – to viewpoints which regard globalization as involving very long-term
processes that have operated over thousands of years (Inglis 2005).
There is a large and complex literature in which various specialists – such as historians, and
historically oriented economists, sociologists, anthropologists, and others – debate the vexed
issue of when globalization ‘ began’. There are various possible responses, varying in chrono-
logical extent. First, globalization is at least several thousand years old, perhaps stretching
back as much as 5,000 years. Second, globalization can be found in the ancient world, in the
two millennia before and after the time of Christ. Third, globalization could have started in
the period after the fall of the Roman Empire, or in the early medieval world. Fourth, glo-
balization begins around about 1500 CE, around the time of the European conquest of the
Americas, and the start of modern capitalism in Europe. Fifth, globalization starts in either
the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries CE, with the coming to dominance of the European
empires across the planet, and then the industrial revolution in Europe. Sixth, some scholars
assert that globalization only really takes off in the twentieth century, either in the aftermath
or WWII, or with the development of new features of the capitalist economy in the 1970s, or
with the end of Soviet Communism in the late 1980s, or with the rise of internet and related
communications technologies in the 1990s (for overviews, see Bentley 1999, 2006; Hopkins
2002; Gills and Thompson 2006; McKeown 2007; Pieterse 2012).
As can be seen from this list, practically any period of human history can be chosen as the
starting point of globalization. The choice is wholly dependent on how any given analyst
defines globalization, and which phenomena they choose to focus on as evidence of globaliza-
tion’s apparent beginnings. Once a starting point has been chosen, a model can be created of
what that analyst believes were the periods that variously (a) were wholly ‘ before’ globaliza-
tion; ( b) created the conditions for, and acted as the run-up to, globalization (such periods are
often referred to as those of ‘proto-g lobalization’); (c) involved the beginning of ‘globalization’
per se; (d) constitute the subsequent phases of globalization, from the beginning period up
until our own time ( Bayly 2002). Howsoever more ‘modern’ phases of globalization may be
conceived, it is important not to assume that these are either completely different from pre-
modern variants, or, conversely, are just bigger and more expansive versions of previous phases.
Each phase may build on previous ones, or may involve ruptures with them ( Bentley 1999).
The scope for dispute and confusion in labelling the different alleged periods of global-
ization is potentially endless. Periods that some scholars refer to as ‘archaic’ globalization
( Bayly 2002), others refer to as not involving globalization at all, or conversely as ‘proto-
globalization’. There is some consensus among scholars that the period around 1500 CE
is somehow special. This partly reflects an apparently commonsensical assumption: surely
globalization only really begins when most of the planet is involved in its processes? If so,
then given that the Americas were only pulled into systematic connection with Eurasia
and Africa after that point, with Australasia following a little later, it must be the case that

14
 Translation and globalization histories

globalization ‘proper’ only really begins at the start of the 1500s CE. The European conquest
of the Americas must therefore be understood as the great turning-point in the emergence
of planet-wide connectivity.
This idea sounds plausible on the surface. But if there is anything that the debate about
the beginnings of globalization can teach us is that common- sense assumptions do not pass
muster when put under historical scrutiny. Focussing on the period about 1500 CE is deeply
Eurocentric. It assumes that globalization, and more broadly world history, pivot on rel-
atively recent European interventions. It also assumes a diffusionist model, where action
emanates from a Western centre, spreading outwards to non-Western peripheries, instead of
recognizing that the circulation of people, ideas, languages and objects over time has been
much more complex and multicentric than that (Olohan 2014).
Such a chauvinist and parochial viewpoint omits many other things too: that much of the
forms of human connectivity throughout planetary history were created in other parts of the
globe beyond Europe; that the Europeans were late starters in this regard; that much of Europe’s
alleged distinctiveness and innovative nature were borrowed, usually in unacknowledged ways,
from other civilizations, notably China; and that over-emphasis on the role of the so-called
‘West’ goes together with the equally untenable assumption that globalization must be wholly
‘modern’ in nature. Given that there were extensive trade networks across Eurasia and sub-
Saharan Africa many centuries before 1500 CE, one could argue that globalization was well in
place before then (Frank and Gills 1993). So, what if globalization is as much to be found in, say,
thirteenth-century CE Mongolia as it is in nineteenth-century CE London? What if evidence
points us towards finding the presence of globalization at times, and in places, including ‘pre-
modern’ ones, that Eurocentric and modernist thinking has trained us not to look at?
Both contemporary globalization studies and translation history have become over the
last 20 years more attuned to understanding history in non-Eurocentric ways, which empha-
size instead t rans-regional flows and circulations, and polycentric complexity ( Bandia 2006).
Such a shift in emphasis has great implications for how translation in history is understood
and studied. Up until quite recently, translation studies and translation history could be
accused of deep Eurocentrism. This took various forms. One was uncritically using Judeo-
Christian timeframes (ancient, medieval, modern, etc.) as if these were somehow natural and
applicable the world over. Another was assuming that the civilizations like ancient Judea,
Greece and Rome, from which came the great, canonized texts like the Bible – which schol-
ars primarily focussed on, while ignoring more mundane w ritings – were simply coherent
and self-contained cultural totalities ( Bandia 2006).
But once one looks at the world through the lens of globalization theory, which itself has
been sensitized by post- colonial thinking to recognize historical complexity and difference,
things look very different. As Appiah (1995: 55) writes:

The Greece to which the West looks back was at the crossroads of cultures of North
Africa and the Near East; the Spain that began the conquest of the New World had been
deeply shaped by Islam; the Renaissance rediscovery of ancient learning owed a great
deal to the Arabs who had preserved that tradition through the European Dark Ages;
and the economic basis of modern capitalism depended on the labour of Africans, the
gold and silver of the New World Indians, and the markets of Asia … The West acquired
gunpowder – at the military heart of the modern European state – f rom China and the
astronomical data on which was based the beginnings of the Scientific Revolution from
the ancient Near East.

15
David Inglis and Christopher Thorpe

So what may seem like self-enclosed cultural and civilizational entities are in fact hybrids,
and indeed one way to describe the history of globalization is to say that it is the history of
different socio-cultural entities coming into contact, and new entities being created in the
process. Such hybridization is made possible in and through translation practices, both those
that are more explicit and, perhaps more often, hidden and subterranean.
‘Translation’ here means two things: first, something more general – ideas and cultural
influences from some groups are adopted, adapted and transformed by others; and second,
something more precise – the adoption, adaptation and transformation had to operate some-
how through linguistic means. Translation practices have been the means through which dif-
ferent groups, cultures and civilizations have influenced each other, and have thereby created
new, hybrid entities, the mixed nature of which has often been subsequently denied. But the
complex mixing that has happened becomes apparent again when we look at such matters in
light of globalization processes, and this becomes even more clear when we understand these
globalization processes as themselves involving complicated practices of translation.

Connections and actors

The connections involved in, and made through, globalization processes can be of a poten-
tially infinite variety. But certain types have reoccurred again and again over time across the
world. They include forms of peaceful and constructive interchange, as well as violent forms of
control and domination. They can involve face-to-face contacts between specific persons, or
more indirect, impersonal, and mediated connections. They can be of a more economic nature
(e.g. trading connections), or of a more political type (e.g. imperial conquests, and resistance to
those by the colonized), or of a more cultural sort (e.g. religious conversions). It is likely that
some or all of these types will be intermingled in any given real-world case (Holton 2005).
Each type of connection, and how they may mix with each other, is made possible by,
and depends on, associated translation processes. For example, different groups can only keep
trading with each other, and so bring their parts of the world into economic connection, if
they work out some sort of way of communicating, involving translating between two or
more languages. The history of economic globalization (or as some scholars would prefer
to say, the economic facets of globalization) is full of instances of ‘pidgin’ languages being
created to allow trading relations to operate. Likewise, what we can call political globaliza-
tion ( how different political units, such as nation- states or empires, relate to each other) is
dependent on translation practices. An invading army needs interpreters to speak with the
local population, to gain crucial information and co- opt local knowledges. A conquering
power will need to find ways to communicate with the conquered, and to impose its own
language upon them in some ways, such as by demanding that official business be conducted
only in the conquerors’ language, and by rendering place and street names into the dominant
language. Yet conquerors may also live in fear of the potential duplicity of native translators,
who might feed the masters faulty information (Cronin 2000).
Religious globalization (which primarily involves the spread of belief systems across ter-
ritories) partly relies on missionaries being able to talk with potential converts in ways that
the latter understand (Chanda 2007). Conversion often means the converted adopting the
language of the missionaries and therefore of the holy texts that they venerate. The same sort
of point applies to other types or facets of globalization. Cultural globalization (the spread of
ideas and imageries across space) and social globalization (the creation of new sorts of social
relationships across distances, including between people who were previously disconnected,
in whole or in part) also rely on translation practices (Inglis with Thorpe 2019).

16
 Translation and globalization histories

Focussing on translating and interpreting encounters allows us to see some of the very
concrete practices that make up the m icro-level aspects of wider and bigger globalization
processes. A good way to understand how translation practices and globalization processes
have intersected and made each other possible at different times and places involves focussing
on the people who did the actual translation and interpreting work, in so doing operating as
brokers between one group and another. This focus chimes with contemporary approaches
in translation history, which are less interested in translated texts taken in isolation, and
more interested in how everyday translation work was done, by whom, and with which tools
(Cronin 2003). Sometimes those doing translation have been individuals or groups who have
explicitly been understood by their contemporaries as professional ‘translators’. There have
also been those who were not recognized as translation professionals, but who nonetheless
undertook translation activity on an everyday basis, such as merchants who dealt with people
from different language groups as part of their day-to- day transactions ( Holton 2005).
There have also been people who were defined by those around them as ‘ interpreters’,
who are a much less studied group than translators. This is partly because, often working
in spoken rather than written language, and for everyday pragmatic reasons rather than for
scholarly purposes, they have left behind far fewer visible traces than have the translators
(Santoyo 2006). But despite their relative invisibility to us ( Venuti 1995), interpreters are
some of the most important, if unsung, makers of globalization processes. In addition to
doing on-the-spot oral translations, they also produced

texts, most of them, of a pragmatic, matter- of-fact condition, which … [for a very long]
time have been present almost daily at school, at court, at church, in monasteries and
chanceries, on routes of pilgrimage, at ports, harbours, and interstate frontiers.
(Santoyo 2006: 16)

In so doing, interpreters have significantly created the everyday fabric of globalization across
the centuries, helping to forge day in and day out the sorts of linkages and connections that
the umbrella term ‘globalization’ refers to.
Translators of various sorts, as well as interpreters, have often been migrants, sometimes
possessed of multiple and/or hybrid identities (Cronin and Simon 2014). Sometimes they have
taken on more passive or more active roles in inter-language brokerage ( Demirkol-Erturk
and Paker 2014). Some have been in a position not only to traverse, but also to transgress,
linguistic and cultural boundaries (Meylaerts and Gonne 2014). They have come from, and
occupied, both higher and lower social positions, ranging from the honoured translator of
sacred texts through to the humble servant or slave who interprets for their master ( Koskinen
2014). Translators and interpreters have often come from outsider or nomadic groups, such
as the Jews (Steiner 1996), or those who have been displaced by political and economic cir-
cumstances, such as the Huguenots and Irish Catholics (Cronin 2000).
Historians of translation practices know that translation has occurred in relation to, and as
part of, many other sorts of transfers and exchanges ( D’hulst 2012). Much translation and in-
terpreting work throughout history – and therefore throughout the history of globalization –
was done not by professionals, but instead improvised by those engaged primarily in other
occupations which required linguistic interchange. The list here would include people like
traders, business people, financiers, soldiers, sailors, political administrators, diplomats, spies,
priests, missionaries, and other types of person ( Kartunnen 1994; Roland and Delisle 1999;
Cronin 2000; Santoyo 2006; Chanda 2007). These are the often anonymous and unacknowl-
edged actors (Serres 1993) who have ‘made’ globalization over the centuries ( Holton 2005).

17
David Inglis and Christopher Thorpe

These linguistic mediators have been characterized as the ‘anonymous heroes’ of cross-
cultural communication (de Certeau and Giard 1983). Their actions were always at least
two-fold in nature, combining their primary activities with their translation and interpreting
practices, the former necessitating the latter, and the latter making possible the former.
The linguistic elements of translation processes encompass understandings and misun-
derstandings ( Vlasova 1999), ‘dialogue, exchange, [and building] bridges’, as well as verbal
domination and exclusion ( Veit 2008: 417). Those engaged in translation have been involved
variously in the production of mutual intelligibility between groups (and sometimes mutual
unintelligibility too), as well as the constructive creation of recognitions of difference by
different groups, and the destruction of difference in the favour of more powerful parties
( Ribeiro 2004). In more negative cases, translators of various sorts have helped to construct
and corroborate dominant groups’ senses of their own superiority, thereby devaluing, ignor-
ing, silencing and reducing the words and values of the less powerful ( Frow 1995). Language
imposed upon a conquered group, forcing them to speak in the language of the conquerors,
can involve total or partial cultural assimilation, or even annihilation. Translations may be
licensed by authorities, or may seek to undermine those authorities ( Lefevere 1990). Repre-
sentatives of conquered, subordinate, or marginal groups might adapt, parody, or otherwise
subvert the linguistic pretensions of the dominant. Translation is usually both multivalent
and ambivalent, even in situations where the dominant seem to hold all the advantages
( Deleuze and Guattari 1986).
In more positive cases, which some scholars today might label as historical instances of
‘cosmopolitan encounters’, each side of a translation process may have begun to see themselves
through the eyes of their interlocutors, and then possibly coming to incorporate the linguis-
tic Other partly in their own self-i mage, perhaps prompting new forms of self-reflection and
interrogation of their own identity and culture ( Bielsa 2014). That is why translators have
not only been go-betweens, but sometimes also have been get-betweens, challenging cultural
assumptions, especially of the dominant groups involved in interchanges, and creating new,
more mixed and hybrid words, ideas and worldviews ( Ribeiro 2004). Sometimes translations
have operated as transformations, subversions and hijackings of orthodoxies and hegemonic
linguistic and cultural dispositions ( Koskinen 2000).

Translation and places

In addition to the people who, through translation and interpreting, have created global-
ization processes and made them possible, we should also examine the places where such
activities have been undertaken. As Pratt (1991) notes, large cities have throughout history
in all parts of the world been crucial ‘contact zones’ between different cultural and linguistic
groups. Metropolises, major harbours, entrepôts and trading centres have acted as cosmopol-
itan crucibles of translation practices. If it is the case that ‘no city is monolingual’ (Meylaerts
and Gonne 2014: 133), with linguistic plurality being the general historical norm, then we
would expect to find within them the enactment of all manner of relations between lan-
guages and language groups. Such relations encompass socio- cultural struggles and shifting,
linguistically mediated power relations on the one side, and mutual influence, interpenetra-
tion and instances of trans-community understanding and appreciation on the other.
The former, more negative, sorts of processes have been dramatically illustrated in the
cases of long- standing multi-l ingual cities like Thessaloniki and Vilnius, which were lin-
guistically purged at specific times in their history by new ruling groups intent on imposing

18
 Translation and globalization histories

novel monoglot regimes. Such trends have often been motivated by conservative factions in
the ruling group regarding the large city as corrupted, both linguistically and otherwise, and
as the antithesis of small town and rural heartlands where monolingual purity is apparently a
dominant virtue (Cronin and Simon 2014). We can also note the tendency of tourist indus-
tries today either to continue and extend older processes of erasure of the polyglot history of
a city, or conversely to highlight and celebrate previous situations of linguistic complexity
and heteroglossia in the lived urban fabric of the past (Sywenky 2014).
The more positive kinds of phenomena alluded to above can be seen in instances of
‘ in-between’ cities like Trieste, where multiple major languages – in this case German and
Italian – have both co-existed alongside, and have informed, distinctive local dialectics and
patois. In multiple language cities, for example Ottoman Istanbul, the work of translators
has often been particularly complex and subtle. There may be indefinite borderlines between
source and target languages, with authors often engaging in acts of self-translation, such
that it becomes ever more unclear – to both participants at the time, and to later observers –
which is the ‘native’ and which is the ‘non-native’ language, both of a given author and of
the city in which they lived ( Demirkol-Erturk and Paker 2014).
Universities, which are themselves a pre-eminently urban phenomenon, have been insti-
tutions where translation practices have very often been concentrated throughout history.
Pre-modern universities were often, if not indeed always, trans-national rather than localized
in nature and orientation. They have operated in and through the great international lan-
guages of their times and places, such as Latin and Arabic. These sorts of languages, which
were used and understood across great swathes of the planet, were deployed in the pedagogy
and scientific endeavours of the universities, being used as highly convenient and productive
lingua franca ( Lo Bianco 2014).
This was as much the case in India as the Arabic and Latin worlds, with universities in the
subcontinent in the medieval period attracting people from vast cultural areas, just as their
counterparts did in places like Cairo and Paris ( Lo Bianco 2014). These processes point to
broader trajectories of Buddhist, Hindu and Islamic cosmopolitanism ( Pollock 2006; Euben
2008), which of course merit quite as much scholarly attention today as do Christian and
European versions of cosmopolitan thought and quotidian practice. Medieval universities
across different parts of Eurasia were in some ways quite as ‘global’ in their functioning as
those today. They gathered up scholars from all over the extensive geographical area covered
by the language(s) they operated in, as well as those from outside those culture areas, to allow
for the comprehensive study of issues that were defined to be of truly ‘universal’ significance.
Such study was often defined as requiring scholarly adeptness in multiple languages, at least
those deemed to contain or express significant forms of learning.
At the same time, language was used in more parochial and instrumentalist ways, with
teaching being greatly oriented towards languages and knowledges directly useful to a given
university’s sponsors, such as European students being inculcated with Latin for the purposes
of religious and political administration ( Bleich 2008). So, just as in the broader case of cities,
so too in the case of universities does the historical record attest to the ongoing and compli-
cated interplay of more monoglot-hegemonic and more polyglot- cosmopolitan dynamics.
On the one side, religious and state officials and evangelists have at times sought to suppress
the use of specific languages in universities in favour of specific dominant ones. But the op-
posite situation has also applied too, with the flourishing of cross- cultural communication
through translation also being an important element of university life at many points in time
(Bleich 2008).

19
David Inglis and Christopher Thorpe

Globalization/translation/history: some pre-modern Eurasian examples

In this section, we will pursue and illustrate some of the more general points set out above,
by considering more particular instances of translation practices, looking at how these have
been embedded within, and expressive of, those dynamics of t rans-national and cross-group
interaction that can be understood under the umbrella term of ‘globalization’. This involves
re-narrating some otherwise famous and familiar cases of translation, especially ‘Western’
cases, in a new light, emphasizing their complex, hybridized and t rans- cultural nature and
genesis. We will focus on examples from Eurasia, ranging from ancient times to the sixteenth
century CE, to illustrate some broader points.
As Barnstone (1993) points out, a modern mindset tends to separate supposed original
‘authors’ from apparently derivative ‘translators’, according most or all of the literary and
aesthetic glory to the author. This point certainly applies in the case of the long- standing
and widely held belief that Homer was the first genuine auteur in the so-called ‘Western’
tradition. But in fact, Homer was an editor, compiler, and re-teller of tales which he gath-
ered from around his cultural world, and which he may have translated from other linguistic
sources beyond his native Greek.
This point raises further issues about how translation processes, now partly or wholly
occluded to our view today, were responsible for creating literary works which were subse-
quently construed as the essential flowering of self-enclosed literary and cultural commu-
nities. Given the widespread presence of Greek language in the East, especially through the
conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BCE, it may be that at least parts of
the Ramayana, the great Sanskrit epic which is one of the great poems of ancient India, may
owe some debt to Homer. In a reverse cultural and linguistic flow, this time from East to
West, the major work of Roman propaganda, Virgil’s Aeneid, which was explicitly modelled
on Homer’s Odyssey, was partly influenced by the Mahabarata, the other major Sanskrit epic
(Frankopan 2016). These literary works may be regarded as the partial results of the cross-
cultural and trans-linguistic flows promoted by those pan-Eurasian trade networks that some
scholars would put under the heading of Eurasian proto-globalization ( Pieterse 2012).
The case of the Aeneid is particularly interesting, as the Romans seem to have been re-
markably uninterested in direct and explicit translating from any other language than Greek.
There seem to have been almost no translations from Eastern languages ( Barnstone 1993).
Even when engaged in Greek translations, Roman literati were notably uninterested in re-
taining any kind of fidelity to the original, adding in present- day concerns to older texts
and often erasing altogether the names of the original authors. Yet at the same time it was
Roman culture which eventually passed on to its ‘Western’ inheritors the major works and
ideological concerns of both the Greek and Judaic worlds, with very long-lasting effects not
just on Europe but on the whole world ( Brague 2002).
One of the major elements that Rome passed on to later societies was the form of Christi-
anity that first took shape within the eastern part of its empire. Both the Torah and the Koran
are still today read in their original languages (Chanda 2007). The Christian Bible is a very
different case, with translations into most of the world’s languages today. Here we can discern
a fundamental ambiguity in Christianity. On the one hand, there is a two m illennia-long set
of fears about linguistic entropy, translation of the (variably defined) ‘original’ being scorned,
as it seems to involve loss or perversion of initial perfection, in turn leading to denunciations
of translation as heresy and bans on vernacular versions of the holy writings. The Catholic
Church banned vernacular translations of the Bible over a remarkably long period, from the
fourth to sixteenth centuries CE, throughout its vast sphere of influence (Moore 2014). On

20
 Translation and globalization histories

the other hand, there is a contrary tendency towards the evangelizing need to speak in – and
therefore to render the Bible into – the language of potential converts, to be able to win them
over to the true path. Monoglot and polyglot tendencies once again are at war with each
other. Translation figures as part both of the construction of canonical religious texts, and of
their transformation and therefore potential destabilization ( Barnstone 1993).
Given this ambiguity, much contemporary scholarship sees the Bible as a radically unsta-
ble entity, with both the text itself and the meanings conveyed by it changing according to
specific translation practices ( Barton 2019). The contents and sub-titles vary according to the
denomination which has commissioned or uses any given translated version. But each faction
usually presents its version of the text as pure, definitive, and simply the direct expression
of the Word of God. Many ‘Westernized’ versions disguise the Eastern roots of the source
texts, which ultimately were originally the linguistic products of Jewish scholars, and in the
case of the New Testament, Hellenized ones who operated across Greek and Jewish linguistic
and cultural domains. Much of the Old Testament, and most of the New Testament, are in
fact disguised translations, and they should not be seen at all as mono-linguistic and mono-
cultural products. Translation processes have hidden likenesses and connections between the
Judaic and other religious traditions, but with traces of these connections left in the texts for
expert readers to discern ( Barnstone 1993).
For example, in the Old Testament, the Judaic conception of God derived from the
Canaanite deity El, who through complex mediation processes became the Hebrew Elohim.
In the Hebrew text, the name retains a sense of ambiguity: is God one or many? Sumerian
and Babylonian elements were also suppressed but left hanging obliquely in the Old Testa-
ment texts. El’s offspring Baal, one of God’s other incarnations, eventually became Beelze-
bub, God’s antagonist ( Barnstone 1993). These textual traces bear witness to the fact that in
the ancient Near East, individuals and groups moved about incessantly, ideas went with them
and became mixed with those of other groups, and new scriptures were as a result created, at
the same time as denials were enacted of any cultural and linguistic impurities in the texts.
The central and influential Septuagint translation into Greek of Hebrew-Aramaic texts was
aimed at Greek- speaking Jews living in the broadly Greek- speaking world of the third and
second centuries BCE. It was quoted more in the New Testament scriptures than was the
Hebrew version of the same texts, as more Jews spoke Greek than Hebrew by that time, re-
flective of broader cultural and political processes in the region (Moore 2014).
The New Testament is also a hybrid production. The texts were translated into Greek
mostly from lost Aramaic sources, possibly oral as well as textual, which were presented as
the original Gospels. Successive translation processes purged ‘Jesus’ (originally Joshua), his
mother ‘Mary’ (originally Miryam), his family, and his disciples of their ‘Jewish’ character-
istics, rendering them mysteriously unaffiliated persons of no specific ethnicity or language.
A major ideological shift occurred as a result: Christianity was no longer framed as a dispute
within Judaism, but as a rift between two novel groups, ‘Christians’ and ‘Jews’, the latter ever
more defined as morally lacking or wholly wicked. Translation has again and again over time
concealed itself, creating a new and original product, which gives the appearance of literalism
and of being the original itself. Successive Greek, Latin, English, and German translations –
to name only a few major target languages – of Old and New Testaments have been claimed
as authoritative by those with vested denominational interests in presenting them so. For
example, for 400 years, many English speakers have experienced the King James translation
of the Bible as the genuine words of God, speaking to them directly, with any divergences
from the sonorous language of the seventeenth century CE being a matter of often grave
dispute ( Barnstone 1993).

21
David Inglis and Christopher Thorpe

Perceptions of textual purity occlude the actual history of inter-textual influences, which
are themselves expressions of inter-cultural processes. Understanding this involves recon-
structing the movements of translators across cultural boundaries and along highways of cul-
tural influence, which, in turn, were made possible by political, military, and trading routes.
Thus the fourth century CE evangelist Ulfila worked in both Bulgaria and Constantinople to
translate over the course of 40 years the Greek translation of the Christian scriptures into the
Gothic language, further spreading Christianity into that cultural world (Santoyo 2006). In
the fifth century CE, Armenian scholars were sent by religious authorities to Constantinople,
to gain access to Greek translations of the Bible, in order to improve existing A rmenian ones.
As Cronin (2003: 26) remarks, repeatedly the ‘product of one translation process becomes a
tool in the commencement of another’. The more translations there are into more languages,
the more potential sources of conflict there may be, as well as greater reach into new re-
gions. Serious disputes over Bible interpretation accompanied the spread of Christianity, as
texts moved from Syriac into Greek, and when the Eastern church spread into Arabia and
central Asia in the sixth century CE, in turn creating the need for more translation work
(Frankopan 2016).
Over subsequent centuries, as the Bible was translated into languages like Armenian,
Georgian and Coptic, sometimes preserving subsequently lost originals along the way, the
translational route was often ‘ long and devious, from Greek into Syriac or Hebrew, thence
into Arabic and thence into Latin, often with Spanish as an intermediary’ ( Haskins 1979:
281). Within such processes, both translations and translators travelled, over often long dis-
tances. For example, Irish monks re-evangelized major parts of Europe, where Christian
belief had fallen into desuetude or had never existed, throughout the sixth to eighth centu-
ries CE. Moving through France, the low countries, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, they
promoted education in Latin and produced Latin translations of Greek works (Cronin 2003).
Interactions between different ( but usually empirically overlapping) religious and political
civilizational complexes may be understood as forms of early or proto-globalization ( Inglis
2010). Relations between the various Christian churches and the newly ascendant religious
and political power of Islam involved multiple and complicated translation practices. As far
as we know, between the seventh and tenth centuries CE, only one Western book was
translated into Arabic, but large numbers of other, more prosaic kinds of documents flowed
both ways at this time (Santoyo 2006). Translation was an important practice in the vari-
ous Islamic centres of learning, involving various sorts of inter- cultural influence. In late
eighth century CE Baghdad, the dynamic nature of translation processes can be seen in the
fact that knowledge of algebra, a new discovery, inflected the translations made of earlier,
pre-a lgebraic Greek mathematicians (Cronin 2003). In the same city in the ninth century,
important translators like Abû Utmân al-Jâhiz and the Arab Nestorian Christian Hunayn
ibn Ishaq were at work; the latter translated key texts from Greek into Syriac and Arabic.
The Baghdad-based Persian mathematician A l-K hwarizmi introduced Hindu numerals and
the concept of zero to Arab mathematics, which were then subsequently introduced by Latin
translators to Europe in the twelfth century (Chanda 2007). Al-Hasan ibn Suwâr al-Hammar
translated Aristotle into Arabic around 1000 CE (Santoyo 2006).
In the tenth century CE, within the Abbasid and Mughal empires, translations of texts
that were meant to facilitate better societal administration, were very expressive of linguistic
and cultural heterogeneity. In Abbasid Baghdad, translations aimed at reviving and rework-
ing ancient Arabic, Sanskrit, Persian, and Greek knowledges, with the resulting translations
building a common way of communicating in a strongly multi-lingual context (Selim 2009).
Scholars from these linguistic groups and others were invited to participate in the translating

22
 Translation and globalization histories

process. Often the translations made at this time are the only ones left to us today, the orig-
inals (or in some cases, earlier translations) having been lost. The Umayyad rulers of Spain
sent agents across the Islamic sphere of influence, to Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, and other
locations, to buy books in multiple languages and to attract scholars and translators to Iberia.
Eventually the rich libraries of Islamic Spain would be crucial resources for the scholars and
translators of the so-called ‘European’ Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Muslim translators were also linchpins connecting their world to other civilizational com-
plexes, notably India. Located in the relatively peripheral location of Afghanistan, in the early
eleventh century CE the polymath A l-Biruni learnt Sanskrit, wrote an influential account
of the subcontinent, and translated and transmitted works of classical Indian literature to the
Muslim world (Chanda 2007).
It has been tempting for modern scholars to present times and places of intense translation
activity as involving formal, institutionalized ‘schools’ of translators. But just as there was no
formalized ‘Baghdad School’ of translators turning Greek texts into Arabic, so too, despite
subsequent myth-m aking, was there no such School in twelfth century CE Christian Toledo,
that supposedly brought translators from across Spain, Italy, England, the low countries and
further afield to translate Arabic and Greek texts (Santoyo 2006). Nonetheless, the so- called
Renaissance of the twelfth century involved intensive translation activities, dispersed across
key centres in Western Christendom, such as the earliest European universities like Salerno
and Bologna. At the same period, the Norman rulers of Sicily developed the island as an in-
tellectual entrepôt, commissioning original scientific works in Arabic, as well as translations
of Arabic science into Latin ( Takayama 2003).
The ‘discovery of Greek and Arabic texts provided a qualitative change in Europe’s intel-
lectual atmosphere that motivated students to look into how these texts might affect canon
law, civil law, and religious practices’ ( Bleich 2008: 501). Students from all over Europe sub-
sequently came to such places of learning to learn about the new knowledges created from
old translated texts. It was often Jewish translators, placed between different cultural worlds,
and living in places where different groups and languages met, who provided the translations
(Haskins 1979). Translations from Arabic coming out of Spain yielded the West European
(re)discovery of Aristotle, some of whose works became available about 1200 CE, along with
those by Galen and Hippocrates. It was often accidental whether the version of a text that
came into wider circulation was taken from either a Greek or Arabic version of it. But the
glosses provided by Arabic scholars on the Greek originals often had a major impact on how
Western scholars took up and made sense of those originals ( Bleich 2008).
The historian Janet Abu-Lughod (1989) has argued that in the thirteenth century CE,
the Middle East, the Indian Ocean area, China, and Europe were becoming ever more in-
tegrated by the connection of major trading hubs linked by sea and land trade routes. This
was in large part made possible by the vast expansion of the Mongol empire across much
of Eurasia. Santoyo (2006: 16) makes the point that at that time ‘not a single book seems
to have been translated between Mongolian and any European language, Latin included’.
Nonetheless, ‘the chronicles of the mutual relations’ between Westerners and Mongols
abound with

messages, letters and documents which went to and fro in the hands of successive em-
issaries ( William of Rubruc, friar Giovanni di Pian del Carpine, and friar Ascelino of
Cremona among them), translated from Mongolian into Latin, from Latin into Russian,
Persian, or Mongolian, from Greek into Mongolian, from Latin into Arabic or Syriac,
and so forth.

23
David Inglis and Christopher Thorpe

The constant movement of translators and translations, usually done on-the-hoof while mul-
tiple sorts of people moved along the trade routes, is a key feature of pre-modern Eurasian
globalization.
Contemporary scholarship often re-narrates phenomena that have for a long time been
understood to be products of self-enclosed cultures, especially so- called ‘European’ ones, in
light of broader, trans-regional processes, including pan-Eurasian dynamics. For example,
the so- called ‘European’ Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries CE is better
described as a trans-national and trans-regional cultural movement. This is partly because it
involved Ottoman Turkey as much as it did places we conventionally associate the Renais-
sance with, such as Italy (Inglis and Robertson 2005). It is also partly because the Renaissance
involved the discovery and putting to use of translated texts preserved by Arab scholars,
many of which were the only surviving copies of the original works of Greek authors. But
such translations from Arabic into the various early modern European languages were pre-
sented in ways that created spurious direct relations between the Greek texts and the target
languages, cutting Arabic out of the transmission story, and therefore out of the history of the
Renaissance itself (Cronin 2003: 39).

Conclusion
This chapter has laid out some of the main contours of the relations between historical
globalization and translation. It has done so at two levels, considering both general types of
those relations, and specific Eurasian instances of them. It has been seen that multiple types
of actors – professional translators, non-professionals who were engaged in translation activi-
ties, interpreters, and so on – have all contributed to the making and running of globalization
processes. There is no current scholarly agreement as to how to define the latter, or to say
how long they have existed. Nonetheless it is clear that, however globalization in history is
understood, translation and interpreting practices have been crucial in forging connections
of multiple types between different human groups and the places where they have dwelled.
It remains the case that translation studies and the historiography of translation still need to
integrate models of historical globalization more fully into their intellectual skill- set, just as
students of long-term globalization must place translators and translation much more at the
forefront of their analytic purview. This chapter has sought to contribute a grounding for
future constructive rapprochements in those directions.

Further reading
Bastin, G. and Bandia, P. (eds.) (2006) Charting the Future of Translation History. Ottawa: Ottawa Uni-
versity Press.
An intriguing collection of essays that touch upon multiple globalization/translation issues.
Cronin, M. (2003) Translation and Globalization. London: Routledge.
A wide-ranging analysis of “modern” globalization processes on translation practices.
Gills, B. and Thompson, W. (eds.) (2006) Globalization and Global History. London: Routledge.
Offers comprehensive overviews of the problems involved in examining historical globalization.

References
Abu-Lughod, J. (1989) Before European Hegemony. New York: Oxford University Press.
Appiah, A. (1995) ‘Geist Stories’, in Bernheimer, C. (ed.), Comparative Literature in the Age of Multicultur-
alism. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 51–57.

24
 Translation and globalization histories

Bandia, P. (2006) ‘The Impact of Postmodern Discourse on the History of Translation’, in Bastin, G.
and Bandia, P. (eds.), Charting the Future of Translation History. Ottawa: Ottawa University Press,
pp. 45–58.
Barnstone, W. (1993) The Poetics of Translation. Yale: Yale University Press.
Barton, J. (2019) A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths. London: Allen Lane.
Bayly, C. A. (2002) ‘ “Archaic” and “Modern” Globalization in the Eurasian and African Arena’, in
Hopkins, A. G. (ed.), Globalization in World History. London: Pimlico, pp. 47–73.
Bentley, J. (1999) ‘Cross- Cultural Interaction and Periodization in World History’, American Historical
Review, 101(3), pp. 749–770.
Bentley, J. (2006) ‘Globalizing History and Historicizing Globalization’, in Gills, B. and Thompson,
W. (eds.), Globalization and Global History. London: Routledge, pp. 16–29.
Bielsa, E. (2014) ‘Cosmopolitanism as Translation’, Cultural Sociology, 8(4), pp. 392–406.
Bielsa, E. (2016) ‘News Translation: Global or Cosmopolitan Connections?’, Media, Culture and Society,
38(2), pp. 196–211.
Bleich, D. (2008) ‘Globalization, Translation and the University Tradition’, New Literary History, 39(3),
pp. 497–517.
Brague, R. (2002) Eccentric Culture. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press.
Chanda, N. (2007) Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped Globalization.
Yale: Yale University Press.
Cronin, M. (2000) ‘History, Translation, Postcolonialism’, in Simon, S. and St.-Pierre, P. (eds.), Chang-
ing the Terms: Translating in the Postcolonial Era. Ottawa: Ottawa University Press, pp. 33–52.
Cronin, M. (2003) Translation and Globalization. London: Routledge.
Cronin, M. and Simon, S. (2014) ‘The City as Translation Zone’, Translation Studies, 7(2), pp. 119–132.
de Certeau, M. and Giard, L. (1983) ‘L’Ordinaire de la Communication’, Réseaux, 1(3), pp. 3–26.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1986) Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Minneapolis: Minnesota Univer-
sity Press.
­

D’hulst, L. (2012) ‘( Re)Locating Translation History’, Translation Studies, 5(2), pp. 139–155.

Euben, R. (2008) Journeys to the Other Shore. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Frank, A. G. and Gills, B. (1993) The World-System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand? London:
Psychology Press.
Frankopan, P. (2016) The Silk Roads. London: Vintage.
Frow, J. (1995) Cultural Studies and Cultural Value. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gills, B. and Thompson, W. (eds.) (2006) Globalization and Global History. London: Routledge.
Haskins, C. H. (1979) The Renaissance of the 12th Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Holton, R. (2005) Making Globalization. London: Palgrave.
Hopkins, A. G. (ed.) (2002) Globalization in World History. London: Pimlico.
Inglis, D. (2005) Culture and Everyday Life. London: Routledge.
Inglis, D. (2010) ‘Civilizations or Globalization(s)? Intellectual Rapprochements and Historical World-
Visions’, European Journal of Social Theory, 13(1), pp. 135–152.
Inglis, D. and Robertson, R. (2005) ‘The Ecumenical Analytic: “Globalization”, Reflexivity and the
Revolution in Greek Historiography’, European Journal of Social Theory, 8(2), pp. 99–122.
Inglis, D. with Thorpe, C. (2019) An Invitation to Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity.
Kartunnen, F. (1994) Between Worlds: Interpreters, Guides and Survivors. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press.
Koskinen, K. (2000) Beyond Ambivalence. Tampere: Acta Universtiatis Tamperensis.
Koskinen, K. (2014) ‘Tampere as a Translation Space’, Translation Studies, 7(2), pp. 186–202.
Lefevere, A. (1990) ‘Translation: Its Genealogy in the West’, in Bassnett, S. and Lefevere, A. (eds.),
Translation, History and Culture. London: Pinter, pp. 14–28.
Lo Bianco, J. (2014) ‘Domesticating the Foreign: Globalization’s Effects on the Place/s of Languages’,
Modern Language Journal, 98(1), pp. 312–325.
McKeown, A. (2007) ‘Periodizing Globalization’, History Workshop Journal, 63, pp. 218–230.
Meylaerts, R. and Gonne, M. (2014) ‘Transferring the City - Transgressing Borders’, Translation Studies,
7(2), pp. 133–151.
Moore, R. (2014) ‘The Case for Bible Translation, Viewed in Historical Perspective’, The Bible Translator,
65(1), pp. 77–87.

25
David Inglis and Christopher Thorpe

Olohan, M. (2014) ‘History of Science and History of Translation’, The Translator, 20(1), pp. 9–25.
Pieterse, J. N. (2012) ‘Periodizing Globalization: Histories of Globalization’, New Global Studies, 6(2):
Article 1.
Pollock, S. (2006) The Language of the Gods in the World of Men. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Pratt, M.L. (1991) ‘Arts of the Contact Zone’, Profession, 91, pp. 33–40.
Ribeiro, A. (2004) ‘Translation as a Metaphor for Our Times’, Portuguese Studies, 20, pp. 186–194.
Roland, R. (1999) Interpreters as Diplomats: A Diplomatic History of the Role of Interpreters in World Politics.
Ottawa: Ottawa University Press.
Santoyo, J.- C. (2006) ‘Blank Spaces in the History of Translation’, in Bastin, G. and Bandia, P. (eds.),
Charting the Future of Translation History. Ottawa: Ottawa University Press , pp. 11– 43.
Serres, M. (1993) Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Selim, S. (2009) ‘Nation and Translation in the Middle East’, The Translator, 15(1), pp. 1–13.
Steiner, G. (1996) No Passion Spent: Essays. Yale: Yale University Press.
Sywenky, (2014) ‘( Re)Constructing the Urban Palimpsest of Lemberg/Lwow/Lviv’, Translation Studies,
7(2), pp. 152–169.
Takayama, H. (2003) ‘Central Power and Multi- Cultural Elements at the Norman Court of Sicily’,
Mediterranean Studies, 12, pp. 1–15.
Veit, W. (2008) ‘Globalization and Literary History’, New Literary History, 39(3), pp. 415–435.
Venuti, L. (1995) The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London: Routledge.
Vlasova, M. (1999) ‘The American Declaration of Independence in Russian’, Journal of American History,
85(4), pp. 1399–1408.

26
 2
Multiple and entangled
modernities, cosmopolitanism
and translation
Gerard Delanty

Introduction: the idea of modernity1

The idea of modernity concerns the interpretation of present time in terms of a repositioning
of the present in relation to the past and to the future. It refers to the major transformations
that led to the making of the modern world and the formation of new imaginaries concerning
the possibility of human autonomy. The term modernity did not arise until the nineteenth
century and was very much reflected in the major historical upheavals of that century, espe-
cially in the way these were experienced by people in Europe and the Americas. One of the
most famous uses of the term was in 1864 when the French poet Baudelaire (1964: 13) wrote:
‘By modernity I mean the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent’. This notion of moder-
nity was an expression of the literary movement of modernism and captured the dynamic
movements and fast moving currents in modern society, in particular those that conveyed the
sense of renewal and the cosmopolitanism of modern urban life. It also signalled the spirit of
creativity and individualism that was taken up by the avant-garde movement. However, the
term has a wider currency beyond its cultural and artistic signification. It captures the revolu-
tionary impetus of modern industrial capitalistic society. Marx and Engels in the Communist
Manifesto in 1848 invoked the spirit of modernity with their account of the rise of capitalism
as the condition in which ‘all that is solid melts into air’. This condition also engendered a
new revolutionary politics in which ‘the working classes have no country’.
Within classical sociology, Max Weber captured some critical aspects of the modern trans-
formation by the concept of rationalization, which had an enhanced importance in shaping
the ways that human beings think and act in modern society. The notion of modernity in
classical sociological theory expressed the transformation observed in political institutions
as well as in the economic and societal transformation of Western societies. Georg Simmel
is generally regarded as the figure who first gave a more rigorous sociological description of
modernity in his account of everyday social life in the modern metropolis. For Simmel, as
for Walter Benjamin, modernity is expressed in diverse ‘momentary images’ or ‘snapshots’.
Modernity is the condition of the fragmentation of modern society, on the one side, and, on
the other, one of new possibilities and forms for culture, made possible, for example, by the

27
Gerard Delanty

camera and the cinema. These technologies led to such momentary images and the related
sense that nothing is durable and solid but that everything is fleeting. Thus there is nothing
like a modern condition that is able to crystallize itself in a specific spatial context. It is a con-
dition that is open to new forms. This is a critical aspect that was asserted by late twentieth-
century critiques including post-modern theories.
Modernity can be defined as a condition of awareness that nothing is settled for once and
for all and therefore the future is not predetermined. It expresses the idea that the present
is not determined by the past, especially by the recent past. Most conceptions of modernity
have announced a rupture of present time from the past, generally the recent past. The mod-
ern is the present time; it is the ‘now’ and ‘the new’. The consciousness of the new is common
to most cultural, philosophical and political expressions of modernity from the eighteenth
century onwards. The modernist movement in literature, the arts and architecture strongly
emphasized a spirit of newness, purity and the break from tradition. The social and political
ideas of what Reinhart Koselleck (2004) referred to as the Sattelzeit, the period from 1750
to 1850, provide the main reference points for modernity, the Neuzeit. This period, which
saw the formation of key conceptual and structural changes, made possible the emergence
of modern society as a new kind of society that sought to reach beyond itself, beyond what
had previously been contained within what he called the ‘space of experience’. In the terms
of Koselleck, the ‘horizon of expectation’ was considerably expanded beyond the ‘space of
experience’, which was also broadened. The discovery of the notion of ‘progress’ in this
period, which he attributes to Kant, marks the point at which new expectations become pos-
sible and are not limited by previous experience. For Koselleck, experience and expectation
are key registers of a shift in historical consciousness. Koselleck’s theory of the emergence of
modernity in terms of a particular kind of time consciousness has been very influential. It
suggests a notion of modernity that is defined in categorical terms rather than reducing it to
a particular period or epoch. The Sattelzeit can be seen as the period when modernity took
shape in Europe but is not confined to this period. However, Koselleck’s account conflated
modernity with its European expression. Despite their co-emergence and entanglement,
they need to be conceptually separated. One aspect of the notion of modernity that is striking
is that it reflects a strong faith in the capacity of human agency to shape society in light of
guiding ideas and in knowledge.
It is also important to highlight the connection between technological advancement and
the ‘civilizational mission’ of Western countries during the colonial period in the second
half of the nineteenth century. The emergence of discourses and institutional practices in
relation to the affirmation of human beings in European contexts took place at the same
time when colonial domination extended over much of Africa and Asia. Thus it came about
that modernity was a leading idea in the struggle for emancipation and for the affirmation
of more inclusive states in the European context, but it was also used as the reason for the
affirmation of domination and exploitation of other supposed backward areas of the world.
The post-colonial critique that emerged by the 1950s emphasized this connection in calls for
new genealogies of the modern age.
The idea of modernity also signals an epistemological condition that announces the loss
of certainty and the realization that certainty can never be established for once and for all.
It is a term that can also be taken to refer to reflection on the age, rather than being coeval
with a specific era. For Habermas, modernity is related to the capacity of modern society
to contest power through communicative means. Developments in post-modern thought
suggest a view of the modern as a reflective moment within the modern, rather than a new
era, a particular kind of consciousness than a societal condition as such. This has also been

28
 Multiple and entangled modernities

affirmed in the work of Zygmunt Bauman. Modernity is thus a condition that is essentially
open as opposed to being closed or a specific societal formation. For this reason, the concept
of modernity should be seen as an alternative to the notion of modernization in so far as it
draws attention to a greater diversity of forms and the capacity for self-transformation.

From multiple to entangled modernities

While much of the literature on modernity outside the sociological theory has tended to
emphasize the cultural dimensions of modernity, it should be noted that it is also a social and
political condition that goes beyond the European assumptions that have tended to accom-
pany the debates. In recent years there has been a huge literature on modernity as a global
and a plural phenomenon (see Gaokar 2001, Wagner 2012). Much of this derives from the
work of S.N. Eisenstadt (2003), who developed the notion of ‘multiple modernities’ whereby
modernity is based on different civilizational trajectories. The older assumptions of moder-
nity as essentially a product of European or Western civilization have been much criticized
in wider-ranging scholarship that has emerged from, for instance, comparative historical
sociology, transnational and global history, post-colonial theory, and cosmopolitanism.
While Eisenstadt gave the notion of modernity a wider and more global relevance, the ten-
dency in recent years has been less centred on its civilizational characteristics in so far as these
relate to the emergence of the major Eurasian civilizations of the Axial Age. Eisenstadt’s own
work also gave the European variant of modernity undue significance in shaping other vari-
eties of modernity. He also neglected questions of power and imperialism in the diffusion of
modernity, which he tended to see in largely cultural terms. Nonetheless, the civilizational
dimension cannot be entirely neglected in any kind of global comparison, as Johann Arnason
(2003) has shown. The multiple forms that modernity takes can be related to civilizational
trajectories, but there are also endogenous logics of development and the entanglement of
these with exogenous ones. In place of the notion of multiple modernities has now come a
new emphasis on varieties of modernity and on entangled modernities, since the divergent
forms of modernity do not develop without interaction with other forms (see Manjapra 2011;
Delanty 2018).
The concern with multiple modernities, without this interactive dimension, can lead to
the mistaken view of different modernities isolated from each other. Whatever the solution
to this problem is, it will have to entail a theory of how modernizing cultures interact and
why modernity is present to varying degrees. This is where cultural translation and cosmo-
politanism enter the picture. The idea of multiple modernity draws attention to processes
of multidirectionality and interconnectivity. Modernity unfolds through the interactions of
different cultures and civilizations; it is transnational and made possible through processes of
interaction rather than autonomous national trajectories. The rise of global and transnational
history in recent times has inadvertently opened up a cosmopolitan perspective on the forma-
tion of modernity as a condition of interconnections and consciousness of globality. Recent
scholarship in global history has drawn attention to earlier expressions of globalization in
history and the emergence of a consciousness of globality, which Robertson has highlighted
in a seminal work on the cultural dimensions of globalization (Robertson 1992; Hopkins
1984; Bayly 2004). In this context, the notion of ‘entangled modernities’ has been proposed
to capture the enmeshed, interconnected nature of modernities and that there are not just
multiple but overlapping ones (Arnason 2003; Therborn 2003; Delanty 2018). This has the
advantage of capturing the ways in which Western and non-Western modernities are linked
and the co-existence of different modernities within one national tradition.

29
Gerard Delanty

The suggestion that modernity exists not just in multiple forms, but in overlapping, en-
tangled forms points to transformative processes and interconnections. No account of mo-
dernity in global perspective can neglect the interactive mechanisms and processes that lie at
the root of modernity as a transformative process. Modernities do not simply exist as coher-
ent or stable, well-defined units, but are in a constant process of change due to the nature of
the particular forms of interpenetration, selection, combination, adaptation and processing of
cultural codes, resources, imaginaries etc. Such ideas are reflected in recent studies on global
trade and cultural encounters, which suggests a more explicit connection with cosmopoli-
tanism (Curtin 1984; Bentley 1993; Bayly 2004; Osterhammel 2014). The key to this is the
interaction of modernities. The logic of interactions is one of the central insights of global
historians such as Hodgson (1993) and McNeil (1963) whose revisions of the rise of the West
thesis have given a central place to the interaction of East and West. Their work builds upon
the earlier pioneering work of Benjamin Nelson, who introduced the notion of civiliza-
tional encounters and the idea of a civilizational complex (Nelson 1976, 1981). Influenced by
Weber’s comparative sociology of civilizations, Nelson went beyond Weber’s conception of
civilization as holistic entities to emphasize the importance of cultural interaction between
civilizations in the shaping of civilizational forms of consciousness.
Arnason’s contribution to the debate on multiple modernity extends the hermeneutical
dimension that was implicit but undeveloped in the work of Nelson. As with Eisenstadt and
Nelson, he approaches modernity from a civilizational perspective (Arnason 2003). His starting
point is Castoriadis’s theory of the imaginary, which is a central feature of the self-constitution
of every society (Castoriadis 1987). For Arnason, Castoriadis broke new ground with
his notion of a radical social imaginary, which for Arnason can be seen as the mechanism that
lies at the core of civilizations and civilizational encounters. His civilizational analysis holds
that civilizations are contested grounds in which different visions of the world emerge and
undergo transformation, central to which are dynamics of encounters and syntheses. Civi-
lizations are internally plural and exist within a plurality of civilizations; they are all based
on frameworks of meaning that can be interpreted in different ways within and beyond the
contours of a given civilization. Such frameworks constitute fields of interpretation for more
or less radical interpretations of the world. Modernity, he argues, is the major example of
internal conflict and contested identity and as such it bears the imprint of the fundamental
tension of the imaginary significations of civilizations. The divergent patterns of modernity
should thus be seen as combinations of civilizational complexes. His aim is

to link the civilizational perspective to an important but under-developed theme in the

theory of modernity: the dynamics of tensions and conflicts, between basic orientations
(such as the cumulative pursuit of power and the more ambiguous moves towards au-
tonomy) as well as between divergent institutional spheres – economic, political and
cultural – with corresponding interpretative frameworks.
(Arnason 2003: 49–50)

In other words, the self-transformative capacity of societies is thus grounded in a pluralistic

vision of civilizations and of modernity.
In addition to the plural and overlapping nature of modernity, the global nature of mo-
dernity must be noted. Modernity, while not globally uniform, is nonetheless a globalizing
process. This does not mean one single modernity, but rather a uniformity in forms of
consciousness, modes of cognition, interpretation and orientations. Modernity is necessarily
global in outlook, while it first emerged in Western Europe and North America it is not

30
 Multiple and entangled modernities

Western. This can be clarified further by an argument Therborn (2003) has made concerning
the global nature of modernity. Rather than begin with a premise of diversity, he argues for a
notion of modernity as global but which expresses itself in major macro-regional variations,
of which he lists four: the European route of revolution or reform; the American route of
independence; a route represented by Iran, Thailand and Japan based on external threat and
selective imports; the route of conquest experienced by much of Africa and Asia. In addi-
tion to avoiding an over-pluralization and reduction of modernity to national trajectories, it
places globalization at the core of modernity without reducing modernity to globalization
as such. As Dirlik (2003) has also argued, the notion of non-global modernities makes little
sense. Moreover, it also avoids a purely culturally oriented view of modernity.
The global dimension to modernity is most evident in the relation of the local to global-
ity. Globalization can be seen as a process that intensifies connections, enhances possibilities
for borrowing, cultural transfer, translation and transformation. As such, it can be found in
many historical contexts. The forms, interrelations and dynamics of modernity are varied
and uneven, but underlying them is the most basic impetus towards self-transformation, the
belief that human agency can transform the present in the image of an imagined future. This
view of modernity as a break from the past seems to accord with the major philosophical
and cultural understandings of modernity as a dynamic process that has made change itself
the defining feature of modernity. Modernity is thus a particular kind of time consciousness
that defines the present in its relation to the past, which must be continuously recreated.
Modernity is not a historical epoch that can be periodized, but a mode of experiencing and
interpreting time. Modernity unfolds in different ways, according to different paces and can
take different societal forms depending on the configurations of state, the capitalist market
and civil society. Modernity is thus not exclusively Western but can emerge anywhere. It
is therefore possible to speak of multiple modernities without pluralizing the notion to the
extent that it becomes meaningless. Viewed from the lens of global history there are at least
three ways to approach a cosmopolitan conception of modernity.
The first and minimal approach is simply to demonstrate through empirical examples how
concepts that ordinarily relate to Western societies can be generalized to all kinds of society.
Thus, the notion of civil society, generally associated with European modernity, is a relevant
term of analysis for non-Western society. Indeed, the very notion of modernity can be uni-
versalized to include, for example, an Islamic modernity, an African modernity, a Chinese
modernity etc. The disadvantage with this approach is that it seeks only to find non-Western
examples of concepts that have a largely Western applicability. A second approach is a mod-
ified version of the previous. Rather than generalize Western experiences to the rest of the
world or take Western concepts as a point of departure, a radicalized global history would
posit universalizable concepts that take multiple civilizational forms. In this case the ob-
jective will be to examine, for example, the global diversity of concepts rather than posit a
universally valid framework of concepts. In other words, there is a plurality of civilizational
forms and concepts. Pollock’s (2006) argument for a ‘vernacular cosmopolitanism’ would
be an example of such an approach to global modernity. A third approach would shift the
emphasis from plurality towards modes of interaction, such as cross-cultural encounters and
interactions. Here, the cosmopolitan momento occurs when two or more cultures interact
as a result of global forces, for example, trade or even as a consequence of war or large-scale
migration. Approaching the problem of multiple modernities in this way avoids the limits of
internal and external accounts of modernity. The rise of the West and European modernity,
for instance, cannot be explained without taking into account how the West interacted with
the East and with other parts of the world.

31
Gerard Delanty

However, reducing the relation to a one-way account of colonial appropriation, as re-

flected in recent revisions of the rise of the West (Frank 1998; Hobson 2004), neglects the
complex nature of the interaction, seeing it only in terms of appropriation. In an assessment
of the internal and external accounts of the rise of the West, Arnason (2006) concludes that
the latter perspective is best seen as a corrective of the traditional account that would explain
the rise of the West with respect to factors internal to the West. Implicit, but underdeveloped
in Arnason’ s account, is the recognition of a third position, which is neither internalist nor
externalist but interactionist. An interactionist account of the rise of modernity would place
the emphasis on the dynamics and modes of interaction whereby different parts of the world
become linked through the expansion and diffusion of systems of exchange, networks of
communication, and various forms of third culture. Thus it was not the case that modernity
was European per se or that different models of modernity emerged spontaneously on their
own, but the rise of modernity was determined by the extent to which in a given part of
the world the capacity existed for the expansion of local cultures into a globally oriented
third culture. It was consequential that this happened in Europe, and only in certain parts of
Europe, but this does not mean that modernity was European per se. Approaching the prob-
lem of modernity from the perspective of global history offers, then, a corrective to the
received view of modernity as a Western condition that was transported to the rest of the
world. Moreover, it also avoids some of the problems of an appeal to a non-Western moder-
nity or multiple modernity. The notion of modernity divested of its Eurocentric assumptions
has a direct relevance to cosmopolitan analysis if it is accepted that it is a transformative con-
dition that arises out of multiplicity and interaction. It is a concept that cannot be confined
to national patterns of development, but has a wider application including, importantly,
civilizational influences.

Cosmopolitanism and cultural translation

The shift towards global history and the related emphasis on multiple modernity as discussed
in the foregoing can be complemented with an additional argument that may go some way
towards correcting a weakness in the global history perspective. The major revision that
global history has brought about in the approach to modernity is that it corrects the Euro-
centric bias that was an integral aspect of the older comparative history with its characteristic
emphasis on Western civilization as the norm and nations as self-contained entities. From a
cosmopolitan perspective, this has not gone far enough in that the emphasis on multiplicity
and interaction alone does not sufficiently capture all aspects relevant to the cosmopolitan
dimension of modernity. The main weakness is that the emphasis on encounters and bor-
rowings is not strong enough to capture fully the transformative dynamics of modernity.
One of the major impulses in modernity is the striving towards an alternative society and
the genesis of universalistic principles. The central impulse of modernity – the belief that the
world can be reshaped by human agency – has entailed a commitment to normative frame-
works that offer a means of imagining an alternative social world. This has been expressed in
modern political ideologies – nationalism, republicanism, socialism, communism – which,
in their various ways, have responded to the modern condition of perpetual renewal and a
future orientation. The turn to post-Eurocentric global history may have opened up new
perspectives of a cosmopolitan nature, but what needs further development is the normative,
critical dimension.

32
 Multiple and entangled modernities

Cosmopolitan normative critique concerns changes in self-understanding arising out of

the encounter with another culture whereby, to varying degrees, a relativization of values
occurs and eventually the movement towards a shared normative culture emerges. Civiliza-
tion analysis, as in the impressive body of work by Eisenstadt and Arnason, is not normally
associated with cosmopolitanism since there is not an explicit attempt to connect global
historical analysis with normative critique, though in the case of the latter the connection
with immanent transcendence is more evident. Neither Eisenstadt nor Arnason addressed
cosmopolitanism to pursue the normative implications of their work. An additional problem
is that civilizational analysis is primarily focussed on Europe and Asia and would appear to
exclude non-Eurasian civilizations. Furthermore the emphasis on civilizational analysis may
be too limiting when it comes to understanding the nature of modernity. Cosmopolitanism
offers a perspective that overcomes some of these problems if it is linked to the idea of cultural
translation, for the problem is essentially a matter of how one culture interprets itself in light
of the encounter with the other and constantly undergoes change as a result. This involves
more than the relativization of universality or the emphasis on interaction, but a logic of
transcendence.
The notion of cultural translation draws attention to immanent processes of transforma-
tion determined by modes of interpretation in which an evaluation occurs. Global history
does not give adequate attention to the genesis of new interpretative frameworks in which
cultures undergo transformation arising out of the re-evaluation of standpoints. The em-
phasis tends to be more on global histories than on developmental logics in which subject
formation occurs. Viewing modernity in terms of the model of translation offers a way to
conceptualize the cosmopolitan current in modernity as one that has normative significance
as well as cultural specificity. The significant consideration here is the tendency within mo-
dernity for translation to become the very form of culture.
The universalizing feature of modernity is the drive to make all of culture translatable.
This does not mean the obliteration of cultural differences or the creation of a universal lan-
guage but a condition of universal translatability. As a condition of universal translatability,
modernity arises when cultures become embroiled in the logic of translation. The key feature
of this is the communicative relation of cultures to each other by means of a third culture.
This third culture – globality, world culture – does not necessarily exist as an overarching
culture or a global lingua franca, but is a medium of translation and one that is embedded in
local cultures. Throughout history the world religions and universalistic languages – Latin,
Sanskrit, English – served this purpose which is today being carried forward by the Inter-
net and other media of communication as well as by new discourses such as democracy and
human rights which provide cognitive models by which cultures interpret themselves. The
result is that cultures are becoming more and more translatable. As they do so, changes in
self-understanding occur and a certain cosmopolitanism enters the interpretative system. If,
as Ricoeur has argued, cosmopolitanism entails the capacity to view oneself from the eyes
of the Other, then cultural translation might be the medium in which one views one’ s own
culture as foreign (Ricoeur 1995, 1996). The resulting universality is more one of pluraliza-
tion than a singular rationality.
The notion of translation has increasingly been applied to the analysis of a broader concept
of culture than the purely textual (Bassnett and Lefevere 1990; Budick and Iser 1996; Ass-
mann 1997; Cronin 1998). A developed use of the notion of translation has existed for some
time in philosophy since Wittgenstein (Benjamin 1989) and has been implicit in anthro-
pology (Asad 2003). Translation has been proposed as a general methodology for the social

33
Gerard Delanty

sciences (Callon et al. 1986), where it refers to the process whereby one thing represents an-
other thing so well that the voice of the represented is effectively silenced. New perspectives
on translation have been opened by Gadamer’s Truth and Method and MacIntyre’s signal essay,
‘Tradition and Translation’ (Gadamer 1975; MacIntyre 1984). Walter Benjamin’ s classic 1923
essay, ‘The Task of the Translator’ is now a key work in rethinking the contemporary rele-
vance of translation from a cosmopolitan perspective (Benjamin 1982). The essay introduced
the idea that in translation an element of foreignness is brought into one’ s own culture and
that as a consequence it is no longer unique or singular. The idea of cultural translation has
been an important focus for Homi Bhabha (1994) who has argued for a concept of translation
as the performative function of communication and which comes into play in the discursive
constitution and contestation of cultural phenomena.
James Clifford (1992, 1997) in a classic essay in 1992 extended the notion to various kinds
of localization, hybridization and vernacularization (see also Ang 2003). This is not the place
to review this diverse literature, but it can be noted that it offers a fruitful approach to global
modernity and to Cosmopolitan analysis. What is suggested by these diverse approaches
is that translation is more than interpretation and the transmission of meaning; it is also
about the transformation of meaning and the creation of something new, for culture is never
translated neutrally. The logic of translation is inherent in culture, which is not static or the
expression of authorial meaning but is dynamic and transformative.
The cultural logic of modernity can thus be seen as a mode of translation that is con-
stitutive of modernity and its forms of communication in which otherness is constantly
transformed. The capacity for translation – of languages, memories, narratives, experiences,
knowledge – is the basis of communication, tradition and cultural possibility and entails a
continuous process of social construction. Translation as a cultural process is a mode of cul-
tural transmission wherein the process of transmission is transformative. It has been widely
recognized that translation is not a simple act of replication. As Gadamer has argued, ‘every
translation is at the same time an interpretation’ (Gadamer 1975: 346). Translation refers
to something that transcends both Self and Other. In Gadamer’ s words: ‘The horizon of
understanding cannot be limited either by what the writer has originally in mind, or by
the horizon of the person to whom the text was originally addressed’ (Gadamer 1975: 356).
Translation can never overcome the gulf between two languages, he argued in this seminal
work on truth, tradition and interpretation. Translation arises because of a need to bridge
this gap but it cannot overcome it. While Gadamer makes the point that translation is never
the norm in ‘ordinary communication’, which is based on a shared language, or even when
the speaker is speaking a foreign language, it is increasingly becoming the space in which
many forms of communication are played out. Migration, globalization, new information
and communication technologies have changed the nature of communication to a point that
cultural translation has become a central category in all of communication.
The terms of Gadamer’s approach also need to be expanded in the need to take account
of the critical moment in which newness is created. Cultural translation is a process of mu-
tations, transferences, innovations, appropriations, borrowings, re-combinations and substi-
tution. It concerns the symbolic and cognitive processes by which cultural aspects of a given
collective identity are appropriated by a different one, which will variously adapt, transfigure
it, subvert it. In the resulting re-codification of culture, new meanings and structures are
created. Bhabha has hinted at a critical normative interpretation that is lacking in Gadamer’s
account: it is not simply appropriation or adaptation; it is a process through which cultures
are required to revise their own systems of reference, norms and values by departing from
their habitual or ‘inbred’ rules of transformation. Ambivalence and antagonism accompany

34
 Multiple and entangled modernities

any act of cultural translation because negotiating with the ‘difference of the other’ reveals
the radical insufficiency of our own systems of meaning and signification (Bhabha 1994).
This is the cosmopolitan condition of living in translation.
The question of power and inequality cannot be neglected since translation is not only
never neutral but frequently involves violence. This is particularly the case in multicultural
encounters where there can be significant questions of power at stake in those cases where
one cultural form as opposed to another is privileged (Asad 2003). Forms of translation can
be devised which reduce the inequality of positions. For example, law, which is itself a form
of translation, is the major way in which modern societies have created a universal language
to translate differences. But not all translation takes this form. When cultures meet, dislo-
cations and even pathologies can result. Cultural translation can have a destructive moment
producing reifications, racism, misunderstandings. It is therefore necessary to address the
‘failures of translation and whether the result will be changes in self-understanding, in acts
of resistance and empowerment’ (Clifford 1997: 182–183). How to achieve reciprocity is the
cosmopolitan challenge in cultural translation.
On the basis of the foregoing three kinds of cultural translation can be identified: trans-
lation of the Self and Other, local and global translations, and translations of the past and
present. Translations of the first kind can be simply a matter of the translation of one culture
into another; they may take the form of an adaptation or a partial or a wholesale borrowing.
Such forms of translation in undifferentiated premodern societies generally assume a degree of
sameness in the cultural and social presuppositions of the two cultures. With the advancement
of civilization and the resulting encounter of cultures that are very different, a new mode of
translation emerges based on a shared system of exchange based on a third language. Examples
of this syncretism vary from a lingua franca to a common system of exchange to universalistic
religions. In this case the integrity of the local culture is not necessarily in question and can
even be protected since the native culture does not have to translate itself into the categories of
the Other (see MacIntyre 1984; Assmann 1997). In the case of the second type of translation,
the local culture is translated onto an overarching global or universal culture, which also func-
tions as a third culture. Examples of this tendency towards universalization range from money
and cartography to nationalizing projects to science and law. While this can lead to hegemonic
forms of translation in which the local is obliterated or becoming unrecognizably transformed,
the reverse can also happen in that the global can be translated into the local. This localization
can take many forms, ranging from vernacularization to hybridization and indigenization.
Finally, translations of past and present are a perpetual feature of all societies since the
present is always defined by its relation to the past. Such translations may take the form of
an ‘invention’ of the past, they may also take the form of a renunciation by which the past is
translated into a new symbolic form. The nature of the translation – which may be nostalgic
or revolutionary – will depend on the understanding of the present. The past can be trans-
lated into the shared present time of a given culture or into a globalized present. The nature
of translation thus entails a relation to otherness, to the universal, and to an origin which are
all experienced in terms of distance and loss. Translation arises in the first instance because
of the reality of cultural distance and plurality. Translations have existed since the beginning
of civilization when the need to communicate with others arose but became intensified with
modernity, which has brought about a culture of translatability in which all of culture has
become translatable. In this translation is more than a medium of communication; it is the
form in which communication takes place and expresses the modern condition of culture as
communication. Rather than define modernity as a singular or a multiple condition it can be
defined as a condition of translatability.

35
Gerard Delanty

Modernity is a condition that can arise within cultures as a cognitive form or structure
in which the various parts of a culture are translated not into each other but also into and
through a third language. The multiple forms of modernity are simply the diverse expressions
of this orientation towards universal communicability. Modernity is thus always in process
depending on the nature of the particular forms of interaction, selection, combination, ad-
aptation and processing of culture codes, frames of meaning, symbolic structures. While the
capacity for translation has existed since the beginning of writing, it is only with modernity
that it has become the dominant cultural form. Prior to modernity, translation served the
function of communication and was not the basis of a given culture. The movement to multi-
plicity has become a more pronounced current in modernity today as the logic of translation
has extended beyond the simple belief that everything can be translated into a universal or
global culture to the recognition that every culture can translate itself and others.

Conclusion
The main thesis of this chapter has been that the concept of modernity must be related to the
self-transformative capacity of society. I have related this to a radicalized notion of cultural
translation. The argument is that what is often called multiple modernities is best seen as
different modes of cultural translation that arise through entanglement. Modernity can arise
anywhere; it is not a specific historical condition, but a mode of processing, or translating,
culture. Modernity is a particular way of transmitting culture that transforms that which it
takes over; it is not a culture of its own and therefore can take root anywhere at any time;
this is because every translation is a transformation of both the subject and the object. Viewed
in these terms there is a cosmopolitan dynamic to the project of modernity. This goes be-
yond arguments concerning the multiple nature of modernity and also the global diversity
of cosmopolitan cultures to a position that places at the centre of historical awareness the
interconnectivity of the world.

Further reading
Bassnett, S. and Lefevere, A. (eds.) (1990) Translation, History, and Culture. London: Pinter.
A useful collection of essays within the field of translation studies that looks at translation in the shaping
of culture.
Budick, S. and Iser, W. (eds.) (1996) The Translatability of Cultures. Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press.
A key collection of essays on cultural translation addressing the central problem of alterity.
Delanty, G. (ed.) (2019) The Routledge International Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies, 2nd ed. London:
Routledge.
A comprensive collection of essays on the major debates on cosmopolitanism.
Gaonkar, D. P. (ed.) (2001) Alternative Modernities. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
A classic collection of essays on multiple varieties of modernity and cosmopolitanism beyond Western
narratives.
Wagner, P. (2012) Modernity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
An important comprehensive account of modernity in contemporary social theory.

Note

36
 Multiple and entangled modernities

References
Ang, I. (2003) ‘Cultural Translation in a Globalized World’, in Paperstergiadis, N. (ed.), Complex En-
tanglements: Art, Globalization and Cultural Difference. Sydney: Rivers Oran Press.
Arnason, J. (2003) Civilizations in Dispute: Historical Questions and Theoretical Traditions. Leiden: Brill.
Arnason, P. (2006) ‘Contested Divergence: Rethinking the “Rise of the West” ’, in Delanty, G. (ed.),
Europe and Asia beyond East and West. London: Routledge.
Asad, T. (2003) Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univer-
sity Press.
Assmann, J. (1997) Moses the Egyptian: The Memory in Western Monothesism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Bassnett, S. and Lefevere, A. (eds.) (1990) Translation, History, and Culture. London: Pinter.
Baudelaire, C. (1964) ‘The Painter of Modern Life’, in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays.
London: Phaidon Press.
Bayly, C. (2004) The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914. Oxford: Blackwell.
Benjamin, A. (1989) Translation and the Nature of Philosophy. London: Routledge.
Benjamin, W. (1982) ‘The Task of the Translator’, in Illuminations. London: Routledge.
Bentley, J. (1993) Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Premodern Times. Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press.
Bhabha, H. (1994) The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.
Budick, S. and Iser, W. (eds.) (1996) The Translatability of Cultures. Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press.
Callon, M., Law, J. and Ripp, A. (1986) Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology. London:
Macmillan.
Castoriadis, C. (1987) The Imaginary Institution of Society. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Clifford, J. (1992) ‘Travelling Cultures’, in Grossberg, L., Nelson, B. and Treichler, P. (eds.), Cultural
Studies. London: Routledge.
Clifford, J. (1997) Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Cronin, M. (1998) Unity in Diversity: Current Trends in Translation Studies. Manchester: St Jerome Press.
Curtin, P. (1984) Cross-Cultural Trade in World History. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Delanty, G. (2018) The European Heritage: A Critical Re-interpretation. London: Routledge.
Dirlik, A. (2003) ‘Global Modernity? Modernity in an Age of Global Capitalism’, European Journal of
Social Theory, 7(3), pp. 275–92.
Eisenstadt, S. N. (2003) Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities: A Collection of Essays by S. N.
Eisenstadt. Volumes 1 and 2. Leiden: Brill.
Frank, A. G. (1998) Re-Orient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Gadamer, H.-G. (1975) Truth and Method. London: Sheed and Ward.
Gaokar, D. P. (ed.) (2001) Alternative Modernities. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Hobson, J. (2004) The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University
Press.
Hodgson, M. (1993) Rethinking World History. Essays on Europe, Islam and the World. Cambridge, MA:
Cambridge University Press.
Hopkins (1984) Cross-cultural Trade in World History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Koselleck, R. (2004) Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. New York: Columbia University
Press.
MacIntyre, A. (1984) ‘Translation and Tradition’, in After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. University
of Notre Dame.
Manjapra, K. (2014) Age of Entanglement: German and Indian Intellectuals across Europe. Cambridge, MA:
Cambridge University Press.
McNeil, W. (1963) The Rise of the West: A History of Human Community. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Nelson, B. (1976) ‘Orient and Occident in Max Weber’, Social Research, 43(1), 114–29.
Nelson, B. (1981) On the Road to Modernity. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield
Osterhammel, J. (2014) The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century. Princ-
eton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

37
Gerard Delanty

Pollock, S. (2006) The Language of the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture and Power in Premodern India.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1995) ‘Reflections on a New Ethos for Europe’, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 21(5/6),
pp. 3–13.
Ricoeur, P. (1996) Oneself as Another. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
Robertson, R. (1992) Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage.
Therborn, G. (2003) ‘Entangled Modernities’, European Journal of Social Theory, 6(3), pp. 293–305.
Wagner, P. (2012) Modernity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

38
 3
The individuality of language
Internationality and transnationality

Naoki Sakai

Introduction
One of the most elementary questions about translation, that is also among the most difficult
to answer, is this: what allows us to regard language as an individual; on what grounds are we
authorized to render language as an indivisible unity? In talking about translation, however,
are we accustomed to discussing languages as if they were unproblematically individual and
indivisible unities? At this juncture, we may further ask why we oblige ourselves to specify a
language as an individual? As a matter of fact, have we not always, that is, trans-h istorically,
taken for granted that language is a countable being, something that can be counted, one,
two, three, and so on, like oranges and apples, and unlike water? Perhaps more out of habit
than conviction, we have not bothered to ask in what context and under what circumstances
language can be treated as a countable nominal. The time has come to discard this absent-
minded habit.
It may be necessary at the outset to elucidate what is at issue in raising such a question:
what allows us to assume, as if indisputably, that a language is an individual unity in our dis-
cussions of translation? Why do we have to be concerned with the countability of language
and then the individuation of it, especially in regard to translation?
First of all, let us remind ourselves of the truism that on innumerable occasions, the word
‘translation’ is used metaphorically. Since translation can involve a wide range of topics and
approaches, the concept of language that is mobilized is not necessarily unitary; one may
well infer diverse tropes by saying ‘ language,’ so let me specify not only one, but also many
contexts in which the individuality of language presents itself as a problematic.1
Translation is commonly used metaphorically to such an extent that it is not easily distin-
guishable from a metaphor or a figurative expression in general, and all too often it serves as a
trope by which, for instance, a medical doctor’s diagnosis is translated into everyday parlance
for ordinary folks, or the literary script of a novelistic work is translated into cinematic lan-
guage. After all, might translation be a metaphor in its etymology, so that, strictly speaking,
there is no way to prevent translation from being used as a substitute for a metaphor? Given
a wide range of tropic uses of the word ‘translation,’ it is unsurprising that some scholars
search for the definition of what translation ought to be in its propriety, for a definition of

39
Naoki Sakai

translation that serves effectively to distinguish translation as a trope or metaphor from trans-
lation proper or translation in and of itself. So, what is translation proper, after all?
In our conventional apprehension of translation, the conduct to translate or the act of
translation is presumed unnecessary unless different languages are at issue. In the last few
centuries – at least since the inauguration of the universal system of national education – the
dominant apprehension of translation has assumed that translation occurs between two dif-
ferent languages or a pair of languages, such as German and French or Hebrew and Greek.
( For the time being, let us evade the possible question as to whether or not translation is able
to involve more than two languages. As it becomes immediately obvious, this question itself
depends upon how we are possibly able to count languages, on the modality of language’s
countability.) In most cases, each of the paired languages between which the act of transla-
tion is performed is regarded as an individual marked by a clear- cut border that divides its
inside from its outside, as an internally consistent entity that sustains an indivisible unity.
Accordingly, it is usually assumed that two different languages between which translation is
conducted are different from one another, first of all in terms of individuality as well as in-
divisibility; in other words, the difference between the languages is an individual difference.
Once again, it seems that we are drawn back to the initial question: what allows us to regard
language as an individual? On what basis, can we say that language is an individual that can
be symbolically, figuratively, and spatially represented as an enclosure with a clear border that
divides its interior from its exterior?
Roman Jakobson is one linguist who has responded to such queries about the indivisible
individuality of a language in translation as well as the difference of languages in translation
at the same time. According to him (1959), the non-tropic or proper use of translation is
given in contrast to those apparently tropic or metaphoric uses of the word; the propriety or
the archetype of translation must be preserved for the type performed between two natural
languages. He insists that translation in the proper sense must be distinguished both from
intralingual translation (translation within the same language, which does not involve another
one) and intersemiotic translation (translation involving non-l inguistic sign systems), and that
in the proper sense of the word it means an interlingual translation, a translation between one
language and another, between two different languages external to one another.
Let me avow at the outset that I cannot avoid feeling skeptical of the classification of
translation types that Jakobson lays out; I am hesitant to endorse the framework against
the background of which his analysis of linguistic aspects of translation is conducted. The
formulation he deploys in classifying types of translation seems to me to be based upon
rather disputable postulations. Conceding that the three types of translation he puts forth
are operational hypotheses, whose truth values are to be judged according to how well they
serve to illuminate the workings of translation, I can hardly ignore the inkling that Jakobson
guilelessly replicates the conventional notions about the event of translation, the definition
of translation, and the figures or schemata of languages in terms of which this dialogic event
called translation is represented, imagined, or figured out.
Under these circumstances, let me reiterate the initial question concerning different lan-
guages: what kind of difference is at stake when we problematize the conventional view of
translation? It is supposed that the difference of and in languages prompts translation, and it
is also a response to this difference because it is usually assumed that this sort of difference
gives rise to difficulty in understanding among interlocutors. For, whenever translation is
mentioned, a certain scenario is presupposed by which some difficulty in comprehension
or conversation naturally arises when different languages are involved. In our conventional

40
 Individuality of language

apprehension of translation, therefore, difference in and of languages is often equated to the

cause for some difficulty or impediment in apprehension between a speaker and a listener
in a dialogue; whereas, when no difference is involved, we do not normally expect such a
difficulty or impediment to arise. Accordingly, translation is supposedly a natural response to
this dialogic obstacle or hindrance that happens between interlocutors.
In this regard, let me further expound on what kind of difference is expected or de-
manded in our apprehension of translation. How do we conceptualize this difference that
supposedly accompanies or gives rise to the occasion of translation? However, one must
keep in mind that, as soon as language is postulated as an individual, a certain logical confu-
sion inevitably ensues: since every language, ethnic or national, is of necessity a composite –
language as such always contains variations called ‘ dialects’ – a language is already a species
of languages in the hierarchy of logical classification. 2 In other words, l anguage would be
doubly registered at the level of individual as well as that of species. Therefore, difference
between languages would necessarily be at the same time one between individuals and one
between species. 3 Is it a difference upheld as such, what is referred to as specific difference
(diaphora), or one that exists between two substances or individuals, each of which cannot
be further divided (atomos or adiairetos) in terms of classical logic, and both of which share
some common property by virtue of belonging to the same class, namely that of languages
in our case?4
Two languages A and B are separated from one another, and they are different. At the
same time they can be subsumed under the same category since they both belong to the same
class, that is, the specific class of languages. Thus the difference at issue is represented in terms
of an interstice between two unified individual things, two individual languages, as if they
were represented spatially as two figures or territories marked by their respective borders and
external to one another. Indeed, difference cannot be of a specific kind when either ‘category
mistake’ or catachresis is committed. In addition to ‘category mistake’ and catachresis, can
there be some other kind of difference beyond a specific one, to remove the need to postulate
two substantive or unified individuals between which there is an interstice?
Whereas Jakobson sees no problem in subsuming the difference of languages to which
translation is a response under the general category of difference between individuals, our
discussion of translation may well take an alternative journey, since we entertain a different
conception of difference precisely because our discussion of translation does not start with
the premise that translation proper is an interlingual translation, or as a response to difference
subsumed in the traditional concept of specific difference.
What if, in contrast to Jakobson, we assume that the difference of languages cannot be
subsumed under specific difference, under the general category of difference between indi-
viduals both of which belong to the class of languages?
As I discuss later in this chapter, we cannot preclude the possibility that the difference in-
volved in translation can be something else not subsumed under the general category of specific
difference or diaphora; it can be a difference other than a specific difference, a difference that
does not require the postulation of languages as individuals. Tentatively I call this difference
‘discontinuity.’
We now must call into question the historical conditions thanks to which the very classifi-
cation of these types of translation – interlingual, intralingual, and intersemiotic translations –
appear indisputable. These historical conditions are, most often, summarily referred to by
‘ internationality’ in the modern world. Henceforth, let me situate the problematic of transla-
tion in the modern international world.

41
Naoki Sakai

Many in one
It is implicitly a ssumed – and rarely thematically questioned – that, while there is one com-
mon world, there are many languages. The world accommodates many languages. Even
though humanity is one, it contains a plurality of languages. It is generally upheld that, pre-
cisely because of this plurality, we are never able to evade translation. Thus, our conception
of translation is almost always premised upon a specific way of conceiving the plurality of
languages. Not surprisingly, we are often obliged to resort to a certain interpretation of the
fable of Babel when trying to think through the issues of the unity of humanity and trans-
lation. Assumed behind this fable is a certain vision of the international world, according
to which the entirety of humanity is divided into units of languages, and each language
constitutes an individual unity that cannot be mixed or conflated with other such units.
The internationality of the international world thus represented consists in the juxtaposition
of individual languages. And each is external to any other. It follows that the link between
any two languages is necessarily of an interlingual kind, so that the representation of the
international world coincides with the Babelic vision of the world that is fragmented by the
individuality of languages and unified only through interlingual translation. Interestingly
enough, the inter- of interlingual translation somewhat resonates with the inter- of the mod-
ern international world.
But, can we take this assumption of a unity in plurality of humanity for granted trans-
historically? Are we always permitted to presume that the plurality of languages in the world
can be apprehended in terms of an ‘ interlingual’ framework, or according to the economy of
the classical logic of individual, species and genus? In other words, can we possibly conceive of
discourses in which the thought of language is not captured in the formula of ‘many in one’?
Are we able to entertain some epistemic possibilities in which language is conceived of in an
alternative way?
How do we recognize the identity of each language, or to put it more broadly, how do we
justify presuming that the diversity of language or languages can be categorized in terms of
one and many or of an interlingual plurality? Appealing to our familiar grammatical category,
I can also pose the question this way. Is language a countable? For example, is it not possible
to think of language, in terms of those grammars in which the distinction of the singular and
the plural is irrelevant? What I am challenging is the individual unity of language, a certain
‘positivity of discourse’ or ‘ historical a priori’ in terms of which we understand what is at issue
whenever a different language or difference in language is at stake. My question is: how do
we allow ourselves to tell one language from others? What allows us to represent difference
in and of languages in terms of specific difference?
I stated my answer to this question some 30 years ago, and I still believe it is valid
(Sakai 1992). My answer is: the individual unity of language is like a regulative idea. It orga-
nizes knowledge, but it is not empirically verifiable. Immanuel Kant introduced the term
‘regulative idea’ in his Critique of Pure Reason. The regulative idea does not concern itself
with the possibility of experience; it is no more than a rule by which a search in the series
of empirical data is prescribed. What it guarantees is not the empirically verifiable truth; on
the contrary, it forbids the search for truth ‘to bring it[self ] to a close by treating anything at
which it may arrive as absolutely unconditioned’ ( Kant 1929: 450 [A 509; B537]).
Unlike some religious convictions, it never confirms truth absolutely or unconditionally.
Therefore, the regulative idea only gives an object in idea; it only means ‘a schema for which
no object, not even a hypothetical one, is directly given’ ( Kant 1929: 550 [A 670; B 698],
emphasis added). The individual unity of language cannot be given in empirical experience

42
 Individuality of language

because it is nothing but a regulative idea that enables us to comprehend other related data
about languages ‘ in an indirect manner, in their systematic unity, by means of their relation
to this idea’ (ibid.) It is not possible to know whether a particular language as a unity exists or
not. It is the reverse: by prescribing to the idea of the individual unity of language, it becomes
possible for us to systematically organize knowledge about languages in a modern, scientific
manner. It follows then that the existence of a national or ethnic language cannot be empir-
ically verifiable. In this respect, it is a construct of schematism, figuration, and imagination.
Just as a nation is in the imaginary register, so is a national or ethnic language.
To the extent that the unity of national language ultimately serves as a schema for nation-
ality5 and offers the sense of national integration, the idea of the individual unity of language
opens up a discourse in which not only the naturalized origin of an ethnic community but
also the entire imaginary associated with ‘national’ language and culture is sought after, de-
bated, and refuted. What is of decisive importance is that such a language is represented in a
schema or an image of national or ethnic totality. Regardless of whether or not it is somewhat
proven to exist, first of all, it must be projected and postulated as an image. Only through an
integrated image of a language can a vast variety of traditional heritages, bundles of familial
lineages, and a wide range of fragmented customs be synthesized and unified into the figure
of national culture. In short, it is in this discourse that the imaginary of an ethnic commu-
nity, whose members are supposed to share the same language, a common tradition or a set
of collective customs, comes into being, but it does not necessarily follow from this postulate
of ethnic community in imagination that an ethnic community or a prototype of national
community can be shown to be present factually or empirically. On the contrary, one could
argue that an ethnic community ought to be brought into existence, whereas actually it is
totally absent. An argument about the absence of national language, or by implication, of an
ethnic community, can equally serve to endorse a sort of discourse in which the individual
unity of language is postulated. As was the case in the birth, or more precisely stillbirth, of
the Japanese nation, the imaginary of an ethnic community becomes available in its absence,
in the modality that it is absent where it should be present.6 What is at stake in the discourse
of national language is not the actual existence of a national or ethnic language, but rather
the very possibility of imagining it as a topic. Such a discourse opens up the theme of a na-
tional language as a possible topic in such a way that it becomes possible to discuss many of
its aspects including its absence. Regardless of whether it is affirmative or negative, adorable
or deplorable, present or absent, the very possibility of imagining such a language as some
mysteriously shared medium is postulated there. This is to say that, in such a discourse, the
very figure of a proto-national language is introduced for the first time as ‘a historical apriori’
(see Foucault 1969: 166–173, 1972: 126–131).
The language that is debated may be pure, authentic, hybridized, polluted or corrupt,
yet regardless of a particular assessment of it, the very possibility of praising, authenticating,
complaining about or deploring it is offered by the unity of that language as a regulative idea.
It is repeatedly argued in American mass media that the English language is a national mat-
ter, and that the soundness of the language is intimately related to the welfare of the nation,
and such conventional contention is rarely challenged. Moreover, by focusing exclusively on
the language of the majority, it seems that little attention is paid to the fact that many other
languages, heterogeneous or even foreign to what is assumed to be ‘good English,’ are spoken
in the population coextensive to the territory of the United States of America.
Regardless of how unscientific and capricious popular discussions on ‘good and beautiful
English’ may be, the strategic principle of national language is scarcely challenged. It is pre-
cisely because of this strategic aspect of the schema of national language that the discussion

43
Naoki Sakai

of good and proper language has never failed to be oppressive toward minorities who are
perceived as deviating from the ‘standard,’ thereby rendering it possible to mark the authentic
from the inauthentic in terms of nationality. Nationality is not merely a matter of the inside
and outside of the national community; it is also a matter of prescription and manipulation.
It demands and prescribes how one should conduct oneself in order to participate in the
feeling of nationality (see Sakai 1992), rather than whether one is or is not in the national
community in an exclusively descriptive way. One is offered the choice of national inclusion
and exclusion in the conditional: if you conduct yourself in such and such a manner, then you
will be entitled to belong to the nation or the ethnicity; but if you do not, you will deserve
to be discriminated against. It is a threat, but it is given as a modality of conduct.
For Kant, as I have so far argued, a regulative idea is explicated primarily with regard to
the production of scientific knowledge; it ensures that the empirical inquiry of some scien-
tific discipline never reaches any absolute truth, and is therefore endless. Furthermore, Kant
qualifies the regulative idea as a schema that is not exclusively in the order of idea, but also in
the order of the sensational. Hence, the regulative idea works in the realm of imagination, of
the faculty of the human mind that synthesizes the ideational and the sensational.
Kant’s critical philosophy was contemporary with the emergence of a new form and im-
age of community called ‘nation’; he witnessed the revolutions which helped establish a new
state sovereignty based on the nation. In this regard too, the institution of the nation- state
is no older than German idealism. In due course, we are led to suspect that the idea of the
unity of language as the schema for ethnic and national communality must also be a recent
invention. The regulative idea thus serves to organize the modern international world as
well as the imaginary formation of national or ethnic language in that world regulated by the
inter-lingual schematism of inter-nationality.
By now this much is evident. From the postulate that the unity of national language is
a regulative idea, it follows directly that we do not and cannot know whether a national
language, such as English or Japanese, exists as an empirical object. The unity of national
language enables us to organize various empirical data in a systematic manner so as to allow
us to continue to seek knowledge about that language. At the same time, moreover, the regu-
lative idea offers not an object in experience but an objective in praxis toward which we aspire
to regulate our uses of language. It is not only an epistemic principle but also a strategic one.
Hence, it works in double registers: on the one hand, determining propaedeutically what is
to be included or excluded in the very data base of a language, what is linguistic or extra-
l inguistic, and what is proper to a particular language or not; on the other, indicating and
projecting what we must seek as our proper language, what we must avoid as heterogeneous
to our language and reject as improper for it; the unity of a national language as a schema
guides us on what is just or wrong for our language, what is in accord or discord with its
propriety.
In this respect, it is worth noting that invariably the modern discussion of national lan-
guage assumes itself to be situated ‘after the Babel,’ so to speak, in a world marked by ‘many
in one,’ in a characteristically particular manner. Walter Benjamin is among those authors
who rely upon the mythology of Babel, but it is noteworthy that he deliberately adopts a
particular tropic strategy that highlights the fragmentary nature of languages while pur-
posefully obliterating the very distinguishability of interlingual and intralingual translations
( Benjamin 1992). He emphasizes languages as fragments and splinters that retain the shapes
and contours of the original unity, thereby he very judiciously evades postulating languages
as individuals and indivisibles, each of which is internally coherent or organically intact. By
‘pure language,’ he designates one that can never be an individual or indivisible. If we strictly

44
 Individuality of language

follow Benjamin’s tropics, it would have been extremely difficult or almost impossible to
either equate translation proper to an interlingual translation, or to represent it to ourselves
as a transaction taking place in the interstice between two individuated figures of languages.
In this respect, he illustrates an entirely different orientation to that of Roman Jakobson.
Inopportunely, nevertheless, we must admit that Jakobson represents the overwhelming ma-
jority, as a consequence of which very few scholars in translation studies today appreciate
Benjamin’s discussion on translation.
By virtue of the fact that we take the model of interlingual translation as translation
proper, we are obliged to acknowledge that we live in a world ‘after the Babel,’ in a modern
world ordered by internationality. In the modern era, an inquiry into language begins with
an acknowledgment that universal language has been lost, so that humanity is inevitably
fragmented into many languages. None of us can occupy the position of totality from which
the oneness of humanity is immediately apprehended. Every one of us is necessarily situ-
ated within one or some languages; our apprehension of humanity is destined to be partial
because it is no longer possible for any of us to have access to an aerial view from which
the entirety can be grasped instantaneously. Instead, the apprehension of oneness requires
tedious processes in the interstices of many autonomous and individuated languages. I want
to tentatively call these processes translations as they are represented according to the modern regime
of translation.
Of course, translation serves as a metaphoric term with much broader connotations than
an operation of the transfer of meaning from one national or ethnic language to another,
but in this context I am specifically concerned with the delimitation of translation according
to ‘the modern regime of translation,’ by means of which the idea of the national language
is practiced and thus concretized. What I want to suggest thereby is that the representation
of translation in terms of ‘the modern regime of translation’ is facilitated as a schema of co-
figuration: it helps to project a paired schemata of individual languages between which inter-
lingual translation is supposed to take place. It is of translation, so that it always involves
difference. And this difference is of a specific kind between two individual languages. It fol-
lows that the representation of interlingual translation necessarily requires a pair of schemata,
a pair of two figures. To the extent that the representation of interlingual translation is pro-
jected by means of a pair of schemata, it is a process of a co-figuration. The paired schemata work
as if one synthetic schema, so that only when translation is represented by the schematism
of co-figuration, does the putative unity of one national language as a regulative idea ensue.
The schema of co-figuration is an apparatus that allows us to imagine or represent what goes on in
translation; it allows us to give to ourselves an image or representation of translation.
A corollary immediately follows: unless another language is represented, a language
would never be figured out as an individual unity. A language is identified only through the
schematism of co-figuration, so that the image of one’s own language is dependent upon how
another language partnered with it is represented. In other words, only when an apparatus is
available by which to recognize and imagine a different language into which a topic, theme
or message is translated from this language, can a language be figured out as an autonomous
and individuated language independent of the other. This is to say that, unless a foreign
language is recognized, one’s own would never be recognized as such. This is why a na-
tional language becomes representable and recognizable only in an international world, even
though the internationality of this world may not be immediately ascribed to that instituted
by the Eurocentric international law, Jus Publicum Europæum.
Thus imagined, the representation of translation is no longer a movement in potentiality.
This image or representation always contains two figures, and, in due course, is necessarily

45
Naoki Sakai

accompanied by a spatial division in terms of ‘ border.’ Hence, the image of translation is

given by the schematism (the putting into practice of schema) of co-figuration in the re-
gime of translation. In other words, the unity of a national or ethnic language as a schema
is already accompanied by another one for the unity of a different language. This is how the
unity of a language is possible only in the element of ‘many in one.’
Translation may well take various forms and processes insofar as it is a political labor to
overcome the points of incommensurability in the social. It need not be confined to the
specific regime of translation; it may well be outside the modern regime of translation. In
the context of our discussion of translation, the ‘modern’ is marked by the introduction of
the schematism of co-figuration; without this it is difficult to imagine a nation or ethnicity
as a homogeneous sphere. Thus the economy of the foreign, that is, how the foreign must
be allocated in the production of the domestic language, has played the decisive role in the
poietic – and poetic – identification of the national language. Without exception, the formation
of modern national language involves certain institutionalizations of translation, according
to what we have referred to as the regime of translation.

Translation as continuity in discontinuity

Finally, we will return to the question of the relationship between the issues of translation
and discontinuity. This is to say that we will probe how our commonsensical notion of
translation is delimited by the schematism of the world (i.e. our operation of representing the
world according to the schema of co-figuration), and inversely, how the modern figure of the
world as ‘ inter-national’ (i.e. a world consisting of the basic and juxtaposed units of nations) is
prescribed by our representation of translation as a communicative and international transfer
of the message between a pair of ethno-linguistic unities.
An inquiry into translation invokes a seemingly endless series of questions when some
formulaic response to this inquiry is postulated. Retracing the network of affinity in trans-
lational equivalence – taking fanyi in Chinese, Übersetzung in German, honyaku in Japanese,
as instances strictly within the economy of the modern international world – you may well
find the sense of transferring, of conveying or skipping from one place to another, of linking
or mapping one word, phrase, or text to or on another. Comparing the lexicographical and
etymological explications of the word ‘to translate’ or its cognates in many languages, one
may feel vindicated to offer this definition: translation is a transfer of the message from one
language to another.
Even before specifying what sort of transfer this can be, you would realize it is hard to
refrain from asking initial questions about the message. Is what is referred to as the message
in this definition not a product or consequence of the transfer called translation, rather than
something whose being precedes the action of transfer, or something that remains invariant
in the process of translation? Is the message supposedly transferred in this process determin-
able in and of itself, without first being operated on or affected by something? Is the sense
of translation determinable prior to its being translated? Does this future-a nteriority of the
message in translation not suggest that what remains invariant does not belong in the worldly
time of past – present – future? It neither belongs to the present of the past, the present of the
present, nor the present of the future. Is it because the message is never present or because it
repeats the very movement of what Jacques Derrida called ‘ iterability’ that it can be said to
remain invariant in translation? ( For iterability, see Derrida 1982.)
Accordingly the message transferred in translation is, above all else, a supposition of the
transmitted invariant that is confirmed, retroactively, after the fact of translation. So, what

46
 Individuality of language

kind of definition is this that includes the term that ought to be explained by what the very
definition aims to determine? Does it not constitute an emblematic circular definition? Like-
wise, the unities of languages are also suppositions, in whose absence the above-mentioned
definition would hardly make sense. Then, are we not required to examine what translation
could be when languages are not countable or when one language cannot be so easily distin-
guished from another?
In the first section of this chapter I already provided my answer to this question. The
languages from and into which a text is translated are like regulative ideas; they serve as sche-
mata in our representation of translation. As to the empirical existence of these languages,
therefore, we cannot tell whether they exist or not except through our operation of transla-
tion in which these languages are retrospectively represented.
The measure by which we are able to assess a language as a unity – let me stress again that
I am not talking about either phonetic systems, various morphological units, even syntactical
rules of a language, but instead the whole of a language as a langue – is given to us only at the
locale where the limit of a language is marked, at the ‘ border’ where we come across a non-
sense that forces us to do something in order to make sense of this non-sense. It goes without
saying that this occasion of making sense out of non-sense, of doing something socially  –
acting toward foreigners, soliciting their response, seeking their confirmation, and so forth – is
generally called translation, provided that suspending the conventional distinction between
translation and interpretation is allowed. So let me repeat once again that the unity of a lan-
guage is represented always in relation to another unity. It is never given in and of itself, but in
relation to another, transferentially so to say. One can hardly evade a dialogic duality when it is
a matter of determining the unity of a language; language as a unity almost always conjures up
the co-presence of another language precisely because translation is not only a border crossing,
but also and preliminarily an act of drawing a border, of bordering. This is why I have to intro-
duce the schematism of co-figuration in analyzing how translation is represented.
Already we are concerned with a range of problems difficult to evade when attempting to
comprehend the terms ‘meaning’ and ‘ language.’ At the very least we can now say that, log-
ically, translation is not derivative or secondary to meaning or language; it is as fundamental
or originary in our attempts to elucidate these two concepts. To the extent that translation
suggests our contact and encounter with the incomprehensible, unknowable, or unfamiliar,
that is with the foreign, we must insist that nothing starts until we come across the foreign.
If the foreign is unambiguously incomprehensible, unknowable, and unfamiliar, it is im-
possible to talk about translation since translation simply cannot be actualized. If, on the
other hand, the foreign is comprehensible, knowable, and familiar, it is unnecessary to call
for translation. Thus, the status of the foreign must always be ambiguous in translation. It
is alien, but it is already in transition to something familiar. The foreign is at the same time
incomprehensible and comprehensible, unknowable and knowable, and unfamiliar and fa-
miliar; this foundational ambiguity of translation derives from the ambiguous positionality
generally indexed by the peculiar presence of the translator. Apparently the translator’s work
consists in dealing with discontinuity among the interlocutors, among whom incomprehen-
sibility, miscommunication, or non-sense can possibly occur, and then building continuity in
this discontinuity. This situation may be rephrased this way: for the first kind of audience, the
source ‘ language’ is comprehensible while for the second it is incomprehensible. Only insofar
as the distinction between the two kinds of audience exists can someone be summoned to be
a translator according to the modern regime of translation.
Yet, it is important to note that ‘ language’ in this instance is figurative in the sense that it
need not refer to any ‘natural’ language of an ethnic or national community, such as German

47
Naoki Sakai

or Tagalog; it is equally possible to have two kinds of audience when the source text is a heav-
ily technical document or an avant-g arde literary piece. Here ‘ language’ may well refer to
such a set of vocabulary and expressions associated with a professional field or discipline, such
as ‘ legal language’; it may imply a style of graphic inscription or an unusual perceptual setting
in which an art work is installed. One may argue that these are exemplary of intra-linguistic
and inter- semiotic translations respectively. But, these two types of translation can be pos-
tulated only when they are in contra- d istinction to inter-l inguistic translation or translation
proper. Let us not forget, however, that the propriety of translation presupposes the unity of
a language; its propriety would be impossible unless one unity of language is posited as exter-
nal to another unity, as if already, languages were given as countable like apples. Thus, these
figurative uses of the term ‘translation’ illustrate how extremely difficult it is to construe the
locale of translation as a linking or bridging of two languages, two spatially marked domains.
Here I want to stress once again that translation is not only a border crossing but also and
preliminarily an act of drawing a border, of bordering.
What is disclosed here is a certain cartography in the representation of translation.
However, this cartography is not about mapping from one striated space onto another; it is
concerned with the mapping of something alien or anterior to spatial coordination onto a co-
ordinated space; it is a mapping of the incomprehensible onto a distance between two figures
in a striated space. It is precisely because the unities of languages are no more than ‘objects
in idea’ or schemata with no corresponding objects in experience, that the schematism of
co-figuration projects figures of language at the locale of translation. In this respect, the
schematism of co-figuration is an art of spatialization, some technology that one might call a
primordial cartography, without whose aid the externality of one language to another would
be inconceivable.
For brevity’s sake, allow me to skip the many steps necessary to move from this primordial
cartography to the global configuration of modernity in which the dichotomy of the West
and the Rest serves as a ruling trope in the imagination of the international world.7
It goes without saying that this conception of translation according to the schematism of
co-figuration is a schematization of the globally shared commonsensical vision about the in-
ternational world; it consists of basic units of nations and is segmented by national borders into
territories. In this schematization, the propriety of ‘translation proper’ does not only claim
to be a description or representation of what happens in the process of translation; but it also
prescribes and directs how to represent and apprehend what one does in translation. In this
respect, the propriety of ‘translation proper’ is a rule of discursive formation: it is part and
parcel of an institutionalized assemblage of protocols, rules of conduct, canons of accuracy,
and manners of viewing in the operations of bio-powers. In other words, the modern regime
of translation in bio-politics is poietic or productive in bringing out what Speech Acts theorists
call the ‘perlocutionary’ effect; it repeatedly discerns the domestic language co-figuratively
as if the two unities were already present in actuality.
As long as one is captive to the modern regime of translation, one can only construe the
ambiguity inherent in the positionality of the translator as the duality of the position a trans-
lator occupies between native and foreign languages. One either speaks one’s own mother
tongue or a foreigner’s. The task of translator would then be to figure out discernible differ-
ences between the two languages as well as the two positionalities, those of the native and the
foreign. In each language one’s position is discernibly determined, so that the difference one
deals with in translation is construed always as that of two linguistic communities external to
one another. Despite innumerable loci of potential difference within one linguistic commu-
nity, the modern regime of translation obliges one to speak so as to address oneself according

48
 Individuality of language

to the binary opposition of either speaking to the same or the other. I call this attitude
of address homolingual address, the anticipatory attitude of relating to others in enunciation,
whereby the addresser adopts a position representative of a putatively homogeneous language
community and relates to general addressees also representative of an equally homogeneous
language community.
However, I must hasten to add a disclaimer: by homolingual address I do not imply the so-
cial condition of conversation, generally referred to as monolingualism, in which both the
addresser and the addressee supposedly belong to the same language; they believe themselves
to belong to different languages yet can still address themselves homolingually.
Ineluctably, translation introduces a disjunctive instability into the putatively personal re-
lations among agents of speech, writing, listening, and reading. In respect to personal rela-
tionality as well as to the addresser/addressee structure, the translator must be internally split
and multiple, and devoid of a stable positionality. At best, she can be a subject in transit. This
is firstly because the translator cannot be an ‘ individual’ in the sense of individuum in order
to perform translation, and secondly because she is a singular that marks an elusive locale of
discontinuity in the social, while translation is the practice of creating continuity at that
singular point of discontinuity. The place she occupies, therefore, belongs to a space anterior
to one striated with coordinates, rather than to an extensive one in which the relationship of
externality is possibly predicative. Translation is an instance of continuity in discontinuity 8 and
a poietic social practice – bordering – which institutes a relation at the site of incommensu-
rability. This is why the aspect of discontinuity inherent in translation would be completely
repressed if we determined it according to the model of communication. And this is what I
have referred to above as the ambiguity inherent in the positionality of the translator.
To elucidate what is implied by continuity in discontinuity, it is necessary to elaborate upon
the concepts of continuity and discontinuity. As is the case in the mathematical conception
of continuity – often talked about in the name of ‘the Dedekind cut’ – continuity primarily
concerns cutting and divisibility. The possibility of infinite cutting defines continuity, for
instance, at point A in the neighborhood of that point. In order to recognize a boundary or
cut at A, therefore, that point must be continuous. Routinely we represent difference inciting
the act of translation in terms of a gap or crevice, but despite such a habit of making sense by
means of a spatialized figure, the incommensurability that we want to understand as differ-
ence cannot be represented as such. The difference at issue is a radical one that is ‘non- sense,’
for it is prior to the act of translation which is after all a process of sense-making; translation
is ‘an act of making sense out of non-sense.’ Yet, this difference cannot be determined in
and of itself. We cannot think of the past, the present, or the future in which this difference
presents itself. In other words, just like what Plato called khora, it is never present or in the
present. The representation of incommensurability as a cut or boundary, therefore, is bound
to betray what it is supposed to represent. In other words, incommensurability is unrepre-
sentable because it is discontinuous. What is suggested by discontinuity is the impossibility
of cutting or of comprehending in terms of a boundary. It is non- sense precisely because it
is anterior to continuity. The difference in or of language to which translation is a response
must be distinguished from measurable difference that is representable as a gap, crevice, or
boundary, for such a representation is possible only when difference is conceived of in the
measure of continuity. What we refer to as incommensurability is a radical difference lacking
in common measure. It is for this impossibility of finding common measure that this differ-
ence is called incommensurability. This is why difference in or of language that incites the
act of translation comes as a representation only after the process of translation. Inherent in
translation is a paradox of temporality that cannot be accommodated in the worldly time of

49
Naoki Sakai

the past, the present, and the future; it calls for a positing of an invariant that is never present 9.
Translation is not only a process of overcoming incommensurability; it is also a process in
which difference is rendered representable.
Thus, translation pertains to two dimensions of difference that should not be confused:
a radical difference of discontinuity that does not render itself to spatialized representation,
and, a measured difference in continuity imagined in terms of a border, gap, or crevice
between two spatially enclosed territories or entities, figuratively projected as a distance
between two figures that accompany one another. And the transition from the first to the
second is what we often call ‘translation.’
Undoubtedly, the locale of translation as the ambiguous point of difference is also the
state of exception in the sense that Carl Schmitt talked about the sovereign. In due course,
the positionality of translator is comparable to that of the sovereign who, ‘although he stands
outside the normally valid legal system, nonetheless belongs to it, for it is he who must decide
whether constitution must be suspended in its entirety’ (ibid.: 6). Referring to Schmitt, Gior-
gio Agamben argues (1998: 17): ‘Through the state of exception, the sovereign ‘creates and
guarantees the situation’ that the law needs for its own validity.’ By overlooking the moment
of discontinuity, one could easily be oblivious to the fact that the locale of translation is the
state of exception, and the place of the sovereign; but it is also a site of transformative labor.
Now, it is possible to inquire into the social performance of labor in terms of translation (cf.
Solomon and Sakai 2006).
In considering the positionality of the translator, we are now introduced into the prob-
lematic of subjectivity in an illuminating manner. The internal split within the translator,
which reflects in a certain way the split between the addresser – or the addressee, and further-
more the actualizing split within the addresser and the addressee themselves10 – a nd the trans-
lator, demonstrates the way in which the subject constitutes itself. In a sense, this internal split
within the translator is homologous to what is referred to as the fractured I, the temporality
of ‘I speak,’ which necessarily introduces an irreparable distance between the speaking I and
the I that is signified, between the subject of the enunciation and the subject of the enunci-
ated. Yet, in the case of translation, the ambiguity in the personality of the translator marks
the instability of the ‘we’ as the subject, rather than the ‘I,’ suggesting a different attitude of
address which I elsewhere term heterolingual address, and in which one addresses oneself as a
foreigner to another foreigner. Heterolingual address is an event because translation never
takes place in a smooth space; it is an addressing in discontinuity.
Captured in the regime of translation, however, the translator is supposed to assume the role
of the arbitrator, not only between the addresser and the addressee, but also between the lin-
guistic communities of the addresser and the addressee. And, in the attitude of monolingual ad-
dress, translation as repetition is often exhaustibly replaced by the representation of translation.
What is rejected in monolingual address is the very social character of translation, of an
act performed at the locale of social transformation where new power relations are produced.
The study of translation will thus provide us with insights into how cartography and the
schematism of co-figuration contribute to our critical analysis of social relations, premised
not only on nationality and ethnicity, but also on the differentialist identification of race, or
the anthropological difference and discriminatory constitution of the West.

Conclusion
It may still be necessary to remind readers that the viewpoint I have adopted in this chapter is
historically delimited, and that I have scarcely done justice to the topic of translation in view

50
 Individuality of language

of the diversity of skills, practices, and accomplishments in human attempts to deal with the
incommensurate, the incomprehensible, and the foreign. This chapter is not designed to give
a comprehensible vision of what translation can be. Instead it is designed to historicize what
we take to be ‘translation proper’ – provided that not only peoples in the West but also in
the Rest are designated by ‘we’ in this case – and to show that the modern regime of transla-
tion, a bio-political technology in terms of which we conduct, apprehend, evaluate, and judge
‘translation,’ is a rather recent invention. Yet, undeniably, this regime of translation is viable
only in the modern international world, a particular order of inter-state politics, which, as Carl
Schmitt illustrated in The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of Jus Publicum Europaeum,
originated in Europe around the seventeenth century and subsequently spread all over the
globe, through modern colonial rules and capitalist commodification. In other words, our
apprehension of translation is under the auspices of the international order in which the world
supposedly consists of the horizontal juxtaposition of national languages, and each of these
national languages is assumed to be an individual, indivisible unity. Prior to the modern inter-
national world, a plurality of languages existed, but this plurality was not that of individuated
languages. Yet, the modern regime of translation drastically changed our ways of apprehending
the plurality of languages and the differences among them. Since the eighteenth century, step
by step, we have been obliged to accept the legitimacy of an imaginary order according to
which one’s belonging to the newly constructed community of ‘nation’ is most decisively and
deterministically marked by one’s own ‘national language.’ Now, for some miraculous and fan-
tastic reasons, one must be able to be identified as a native of this national language community
and not allowed to change it as if one were born into it. This is nothing but a consequence of
the modern regime of translation in the modern international world.
I do not believe that the modern international world will disappear in the near future,
even though for the majority of humanity on this planet, the basic unit of this international
world – the nation-state – is rather new, less than one-century old, and appears temporary
and artificial. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that the very structure of the international world
is in transition. As Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson argued in Border as Method, or, the
Multiplication of Labor, the borders of the modern international world are less and less effec-
tive to regulate the global distribution of labor forces, capital, population, knowledge and
commodities. What we conventionally call ‘globalization’ is eroding the regularities of the
international world. Far from giving rise to a ‘ borderless’ world, globalization generates more
and more borders and new regimens of discrimination.
With globalization, the inadequacy of conventional translation studies is all the more ev-
ident. Because of their uncritical acceptance of the modern regime of translation, they have
so far failed to address the socio-political aspects of translation, how it has contributed to the
institutionalization of nationality and ethnicity. To the extent that we draw attention to the
expanding sense of anxiety in that globalization is experienced as humiliating, impoverish-
ing, alienating, and demoralizing by the majority of people on the planet, the critical assess-
ment of the individuality and individuation of language should serve as a critical supplement
to the inadequacy of existent translation studies.

Further reading
Mezzadra, S. and Neilson, B. (2013) Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press.
Arguably the most important book on the social and political significance of globalization through an
analysis of border under transformation.

51
Naoki Sakai

Sakai, N. (1997) Translation and Subjectivity: On ‘ Japan’ and Cultural Nationalism. Minneapolis: Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press.
In this book I attempt to broaden my scope of translation studies to include the twentieth century
development following the initial insights laid out in my seminal work Voices of the Past: The Status of
Language in Eighteenth-Century Japanese Discourse (1992).
Schmitt, C. (2006) The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of Jus Publicum Europaeum. Trans.
G. L. Ulman. New York: Telos Press.
A classic work that discusses the early modern formation of the international world and its inherent
Eurocentricity.
Simondon, G. (1989) L’individuation psychique et collective; A la lumière des notions de forme, information,
potentiel et métastabilité. Paris: Aubier.
Perhaps the most insightful examination of individuation and individuality.
Solomon, J. (2019) ‘Discovering the Modern Regime of Translation in China: Liu Cixin’s Remem-
brance of Earth’s Past and Wuhe’s Remains of Life’, Journal of Translation Studies 3(1) ( New Series),
pp. 139–189.
A brilliant analysis of how the modern regime of translation was institutionalized in modern China.

Notes

3 That language cannot be an enclosed unity or represented as a spatial enclosure is brilliantly

demonstrated by Ferdinand de Saussure. By analyzing the instances of dialectic features, de Sau-
ssure demonstrates convincingly that it is impossible to postulate a dialect as an indivisible unity.
The same can be said about any language. Cf. Ferdinand de Saussure, TROISIEME COURS DE
LINGUISTIQUE GENERAL (1910–1911), d’apres les cahiers d’Emile Constatin, Eisuke Komatsu
ed. Roy Harris trans. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1993, 24~32.
4 Here, let me outline the preliminary procedure involved in the classification according to classical
logic. For difference between two individuals A and B to be of specific difference, A and B must
both belong to the same group. It would be tantamount to sheer meaninglessness if A and B are a
desk and a family. Yet, a desk can be an individual just as a family can be an individual. A desk and
a family cannot be comparable to one another unless the common denominator is specified. For in-
stance, as two words or nouns, they can be compared, yet the referents these words refer to remain
incomparable. The minimal condition for comparison is that A and B share some common quality
or predicate. Expressed in propositional form, the two propositions, for example, ‘A is C’ and ‘B
is C,’ are upheld where C signifies some quality or predicate that A and B share. In the absence of
such a shared predicate, a specific difference between two individuals is unthinkable.

52
 Individuality of language

( The Stillbirth of the Japanese as an Ethnos and as a Language). (Sakai 1996, Second edition: Tokyo:
Kôdansha, 2015.)

References
Agamben, G. (1998) Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. D. Heller-Roazen. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press.
Benjamin, W. (1992) “The Task of the Translator”, in Arendt, H. (ed.), Walter Benjamin: Illuminations.
Trans. H. Zohn. London: Fontana Press, pp. 70– 82.
Chang, B.G. (1996) Deconstructing Communication: Representation, Subject, and Economies of Exchange.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
De Saussure, F. (1993) Troisième Cours de Linguistique Générale (1910–1911) d’après les cahiers d’Emile Con-
stantin/ Saussure’s Third Course of Lectures on General Lingustics (1910–1911) from the Notebooks of Emile
Constantin, Eisuke Komatsu ed., Roy Harris trans. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Derrida, J. (ed.) (1982) ‘Signature Event Context’, in Margins of Philosophy. Trans. A. Bass. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, pp. 307–330.
Derrida, J. (1987) The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond. Trans. A. Bass. Chicago, IL: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press.
Foucault, M. (1969) L’archéologie du savoir. Paris: Gallimard.
Foucault, M. (1972) The Archaeology of Knowledge. Trans. A.M. Sheridan. New York: Harper Torchbooks.
Fukuzawa, Y. (2008) An Outline of a Theory of Civilization. Trans. D.A. Dilworth and G. Cameron
Hurst. New York: Columbia University Press.
Jakobson, R. (1959) ‘On Linguistic Aspects of Translation’, in Brower, R.A. (ed.) On Translation.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 232–239.
Kant, I. (1929) Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. N. Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin’s Press, p. 450
[A 509; B537].
Mill, J.S. (1861/1972) Utilitarianism: On Liberty, Considerations on Representative Government. London &
Rutland: Everyman’s Library.
Morinaka, T. (2007) ‘La traduction comme critique de l’ethno-anthropocentrisme d’aujourd’hui’.
Paper presented at conference La traduction et le sens du mo(n)de. Tamkang University, Taipei,
Taiwan, 16–18 June 2007.

53
Naoki Sakai

Nishida, K. (1934/1965a) ‘Genjitu no sekai no ronri-teki kôzô’ (‘The Logical Structure of the Real
World’), in Nishida Kitarô Zenshû Collected Works of Nishida Kitarô, Vol. 7. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,
pp. 217–304.
Nishida, K. (1935/1965b) ‘Sekai no jiko dôitsu to renzoku’ (‘The Self-Identity of the World and Conti-
nuity’), in Nishida Kitarô Zenshû Collected Works of Nishida Kitarô, Vol. 8. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,
pp. 7–106.
Sakai, N. (1992) Voices of the Past: The Status of Language in Eighteenth-Century Japanese Discourse. New
York and Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Sakai, N. (1996)『死産される日本語・日本人』( The Stillbirth of the Japanese as an Ethnos and as a Language).
Tokyo: Shinyôsha.
Sakai, N. and Solomon, J. (2006) ‘Introduction: Addressing the Multitude of Foreigners, Echoing
Foucault’, in Sakai, N. and Solomon, J. (eds.), Traces 4, Translation, Biopolitics, Colonial Difference.
Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, pp. 1–36.
Schmitt, C. (1988) The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of Jus Publicum Europaeum. Trans.
G. L. Ulman. New York: Telos Press.
Solomon, J. (2019) ‘Discovering the Modern Regime of Translation in China: Liu Cixin’s Remembrance
of Earth’s Past and Wuhe’s Remains of Life’, Journal of Translation Studies, 3(1), New Series, pp. 139–189.

54
 4
Translation and inequality
Paul F. Bandia

Introduction
Early conceptualizations of translation and its practice in Western scholarship seemed to
have presumed a non-polemic and unequivocal transfer between two relatively stable lan-
guage cultures. This Eurocentric perspective was largely due to the fact translation practi-
tioners often worked with genetically close European languages that may not have involved
radically different linguistic, cultural and historical circumstances. The objective was often
to ensure complete or total equivalency between established and well- defined monolithic
entities with particular emphasis on linguistic and comparative stylistic approaches devoid
of any ideological concerns. Translation was viewed as an objective endeavour to bridge the
gap between noncognate languages and cultures and a mechanism for ensuring intercul-
tural communication. The notion of fidelity, with its implied moral or religious overtone
as sanctioned by Judeo- Christian belief systems, was central to any ethical consideration of
the translation act. The task of the translator was viewed as one of resolving differences and
establishing congruency between languages and cultures. The linguistic bias inherent in
this conceptualization of translation had reduced the art to a mere mechanical craft which
from an early epoch served scholastic and pedagogical interests. In the Western tradition
translating had been of particular interest in philology where it was considered a useful skill
to acquire or learn foreign languages. The idea of translation was equated with the ability
of a polyglot, someone who knew languages and could move with ease between disparate
linguistic worlds. This view of translation meant that establishing equivalency between lan-
guage cultures for the mere enactment of interlingual communication was of the essence.
Even with the professionalization of translation in the early to m id-twentieth century the
predominant understanding was the restitution in a target language of the full equivalency
or sameness of meaning derived from the source language. As theoretical interests grew
in the field and some theorists began questioning the very essence of translation by raising
issues related to notions of (u n-)translatability, some practitioners began to wonder if the
theorists were indeed talking about the same art or craft which they practised daily with
palpable results and rewards. The question of (un-)translatability surfaces in the Renaissance
as groups like the Pléiade made up of French poets raised doubts about the adequacy of

55
Paul F. Bandia

vernacular languages in translating from classical Latin. This scepticism is indeed implied
in the well-known and clever consonance tradutorre, traditore (translator, traitor) attributed to
Italian sceptics who felt French translations of Dante had betrayed either the beauty or accu-
racy of the work. Recent examples of discussions on (un-)translatability can be seen in Bar-
bara Cassin’s (ed.) Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon (2014), which focusses
on philosophical terms that have proven difficult to translate across language cultures often
due to their linguistic, historical and philosophical specificity; and Emily Apter’s Against
World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability (2013), inspired by Cassin’s book, in which
Apter highlights the failure of translation as inevitable, although we must carry on with the
task given the need for intercultural understanding. Apter’s book alludes to issues related to
inequalities in the context of globalization, which often emphasizes universalist trends and
overlooks differences to the detriment of minority or marginalized cultures. The notion
of the incommensurability of cultures, which does not necessarily imply untranslatability,
was virtually absent in translation discourse, as most practitioners would engage with his-
torically cognate or related global languages. In fact, for most old- school practitioners it
was unthinkable to question the relevance or feasibility of translation, let alone to imagine
occurrences of inequalities when the entire enterprise of translation was construed as an
honest or objective attempt to establish equivalency between language cultures. In light of
this normative view of translation it is therefore a misnomer to speak about ‘translation and
inequality’, a contradiction in terms as the raison d’être of translation is supposed to be the
erasure of difference, hence of inequality between language cultures, by establishing equiv-
alency or sameness of meaning.
Then came the ‘cultural turn’ in translation studies in the 1990s which opened up the
field to include several other factors (cultural, ideological, political, sociological, etc.) which
are likely to influence the translation process. The cultural turn in translation studies was
fuelled by the theoretical debates of the 1980s and 1990s, which also gave rise to the field of
cultural studies (see Bassnett and Lefevere 1990). The preoccupation with what has been re-
ferred to as the postmodern condition relied on post- structuralism and inspired theoretical
approaches that were generally aimed at deconstructing the hierarchy or power asymmetry
characteristic of mainstream or normative translation theory. There was a major shift from
a quest for sameness in translation to an emphasis on difference. This postmodern ethic of
difference highlighted issues related to identity and ideology and brought the previously
overlooked political aspects of translation to the fore. Translation became a forum for as-
serting the voices of marginalized groups such as women, indigenous communities and
formerly colonized peoples in an attempt to redress the inherent inequalities ingrained
in a normative translation process based on an ethic of sameness. Although Europe had
always had its own realities of asymmetry between dominant and minor languages, the
concept of minority as a research paradigm became even more relevant in the context of
power inequalities resulting from the consequences of Western imperialism. Postcolonial
theory intersected with translation theory to establish a research paradigm that has moved
the field forward into what can be termed the postmodern era. Postcoloniality continues to
hold sway in significant ways in many disciplines including translation studies as research-
ers grapple with the implications of the rapid globalization and internationalization of the
world community.
This seismic shift in the humanities and the social sciences enhanced translation research
beyond the mere linguistic and stylistic approaches and set the stage for accounting for trans-
lation phenomena in the light of power relations between dominant and subaltern language
cultures, as well as in terms of issues related to transculturality in the encounter between

56
 Translation and inequality

distant or remote language cultures. Translation-inspired conceptualizations began to pro-

vide the basis or trope for analysing and comprehending transnational forms of aesthetic
production. Accounting for inequalities or power differentials in translation studies enlarged
the field and enhanced its profile, by adopting a mainly interdisciplinary approach, intersect-
ing with a variety of disciplines such as postcolonial studies, cultural studies, anthropology,
philosophy, gender and queer studies. Translation ceased to be viewed as a mere restitution
of meaning and understood in its wide range of affect and complexity involved in encounters
between disparate cultures with at times conflicting worldviews and divergent historical
circumstances. The foundational pragmatic dimension of translation was now being en-
hanced by a metaphorical conceptualization of translation enabling the field to intersect with
various areas of scientific enquiry and providing concepts and theoretical frameworks for
elucidating questions related to transculturality and transnationalism. It is in the context of
this overlap between the pragmatic and the metaphorical in translation studies that issues of
power relations or inequalities can be better explored across historical space and time, from
the early encounter of pre-industrialized and industrialized worlds to our current context of
globalization. In the early stages of this encounter the practice of translation consisted mainly
in capturing and deciphering the worldview of the other, the ‘savage’, to know what makes
them tick, as it were, the better to control, dominate and assimilate them into the inevita-
ble long march of civilization. Although purporting to be a factual or literal translation of
dominated peoples’ culture for the sheer anthropological understanding of their humanity,
the affect or weight of inequality had dogged translation from the very beginning, as it was
never practised on an even playground, but rather pursued on the basis of an agenda with an
imperial devotion to a mission civilisatrice (civilizing mission). Hence, the caption ‘translation
and inequalities’, which might seem at first glance to be incongruous with the concept of
translation, is indeed a fundamental and apt way of perceiving the act of translating. As a gen-
eral rule, the need for translation often arises in contexts of unequal power relations, whether
political, economic, cultural or linguistic. Even among cognate languages ( European lan-
guages, for instance) there is often a power dynamic that underlies the need and practice of
translation. More often than not, translation flows from major to minor languages, as the
consequence of power imbalance imposes a translated (or translating) existence upon the
minority. This one-way traffic is even more relevant in contemporary globalization, which
is largely commandeered by the dominant economic and military global powers. It is said
that empires do not translate, and as clichés go, this statement is fundamental to understand-
ing the power dynamic inherent in the translation process. Lawrence Venuti discusses this
‘asymmetries of commerce and culture’ (1998: 160) and points out that ‘British and American
publishers  … translate much less’, and that ‘Translation undoubtedly occupies a marginal
position in Anglo-A merican cultures’. Venuti observes that ‘… among the foreign texts that
do enter English, writing in African, Asian, and South American languages attracts relatively
little interest from publishers…’ In other words, there is a vested economic and cultural in-
terest in translating from English rather than translating into English. This was especially the
case during colonization when Western classics, both religious and secular, were routinely
translated into indigenous languages, as strategies for religious proselytism and cultural as-
similation of the colonized. The reverse flow of translation, that is, from indigenous lan-
guages into the colonial language, was practised less only insofar as it was necessary to grasp
native languages and to comprehend native lore, customs, culture and mentality. The pre-
dominantly one-way flow of translation from the centre to the periphery has persisted in the
current context of globalization, following trends in global flows of commerce and culture.
According to Pascale Casanova, ‘It is in confronting the question of language that writers

57
Paul F. Bandia

from outlying spaces have the occasion to deploy the complete range of strategies through
which literary differences are affirmed’ (2004: 254).
The adoption of power relations in terms of inequalities as a paradigm in translation
studies, which was enabled by the ‘cultural turn’ discussed earlier, is fundamental to the
understanding of the pivotal role of translation in the current context of globalization. If
contemporary globalization is understood as the spread of an essentially Western world-
view or way of life, then translation has been instrumental in the global Westernization of
economies, languages and cultures. Although one might argue that translation has also been
antithetical to globalization, as dominated cultures strive to resist global homogeneity by
translating or representing themselves in ways that would ensure diversity or multiplicity.
This chapter therefore seeks to explore the impact of inequalities, whether political, eco-
nomic, social or cultural, on translation both locally and globally. Drawing from postco-
lonial and postmodern discourses, the intercession of translation between majoritarian and
minoritarian cultures or between the centres of power and their peripheries is discussed in
light of the power differentials that have characterized relations historically in the contexts of
colonization, postcolonialism, neo-colonialism and globalization. With respect to the latter,
particular emphasis is placed on the impact of inequalities on translation in the linguistic,
cultural and material exchanges between the global North and the global South.

Colonization and globalization

There is a close link between the spread of modern globalization and the historical fact of
colonization and empire. Globalization would not have been possible without colonization
understood as the ‘political and economic domination of a territory and its population(s)
by citizens of another territory’ (Mufwene 2013: 35). Indeed, contemporary globalization
is a corollary of European imperialism, as the acquisition of territory, control of natural
resources and the exploitation of other humans for cheap and profitable labour remain a
constant, tracing a direct link between imperial history and globalization. In fact, it is rather
interesting that

today’s key players in world-wide globalization include nations that evolved out of
settlement colonization—whereby Europeans resettled or founded new homelands in
territories outside Europe, eliminated or marginalized indigenous populations, de-
veloped highly glocalized economic systems that they intended to be better than in
the Europe they emigrated from and imposed socioeconomic world orders that reflect
‘occidentalism’ or westernization.
(2013: 35)

It is hardly a coincidence therefore that the United States of America is among today’s
leading agents of globalization ( hence the oft-mentioned ‘Americanization’ of the world,
particularly through the spread of American culture in music and other products of global
consumerism). It would be imprudent to misconstrue current trends in American world af-
fairs promoting an ‘America first’ policy as a desire to scale back America’s global influence.
In spite of its nefarious consequences, globalization has uplifted some populations particu-
larly in the global South enabling the growth or expansion of a middle class that is virtually
on par with its counterparts in the global North. On the flip side, some populations have
felt left behind, which has, in turn, brought to the surface some measures of nativism and
nationalism currently being exploited by right-wing groups in the global North. There is

58
 Translation and inequality

a rising anti-immigrant as well as an anti-g lobalization sentiment, although the forces of

global capital and commerce hold on stubbornly to the benefits of globalization. The United
States of America is still more defined by its global influence than by its current nativist
and isolationist policy. In fact, contemporary perception of English as the global language is
more intimately related to global Americanization. Furthermore, even global powers such
as the United Kingdom and France, though not settlement colonies, had built powerful
economic systems thanks to huge colonial empires which allowed them total control of the
natural resources of colonized nations until the m id-t wentieth century (Mufwene 2013). It
is perhaps not so far-fetched to surmise that Great Britain would rely heavily on its network
of Commonwealth nations, built largely through a history of colonization, once Brexit be-
comes a reality.
Colonization and empire resulted in the encounter of peoples, languages and cultures,
as well as the movement of capital and labour, often in a context of inequality whereby the
imperial language and culture are clearly dominant. The spatial distribution of major lan-
guages and cultures in today’s globalized world can be traced to the patterns of colonization.
This evolving ‘ linguascape’ (due to migration or relocation of people) often reflects the ten-
sion between the dominant colonial language and the marginalized indigenous languages.
Slavery, a corollary of colonization, saw the widespread relocation and forced migration of
people around the globe, the exploitation of labour for economic gains, in much the same
way as in current globalization where underprivileged peoples toil for mere pittance and
ultimately for the commercial and material benefit of the developed world. Western colo-
nization (whether trade, settlement or exploitation colonization) and empire had indeed set
the stage for the kind of power asymmetry evident in current globalization practices whether
economic, cultural or linguistic. This power imbalance explains somewhat the tendency to
resort to translation as a strategy for understanding or grasping the Other as practised by an-
thropologists, administrators and missionaries in colonial times. Translation was mainly uni-
directional, into the colonial language, as indigenous oral traditions and texts were the main
focus. There was a thirst for the exotic, understanding or grasping the mind of the native and
their worldview to ensure total control or better yet to hold them up as a mirror or contrast
to Western modernity. There were numerous instances of colonial administrators, without
much training in anthropology or linguistics, who dabbled in Sapir/ Whorfian linguistics
in other to make a link between what they perceived as the simplistic nature of indigenous
languages and the limitations of the native’s mind. Colonial language translations of indig-
enous texts were almost entirely for the benefit of the colonizer, who would soon revert to
translating colonial language texts into indigenous languages or the local lingua franca with
the aim of spreading Western thought and values among the natives as mentioned earlier.
Even here, as is often the case in contemporary globalization, there was a paternalistic need
to raise or bring the native into the fold of Western enlightenment and modernity. The desire
to shape the native into one’s own likeness recalls the homogenizing trend characteristic of
globalization, a trend that has been referred to as the ‘McDonaldization’ or Americanization
of the world. When translation was carried out in the dominated indigenous languages it
was often to ultimately achieve similar goals, as was the case of translations carried out by
missionaries for the sole purpose of religious conversion and evangelization or translations
done by linguists to alphabetize or give written form to a mainly oral literature (see Bandia
1998). Vicente Rafael (1993) discusses this phenomenon in the context of the early Spanish
colonization of the Philippines and the conversion to Christianity of the Tagalog speaking
society. Like today’s globalization, colonization fed into the myth of the language of empire,
all-powerful and far-reaching, which has established the inequality or asymmetry of power

59
Paul F. Bandia

at the basis of translation and intercultural communication between the global North and
the global South.

Postcolonialism and globalization

The creation of postcolonial independent states was often based on political systems that were
essentially clones or adaptations of the governing systems of the colonial metropole. For in-
stance, the partition of Africa among European colonialists, eventually led to the creation of
nation-states (in the manner of European nation-states) without regard for historically well-
defined boundaries of ethnicities, languages and cultures. These conditions were from the very
inception of the nation-states extremely favourable to outside encroachment and the continued
reliance on former colonizers. The ensuing confrontation of divergent ethnicities, languages
and cultures hampered successful governance and exposed the postcolonial nation-states to
political strife and economic stagnation. The postcolonial condition therefore is highly con-
ducive and permeable to the kind of globalization driven by the West, which has undoubtedly
taken advantage of the shortcomings and vulnerabilities of the postcolonial nation-states. The
postcolonial has become a metaphor for engaging the unequal power relations between the
global South and the global North. As an ideological construct, it seeks to represent the view
or the perspective of the dominated or oppressed or marginalized. Its relation with globaliza-
tion has to do with the strategic creation of postcolonial nation-states ensuring political and
economic dependency on the colonial metropole and subsequently constituting a marketplace
for all manners of commodification. The blatant consumerism in postcolonial societies often
contrasts with the high poverty levels of such societies, and the influx of goods or commodities
from the West is often inversely proportional to the capital available to such nations. It is as if
postcolonialism, as an enabler of globalization, was a sure way to tether newly independent
states to their European colonizers in order to maintain spheres of influence for political and
economic gains. France has often figured as a major example in this regard in terms of its re-
lations with its former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, which have remained
France’s chasse gardée or preserve, as it were. Recently there has been talk of some of these
former colonies in Africa abandoning the French-based CFA Franc—which was based on
the now defunct French currency and manipulated to ensure France’s economic grip on the
region—for an African regional currency pegged to the Euro.
Language is arguably the most impactful legacy of colonization. As aptly stated by Casa-
nova, ‘The question of linguistic difference is faced by all dominated writers, regardless of
their linguistic and literary distance from the center’ (2004: 255). The imposition and sub-
sequent adoption of colonial languages ensured the continued domination of postcolonial
societies by Western powers and laid the groundwork for the kind of dependency that has,
in turn, facilitated the spread of globalization. Just as colonialism placed the colony squarely
within the sphere of influence of the colonial power, so too did postcolonial arrangements
ensure the continued influence of such powers. A main characteristic of the relationship
between postcolonialism and globalization is the continued presence and influence of major
colonial languages across the globe. In other words, colonization and postcolonialism had
prepared the ground for the dominance or widespread use of colonial languages such as
English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. If English is today considered to be a global lan-
guage, it is because the language had been imposed on vast territories under British colonial
rule. Even for nations that were never within the British empire, either as exploitation or
as settlement colonies, the English language thrived initially as the language of trade, and

60
 Translation and inequality

eventually served as the lingua franca of vast territories without a British colonial past. It is
generally acknowledged that China is fast becoming a global power with an important geo-
political presence and influence in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, etc., and considered
a menace to the interests of former colonial powers. Yet, to emphasize the importance of
postcoloniality for the spread of hegemonic languages, it must be mentioned that the Chinese
language does not (yet?) carry the same weight as former colonial languages around the globe.
Chinese is not a former colonial language in Africa, for instance, and it would take a seismic
mutation of cultural and political relations for Chinese to compete with English or French
in a postcolonial country in Africa. There are now enclaves of Chinese speakers in parts of
Africa, but they are usually centred around Chinese business interests on the continent. It is
not surprising therefore that postcolonial theory, which seeks to represent the voice of the
subaltern, has made language one of its most important arenas for redressing the power im-
balance or inequalities between the global South and the global North. While some postco-
lonial writers have lamented the use of colonial languages for the expression of local art and
literature, others have claimed the colonial legacy and view the colonial language as part and
parcel of their national heritage. In his seminal book, Decolonising the Mind (1986), Ngugi wa
Thiong’o discusses the impediment of writing in a language that is not only foreign to one’s
native literary resources but also represents a psychic wound left behind by the colonial ex-
perience. In an attempt to enhance the literary status of his native language, he subsequently
wrote fiction in his native Gikuyu language and translated it into English, giving his native
language centre-stage and relegating English to a mere instrument of communication beyond
his Gikuyu-speaking readership. After bidding farewell to English he extolled the virtues of
translation as an age-old medium through which he will be able to continue conversation
with the wider public. More recently, in 2004, as Director of the International Center for
Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine, he reaffirmed his commit-
ment to translation and imagined ‘translation as conversation’, especially between and among
minority or marginalized language communities. This recalls what I had described elsewhere
as ‘ horizontal translation’ ( Bandia 2008), which is essentially having minority languages in
conversation without the impediment of inequalities that underlie the translation process in
situations of power imbalance. For the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe (1975) English today
is an African language insofar as the language has taken on an African inflection in line with
African idioms and expressions. In order to redress the inequality implied in the global status
of English vis-à-v is local African languages, the writer must subvert English transforming it
into a local idiom in a process at times referred to as glocalization (the localization of a global
language) that often involves translation marked by a power differential between cultures of
orality and writing. Alluding to this power differential, Casanova surmises that

It therefore became necessary to reinstate a paradoxical sort of bilingualism by making

it possible to be different linguistically and literarily, within a given language. In this
way a new idiom was created, through the littérarisation of oral practices (2004: 282). In
my foundational book Translation as Reparation (2008), I discuss extensively the linguistic
and sociocultural underpinnings of the littérarisation of African oral practices and the
mechanisms underlying the literary transmutation of African orature. Casanova notes
that, ‘In literary worlds in which the national language is initially endowed with only an
oral tradition, … literary capital—that is, the traditional forms associated with written
tradition—is almost non-existent.
(2004: 274)

61
Paul F. Bandia

The fundamental bias towards orality is at the basis of the unequal treatment of literary prod-
ucts emanating from either the global South or the global North.
In the context of globalization therefore postcolonial theory encourages an alignment
against linguistic neo-imperialism and the writing practice recalls translation as a strategy
to resist imperial domination and to redress power imbalance. In its various manifesta-
tions worldwide English becomes a lingua franca for those speakers intent on preserving
their national linguistic resources, as well as their identity in direct contrast to the glo-
balist neo-liberal discourse of monolingualism and uniformity. This indeed evokes the
concept of ‘panlingual globalization’ whose aim is to offset the drift towards global mono-
lingualism through English by the practice of ‘panlingual translation’ ( Pool 2013: 146). The
latter ensures the representation of minor languages and cultures in translating between
unequal entities. Panlingual translation asserts the power of vernacularity in situations of
linguistic globalization. This concept—which initially refers to automated efforts to pre-
serve low- density languages in order to favour linguistic diversity as a stalwart to global
unilingualism—is evocative of Pan-Africanism, a movement in the 1920s led by W. E. B.
DuBois and others, calling for solidarity and the democratic and egalitarian unification of
all peoples of African descent. The movement was uplifting and assertive of the identity
of all African people v is- à-vis the effects of slavery and colonialism. Similarly, panlingual
translation emphasizes the egalitarian treatment and respect for all languages and cultures.
It is an obstacle to wanton globalization and the drive towards global monolingualism.
Panlingual translation practice is not necessarily foreignizing, as the global language of
communication is not considered foreign in its context of usage, but rather glocalized and
infused with local inflections. In other words, unlike the foreignizing practice of bending
English in non- standard ways to capture non-Western aesthetics, panlingual translation
recognizes English as a local language with assertions or manifestations of local inflections
in a global language.
The revival of World Literature as an academic discipline can be related to the effects of
panlingual globalization, as a variety of literary traditions are being disseminated globally
with their specific cultural inflections. Although the predominant A nglo-American con-
ceptualization of World Literature is Anglocentric, with input from diverse linguistic back-
grounds read mainly in English translations, the issues of translation and inequalities have
surfaced prominently thanks to the influence of postcolonial theory which is generally in-
terested in linguistic and cultural diversity. The sub-field of postcolonial translation theory
has highlighted the importance of difference and issues of translation for a world literature in
English that must account for the specificities of languages and cultures expressed in a global
language. Postcolonial theory and practice resist the simple linear accounts of globalization
which hold that the world is becoming smaller and more uniform, and that we are headed
towards a kind of monolingualism of English. According to Appadurai ‘… as rapidly as forces
from various metropolises are brought into new societies they tend to become indigenized
in one way or another’ (1996: 29). Globalization is therefore non-l inear and thrives on the
tensions between sameness and difference, the hallmark of postcoloniality which is mobi-
lized to assert subaltern identity within a globalized cultural and linguistic landscape. The
intersection of postcolonialism and globalization can therefore be understood in terms of
the interaction of sameness and difference, which generates hybridity and multiplicity. This
interaction is simultaneously globalizing and localizing, hence the characterization of non-
linear globalization as ‘glocalization’ mentioned earlier. Glocalization makes possible the
practice of panlingual translation, which in effect accounts for minority representations in
our increasingly globalized world.

62
 Translation and inequality

Neo-colonialism and globalization

In tracing the historical relations between the global South and the global North, neo-
colonialism can be construed as a corollary of globalization, seen as somehow related as
both concepts coincide in contemporary accounts about North- South relations. In other
words, neo- colonialism is often the specific manifestation of globalization in formerly colo-
nized territories. Although globalization often involves three familiar dimensions—namely,
economic, cultural and political—the primary point of convergence with neo- colonialism
seems to be economic, as it conveys the sense of commodification of everything else includ-
ing the other two dimensions (culture and politics). Whereas postcolonial relations catered
to the will of the colonial metropole to maintain total control (albeit a kind of remote
control)—economic, cultural, political and military—of the colonies, neo-colonialism seems
mainly preoccupied with safeguarding the economic interests of the colonial metropole.
Current interventions by the metropole such as demanding and orchestrating regime change,
maintaining a military presence and engaging in joint military exercises in the postcolony are
control mechanisms to ensure protection for Western interests and economic capital. Rapid
globalization or what has been referred to as ‘ banal globalization’ (that is, ‘the everyday
textual realization of global capitalism’ (Coupland 2013: 14) has unleashed competing forces
among developed nations who have, in turn, sought to maintain their former colonies as eco-
nomic spheres of influence (a kind of chasse-gardée). This has defined or reduced North-South
relations to an even narrower purpose of exploitation or commodification of inequalities or
the gap between the developed and the underdeveloped world. As remarked by Young, ‘…
by the end of the nineteenth century, imperialism formed a global system through physical
occupation of most inhabited territory on earth, together with often coercive practices of
trade’ (2015: 118). He notes however that, ‘In the twentieth century, decolonization into
a world of separate states appeared to break up this globalized imperial world back into its
constituent parts’ (2015: 118). Young goes on to cite Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of
the newly independent Ghana, who in 1965 decried the fact that

he and his fellow politicians had achieved liberation and sovereignty for Ghana in 1957
only to discover that they remained subject to larger economic forces, markets, and
multinational companies that controlled the prices of local crops, the rate of investment,
and the ability to borrow.
(Nkrumah 1965, cited in Young 2015: 118)

As it so happened, these powers were controlled by the very same countries that had formerly
been colonial rulers. It was Nkrumah who had labelled this condition of financial control
by the big foreign powers ‘neo-colonialism’. Nkrumah was actually describing a new order
that has been referred to as ‘American’ or ‘ informal’ imperialism without colonies, exerting
control over independent nations through economic and financial means ( Young 2015: 118).
After the end of the Cold War globalization became synonymous with the spread of unbri-
dled capitalism.
The relationship between neo-colonialism and globalization opens up other avenues for
elucidating translation in the context of power differential or inequality. In the context of
neo- colonialism the ‘postcolony’ (Mbembe 2001) becomes the main focus in terms of the
dynamics of class and power, as well as the relations with the outside world. Although post-
colonies are indeed former colonies, in the current context of globalization they can be dis-
tinguished into three main categories: ‘postcolonies’ that are called such simply because they

63
Paul F. Bandia

were once colonies, perhaps due to some historical oddities, like Sweden making annual pay-
ment to the King until 1983 for his loss of the island of Guadeloupe (1813–1814); ‘settler post-
colonies’ that are simply former settler colonies; and ‘ “dysfunctional” postcolonies’ described
as such because they have not been able to rid themselves of colonial domination and men-
tality and have been unable to transcend the effect of colonization and to establish a stable,
functioning government and society ( Young 2015: 136–137). While the settler postcolonies
such as the United States of America, Australia and Canada (though guilt-r idden regarding
the unfair treatment of indigenous peoples) have managed to create modern states owing to
their ancestral relationship to Europe, the dysfunctional postcolonies which Mbembe locates
in Sub- Saharan Africa in particular are characterized by their specific dysfunction modes of
domination and violence. Through their institutions and bureaucracies these states impose
an authoritarian rule and are rife with corruption obliging the citizenry to participate in a
carnivalesque performance of the state for survival (Mbembe 2001). There is a forced or hyp-
ocritical relation of conviviality (Mbembe 2001: 110) between the authority and the people,
a kind of spectacle or farcical theatre whereby opposition is marginalized or contained in a
carnivalesque inversion that plays into a general state of stupor, impassivity or what Mbembe
refers to as ‘zombification’ (2001). And when opposition or resistance does occur it is met
with an unparalleled level of violence and bloodshed. These ‘ kleptocracies’ ( Young 2015:
145) are known for their high level of corruption and appropriation of wealth by the ruling
elite driven by what the French historian Jean-François Bayart has referred to as ‘the politics
of the belly’ ( Bayart 1993). An elaborate scheme is set up consisting of a culture of patronage,
palm-greasing and public ostentation in order to enhance the appeal yet terror of the state,
often without regard for human rights and criminal accountability. The dynamics of class
and power rests on the exploitation of the masses by the elite. The significance of dysfunc-
tional postcolonies in contemporary globalization is that they are often an open market and
are conducive to the spread of globalized linguistic, cultural and economic practices. They
also showcase drastic inequalities within the state itself, as well as between the global South
and the global North.
While some settler postcolonies have themselves become the leading agents of global-
ization, assuming the mantle of today’s imperial power (the United States of America), the
dysfunctional postcolonies have for the most part remained marginalized and confined to
the receiving end of globalization. Owing to inequalities within the postcolony itself, the
tendency has been one of consumerism of anything Western and a desire for flight towards
the West. For the masses, consumerism is driven by the mere desire to overcome the dire
effects of poverty, while for the elite it is the condition diagnosed as colonial mentality, based
on the reverence for anything Western that draws them closer to a mimicry of their former
colonial masters. The dysfunctional postcolonies have endured a considerable flight of their
populations towards greener pastures in the West, as well as the flight of capital towards
the West by the corrupt elite seeking to hide their ill-gotten wealth in Western financial
institutions and businesses. In many dysfunctional postcolonies today the masses depend on
financial remittance sent by family members living abroad in Western metropolises. The
circulation of these remittances has been largely enabled by the other important dimension
of globalization, which is the spread of modern technology such as the internet and the
easy access to cell phones. While the elite collaborate with supranational institutions such
as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund ( IMF) to cope with the i ll- effects
of corruption and mismanagement by the elite, the masses bear the brunt of the rigorous
preconditions imposed by these supranational institutions such as massive layoffs and un-
employment, drastic reduction in salaries, as well as reduced revenues from cash crops and

64
 Translation and inequality

natural resources whose prices and conditions for production are now being determined un-
favourably by global market forces. There is also the corrupt exploitation of natural resources
such as timber and precious minerals often lead by Western corporations and destined for
the Western market in order to line the pockets of the corrupt elite and their Western coun-
terparts. This anthropocentric treatment of the environment is a nefarious consequence of
globalization, which has been particularly damaging to postcolonial societies. This servile
economic globalization is often accompanied by forces that undermine the local linguistic
and cultural heritage. Hence the spread of former colonial languages to the detriment of
indigenous languages and the undermining of the local culture in favour of a globalized
culture, particularly among the youth.
These and other effects of globalization are taken up in contemporary postcolonial litera-
ture dealing more specifically with the postcolony. It is often in this context that the rapport
between translation and power imbalance is discussed. The postcolony is characterized by
pluralism in language, culture and in its ethnoscapes (ethnic pluralism). It is the microscope
into the superdiversity that is currently associated with globalization. The demographic mo-
bility engendered by global forces has resulted in a kind of global multilingualism, which is
in sharp contrast to the kind of global homogenization often espoused by critics of the Amer-
icanization of the world. Postcolonial literature of or about the postcolony highlights the
writing strategies of resistance often applied to counter the homogenizing effect of globaliza-
tion. Local linguistic forms are resemioticized and stylized in the global language taking on
new ideological values that contrast with early postcolonial writings. A fitting example of this
practice can be found in the fiction of the Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who
has become something of a global phenomenon. Following Chinua Achebe’s well-k nown
position regarding diversity within the English language, one can point to her novel, Amer-
icanah (2013), as an example of writing that submits the global language to a local treatment
that is indeed glocalized. Americanah blends a spectrum of Englishes including Nigerian,
British, American and other global varieties, as well as non-l iterate varieties such as pidgin
English and the broken English spoken by non-A nglophone African immigrants struggling
to eke out a living in American inner cities. The novel displays the multilingual currents
within English itself and requires a reading process that is at once local and transnational.

‘Emeka say his mother tell him if he marry American, she kill herself,’ Aisha said.
‘That’s not good.’
‘But me, I am African.’
‘So maybe she won’t kill herself if he marries you.’
Aisha looked blankly at her. ‘Your boyfriend mother want him to marry you?’ …
‘Yes. She keeps asking us when we will get married.’ …
‘Ah!’ Aisha said, in well-meaning envy. …
‘You talk Igbo to Chijioke. He listen to you’, Aisha said.
‘You talk Igbo?’
‘Of course I speak Igbo’, Ifemelu said, defensive, wondering if Aisha was again suggest-
ing that America had changed her.
(2013: 48–49)

There is a sense of multiplicity and heterogeneity that evolves into a kind of creolization of
language. This creolization recalls translation as a writing strategy for postcolonial writers
who champion linguistic and cultural hybridity in the assertion of discourses of differenti-
ation in an increasingly globalized world. The writing of the postcolony is transglocalized,

65
Paul F. Bandia

so to speak, to ensure the simultaneous globalization and localization or preservation of a

minor literature. Transglocalization is made possible through a panligual translation practice.
In dealing with translation in the context of power imbalance or inequality postcoloniality
is the nucleus of most subaltern literatures and its discourses of differentiation should not be
lost in translation in the global marketplace.

Translation and inequality: a brief survey of current research

How translation deals with issues related to power imbalance or inequality has been broached
in several disciplines including translation Studies. The study of translation and inequalities
is highly interdisciplinary drawing theoretical concepts and methodology from a variety of
fields, including anthropology, political science, history, philosophy and cultural studies. As
mentioned earlier, the cultural turn in translation studies had a major impact on the disci-
pline by moving its concerns beyond conceptual and practical issues having to do mainly
with the basic Eurocentric paradigm of fidelity and linguistic equivalency. Current transla-
tion discourse is heavily steeped in this desire to conceive translation as much more than the
mere restitution of meaning between stable language cultures without ideological input. It
goes without saying that in our current context of globalization some languages are more
equal than others and movement between the languages is not always performed on a level
playing ground. The asymmetric relations of power among nations have been translated
into unequal or uneven relations between languages. Global and transnational languages
such as English, French and Spanish are dominant within global communication systems
and networks, and minority languages and cultures seek representation through translation
onto the world stage. Chief among the paradigms that have opened up translation studies to
account for power differentials is postcolonial theory, which has a very broad reach, as it deals
with the inequality between the global South and the global North, articulates non-Western
perspectives, and ‘ identifies with other political practices that reverse customary power rela-
tions in the name of women, the working class, or even the earth itself ’ ( Young 2015: 151),
including sexual orientation and indigenous rights. Postcolonial translation studies have been
front and centre in the quest for an ethical dimension to translation theory and practice in
the postmodern era (or what some prefer to refer to as late modernity). Some of the earliest
contributions to this endeavour have been Talal Asad’s foundational essay, ‘The Concept
of Cultural Translation in British Social Anthropology’ (1986), which laid the framework
for the cross-l inguistic analysis of non-Western language cultures. Homi Bhabha’s seminal
book The Location of Culture (2004) has been highly influential in defining the concepts of
hybridity, multiplicity, heterogeneity, mimesis, and cultural translation, which have proven
to be fundamental to the understanding of translation and its relation to power. Robert J.
C. Young’s Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Culture, Theory and Race (1995) is also fundamental
in relating translation to issues of empire and postcolonialism. These references by scholars
from varied academic backgrounds attest to the heightened interest in translation studies as
a forum for elucidating the encounter between disparate cultures, histories and civilizations,
as well as for mapping and exploring the inequalities underlying relations of power in trans-
national transactions.
Other studies from outside the specific field of translation studies that have proven rele-
vant to issues of translation and inequality are Michel Foucault’s (1982) study of the relations
of power, Gramsci’s concept of the ‘marginalized’, Spivak’s use of the term ‘subaltern’ to
infer gender inequality, Jean-Jacques Lecercle’s the ‘remainder’ to define that which resists
translation and hence affirm ‘otherness’ (see Lecercle 1990); Deleuze’s and Guattari’s (1987)

66
 Translation and inequality

concept of the ‘rhizome’ to argue for multiple, horizontal rather than vertical relations; and
Louis-Jean Calvet’s ‘deterritorialization’/‘reterritorialization’ of language (see Calvet 1979).
These concepts have grown out of the intersection between philosophy and translation the-
ory, highlighting the interdisciplinary character of postcolonial approaches to translation
theory. A more direct postcolonial or minoritizing theorization of translation and its practice
can be seen in Salman Rushdie’s designation of postcolonial subjects as ‘translated men’, im-
plying a multilingual or multicultural existence by default (see Rushdie 2013); the Brazilian
poet Oswald de Andrade’s concept of ‘anthropophagy’ or cannibalism to refer to a translation
process likened to the consumption of European colonists by indigenous peoples metaphori-
cally as a mode of resistance (see Andrade 1982); Bandia’s conceptualization of translation in
postcolonial contexts as a form of ‘reparation’ and in migrant contexts as ‘translocation’; and
Jacques Derrida’s ‘monolingualism of the other’ that highlights relations of language in post-
colonial contexts. These are just a sampling of the wealth of knowledge that has been inspired
by the input of postcoloniality in the field of translation studies. There are still quite a few
relevant studies from outside the field such as Pascale Casanova’s classic The World Republic of
Letters (2004), which discusses the plight of minority languages and cultures and the role of
translation in the representation of minority literatures in the global literary space and Gisèle
Sapiro’s La sociologie de la littérature (2014) in which the author discusses issues related to trans-
lation and the global circulation and publishing of literature.
More specific to the field of translation studies are early publications such as Niranjana
Tejaswini’s Siting Translation (1992) about the need for retranslations of colonial history by
colonial subjects; Antoine Berman’s The Experience of the Foreign (‘L’Épreuve de l’étranger’)
(1992) which builds on the concepts of ‘ foreignization’/‘domestication’; Lawrence Venuti’s
The Scandals of Translation (1998), which highlights the issues of fluency and transparency in
relation to accounting for difference in translation; Vicente Rafael’s Contracting Colonialism
(1993), mentioned earlier, which discusses the role of translation and forms of resistance
during the Christian conversion of the Philippines; and Emily Apter’s The Translation Zone
(2005) that pushes the limits of translation studies by expanding its role in comparative
literature in dealing with issues of postcoloniality and transculturality. Maria Tymoczko’s
Translation in a Postcolonial Context (1999) is foundational as it presents Ireland as a case study
for exploring postcoloniality in translation. Michael Cronin’s Translation and Globalization
(2003) deals more squarely with the topic at hand, as it discusses translation in relation to the
linguistic and cultural flows in the context of globalization. Paul Bandia’s Translation as Rep-
aration (2008) has been quite influential in elucidating the conceptualization of translation in
postcolonial Africa. There have been quite a few edited volumes such as Venuti’s special issue
of The Translator journal entitled ‘Translation & Minority’ (1998) with a collection of articles
on postcolonial, gender and queer literatures; Bassnett and Trivedi, Postcolonial Translation
Theory and Practice (1999), one of the early volumes that set the stage for studying postcolo-
nialism in translation studies; Tymoczko’s and Gentzler’s Translation and Power (2002) with
contributions covering a wide range of scenarios where power relations play a vital role in
translation matters; and Theo Herman’s Translating Others (2006) published in two volumes
including a wide range of contributions about translation as representation of otherness. It
is indeed fascinating to see how much work has been done in translation studies in relation
to issues of power differential or imbalance. It is as if the cultural turn in translation studies
did not only move the field away from a mainly linguistic approach, but had also opened up
new avenues for studying translation phenomena beyond the familiar Eurocentric paradigms.
There are obviously many more studies that are relevant to the topic, and many more to come
in this growing field, especially when the theme of translation and inequalities is elevated or

67
Paul F. Bandia

updated to keep track of the inevitable transformations resulting from an ever- expanding and
volatile globalization movement.

Conclusion
Far from being a mere instrument of communication in the context of globalization, trans-
lation exposes the far-reaching implications of globalization with its concomitant privileges
and inequalities. Translation lays bare the inequities of globalization by demonstrating the
struggles of minoritizing languages and cultures to carve space for themselves within the
global marketplace. The mechanisms set forth to assert minoritized identities and positions
in the global space are reminiscent of the kind of strategies that have been developed and
deployed in postcolonial contexts. These mechanisms which have been characterized as strat-
egies of resistance in postcolonial theory take on a more proactive dimension in the current
phase of globalization as the context is broader and the implementation more diffuse than it
would be within the confines of a specific colonial geography under the aegis of an imperi-
alist power. A more proactive engagement means that, rather than retreating into a nativist
position, minoritized cultures embrace the global language, for instance, but submit it to
a process of acculturation in order to have a voice on the global stage. Casanova alludes to
this phenomenon when she describes the following strategies used by writers from minority
cultures:

The attempts by writers on the periphery to deal with distance and decentering—notions
that are subsumed here under the generic term ‘translation’ which includes adoption of
a dominant language, self-t ranslation, construction of a dual body of work by means of
translation back and forth between two languages, creation and promotion of a national
and/or popular language, development of a new writing, and symbiotic merger of two
languages….
(2004: 257–258)

This process of cultural affirmation is akin to translation insofar as minoritized societies

translate themselves in the global language in terms that are at once assertive of their identity
and comprehensible to the global community. In this respect, translation has been instru-
mental in redressing the inequalities brought forth by the power differential inherent to
globalization. The concept of transglocalization discussed in this chapter seeks to encapsulate
the desire to assert or retain the local within the global in an effort to resist or contain the
effects of globalization.

Further reading
Casanova, P. (2004) The World Republic of Letters. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
The book covers the topic in relation to the power imbalance in the global literary market. Chapters 5
‘From Internationalism to Globalization’ and 9 ‘The Tragedy of Translated Men’ bring together mi-
nority literatures, translation and power differentials in very pertinent ways.
Cronin, M. (2003) Translation and Globalization. London: Routledge.
This is one of the rare books that deal with translation in the context of globalization. Chapter  5
‘Translation and Minority Languages in a global setting’, is of particular relevance to issues related to
translation and inequality.
Tymoczko, M. and Gentzler, E. (2002) Translation and Power. Amherst and Boston, MA: University of
Massachusetts Press.

68
 Translation and inequality

The collection of essays emphasizes the ideological and political underpinnings of translation, and
showcases a variety of cultural and social contexts where translation addresses issues of inequalities.
Venuti, L. (1998) The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. New York: Routledge.
The entire book addresses issues of inequality in translation, and Chapter  8 ‘Globalization’ deals
squarely with the various asymmetries and power dynamics at play with respect to translation in the
global economy.
Young, R. J. C. (2015) Empire, Colony, Postcolony. Sussex: Wiley Blackwell.
This book provides clear definitions and discussions of some of the major concepts in history from
imperial to postcolonial times, highlighting the tensions between dominant and dominated peoples.
Chapter 10 ‘Neo- Colonialism, Globalization, Planetarity’ discusses contemporary issues of inequality
that are relevant to translation.

References
Achebe, C. (1975) ‘The African Writer and the English Language’, in Achebe, C. (ed.), Morning Yet on
Creation Day. Essays. London: Heinemann, pp. 55–62.
Andrade, O. (1982) Anthropophagies. Trans. J. Thiériot. Paris: Flammarion.
Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
Apter, E. (2005) The Translation Zone. A New Comparative Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Apter, E. (2013) Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability. London and New York: Verso.
Asad, T. (1986) ‘The Concept of Cultural Translation in British Social Anthropology’, in Clifford, J.
and Marcus, G. E. (eds.), Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, pp. 141–164.
Bandia, P. F. (1998) ‘African Tradition. Translation in Sub- Saharan Africa’, in Baker, M. (ed.), Encyclo-
pedia of Translation Studies. London: Routledge, pp. 295–305.
Bandia, P. F. (2008) Translation as Reparation: Writing and Translation in Postcolonial Africa. Manchester:
St. Jerome Publishing/London and New York: Routledge (2014).
Bassnett, S. and Lefevere, A. (eds.) (1990) Translation, History, and Culture. London and New York:
Pinter Publishers.
Bassnett, S. and Trivedi, H. (eds.) (1999) Postcolonial Translation Theory and Practice. London and New
York: Routledge.
Bayart, J.-F. (1993) The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly. Trans. M. Harper, C. Harison, and
E. Harison. London: Longman.
Berman, A. (1992) The Experience of the Foreign. Culture and Translation in Romantic Germany. Trans.
S. Heyvaert. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Bhabha, H. (2004) The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge.
Calvet, L.-J. (1979) Linguistique et colonialisme. Petit traité de glottophagie. Paris: Petite Bibliothèque Payot.
Cassin, B. (ed.) (2014) Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon. Trans. and edited by E. Apter,
J. Lezra, and M. Wood. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Chimamanda, N. A. (2013) Americanah. New York: Random House.
Coupland, N. (2013) ‘Introduction: Sociolinguistics in the Global Era’, in Coupland, N. (ed.), The
Handbook of Language and Globalization, Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 1–27.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. B. Mas-
sumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Foucault, M. (1982) ‘The Subject and Power’, Critical Inquiry, 8(4), pp. 777–795.
Herman, T. (ed.) (2006) Translating Others. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.
Lecercle, J. (1990) The Violence of Language. London and New York: Routledge.
Mbembe, A. (2001) On the Postcolony. Trans. A. M. Berret. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Mufwene, S. S. (2013) ‘Globalization, Global English, and World English(es): Myths and Facts’, in
Coupland, N. (ed.), The Handbook of Language and Globalization. Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 31–55.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1986) Decolonising the Mind. The Politics of Language in African Literature. London:
James Currey Ltd.
Pool, J. (2013) ‘Panlingual Globalization’, in Coupland, N. (ed.), The Handbook of Language and Global-
ization. Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 142–161.

69
Paul F. Bandia

Rafael, V. (1993) Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society under Early
Spanish Rule. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.
Rushdie, S. (2013) Imaginary Homelands. Essays and Criticisms 1981–1991. New York: Odyssey Editions.
Sapiro, G. (2014) The French Writers’ War 1940–1953. Trans. V. D. Anderson and D. Cohn. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
Tejaswini, N. (1992) Siting Translation. History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context. Berkeley, Los
Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press.
Tymoczko, M. (1999) Translation in a Postcolonial Context. Early Irish Literature in English Translation.
London and New York: Routledge.
Venuti, L. (ed.) (1998) Translation and Minority. Special issue of The Translator 4 (2).
Young, R. J. C. (1995) Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Culture, Theory and Race. London: Routledge.
Young, R. J. C. (2015) Empire, Colony, Postcolony. Sussex: Wiley Blackwell.

70
 5
Translation and geography
The globe and the Western
spatial imagination

Federico Italiano

Introduction
This chapter explores the relationship between translation and geography from a global-
ization perspective. Drawing on Denis Cosgrove (2001) and Peter Sloterdijk (2011, 2013)
among others, it will first discuss the translational implications of a spherical understanding
of Earth, tracing to what extent spatial, geometrical and cartographical notions of ‘globe’
interconnected and determined translation practices that fuelled and provoked geographic
exploration, colonization and knowledge circulation. Second, it will address Edward W.
Said’s seminal concept of ‘ imaginative geographies’ and how it prepared the field for what
I call ‘geography of translation,’ that is, the question of where translation happens. Build-
ing on the works of Homi K. Bhabha (2005 [1994]), Emily Apter (2006) and Sherry Simon
(2012) among others, I will touch on the importance of a spatially and geo- critically con-
scious discussion of translation. More specifically, I will examine some leading concepts in
cultural studies that imply a geographical dimension in translation, such as Chakrabarty’s
‘rough translation’ (2000), Emily Apter’s ‘translation zone’ and ‘translational transnational-
ism’ (2006) and ‘planetarity’ as first introduced by Spivak (2003) and later re-actualized by
Amy J. Elias and Christian Moraru (2015). Third, I will address what I call the ‘translation of
geographies’ (Italiano 2016) that is the question of how and to what extent spatial and geo-
graphical imaginations have been translated across languages, media and epochs.

610 CE: translating the globe

In his genealogy of the Western spatial imagination, Cosgrove asserts that geography ‘ lays
particular claims to the globe,’ since its task, by definition, consists in describing the face of
the Earth (Cosgrove 2001: ix), which has indeed the form of a globe. As he explains, three
words in English usually designate the planet on which we live: Earth, World and Globe.
While ‘Earth,’ denoting ‘rootedness, nurture, and welling for living things,’ is something
environmental rather than spatial, the word ‘World,’ implying cognition, agency and mobil-
ity, has more of a social, political and spatial meaning (ibid.: 7). However, neither earth not
world, states Cosgrove, denote the spatiality implied by the term ‘Globe’:

71
Federico Italiano

Globe associates the planet with the abstract form of spherical geometry, emphasizing vol-
ume and surface over material constitution or territorial organization. Unlike the earth and
the world, the globe is distanciated as a concept and image rather than directly touched or
experienced. As a globe, the planet is geometrically constructed, its contingency reduced to a
surface pattern of lines and shapes. Thus the globe is visual and graphic rather than experien-
tial or textual. As a spherical object, the globe of Earth can be associated with other spheres,
such as the crystalline spheres that revolved in the Ptolemaic planetary system or crafted by
the fortuneteller. The form of the globe finds anthropomorphic expression in the human eye
or the female breast, generating a poetics of form that connects the microcosm of a gendered
human body to the macrocosm of the planetary globe (Cosgrove 2001: 7– 8).
In this poetics of the globe delineated by Cosgrove, we see the pivotal connection be-
tween globalization, geography and translation. Beginning with the sphaira (the shell, the
sphere) of the Greeks, which translated ontology into geometry and explained the cosmos
with concentric, transparent spheres, we observe a complex transition process shaping the
whole history of the Western spatial imagination: the ‘geometrization of space’ ( Koyré 1965:
6). According to Koyré, the main output of this transitional and translational process was the
destruction of the ancient cosmos of the Greeks, considered as a finite and hierarchically or-
dered whole, and the substitution of the ‘ homogeneous and abstract – however now consid-
ered as real – d imension space of the Euclidean geometry for the concrete and differentiated
place-continuum of pre- Galilean physics and astronomy’ ( Koyré 1965: 6).
The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk in his comprehensive and ambitious trilogy
on the idea of the sphere analyses this progressive rationalization of space – f rom Plato and
Aristotle’s geometrization of heavens to the Early Modern Euclidean revolution – offering
an intriguing philosophical reflection on globalization. For him, globalization is, at its core,
the reconstruction on planetary scale of an artificial sphere, in order to compensate the loss
of the cosmic spheres. His ‘theory of spheres’ can be considered as ‘a morphological tool’
for understanding ‘the exodus of the human being, from the primitive symbiosis to world-
historical action in empires and global systems, as an almost coherent history of extraversion’
(Sloterdijk 2011: 67).
In this history of progressive ‘extraversion,’ Sloterdijk individuates three main forms of
globalization that have followed in European thought (Sloterdijk 2013: 9–10). The first form
was the ‘cosmic-Uranian,’ that is, the celestial globalization of ancient physics, in which
the entire cosmos assumes the appearance of a sphere or of concentric series of spheres. The
‘terrestrial globalization’ (ibid.: 9), the second form, which started with Columbus’s western
route to India and the consequential collapse of the three-continent image of the Earth, is the
result of the crisis of the Aristotelian model. The outcome of this modern crisis leads, in the
second half of the twentieth century, to the third and last form of globalization, generated by
the accelerated circulation of images in the electronic network, which is usually ‘ indicated by
the concept, as familiar as it is opaque, of Virtuality’ (Sloterdijk 2011: 66).
This temporalization’s attempt by Sloterdijk is plausible and convincing. Nevertheless, the
process of translation that led to the terrestrial globalization began much earlier. The tran-
sition of the globe from a pure geometric and symbolic form into a practical tool of under-
standing the spatial constitution of our planet was already part of the early Christendom and
its translational culture, as a little passage from Jonas’s Vita Columbani (c. 643 CE) shows us.
In Translation and Globalization (2003), Michael Cronin begins the chapter on the geography
of translation (a concept on which I will later expand) with an exquisite anecdote about the
Irish Monk Columbanus, who was visited by an angel in Bregenz, Austria, after having been
expelled in 610 CE from Luxeuil in Burgundy, a monastery he himself had established. The

72
 Translation and geography

angel of the Lord showed ‘ him in a little circle the structure of the world [mundi compa-
gem] just as the circle of the universe is usually drawn with a pen in a book’ (cited in Cronin
2003: 76), eager to persuade him that the whole world stood open to him and his mission.
Columbanus, who interpreted this vision as a sign to remain in Bregenz ‘until the way to
Italy was clear,’ established afterwards in Bobbio, Northern Italy, a monastery that became
one of the most important sites for translation and knowledge circulation in early mediaeval
Europe. For Cronin, this passage from Jonas’s Vita Columbani describes one of the founding
moments in the history of translation, since it links the figure of the globe and the activity
of translation processes.
Columbanus’s vision of the global seems less prescience than recognition, a mirror held
up to his own wandering as an Irish peregrinus in the Europe of his time. That this peregrinatio
is shadowed by the practice of translation hints at the enduring nature of a connection that is
sometimes annexed to the post-modern alone (Cronin 2003: 76).
But there is more than this. The circle shown by the angel to Columbanus is nothing less
than a T- O map, that is, an orbis terrarum presented as a circle divided into three portions by
the letter T, first described in the Etymologiae (c. 600– 625) by Isidore of Seville. As Patrick
Gautier Dalché explains, commenting on this very passage of the Vita Columbani, this circle
had not only a symbolic value, but it was ‘conceived as having a “practical” purpose,’ helping
to ‘situate the points of departure and arrival for a journey and to think out its stages’ ( Dalché
2015: 145–148). In this sense, this essential mappa mundi, which from the Late Antiquity on-
wards translated the spherical imagination of the Earth into a bi- dimensional, cartographic
imagine, was not anymore just a symbolic representation of the world’s perfect roundness,
but a device for spiritual and physical orientation. Jonas’s account of Columbanus’s vision can
be thus considered one of the first statements on the interrelatedness between the concept
of globe, geographical imagination and the activity of translation. It affirms that translation
is always geographically anchored and thus involved, as an integral part of it, in the global
circulation of knowledge.

1492: imaginative geographies

In 1492 two men had very similar plans on how to reach Asia from Europe, namely setting
sail westward towards Japan and China, that is, towards Marco Polo’s Cipango and Cathay.
Martin Behaim constructed in Nurnberg his famous globe, based on a map by Toscanelli,
the same map on which Columbus conceived his western route to the West Indies. Both the
German globe-maker and the Genoese navigator wanted to lead a voyage not to demonstrate
that the Earth is round – this was clear at least since Eratosthenes –, but to show that the
westward route was the most reliable and convenient way for reaching China. Only one of
them did the journey, setting in motion what Sloterdijk calls the ‘terrestrial globalization,’
which began, as he puts it, with the emancipation of the Occident from its ‘ immemorial
solar-mythological orientation towards the East’ (Sloterdijk 2013: 33).
With the discovery of a western continent, he had succeeded in denying the mythical-
metaphysical priority of the Orient. Since then, we have no longer been returning to the
‘source’ or the point of sunrise, but rather moving progressively with the sun without home-
sickness […] After the Portuguese seafarers from the mid-fifteenth century on had broken
the magical inhibition obstructing the westward gaze with the Pillars of Hercules, Colum-
bus’s voyage gave the final signal for the ‘disorientation’ of the European interests. Only
this ‘revolutionary’ de-Easting could bring about the emergence of the neo-Indian dual
continent that would be called ‘America.’ It alone is the reason why for half a millennium,

73
Federico Italiano

the cultural and topological meaning of globalization has always also meant ‘Westing’ and
‘Westernization’ (Sloterdijk 2013: 33–34).
Interesting enough, this foundational episode of the colonial, Western globalization be-
gins with a gigantic translation failure. Columbus, in fact, signed up as a translator and
interpreter for his first voyage a converso Jew, Luis de Torres, who served to the Governor of
Murcia and was known for his profound knowledge of Hebrew, Chaldean and Arabic, be-
sides, of course, Latin, Spanish and Portuguese (Columbus 2006: 122; Italiano 2016). Since
the Genoese explorer was completely convinced of sailing westward to Asia, he thought that
Torres’s versatility in Arabic and Hebrew could help him to communicate with the people he
would encounter or at least with Jewish or A rab- speaking merchants who lived there, as told
in The Travels of Marco Polo (Italiano 2016: 67). Obviously, Columbus strategy was doomed
to fail and he himself understood that the only way to solve the translation problem was to
captivate the natives, ship them to Spain and teach them Spanish (ibid.).
This episode is not only paradigmatic for the cultural negotiations that shaped the ter-
restrial globalization at the beginning of the modern era, but shows an important and still
decisive aspect in the interconnection between translation, geography and globalization:
translation is always located somewhere. However, the location of translation is never simply
the place where the transfer happens – the apartment of the translator, the site of a publishing
house, the cabin of the interpreter, the street of an interchange between tourists and local in-
habitants, or the aseptic desk of a costumes officer. Translation is also and foremost located in
the minds of the people involved in the translation process. Thus, every translation depends
on our geographical imagination and on how translators and translation agents relate to these
spatial constructions.
While not addressing specifically the question of translation, Said’s Orientalism (2003
[1978]) – which is not only a milestone in the foundation of the post- colonial literary the-
ory, but, in particular, one of the most important and influential books of geography of the
twentieth century – has taught us that we understand the Other and Otherness by means of
preordained spatial constructions.

It is perfectly possible to argue that some distinctive objects are made by the mind, and
that these objects, while appearing to exist objectively, have only a fictional reality. A
group of people living on a few acres of land will set up boundaries between their land
and its immediate surroundings and the territory beyond, which they call ‘the land of
the barbarians.’ In other words, this universal practice of designating in one’s mind a
familiar space which is ‘ours’ and an unfamiliar space beyond ‘ours’ which is ‘theirs’ is
a way of making geographical distinctions that can be entirely arbitrary. I use the word
‘arbitrary’ here because imaginative geography of the ‘our land – barbarian land’ variety
does not require that the barbarians acknowledge the distinction. It is enough for ‘us’ to
set up these boundaries in our own minds; ‘they’ become ‘they’ accordingly, and both
their territory and their mentality are designated as different from ‘ours.’ To a certain
extent modern and primitive societies seem thus to derive a sense of their identities
negatively.
(Said 2003: 54)

Geography begins with what Said calls the ‘the universal practice’ of distinguishing what
we call ‘our’ familiar space from an unfamiliar space we call ‘theirs’; therefore, geography
begins by making distinctions, differentiations, and separations that can be completely hap-
hazard and idiosyncratic. According to Ó Tuathail and Agnew, geography is never ‘a natural,

74
 Translation and geography

What I have tried to do is a kind of geographical inquiry into historical experience, and
I have kept in mind the idea that the earth is in effect one world, in which empty, unin-
habited spaces virtually do not exist. Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography,
none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography. That struggle is complex
and interesting because it is not only about soldiers and cannons but also about ideas,
about forms, about images and imaginings.
(Said 1993: 7)

Drawing on Said, the geographer and cultural theorist Derek Gregory states that our imag-
inative geographies are simultaneously global and local, since they do not simply articulate
the differences between places, producing images of here and there, ‘ but they also shape the
ways in which, from our particular perspectives, we conceive of connections and separation
between them’ (Gregory 1994: 203–204). In this sense, geography displays a strong perfor-
mative character; it ‘produces the effects it names. Its categories, codes and conventions shape
the practices of those who draw upon it, actively constituting its object’ (Gregory 2004: 183).
As a performative practice, geography is not just an archive of our imaginings, but some-
thing that produces spaces. By writing the Earth (­γεωγραφία, geo-graphia), geography per-
forms space. In a sense, geography’s performative character can be considered a form of
translation. As Edward Soja argues in his ground-breaking study on Postmodern Geographies,
‘every ambitious exercise in critical geographical description’ is a complex and often despair-
ing ‘translat[ion] into words of encompassing and politicized spatiality of social life’ (Soja
1989: 2). Drawing on Georg Simmel, Michel Foucault and Henri Lefebvre, Soja asserts that
‘space itself may be primordially given, but the organization, and meaning of space is a prod-
uct of social translation, transformation, and experience’ (Soja 1989: 79– 80).

Geography of translation
After the so- called ‘spatial turn’ in the cultural studies, prepared by philosophers, geogra-
phers and scholars such as Gaston Bachelard, Michel Foucault, Henri Lefebvre, Michel De
Certeau, Edward W. Said, David Harvey and Edward Soja, the paradigm of space has pene-
trated and shaped the theoretical reflection on translation too. From Homi K. Bhabha’s ‘third
space’ ( Rutherford 1990) through Emily Apter’s ‘translation zone’ (2006) and from Sherry
Simon’s Cities in Translation (2012) to Federico Italiano’s Translation and Geography (2016), the
relationship between space and translation processes has become an important and stable
research field in translation studies and translation theory tout court.
In Location of Culture, Bhabha defines (cultural) translation as a ‘staging of cultural differ-
ence’ that happens in a third space, that is, a space of hybridity that enables newness to enter

75
Federico Italiano

the world ( Bhabha 2005: 325). Bhabha’s employment of the concept of ‘space’ is of course
metaphorical, since he is not just referring to a spatial dimension but to a sort of modal-
ity, a way of articulating cultural productivity and communication. Nevertheless, his whole
thinking on liminality, interstices, in-between dimensions and third spaces is inextricably
linked to a specific locality of translation, to a determined place on Earth where translation
is happening, as he clearly points out in his preface to the edited collection Communicating in
the Third Space: ‘To hold, in common, a concept like third space,’ he writes ‘ is to begin to see
that thinking and writing are acts of translation. Third space, for me, is unthinkable outside
the locality of cultural translation’ ( Bhabha 2009: ix).
Less abstract than Bhabha’s ‘third space,’ Emily Apter’s spatial notion of ‘translation
zone’ (2006) bears still a metaphorical signature in its general intent. Nevertheless, with an
intellectual gesture similar to Edward Said’s, Emily Apter never tires to emphasize in her
investigation how crucial is spatial awareness and geography when discussing translation.
Drawing on Louise Mary Pratt’s concept of ‘contact zone’ developed in her influential
book Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (1992), Apter employs the term ‘zone’
to denote a ‘ broad intellectual topography that is neither the property of a single nation,
nor an amorphous condition associated with postnationalism, but rather a zone of critical
engagement that connects the ‘ l’ and the ‘n’ of transLation and transNation’ (Apter 2006:
5). The word ‘zone’ comes from Latin zona, meaning ‘geographical belt’ or ‘celestial zone,’
which, in turn, derives from Ancient Greek zōnē (­ζώνη), that is, the belt or girdle worn
by women at the hips. With ‘translation zone’ Emily Apter individuates thus a sort of
topographical belt, a spatial girdle, so to speak, by means of which the local and the global
are being held together in the translation process, where they co- exist ‘ in-translation’
(ibid.: 6). Considered this way, the translation zone applies to a variety of locations, such
as war scenes, news rooms, governmental institutions, transit areas, border controls and
several other kinds of heterotopias, where unresolved and conflictual translation processes
take place. In a much broader acceptation, the translation zone ‘ defines the epistemo-
logical interstices of politics, poetics, logic, cybernetics, linguistics, genetics, media, and
environment; its locomotion characterizes both psychic transference and technology of
information transfer’ (Apter 2006: 6). With this ‘zonal’ and topographical perspective on
translation, Apter actualizes the Bhabhian concept of locating culture and defines what she
calls ‘a location- conscious translational transnationalism’ (ibid.: 87). Moreover, she pleads
for a critical geography of translation that does not take for granted the ‘where’ of translation,
but that aims at investigating how the interaction between topography and technology shapes
the translation process.
A few years earlier, in 1998, Lawrence Venuti called for an ‘ethics of location’ in trans-
lation studies, denouncing how ‘the cultural authority and impact of translation vary ac-
cording to the position of a particular country in the geopolitical economy’ ( Venuti 1998:
186). Speaking from an ethnographical point of view, Michaela Wolf has also addressed the
relevance of the spatial dimension in translation studies, stating that translation is not only a
transfer between cultures but much more ‘a place where cultures merge and create new spaces’
( Wolf 2002: 186). A space where cultures merge, creating new spaces, new topographies, is
undoubtedly the city, with its porous and conflictual spatiality, where to orientate oneself
means also to recognize the divisions of the past, old liminalities, where to move across space
means moving across time and languages.
In Cities in Translation, Sherry Simon focusses on the urban intersections of language and
memory and, in particular, on the city space as a crucial agent within the translation process.
Completing her previous work dedicated to the translational dimensions of Montreal, her

76
 Translation and geography

book examines how linguistically divided cities such as Calcutta, Trieste, Barcelona and
again Simon’s hometown, Montreal, impose their ‘own patterns of interaction’ (ibid.: 2),
shaping and modulating the negotiation among languages. Drawing on Simon’s ground-
breaking work on the translational spatiality of the cities and on Apter’s concept of the
‘translation zone,’ Cronin and Simon have published a special issue of Translation Studies
on what they call ‘the translational city’ (Cronin and Simon 2014: 119). Focussing on five
cities in particular, Antwerp, Lviv, Istanbul, Tampere and New Orleans, this special issue
investigates the difference between translational and multilingual city and explores ‘ divided
and contested urban space, where language relations are regulated by the opposing forces of
coercion and resistance, of wilful indifference and engaged interconnection’ (Cronin and
Simon 2014: 120).

1884: rough translation

On October 13, 1884, at the International Meridian Conference in Washington, the rep-
resentatives of 26 nations agreed to recognize the Greenwich longitude as the prime me-
ridian, that is, the basis, the point zero of the international coordinate system. Before this
agreement  – one of the first global agreements in the history of mankind  – a lmost every
European country had its own prime meridian, usually the longitude running through the
observatory located in its respective capital. However, the exponential growth of the global
market, triggered by the new vapour- steamed technology of transport, such as trains and
transoceanic steamships, required a standardization and homologation of the systems respon-
sible for indicating time in different zones of the Earth surface.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, more than t wo-thirds of the sea-faring countries
were already navigating on charts based on the Greenwich longitude out of practicality. The
Washington agreement made it a world-w ide convention, officially inscribing ‘Eurocentric
assumptions into a hegemonic global image’ (Cosgrove 2001: 221). In this sense, the Interna-
tional Meridian Conference did not only ratify a common maritime praxis, but established
ideologically and symbolically the latest major shift in the geographical self-perception of the
West, the last translatio imperii et studii – after Jerusalem, Rome and Paris. From this moment
on, East and West, North and South would ‘ be fixed hemispheric spaces on a quartered globe
centred upon London’ (ibid). The agreement on the prime meridian of Greenwich did not
come ex nihilo, but was the result of a progressive encirclement and demythologization of the
globe, propelled by the improvement of steady chronometers for calculating the longitude,
better survey technologies, the laying of the transoceanic telegraph cables in the Atlantic
in 1866 and the building of railroads in every continent. In the last years of the nineteenth
century, a ‘pervasive sense that spatial limits had been reached dominated the geographical
imagination of many Westerners’ (ibid.).
No other novel has probably better captured this sense of closure of the global space as Le
Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours [Around the World in 80 Days] by Jules Verne (1872). Phileas
Fogg’s travel around the globe is the perfect metaphor of the time-machine built by the con-
nection between colonization and capitalism – a very real time-machine that translates dis-
tance into time and time into money. For Fogg, the globe is a closed system on which he travels
without any consideration for what he encounters, for the people he meets, for the autochthone
cultures and the spoken languages he comes across: every place is the same place to him. The
only thing that matters is the time he invests moving through space. As Jane Suzanne Caroll
states, ‘Fogg has internalized time. He becomes a horological man: a man of time and a timely
man’ (Carroll 2013: 91). However, if there is no time to stop, to look, to see, there is also no

77
Federico Italiano

time for translation. It is almost paradoxical how in this novel translation is almost completely
absent. In Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne presents not only a travel backwards through
time, made possible by a geographical convention, the Greenwich meridian, but also a world
with no need for translation. Fogg does not really need translation, because he does not really
leave London.
In Fogg’s world, translation does not exist and when it does, it is a rough translation,
like every colonial translation. As Dipesh Chakrabarty has shown, analysing the world of
post- colonial scholarship, ‘the problem of capitalist modernity cannot any longer be seen
simply as a sociological problem of historical transition […] but as a problem of translation’
(Chakrabarty 2000: 17). Like Phileas Fogg, the imperturbable protagonist of Verne’s Around
the World in 80 Days, who never thought for a moment to interrupt his globe- encircling travel
back to his Londoner club in order to better understand the language and the culture of the
people he encountered, no modern reader of a monograph in Asian or area studies – before
scholarship became itself g lobalized – ‘was ever seriously expected to interrupt their pleasure
of reading by having to turn pages frequently to consult the glossary’ (ibid.). These glossaries,
as Chakrabarty explains, ‘reproduced a series of “rough translations” of native terms, often
borrowed from the colonialists themselves’ (ibid.).

These colonial translations were rough not only in being approximate (and thereby inac-
curate) but also in that they were meant to fit the rough-a nd-ready methods of colonial
rule. To challenge that model of ‘rough translation’ is to pay critical and unrelenting
attention to the very process of translation.
(Chakrabarty 2000: 17)

Phileas Fogg’s steam-powered time-travel embodies perfectly the way modern capitalism
minimizes reciprocal communication producing what Chakrabarty calls ‘rough translations.’
No matter how plausible Fogg’s travel could have been, its itinerary celebrates the geographic
order aligned on the Greenwich longitude, that is, an image of the terrestrial globe rotat-
ing on a London-centred axis. The self-evidence with which Fogg completes his journey
without interacting with the world around him finds its equivalent in the ideological pro-
nouncement with which the International Meridian Conference in Washington projected
geometrically on the globe its Western hegemonic self-consciousness.

1968: earthrise
On Christmas Eve of 1968, one of the three-manned crew of the Apollo 8, William Anders,
took a photograph of the rising Earth, ‘about five degrees above the lunar horizon,’ as docu-
mented by the NASA’s official caption of the image. This picture was not scheduled. It was
taken spontaneously, when, after three orbits observing the lunar surface, Earth appeared
at the horizon. The photograph was shot simply out of an irresistible aesthetic fascination,
vividly recorded in Anders’s mission log: ‘Oh, my God! Look at that picture over there!
Here’s the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty!’ Afterwards, Anders will comment on his
photograph: ‘we came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is
that we discovered the Earth.’ Bill Anders photograph is now universally known as Earthrise
and together with a later image from the last Apollo mission, known as Blue Marble (1972),
depicting a frameless Earth floating beautifully in the void, is the inaugurating image of what
Benjamin Lazier calls ‘Earthrise era’ (2011: 605), which is still the era in which we live, at
least until we will set foot on Mars.

78
 Translation and geography

The imaginary generated by the Apollo photographs ‘ has acquired an iconic power that
helps organize a myriad of political, moral, scientific, and commercial imaginations as well’
(ibid.: 606). The way we inhabit our world now is inextricably interwoven with these Apollo
images that ‘displace local, earthbound horizons with ‘ horizons’ that are planetary in scope –
the distinction between earth and sky surmounted by that between Earth and void’ (ibid.).
These images even changed the way we speak, our vocabulary. As Lazier convincingly asserts,

the word ‘globalization’ and the phrases ‘global environment,’ ‘global economy,’ and
‘global humanity’ simply did not exist before the Earthrise era, and this explosion of
globe talk is part and parcel of changes in the Western pictorial imagination that at first
glance seem unsuited to it.
(Ibid.)

However, the most striking effect of this revolutionary gaze on our planet is its iconographic
ambiguity and discursive duplicity. While it boosted the contemporary environmentalism
( Poole 2008) and the appreciation of the Earth as a beautiful and fragile organism we should
protect, becoming ‘a photographic manifesto for global justice’ (ibid.: 95), it also became
the base imagery for suggesting the global reach of news broadcasting, credit cards, air-
lines, bookstore chains and every kind of companies and travel agencies ( Jasanov, cited in
Peoples 2016: 170), whose primal objective is surely not the safeguard of our delicate en-
vironment. From a cartographical point of view, these images ‘upset’ the Western spatial
imagination, stripping away the ‘graticule, principal signifier of Western knowledge and
control’ (Cosgrove 2001: 261); on the other hand, they became the emblems of many US
defence agencies, such as the US Strategic Command, the Defence Intelligence Agency and
the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency ( Peoples 2016: 170).
In the last chapter of Death of a Discipline, following the anti-hegemonic and environmen-
talist understanding of our planet inspired by the Apollo photographs, Spivak proposes ‘the
planet to overwrite the globe’ (Spivak 2003: 72). For Spivak, the globe is a cartographic prod-
uct that seduces us into thinking that we can control it, an ‘abstract ball covered in latitudes
and longitudes, cut by virtual lines,’ on which globalization imposes its undiversified system
of exchange (ibid.). ‘The globe,’ she writes

is on our computers. No one lives there […] The planet is in the species of alterity, be-
longing to another system; and yet we inhabit it, on loan. It is not really amenable to a
neat contrast with the globe.
(ibid.)

As the Blue Marble photograph defied the Western cartographic preconception of the planet
by showing a decentred Earth, with Africa in the middle and a realistic proportion between
waters and lands, so Spivak’s ‘planetarity’ invites us to re-think our position on the planet
and our relationship to otherness, to consider ourselves not as global agents but as planetary
beings.

If we imagine ourselves as planetary subjects rather than global agents, planetary crea-
tures rather than global entities, alterity remains underived from us; it is not our dialecti-
cal negation, it contains us as much as it flings us away. And thus to think of it is already
to transgress, for, in spite of our forays into what we metaphorize, differently, as outer
and inner space, what is above and beyond our own reach is not continuous with us as

79
Federico Italiano

it is not, indeed, specifically discontinuous. We must persistently educate ourselves into

this peculiar mindset.
(Spivak 2003: 73)

Proposing planetarity as a critical alternative to the homogenizing, cartographic concept of

globalization, Spivak asks us to embrace all the differences (all the ‘names of alterity’) – not
to eradicate them – and to re-think the way we relate to otherness. Drawing on Spivak’s
influential counter-g lobal concept of ‘planetarity,’ Amy J. Elias and Christian Moraru have
edited an engaging collection of essays pleading for a ‘planetary turn’ in the humanities
(2015). As the editors assert in the introduction, the discourse of planetarity presents itself ‘as
a new structure of awareness, as a methodical receptivity to the geothematics of planetariness
characteristic of a fast-expanding series of cultural formations’ ( Elias and Moraru 2015: xi).
For them, as for Spivak, planetary is not the contrary of globalization; it is configured from
another angle, it is ‘a move away from the totalizing paradigm of modern-age globalization
and thus a critique or critical “completion” of globalism’ (ibid.). Within translation studies,
this critical shift from the pseudo-totality of globalization towards the transcultural, alterity-
oriented perspective of planetarity has already offered location- conscious, geo- centred ap-
proaches to a variety of translational phenomena, such as the politics of untranslatability
(Apter 2013), translational writing ( Pizer 2015) and the relationship between translation and
the planet’s ecology (Cronin 2017) among others.

Translation of geographies
What has been discussed until now delineates a sort of ‘spatial turn’ within the translation
studies that I do not consider just a trend following the general shift in the humanities from
the paradigm of time to the paradigm of space. It is one of the most consistent and successful
attempts to overcome a view of translation based on the illusion of linguistic reciprocity in
the transfer of meaning (Italiano 2016: 3). All these perspectives, theories and approaches I
have mentioned above outline a complex and fruitful effort towards a geography of transla-
tion, that is, a geocentric, location-conscious analysis of communication patterns and trans-
lation processes. What should be briefly sketched out in this last section is another kind of
spatial dimension within translation, the translation of geographies, that is, not primarily the
‘where’ of translation, its location or spatial traceability, but how geographical imaginations
have been translated across spaces, media and epochs.
One of the first attempts to investigate this kind of geographical translation was Michael
Cronin’s study on the relationship between travel writing, language and translation, Across
the Lines (2000). Arguing that every travel writing implies a form of translation, Cronin ex-
amines narratives of space, and in particular of movement in space, from a language- oriented
perspective as translational negotiations. Following the pioneering work of Cronin, several
articles and books on the relationship between travel, language and translation have been
published, such as Loredana Polezzi’s monograph on contemporary Italian travel writing in
English translation (2001), Di Biase’s edited collection on travel and translation in the Early
Modern Period (2006) and a collection on the translation of non-fictional travel accounts
between 1750 and 1830 (Martin and Pickford 2012). But while they all examine the relation-
ship between movement in space, language and translation, they do not primarily investigate
the translation of geographical imagination.
Translation and Geography (Italiano 2016) focusses on this specific aspect. Drawing on the
critical cartography of Harley and Woodward (1987), Wood and Fels (1992) and Pickles

80
 Translation and geography

(2004) among others and on the works of literary scholars such as Conley (1996), Padrón
(2004), Stockhammer (2007), Smith (2008) and Dünne (2011), it investigates, on the one
hand, the relationship between literature, translation and geography, characterizing the pro-
cess of translation as a negotiation of geographical imaginations. On the other, it ‘spatializes
the concept of translation,’ transposing the notion of translation into a context of knowledge/
power relations, that of geography, which transcends the mere verbal and textual horizon
(Italiano 2016: 5). In particular, exploring the affinity between literary writing and maps as a
performative negotiation across media, it defines the translation process of a map into a text
and vice versa as a kind of ‘transmediation’ (Italiano 2016: 35–38). Drawing on case studies
ranging from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century, Translation and Geography argues
that translation has not only profoundly shaped the way the West has mapped the world, but
that orientation in space should be considered as ‘a form of translation across cultural differ-
ences’ (Italiano 2016: 1).
But we do not find translations of geographies only in old travelogues, epic poetry,
novels or maps. We constantly translate geographies without probably noticing it by re-
contextualizing myriads of geographical and topographical data into our daily life and into
our different language registers. We do that simply by orientating ourselves in our daily paths
to our working place, activating a GPS navigational tool (which is actually a translation de-
vice) or finding our way in a city district by roughly pointing towards what we think should
be the north-west passage to the city centre or to the market we are looking for. And when
we are there, at the market, the translation process goes on, since we are, more or less con-
sciously, migrating from Spanish tomatoes to Norwegian smoked salmon, from Bordeaux
wines to Sicilian sea salt, from Indian curry mix to Japanese ramen noodles. This happens of
course, if not by pure imagination, by reading the multilingual texts displayed on the pack-
age, their essential and concise cartographies, usually introduced by formulas such as ‘product
of ’ or ‘made in’ and more or less authenticated by the constellation of addresses locating the
places of production, the importer/exporter and the packaging sites.
Less obvious is perhaps that, by reading food labels on the products, we are often con-
fronted with a geographical imagination still shaped by the Western colonial past. This is the
case of those ‘rough,’ Eurocentric translations, which mark, for instance, the French version
of an ingredient list with the country abbreviation ( FR) for France, sometimes even accom-
panying it with a little tricolour flag, or the English version with the acronym ( UK) and the
Union Jack just beside it, as if French and English ‘ belonged’ respectively only to France and
the United Kingdom. Considering this very tangible confrontation with the translation of
geographies makes clear how important is to reflect on the spatiality of translation not only
to understand what is going on at a macro-level or in the complex textualities of literature
and the arts, but also at the m icro-level of our daily effort to orientate ourselves on this planet
we all inhabit.

Conclusion
As the last remarks suggest, the geography of translation and the translation of geographies
are complementary perspectives that, when deployed together, help us to better comprehend
the multi- d imensional spatiality of translation. In particular, combining these approaches
could be very helpful for investigating a series of translational spaces that still need to be
discussed. One of them is surely the interstice between digital cartography and machine
translation. What is, for example, the relation between satellite-based navigation systems
and translation produced by automated software? What kind of power/knowledge relations

81
Federico Italiano

emerge, for instance, through the all- encompassing, earth- encircling system created by the
interaction of corporate apps like Google Maps and Google Translate? Can we really be ‘ lost’
in translation?
Moreover, following the important results obtained by studying the city as a translational
space, we should draw our attention towards other physical and cultural translational spaces
that still need to be explored, such as rivers, lakes, oceans, mountains, deserts, etc. These
geographical bodies, probably because of their apparent un-relatedness to language or just
because they sound too much like old school geography, have been only marginally taken
into account as spaces of translation and even less as translated spaces. But I believe that a
combined approach that would analyse both the geography of translation and the translation
of geographies of the Brahmaputra river, just to make an example, would help us not only
to know better its inherent geography, its spaces of translation, the languages and histories
changing along its meandering, the economics of its t rans-boundary course, but also to better
understand how translation works tout court, discovering modalities, technologies and tonal-
ities of translation of which we did not have a clue before.

Further reading
Apter, E. (2006) The Translation Zone. A New Comparative Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer-
sity Press.
Apter’s concept of ‘translation zone’ is still one of the most fertile concepts for a spatial understanding
of different kinds of translation processes.
Cosgrove, D. (2001) Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination. Balti-
more, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
This book offers one of the best- documented genealogies of the Western spatial imagination focusing
on how the idea of the globe from the antiquity to the space age has shaped what we call globalization
and our understanding of the planet we live on.
Italiano, F. (2016) Translation and Geography. London: Routledge.
In this book, Italiano explores how translation has profoundly shaped the Western cartographic imagination
and to what extents geographies can be translated across languages, epochs and different media.
Simon, S. (2012) Cities in Translation. Intersections of Language and Memory. London: Routledge.
Sherry Simon’s book on the urban intersection between language and memory is a g round-breaking
study for the investigation of the city as a translational space.

References
Apter, E. (2006) The Translation Zone. A New Comparative Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer-
sity Press.
Apter, E. (2013) Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability. London: Verso.
Bhabha, H. K. ([1994] 2005) The Location of Culture, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
Bhabha, H. K (2009) ‘Preface’, in Ikas, K. and Wagner, G. (eds.) Communicating in the Third Space.
London: Routledge, pp. ix–xiv.
Carroll, J. S. (2013) ‘“You Are Too Slow”: Time in Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days’, in
Ferguson, T. (ed.), Victorian Time. Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture. London:
Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 77–94.
Chakrabarty, D. (2000) Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Columbus, C. [Colón, Cristóbal] (2006) Diario de a bordo. Ed. L. Arranz Márquez. Madrid: Edaf.
Conley, T. (1996) The Self-Made Map: Cartographic Writing in Early Modern France. Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press.
Cosgrove, D. (2001) Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination. Balti-
more, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

82
 Translation and geography

Cronin, M. (2000) Across the Lines: Travel, Language, Translation. Cork: Cork University Press.
Cronin, M. (2003) Translation and Globalisation. London: Routledge.
Cronin, M. (2017) Eco-Translation: Translation and Ecology in the Age of the Anthropocene. London:
Routledge.
Cronin, M. and Simon, S. (2014) ‘Introduction: The City as Translation Zone’, in Cronin, M. and
Simon, S. (eds.), The City as Translation Zone. Special issue of Translation Studies, 7:2, pp. 119–132.
Dalché, P. G. (2015) ‘Maps, Travel and Exploration in the Middle Ages: Some Reflections about
Anachronism’, The Historical Review/La revue historique, 12, pp. 143–162.
Di Biase, C. G. (ed.) (2006) Travel and Translation in the Early Modern Period. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Dünne, J. (2011) Die kartographische Imagination. Erinnern, Erzählen und Fingieren in der Frühen Neuzeit.
Munich: Fink.
Elias, A. J. and Moraru, C. (2015) ‘Introduction: The Planetary Condition’, in Elias, A. J. and Moraru,
C. (eds.), The Planetary Turn: Relationality and Geoaesthetics in the Twenty-First Century. Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press, pp. xi–2.
Gregory, D. (1994) Geographical Imaginations. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Gregory, D. (2004) ‘Palestine and the “War on Terror” ’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the
Middle East, 24(1), pp. 183–195.
Harley, J. B. and Woodward, D. (eds.) (1987) ‘Preface’, in The History of Cartography. I. Cartogra-
phy in Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. Part 1. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,
pp. xv–xxi.
Italiano, F. (2016) Translation and Geography. London and New York: Routledge.
Koyré, A. (1965) Newtonian Studies. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Lazier, B. (2011) ‘Earthrise: Or, the Globalization of the World Picture’, The American Historical Review,
116(3), pp. 602–630.
Martin, A. E. and Pickford, S. (eds.) (2012) Travel Narratives in Translation, 1750–1830: Nationalism,
Ideology, Gender. London: Routledge.
Ó Tuathail, G. and Agnew, J. (1992) ‘Geopolitics and Discourse: Practical Geopolitical Reasoning in
American Foreign Policy’, Political Geography, 11(2), pp. 190–204.
Padrón, R. (2004) The Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature, and Empire in Early Modern Spain. Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press.
Peoples, C. (2016) ‘Envisioning “Global Security”? The Earth Viewed from Space as a Motif in Security
Discourses’, in van Munster, R. and Sylvest, C. (eds.), The Politics of Globality Since 1945: Assembling
the Planet. London: Routledge, pp. 164–187.
Pickles, J. (2004) A History of Spaces: Cartographic Reason, Mapping and the G eo-Coded World. London:
Routledge.
Pizer, J. D. (2015) ‘Planetary Poetics: World Literature, Goethe, Novalis, and Yoko Tawada’s Transla-
tional Writing’, in Elias, A. J. and Moraru, C. (eds.), The Planetary Turn: Relationality and Geoaesthet-
ics in the Twenty-First Century. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, pp. 3–24.
Polezzi, L. (2001) Translating Travel: Contemporary Italian Travel Writing in English Translation. Aldershot:
Ashgate.
Poole, R. (2008) Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Pratt, M. L. (1992) Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge.
Rutherford, J. (1990) ‘The Third Space: Interview with Homi Bhabha’, in Rutherford, J. (ed.), Identity:
Community, Culture, Difference. London: Lawrence and Wishart, pp. 207–221.
Said, E. (1993) Culture and imperialism. New York: Alfred Knopf.
Said, E. ([1978] 2003) Orientalism, 2nd ed. London: Penguin.
Simon, S. (2012) Cities in Translation. Intersections of Language and Memory. London: Routledge.
Sloterdijk, P. (2011) Bubbles: Spheres, Volume I: Microspherology. Trans. W. Hoban. Los Angeles, CA:
Semiotext(e).
Sloterdijk, P. (2013) In the World Interior of Capital: Towards a Philosophical Theory of Globalization. Trans.
W. Hoban. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Smith, D. K. (2008) The Cartographic Imagination in Early Modern England: Re- writing the World in Mar-
lowe, Spenser, Raleigh and Marvell. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Soja, E. (1989) Postmodern Geographies. London: Verso.
Spivak, G. C. (2003) Death of a Discipline. New York: Columbia University Press.
Stockhammer, R. (2007) Kartierung der Erde. Macht und Lust in Karten und Literatur. Munich: Wilhelm
Fink Verlag.

83
Federico Italiano

Venuti, L. (1998) The Scandals of Translation. Towards an Ethics of Difference. London: Routledge.
Verne, J. (1872) Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours. Paris: Hetzel.
Wood, D. and Fels, J. (1992) The Power of Maps. New York: Guilford Press.
Wolf, M. (2002) ‘Culture as Translation – A nd Beyond. Ethnographic Models of Representation in
Translation Studies’, in Hermans, T. (ed.), Crosscultural Transgressions. Research Models in Translation
Studies II. Historical and Ideological Issues. Manchester: St Jerome, pp. 180–192.

84
 6
Translation and climate change
Michael Cronin

Introduction
In 2019 the U K-based Institute for Public Policy published a report starkly entitled, This Is
a Crisis: Facing up to the Age of Environmental Breakdown. Introducing the report, the authors
summarized their conclusions:

Mainstream political and policy debates have failed to recognise that human impacts
on the environment have reached a critical stage, potentially eroding the conditions
upon which socioeconomic stability is possible. Human-induced environmental change
is occurring at an unprecedented scale and pace and the window of opportunity to avoid
catastrophic outcomes in societies around the world is rapidly closing. These outcomes
include economic instability, large- scale involuntary migration, conflict, famine and the
potential collapse of social and economic systems. The historical disregard of environ-
mental considerations in most areas of policy has been a catastrophic mistake.
(Laybourn-Langton et al. 2019: 6)

The litany of destruction is both unsurprising and alarming. The 20 warmest years since
records began in 1850 have been in the past 22 years, with the four years between 2015 and
2019 the warmest ever recorded. Vertebrate populations on the planet have fallen by an aver-
age of 60% since the 1970s. Extinction rates for all species have increased to between 100 and
1,000 times the ‘ background rate’ of extinction. At this stage, more than 75% of the Earth’s
land is substantially degraded. Topsoil is now being lost 10– 40 times faster than it is being
replenished by natural processes, and, since the mid-t wentieth century, 30% of the world’s
arable land has become unproductive due to erosion; 95% of the Earth’s land areas could
become degraded by 2050 (ibid.: 6–7). As the statistics show, the extent of the crisis is global.
No part of the planet escapes unscathed from the destructive consequences of climate change.
In a discussion of translation and globalization, there is also no escaping consideration of
climate change and how we might conceptualize both the notion and practice of translation
in the age of the A nthropocene – the geological era of irreversible, human-induced changes
to our climate.

85
Michael Cronin

Concepts
In order to see how translation studies might respond to the context of environmental dis-
ruption, it is useful to consider a typology of approaches that have roughly characterized
the study of translation in recent decades. The first approach is what might be termed the
ethnocentric approach, which was largely an offshoot of translation history and was primarily
concerned with the impacts of translation on specific national or regional entities. Ethno-
centric is to be understood as relating to the object of study and not to any set of ideological
assumptions favouring nationalist supremacism. Practitioners of the ethnocentric approach
were generally at pains to complicate sui generis narratives of national preeminence. Many
of the contributions to Jean Delisle and Judith Woodworth Translators through History (1995)
focussed on translation in national settings or in bounded geographical areas. Representative
volumes from this period would be Antoine Berman, L’Épreuve de l’étranger. Culture et tradition
dans l’Allemagne romantique (1984), Michael Cronin, Translating Ireland (1996), John Corbett,
Written in the Language of the Scottish Nation: History of Literary Translation into Scots (1999) or
Mireille Agorni, Translating Italy for the Eighteenth Century: British Women, Translation and
Travel Writing (2002).
The second approach is what can be termed the geocentric approach, which relates to trans-
lation as an integral part of the phenomenon of globalization. The term ‘globalization’ was
used to broadly describe the profound nature of changes affecting economies, cultures and
societies worldwide from the late twentieth century onwards (Steger 2017). Anthony Gid-
dens had defined globalization as ‘the intensification of worldwide social relations which
link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring
many miles away and vice versa’ (1990: 64). Five main features of the globalization era were
the growing frequency, volume and interrelatedness of cultures, commodities, information
and peoples across time and space; the increasing capacity of information technologies to
reduce and compress time and space; the diffusion of routine practices for processing global
flows of information, money, commodities and people; the emergence of institutions and
social movements to promote, regulate, oversee or reject globalization; the emergence of
new types of global consciousness or ideologies of globalism which give expression to new
forms of social connectedness described as cosmopolitanism ( Beckford 2003: 119; Turner and
Holton 2016: 10). Important geopolitical contexts for the emergence of globalization were
the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the spectacular emergence of the
Asian economies – Japan, China, South Korea, Singapore – which led to a fundamental shift
in the global basis of economic production. Theories of globalization focussed in the initial
phase on economic issues before engaging more broadly with questions around culture and
the media and more latterly with the political dimensions of global governance, cosmopol-
itanism and transnational citizenship ( Turner and Holton 2016: 4–5). The centrality of the
information economy in the era of globalization and the emphasis on transnational flows of
goods, people and ideas understandably attracted the attention of translation scholars. Trans-
lation studies monographs that were influenced by this geocentric approach included Susan
Bassnett and Esperança Bielsa, Translation in the Global News (2009), Minako O’Hagan and
Carmen Mangiron, Game Localization: Translating for the Global Digital Entertainment Industry
(2013), Michael Cronin, Translation and Globalization (2003) and Miguel Jimenez-Crespo,
Translation and Web Localization (2013).
The advent of accelerated climate change demands a third approach, which is neither the
bounded enquiry of the ethnocentric approach nor the open-ended, globalizing bound-
lessness of the geocentric approach but an earth-focussed approach that we might term the

86
 Translation and climate change

terracentric approach. The terracentric approach assesses translation from the point of view of
sustainability and reliance. The objective is to develop a translation practice that can facili-
tate a transition to a post-carbon society and to identify areas of translation practice that are
complicit in cultures of unsustainable resource extractivism. Underpinning this terracentric
approach is the contention by Bruno Latour that the utopias of nationalism (redemptive
sovereignty) and globalization (redemptive growth) have both exhausted themselves and the
planet:

to my knowledge, no one has explained clearly enough that globalization is over, and
that we urgently need to reestablish ourselves on an Earth that has nothing to do with
the protective borders of nation- states any more than the infinite horizon of globaliza-
tion. The conflict between the utopia of the past and the utopia of the future must not
occupy us any longer.
(Latour 2016)

In advancing an earth-centred praxis for translation we will begin by considering the (absent)
role of translation in more recent formulations of the post-human and then proceed to iden-
tify areas in translation where a terracentric translation narrative is urgently needed.

Terracentric translation studies

Martha Nussbaum has argued that

the question ‘What is it to be human?’ is not just narcissistic. It involves a culpable ob-
tuseness. It is rather like asking, ‘What is to be white?’. It contains unearned privileges
that have been used to dominate and exploit. But we usually don’t recognise this because
our narcissism is so complete.
( Nussbaum 2019: 46)

This narcissism has been called into question in the age of the Anthropocene because hu-
mans find that as a result of their cumulative actions they are endangering the very basis for
their survival. There is the belated realization that it is no longer possible to speak about
the ‘environment’ as something out there, as a negligible and dispensable externality. The
environment is not exterior to but constitutive of who we are. Furthermore, it is no longer
tenable to conceive of humans as a species apart but as one species among many in relation-
ships of increasingly acute interdependency. Therefore, it becomes necessary to think again
about what it is to be human and thinking again about what it is to be human inevitably
means thinking again about one of the activities that humans engage in, namely, translation.
One crucial outcome of the emergence of the Anthropocene – the convergence of the
fate of humans and the fate of the planet – is a revisiting of traditional disciplinary divisions
or alliances. The findings of biology and geology in the nineteenth century and the greatly
expanded timescale of terrestrial existence that ensued led to a division of academic tasks.
The geologists concentrated on the physical history of the planet, the biologists looked at
the history of organic life on earth and historians devoted themselves to the study of what
a subsection of these organisms, humans, got up to in their time on the planet ( Rudwick
2005). With the sole exception of geography, the social and human sciences increasingly
defined themselves in isolation from the natural world whether it was social and cultural

87
Michael Cronin

anthropology under Durkheim differentiating itself from physical anthropology or psycho-

analysis under Freud considering any sensation of deep relation to the natural environment
was a belated fusional fantasy from early childhood ( Bonneuil and Fressoz 2013: 49–50).
Translation studies, traditionally part of the humanities and social sciences, has shared this
general indifference to the more-than-human world. If, however, we take Nussbaum’s criti-
cism seriously and challenge the notion of human exceptionalism, the unearned privilege of
indifference, then new perspectives open up for translation studies.
The move towards species awareness – humans as one species among others, is a necessary
step towards post-anthropocentric identity. For Rosi Braidotti this involves the de- centring
of anthropos, ‘the representative of a hierarchical, hegemonic and generally violent species
whose centrality is now challenged by a combination of scientific advances and global eco-
nomic concerns’ ( Braidotti 2013: 65). This critique of humanism and anthropocentrism has
been prefigured in the tradition of ‘anti-humanism’ that Braidotti references, ‘ feminism,
de- colonization and anti-racism, anti-nuclear and pacifist movements’ (ibid.: 16) where the
white, sovereign, male subject of Western techno-imperialist thought was singled out for
repeated critique. Out of this vision comes a notion of relationality and ontological equal-
ity that does not privilege one life form over another. Braidotti’s notion of the post-human
‘implies the open-ended, inter-relational, multi-sexed and trans-species flows of becoming
through interactions with multiple others’ (ibid.: 89). Being ‘matter-realist’, to use her term,
is to take seriously humans’ multiple connections to natural and material worlds. Conceiv-
ing of the notion of subjectivity as including the non-human means that the task for critical
thinking is, as Braidotti herself admits, ‘momentous’. It would involve visualizing the subject
as ‘a transversal entity encompassing the human, our genetic neighbours the animals and the
earth as a whole, and to do so within an understandable language’ ( Braidotti 2013: 82). The
missing term in Braidotti’s equation is translation. The transversal entity cannot function if
there is no way of establishing a meaningful relationship between the human, our genetic
neighbours and the earth as a whole. It is in this context that we have proposed the term of
‘tradosphere’ (Cronin 2017: 70–73). The aim is to suggest that the organic and the inorganic
world enter into a relationship through patterns of information that are mediated or more
properly translated through various communication systems. Rowan Williams, for example,
has critiqued the tendency to perceive matter as ‘dead’ or ‘mindless’, as the passive object
of human action. This attitude fails to acknowledge the idea of matter itself as inherently
symbolic, ‘ in the sense that it is structured as a complex of patterns inviting recognition
and constantly generating new combinations of intelligible structures’ ( Williams 2014: 103).
Williams takes the example of the genetic code and the genome and claims that implicit in
both is the notion that there are genetic material regularities, which can be identified as sig-
nificant by other material receptors:

A gene is not a small item, not even in the rather refined sense in which we could still
just say this of an atom, but a shorthand symbol for a pattern of recurring elements
within the ensemble of genetic material activating cell tissues; but it becomes a pattern
only when there is a receiving and decoding ‘partner’.
(Williams 2014: 102, emphasis added)

For Williams, it is no accident that the life sciences in general, and biology in particular, are
littered with linguistic metaphors. Language is the natural integrating factor in the evolving
material universe. Rather than examining material processes, in a largely mechanical fash-
ion, to establish what language is, it is more useful to attend to language to show us what

88
 Translation and climate change

matter is. In a different register, Jane Bennett argues for a ‘vital materiality’, contesting the
division of the world into dull matter and vibrant life:

The quarantines of matter and life encourage us to ignore the vitality of matter and the
lively powers of material formations, such as the way omega-3 fatty acids can alter hu-
man moods or the way our trash is not ‘away’ in landfills but generating lively streams of
chemicals and volatile winds of methane as we speak.
(Bennett 2010: vii, emphasis in the original)

Granting vitality to the material means establishing a relationship across difference, an act
that is fundamental to the practice of translation. In other words, arriving at the transversal
subjectivity that Braidotti correctly believes to be central to a post-human ecological sensi-
bility means introducing translation into the heart of post-anthropocentric identity.
This transversal subjectivity is implicit in the notion of the tradosphere as the sum of all
the translation systems on the planet, all the ways in which information circulates between
living and non-living organisms and is translated into a language or a code that can be pro-
cessed or understood by the receiving entity. We claim to understand our world or to have
access to it and to the beings that inhabit it and constitute it through our ability to be able
to translate the information they transmit into a language – a nd this can be the language of
mathematics, cosmic physics, molecular chemistry or marine biology – we purport to un-
derstand. Kobus Marais and Kalev Kull have begun to explore a dimension to this with their
work on biosemiotics and translation studies (Marais and Kull 2016). The tradosphere like
the biosphere is in a constant state of evolution and in a time of ecological crisis is susceptible
to a series of risks that can threaten its very survival. The biosphere can typically be threat-
ened by climate change, exponential human population growth, biotic impoverishment,
reduction of biodiversity or renewable resource depletion. In the case of the tradosphere,
the principal danger comes from the collapse of translation systems which allow humans to
interact in a viable and sustainable way with other sentient and non- sentient beings on the
planet. The use of the term ‘tradosphere’ rather than ‘ infosphere’ is deliberate as the aim is to
conceptualize non-anthropocentric forms of communication. In communicating with oth-
ers, in trying to understand what it is an organism or non- sentient object is expressing, the
point is not anthropomorphic projection but communication across and in the full knowl-
edge of radical difference.

Animals
According to Elizabeth Kolbert we are now living through the sixth mass extinction of
species on planet Earth, much of this as the result of human activity ( Kolbert 2014). The
National Academy of Sciences in the United States has estimated that since the dawn of civ-
ilization humanity has caused the loss of 83% of wild mammals, 80% of marine mammals,
50% of plants and 15% of fish. This is despite the fact that humans represent just 0.01% of all
living beings ( Boag 2019: 38–39). Martha Nussbaum has pointed out that, ‘We share a planet
with billions of other sentient beings, and they all have their own complex ways of being
whatever they are’ but that, ‘we humans now so dominate the globe that we rarely feel as if
we need to live with other animals on reciprocal terms’ ( Nussbaum 2019: 46– 47). What the
basis of that reciprocity might be is a question that inevitably involves translation. In order
to understand what might constitute sentience or the ‘complex ways of being’ whatever any
animals are then, we need to engage in some form of translation, mediating across different

89
Michael Cronin

systems of communication. The ethical basis for this translation endeavour is suggested by
Aymeric Caron in Antispéciste:

L’humanité a toujours progressé en étendant sa sphère de considération morale à des

groupes d’individus jusque-là considérés comme des humains de rang inférieur: des
peuples que l’on a d’abord qualifiés de ‘ barbares’ou de ‘sauvages’, des populations que
l’on a réduites en esclavage, ou des catégories discriminées comme les femmes ou les
homosexuels. [Humanity has always progressed through extending its sphere of moral
consideration to groups that were previously considered to be inferior; peoples that had
hitherto been described as ‘ barbarians’ or ‘savages’, populations that had been enslaved,
or groups that were discriminated against such as women or homosexuals].
(Caron 2016: 10)

A standard trope of a particular form of imperial discourse was the silencing of the native
subject. By refusing to translate what the native had to say into the language of the master,
it was assumed that the native had nothing to say. Refusing the subjects’ communicative
capacity was a way of denying them political agency. Patricia Palmer in Language and Con-
quest in Early Modern Ireland: English Renaissance Literature and Elizabethan Imperial Expansion
(2001) describes in detail how a refusal to translate what the native Irish were saying and
writing in their own language became a necessary precondition for unconscionable slaugh-
ter and territorial dispossession. A move towards liberation, however, was to give language
back to the enslaved, the colonized, the downtrodden. Almost always this involved the
move of translation as the subject had to articulate their grievances or their oppression in
the language of the master so as to get access to resources or to potential allies or to a wider
audience. Words falling on ears deafened by linguistic incomprehension were of little con-
sequence. They require the ally of translation whether through direct textual translation or
through the agency of language mediators who brought the news of injustice to a wider or
more effective stage.
A condition of empathy, of a widening of the sphere of moral consideration invoked by
Caron, was the making manifest or vocal of forms of oppression that were often obscured
by language difference, an ignorance often knowingly engineered by imperial overlords or
slave masters. Roberto A. Valdéon in his Translation and the Spanish Empire in the Americas
documents the ways in which the ‘ individual narratives’ of particular translators in the period
of the conquest expressed a ‘ form of resistance against the established order’ and goes on to
note that ‘mediators struggled against the invaders in different ways and for different reasons’
( Valdéon 2014: 39). Therefore, in seeking an equitable or reciprocal co- existence with other
species we need to look to translation as a way of resisting human exceptionalism, as a way
beyond the unreflective narcissism that bedevils human- centred ‘ humanities’. In doing so,
however, it is important not to privilege the ‘ human’ (classically understood as white, male,
heteronormative) as the norm against which all others are judged or defined but that the con-
cept of translation itself be fully used to destabilize or de- centre the orthodox human subject.
If classic Chomskyan theory has argued that human language is entirely distinct from the
communication taking place between animals, linguists from other theoretical backgrounds
are less sure. Philip Lieberman has argued, for example, that to discount the communicative
abilities of other animals is wholly unscientific. Trying to decide what are necessary and what
are contingent traits for human language is only possible if all forms of communication be-
tween species are studied ( Lieberman 2006). Border collies, African grey parrots and bono-
bos have some capacity for perceiving and understanding words within a semi- continuous

90
 Translation and climate change

speech stream ( Kenneally 2008: 152). The voluntary production of sounds which are mean-
ingful to other creatures is not a skill that is confined to humans. Klaus Zuberbühler and
Katie Slocombe in an experiment on chimpanzees in Edinburgh Zoo demonstrated that
they emitted very different cries depending on the type of food that they found (Slocombe
and Zuberbühler 2005). In effect, they were using a sound-referent connection to make and
communicate distinctions which is not wholly dissimilar to what humans do when they
communicate.
Dolphins use what are known as ‘signature whistles’ to identify themselves to other dol-
phins. In their first year, they produce a unique sound that is different from other dol-
phin whistles and which can allow them to be individually recognized ( Janik et al. 2006).
Researchers on the Elephant Listening Project at Cornell University’s Bioacoustics Research
Program are compiling an elephant dictionary compiled of the distinct sounds produced by
individual elephants for different purposes ( Poole et al. 2005: 455– 456). In all three cases, so-
cially complex species have come up with similar tactics to communicate. Though the vocal-
izations occur in different social and biophysical contexts (air, water, extended atmospheric
and ground pitch range), there is clearly a form of structured and intelligible communication
taking place between members of the same species. Animals of different species have also
been known to understand the cries other species make. If a predator hears the alarm call of
its prey, it often gives up. They know they have been seen. There is no point continuing the
hunt (Seyfarth and Cheney 2003).
How work on animal communication crosses over into translation is demonstrated by the
research of Con Slobodchikoff, a US researcher in animal behaviour. Slobodchikoff is the
author of Chasing Doctor Dolittle: Learning the Languages of Animals (2012) and has spent more
than 30 years decoding animal communication. In one study he had initially wanted to look
at the social behaviour of Gunnison prairie dogs but soon became aware of the translational
possibilities of the dogs’ alarm calls, ‘the alarm calls turned out to be a Rosetta stone for
me, in the sense that I could actually decode what information was contained within the
calls’ (Garber 2013). He made extensive recordings and carried out a statistical analysis on
the alarm calls of around 100 of these dogs and cross-referenced the acoustic qualities of the
animal cries with the circumstances in which they were uttered. The natural contexts would
help provide clues as to the meanings of the different sounds. Slobdodchikoff discovered
that the prairie dogs have word-l ike phonemes that they combine into sentence-l ike calls.
They use vocalizations to distinguish between different kinds of predators based on species,
size and colour. The next stage for Slobodchikoff was to cooperate with a colleague with
computer science to make a computer record of the different calls, analyse them with AI
techniques and then have them rendered into English. The process could then be reversed to
produce a call comprehensible to the dog. For Slobodchikoff this research could open up a
new future for translation technology:

So I think we have the technology now to be able to develop the devices that are, say,
the size of a cellphone, that would allow us to talk to our dogs and cats. So the dog says
‘ bark!’ and the device analyzes it and says, ‘I want to eat chicken tonight.’ Or the cat can
say ‘meow,’ and it can say, ‘You haven’t cleaned my litterbox recently’.
(Garber 2013)

The animal communication specialist is suitably humble about the complexities of the un-
derlying research claiming that a decade’s more research might be necessary to allow trans-
lation back and forth between ‘ basic animal languages’. Working in a country where 40%

91
Michael Cronin

of households have dogs and 33% have cats, he sees the implications of animal translation
research as ‘world-changing’:

What I’m hoping, actually, is that down the road, we will be forming partnerships with
animals, rather than exploiting animals. A lot of people either exploit animals, or they’re
afraid of animals, or they have nothing to do with animals because they don’t think that
animals have anything to contribute to their lives. And once people get to the point
where they can start talking to animals, I think they’ll realize that animals are living,
breathing, thinking beings, and that they have a lot to contribute to people’s lives.
(Garber 2013)

Citing a figure of 4 million dogs that are euthanized each year because of ‘ behavioral prob-
lems’, he claims that, ‘most problems are because of the lack of communication between ani-
mal and human’. Implicit in the development of the translation technology envisaged here is
the creation of a sense of cross-species solidarity, a new kind of transversal subjectivity, which
would contribute to a sense of transformative planetary agency. Respect for animals should
not, of course, be based on their ability to approximate human language or to be capable
of adapting their communication systems to human translation devices. Transversal subjec-
tivity in the age of the Anthropocene means that there is no ontological basis for human
claims to ethical primacy in realm of the organic or inorganic. What the translational work
of Slobodchikoff and others point to in the realm of animal communication is how the act
of interspecies communication itself reveals the crippling narrowness of the human sphere of
moral consideration.
The perennial danger in any attempt to engage in forms of translation across species is
anthropomorphism. From Black Beauty to The Wind in the Willows and Winnie the Pooh and
from Mickey Mouse to Peter Rabbit and Peppa Pig, anthropomorphism has been a constant
feature of writing and cultural production, particularly for children (Markowsky 1975: 460–
466). Animal speech is routinely translated into human speech. We understand these others
‘all too easily’ as we relentlessly domesticate animals for a variety of political, educational and
narrative reasons. The figure of anthropomorphism is so widespread in writing for children
that it is rarely an occasion for comment that such a degree of radical translation should be
so widely accepted.
More attention has been paid in recent years to the translation of children’s literature into
other languages ( Lathey 2010) but there has been strikingly little commentary in translation
studies on the centrality of the trope of translation to the very operation of the anthropo-
morphic in children’s writing. At one level, it can be argued that what this form of transla-
tion does is to develop a sense of compassionate kinship between young humans and other
creatures. The strange or the alien or the unfamiliar is reassuringly domesticated and initial
forms of rejection give way to expressions of sympathy and understanding (Markowsky 1975:
460). Indeed, it has been argued that the spectacular growth in anthropomorphism in chil-
dren’s literature in the second half of the nineteenth century was a consequence of the spread
of Darwinian ideas about the animal origins of the human species (Magee 1969). Getting
to know one’s biological neighbours appeared more pressing as the evolutionary evidence
pointed in particular directions. Therefore, the fiction of translation in the form of talking
beasts makes the changed circumstances more tolerable.
The risk of anthropomorphism does not so much invalidate the act of translation as point
to its greater necessity. The foundational act of translation is the attempt to communicate
across difference, not to deny difference but to acknowledge its existence if the operation of

92
 Translation and climate change

translation is to make any sense. Why translate if there is no difference? Maria Tymoczko
notes that difficulties relating to underdetermination of meaning are particularly acute in the
case of texts from very different cultures, texts from the past and texts in dead languages:

Often most difficult to construe are texts that are radically decontextualized in some
way, for instance, by having uncertain authorship, provenance or dating. Scholars of
antiquity, medievalists and translators of the Bible and other scriptures struggle with
underdetermination of meaning all the time, but translators who work with any textual
material from a culture that is significantly different from their own are likely to face
similar questions.
( Tymoczko 2014: 301)

The problem of underdetermination of meaning would appear to be even more problematic

when we consider translation between different species. But the problems of underdetermi-
nation have not prevented scholars of antiquity, Bible translators and medievalists from doing
their work. If the perception of the difficulty was to lead to the cessation of all translation of
scriptures, medieval texts, or texts from dead or remote languages, the historical and cultural
loss would be immense. It is precisely because the history of translation theory and practice
has involved an extended reflection on dealing with and conceptualizing the difficulties of
underdetermination of meaning that translation has much to offer to any attempts to con-
struct a paradigm for interspecies translation. More particularly, scholars in translation studies
have centuries of expertise in the area of translation that is at present wholly unknown or
unrecognized in the field of the life sciences and which could arguably make a significant
contribution to broadening understanding in a wide range of disciplines from biology to
zoology. The notion of cross- species agency is not simply to forge a new understanding be-
tween different species but also to favour a new dialogue between different disciplines.

Machines
Ethan Zuckerman, the media scholar and director of the MIT Center for Civic Media, sees
translation as an essential feature of a new ‘digital cosmopolitanism’. Zuckerman claims, ‘It
is not enough to be enthusiastic about the possibility of connection across cultures, by digital
or other means. Digital cosmopolitanism, as distinguished from cyberutopianism, requires
us to take responsibility for making these connections real’ (Zuckerman 2013: 30). Digital
cosmopolitanism is not a necessary consequence of the globalization of internet connectivity.
Only by taking language difference seriously can the internet live up to the utopian promise
of global understanding:

A connected world is a polyglot world. As we gain access to the thoughts, feelings, and
opinions of people around the world, our potential for knowledge and understanding
expands. But so does our capacity to misunderstand. As we become more connected,
we’re able to comprehend a smaller and smaller fraction of the conversations we encoun-
ter without help and interpretation.
(Zuckerman 2013: 134)

As more and more material becomes available in languages other than English, Anglophones,
in Zuckerman’s view, find themselves increasingly provincialized by their linguistic igno-
rance. Only foreign language acquisition or translation can make the ‘connections real’.

93
Michael Cronin

Translation as a medium of circulation is aligned with the circulatory possibilities of the

Internet, part of a programme of cultivation and understanding of the multiple perspectives
of others. Anjali Joshi, director of product management at Google, offers Zuckerman her
own vision of the cosmopolitan possibilities of a translatable Internet, ‘ “Once you can search
in every language, and you have perfect translation, you have the best content for everyone
on the web. That would be Nirvana” ’ (Zuckerman 2013: 166). Information, connectedness,
globality, these would, indeed, seem to be part of a re- orientation of knowledge and the econ-
omy towards the mobile, the supra-national, the immaterial. For Zuckerman, translation –
whether provided by volunteers or through free, online apps – is the solution to the political
impasse where internet users massively consult content in their own language and remain
circumscribed within their geographical areas of origin. The MIT scholar is articulating in
political terms what has long been argued by the localization industry. Foreign markets can
only be opened up through language mediation. Only listening to or talking to people in
their own language provides the basis for long-term, meaningful, sustainable relationships.
Zuckerman’s translation evangel would seem to be wholly progressive, a non- commercial
version of the cultural and linguistic outreach of the localization industry. However, if we
look more closely at the material consequences of virtual technologies, the cosmopolitan
credo of Zuckerman and others becomes somewhat more unsettling.
Whether slaves as a primary energy source of Greco-Roman society or fossil fuels as the
main energy staple of the developed world, not many theorists or thinkers in the Western tra-
dition, until recently (Mitchell 2011), have dwelt on the energy sources that power political,
economic or social practices. The slave or the steam engine rest in the realm of the unspoken
or the unsaid. Slaves, hydrocarbons and nuclear power have the common property of being
means. Humans fixated on ends have often been reluctant to speak of them. They remain
obscured, concealed in the black box of power. Pascal Chabot in his L’Âge des transitions (2015)
has argued for the development of a new discipline or interdiscipline of ‘transitology’, the
science and art of managing the transition to more sustainable, resilient and viable economies
and societies in order to avoid the irrevocable destruction of the ecosystem. Chabot argues
transitional thought has as its aim the opening of the black box, ‘porter au jour l’invisible,
montrer l’enfoui, comprendre ce que nous consommons pour n’en être pas les victimes’
[bring to light the invisible, reveal the hidden, understand what we consume so as not to
become victims of what we consume] (Chabot 2015: 89). If we are defined, in part, by the
type of energy that we consume, we need to think about how translation itself is complicit
in particular forms of energy consumption that contribute to climate chaos. The energy di-
mension to the Information and Communication Technology ( ICT) revolution that drove
both globalization and the translation industry is never commented upon. Yet, devices need
energy to run and the more sophisticated the devices, the more energy they consume. The
devices themselves are more often than not the pure products of resource extractivism.
There is nothing virtual about the ecological impact of the virtual. It is damagingly real.
Telephones, servers, computers, all contain metals that are difficult to extract and difficult
to recycle. In the average desktop tower computer and cathode tube monitor, the following
valuable and hazardous metals can be found: Aluminium, Antimony ( hazardous), Arsenic
( hazardous), Bismuth, Cadmium ( hazardous), Chromium, Copper, Ferrite, Gold, Indium,
Lead ( hazardous), Nickel, Platinum, Steel, Silver, Tin and Zinc ( Williams 2011: 356). Trans-
mission equipment, aerials, transoceanic cables expand in number and energy consumption
to meet the exponential needs of information-hungry applications. Fibre optic cables may
have reduced the mining for copper but they contain boron and rare metals such as Ger-
manium which increase the refraction index and help to retain the light within the fibre.

94
 Translation and climate change

Between 30% and 50% of the world production of Germanium is used in the manufacture of
fibre optic cables ( Bihouix 2014: 223–224). The toxicity of ICT is particularly to be found in
the externalization of pollution which is a recurrent feature of the global economic system,
the tendency to move highly polluting activities to parts of the planet where there are laxer
forms of environmental regulation or more authoritarian forms of governance ( Williams
2011: 355). The shift from fixed to nomadic or ubiquitous computing with the ascendancy
of smartphones and laptops means energy demands increase apace. The most energy-efficient
way of connecting to a network is through a wired connection, whether Digital Subscriber
Line ( DSL), cable or fibre. WiFi uses somewhat more energy. Connection through a wireless
cellular network tower, however, leads to a dramatic rise in energy consumption. In the case
of 3G, energy use compared to a wired connection is 15 times greater and in the case of 4G,
23 times greater (Huang et al. 2012). The rolling out of a 5G network will lead to further
multiples of increase in energy usage. This is the other ‘ black box’ of translation in a global-
ized world, not so much what goes on in the translator’s head, as what happens when their
fingers touch the screen or hit the keyboard, the long tail of resource extractivism.
In the case of translation and climate change, it is not only a question of the tools we use
but what we use them for. The coupling of ICT and the liberalization of markets in the 1980s
and 1990s lead to the exponential rise in the localization industry. A typical pitch in the lo-
calization industry can be found on the Lionbridge website:

Software localization is the process of translating the text and adjusting the functional
elements of a software application so it can be used by consumers internationally. At
Lionbridge we offer best-in-class methodology and the most advanced localization tech-
nologies to ensure that your software is ready for global consumption.
According to a recent study by Gartner, by 2017, it’s projected that over 268 billion
downloads worldwide will generate $77 billion worth of revenue. The best way to cater
to global markets and customers is to offer your app in their native language. A recent
survey by Common Sense Advisory found that more than half of global consumers only
buy products from websites that provide information in their own language. And more
than half of the countries on the top 10 list for application downloads and revenue are
non-English speaking countries from Europe and East Asia.
(Lionbridge 2016)

Production, consumption, translation and technology are carefully combined in the com-
mercial blandishment of a major global purveyor of translation services and technologies.
The industry is thriving because the demand for translation, as the figures show, continues
to grow worldwide. Indeed, this growth is both a driver of and is facilitated by expanding
ICT capacity on the planet. The very rationale for translation investment is bound up with an
ideal of endlessly expanding markets for goods and services. The problem is that this culture
of infinite growth is no longer sustainable. As the authors of This Is a Crisis note, ‘the ac-
tions required to mitigate breakdown [climate catastrophe] are structural, involving deep and
rapid economic, social and political change across all of society and every nation on earth’
(Laybourn-Langton et al. 2019: 20).
A new ethics for translation technology in the present phase of globalization must criti-
cally evaluate the resource implications of current uses of technology and advance alternative
scenarios for the development of sustainable technology practices at the level of tool and tool
use. From a supply- side perspective, this might involve, for example, the redesigning of ICT
devices to radically reduce the consumption of scarce or hazardous materials or producing

95
Michael Cronin

devices that optimize their capacity for recycling so putting an end to recycling practices
which endanger the lives of men, women and children in developing countries. Modular
manufacturing practices could be adopted to allow for easier repairs and the re-usage of
different component parts or compatibility could be increased or made mandatory not just
in the area of chargers but also for screens, batteries, processors and ports. From a demand-
side perspective, we will have to begin to think of limits to translation growth. Translation
is resource hungry so the need to think about translation as a scarce resource in the light of
the ecological mantra – reduce, reuse, recycle – means the inevitable involvement of ethical
choice. Do we favour the use of translation to sell another camera or skin cream or to further
the provision of health education or instruction in agro- ecology? What is clear is that in a
globalized world on the brink of climate chaos, translation studies cannot remain neutral in
the debates that concern us all.
In John Lanchester’s novel The Wall set in the near future in a Britain adjusting to the
effects of severe climate change, Kavanagh, the main character, reflects on the catastrophic
legacy of the failure to act on climate change:

None of us can talk to our parents. By ‘us’ I mean my generation, people born after the
Change. You know that thing where you break up with someone and say, It’s not you,
it’s me? This is the opposite. It’s not us, it’s them. Everyone knows what the problem
is. The diagnosis isn’t hard – the diagnosis isn’t even controversial. It’s guilt: mass guilt,
generational guilt. The olds feel they irretrievably fucked up the world, then allowed us
to be born into it. You know what? It’s true. That’s exactly what they did. They know
it. We know it. Everybody knows it.
(Lanchester 2019: 55)

In arguing for the development of a terracentric perspective on translation studies, the hope
is that whatever the future brings we cannot be accused of knowing and not acting.

Further reading
Cronin, M. (2017) Eco-Translation: Translation and Ecology in the Age of the Anthropocene. London:
Routledge.
This work focusses on translation from the point of view of political ecology. The four main areas
that are investigated in the volume are food, interspecies communication, technology and travel
literature.
Jiang, X. (2015) ‘ “Eco” and “Adaptation- Selection” in Eco-Translatology Explained’, in Yifeng, S.
(ed.), Translation and Academic Journals: The Evolving Landscape of Scholarly Publishing. Palgrave Mac-
millan: New York, pp. 135–148.
This article provides an accessible introduction to an ecological approach to translation which is pri-
marily concerned with a post-Darwinian notion of translations as occupying particular kinds of eco-
logical niches.
Scott, C. (2018) The Work of Literary Translation. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
The work is directed at the translation of literary texts and considers the interaction between translator
and text as constituting a dynamic, ecological force field.

References
Agorni, M. (2002) Translating Italy for the Eighteenth Century: British Women, Translation and Travel Writ-
ing. Manchester: St. Jerome Press.
Bassnett, S. and Bielsa, E. (2009) Translation in the Global News. London: Routledge.

96
 Translation and climate change

Beckford, J. (2003) Social Theory and Religion. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Berman, A. (1984) L’Épreuve de l’étranger. Culture et tradition dans l’Allemagne romantique. Paris: Gallimard.
Bihouix, P. (2014) L’Âge des low tech: vers une civilisation techniquement soutenable. Paris: Seuil.
Boag, Z. (2019) ‘A Fraction of Life’, New Philosopher, 23, pp. 38–39.
Bonneuil, C. and Fressoz, J.-B. (2013) L’Événement Anthropocène: La Terre, l’histoire et nous. Paris: Seuil.
Braidotti, R. (2013) The Posthuman. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
Caron, A. (2016) Antispéciste. Paris: Don Quichotte.
Chabot, P. (2015) L’âge des transitions. Paris: PUF.
Corbett, J. (1999) Written in the Language of the Scottish Nation: History of Literary Translation into Scots.
Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Cronin, M. (1996) Translating Ireland: Translation, Languages, Cultures. Cork: Cork University Press.
Cronin, M. (2003) Translation and Globalization. London: Routledge.
Cronin, M. (2017) Eco-Translation: Translation and Ecology in the Age of the Anthropocene. London:
Routledge.
Delisle, J. and Woodworth, J. (1995) Translators Through History. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Garber, M. (2013) ‘Animal Behaviorist: We’ll Soon Have Devices That Let Us Talk with Our Pets’,
The Atlantic, June 4. Available online: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/
animal-behaviorist-well-soon-have-devices-that-let-us-talk-with-our-pets/276532 [Accessed 25
April 2020].
Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Huang, J., Qian, F., Gerber, A., Mao, M. Z., Sen, S. and Spatscheck, O. (2012) ‘A Close Examina-
tion of Performance and Power Characteristics of 4G LTE Networks’, MobiSys, p. 12, 25–29 June.
Available online: http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~lierranli/coms6998-7Spring2014/papers/rrclte_
mobisys2012.pdf [Accessed 25 April 2020].
Janik, V. M., Sayigh, L. S. and Wells, R. S. (2006) ‘Signature Whistle Shape Conveys Identity Infor-
mation to Bottlenose Dolphins’, PNAS, 103, pp. 8293–8297.
Jimenez-Crespo, M. (2013) Translation and Web Localization. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Kenneally, C. (2008) The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language. London: Penguin.
Kolbert, E. (2014) The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. London: Bloomsbury.
Lanchester, J. (2019) The Wall. London: Faber and Faber.
Latour, B. (2016) ‘Two Bubbles of Unrealism: Learning from the Tragedy of Trump’. Translated
by Clara Soudan and Jaeyoon Park. Los Angeles Review of Books, 17 November. Available online:
https://lareviewof books.org/article/two-bubbles-unrealism-learning-tragedy-trump [Accessed 19
April 2019]
Lathey, G. (2010) The Role of Translators in Children’s Literature: Invisible Storytellers. London: Routledge.
­

Lieberman, P. (2006) Towards an Evolutionary Biology of Language. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press.
Lionbridge (2016) ‘Software Localization: Reach a Global Audience with Your Software and Applica-
tions’. Available online: http://www.lionbridge.com/solutions/software-localization [Accessed 26
April 2019].
Magee, W. H. (1969) ‘The Animal Story: A Challenge in Technique’, in Egoff, S., Stubbs, G. T.,
Ashley, L. F. (eds.), Only Connect: Readings on Children’s Literature. Toronto, ON: Oxford University
Press, pp. 58–71.
Marais, K. and Kull, K. (2016) ‘Biosemiotics and Translation Studies: Challenging “Translation” ’, in
Gambier Y. and van Doorslaer, L. (eds.), Border Crossings: Translation Studies and Other Disciplines.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 169–188.
Markowsky, J. K. (1975). ‘Why Anthropomorphism in Children’s Literature?’, Elementary English 52(4),
pp. 460– 466. Available online: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41592646 [Accessed 23 April 2019].
Mitchell, T. (2011) Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. London: Verso.
Nussbaum, M. (2019) ‘All about Us’, New Philosopher, 23, pp. 46–47.
O’Hagan, M. and Mangiron, C. (2013) Game Localization: Translating for the Global Digital Entertainment
Industry. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Palmer, P. (2001) Language and Conquest in Early Modern Ireland: English Renaissance Literature and Eliza-
bethan Imperial Expansion. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

97
Michael Cronin

Poole, J., Tyack, P., Stoeger-Horwath, A. and Watwood, S. (2005) ‘Animal Behaviour: Elephants Are
Capable of Vocal Learning’, Nature, 434, pp. 455–456.
Rudwick, M. (2005) Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Seyfarth, R. and Cheney, D. (2003) ‘Signallers and Receivers in Animal Communication’, Annual
Review of Psychology, 54, pp. 145–173.
Slobodchikoff, C. (2012) Chasing Doctor Dolittle: Learning the Languages of Animals. New York: St Martin’s
Press.
Slocombe, K. E. and Zuberbühler, K. (2005) ‘Functionally Referential Communication in a Chim-
panzee’, Current Biology, 15(19), pp. 1779–1784.
Steger, Manfred B. (2017) Globalisation: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Turner, B. S. and Holton, R. J. (eds.) (2016) ‘Theories of Globalisation: Issues and Origins’, in The
Routledge International Handbook of Globalisation Studies, 2nd ed. London: Routledge, pp. 3–23.
Tymoczko, M. (2014) Enlarging Translation, Empowering Translators. London: Routledge.
Valdéon, R. A. (2014) Translation and the Spanish Empire in the Americas. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Williams, E. (2011, November 17) ‘Environmental Effects of Information and Communications Tech-
nologies’, Nature, 479(7373), pp. 354–358.
Williams, R. (2014) The Edge of Words: God and the Habits of Language. London: Bloomsbury.
Zuckerman, E. (2013) Digital Cosmopolitans: Why We Think the Internet Connects Us, Why It Doesn’t, and
How to Rewire It. New York: Norton.

98
 7
The internationalization
of translation studies
Jorge Jiménez-Bellver

Introduction: a success story of the twenty-first century?

The first two decades of the twenty-first century have seen the transformation of translation
studies into a global field of research. If book titles are anything to go by, the scope of con-
temporary translation studies can be gauged from the publication since the late 2000s of a
multitude of monographs and collective volumes on translation in a wide variety of places,
such as China, India, Japan, Korea and Asia at large (Cheung 2009; Wakabayashi and Kothari
2009; Ricci and Van der Putten 2011; Clements 2015; Kang and Wakabayashi 2019), East
Africa and Africa at large ( Bandia 2008; Inggs and Meintjes 2009; Mazrui 2016), Eastern
Europe and Russia ( Baer 2011; Schippel and Zwischenberger 2017), Latin America and the
Americas at large (Gentzler 2008; Jansen and Müller 2017), and Turkey and the Middle East
(Selim 2009; Gürçağlar et al. 2015).
At the institutional and teaching level, the early t wenty-first century has also seen transla-
tion studies programmes mushroom in countries as geographically distant from each other as
Brazil, China, South Africa and Turkey (Gambier 2018: 183). In this regard, the Colombian
scholar Álvaro Echeverri (2017: 530) has borrowed the term ‘ imagined community’ from the
late historian of nationalism Benedict Anderson to refer to the shared sense of belonging that
bonds scholars from around the world to translation studies. According to Echeverri, this has
been despite the recent explosion of the discipline into a variety of burgeoning subfields with
their own paradigms and methodologies (such as audiovisual translation and localization) and
the increasing lack of familiarity of scholars with the work of colleagues who specialize in
other areas than their own.
Early into the new century the Canadian translation journal Meta celebrated its fiftieth
anniversary with an international symposium. One of the keynote addresses was delivered
by the North American scholar Maria Tymoczko and subsequently appeared as an article
( Tymoczko 2005a). Tymoczko outlined in it the six areas of translation research that she
predicted would become the most productive in the near future. One of those areas was
identified as ‘The Internationalization of Translation Studies’ and was described as the in-
vestigation of ‘the range of forms and practices that translation has assumed throughout the
world over the centuries’ (2005a: 1087).

99
Jorge Jiménez- Bellver

Internationalization had previously entered the vocabulary of translation studies from the
field of software localization, where it refers to a preliminary process whereby a programme
and its documentation are prepared to become functional and acceptable in foreign mar-
kets and easy to localize. Tymoczko went in a different direction: internationalization was
intended to convey the urgent need of historical and cross- cultural research in translation
studies in order to combat the ‘idées reçues of the dominant (comer[ci]al, governmental, and so
forth) powers of contemporary ( Western, globalized) culture’ about ‘what […] [translation]
should be’ in the current era of rampant globalization, where translators are key (though often
unwitting) actors in the pursuit of ‘multinational economic and military interests’ (2005a:
1087, 1094).
Tymoczko revisited her predictions a decade later in another article that appeared in the
newly founded journal Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies (APTIS), where she
noted with satisfaction that internationalization had been growing steadily since her 2005
article ( Tymoczko 2016). She explained this by reference not only to research initiatives but
also to horizontal forms of academic institutionalization, such as the foundation of regional
and international associations of translation studies, the organization of translation confer-
ences in venues around the world, and the creation of publication outlets devoted to trans-
lation in specific regions, such as APTIS. Although she also made reference to a comparable
increase in ‘the depth of theoretical inquiry possible’ (2016: 101), she took no note of the
theoretical foundations upon which internationalization was being built.
More recently, Tymoczko (2018: 163–165) characterized the degree of internationaliza-
tion that has been attained so far with the term ‘globalization’. No longer a dirty word linked
to expansionism, globalization was equated with ‘ full internationalization’ by way of the
worldwide institutionalization of translation studies and the unprecedented growth and de-
mographic diversification of the scholarly community (2018: 165). In contrast to her previous
reports, Tymoczko mentioned on this occasion some cases of ‘resistance’ to internationaliza-
tion that had surfaced through different forms of cultural chauvinism (specifically in China
and continental Europe), editorial favouritism (in the case of studies involving European
languages) and prohibitive access to knowledge (with regard to the price of translation studies
books). Other than these issues (to which any serious-m inded scholar would surely object),
she did not mention any kind of intellectually motivated resistance.
Reminiscent of Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere’s depiction of the growth of transla-
tion studies as ‘a success story of the 1980s’ (1990: n.p.), Tymoczko’s account of the inter-
nationalization of the discipline in the early t wenty-fi rst century makes for a great success
story of academic globalization. Indeed, the number of publications listed above is a telling
sign of the international vibrancy of translation research. What is more, there seems to be a
general agreement among scholars about the intrinsic value of drawing on as wide a range of
historical and cross- cultural contexts of translation as possible (e.g. Van Doorslaer 2010: 40;
Pym 2015: 117; Mossop 2016: 22).
Tymoczko has become in this regard the most visible proponent of the internationaliza-
tion of translation studies, as well as its most persuasive theorist. However, due to the self-
fulfilling prophetic character of her 2005 article and the lack in its 2016 and 2018 offshoots of
an account of the theoretical foundations of internationalization and the criticisms that have
been raised, a more detailed and nuanced account is needed to take stock of the success of
internationalization. In what follows, I present some key theoretical claims on international-
ization as they have been made in a number of publications that appeared over the course of
the 2000s and can be seen as building on one another, along with some of the criticisms that
have been made along the way.

100
 Internationalization of translation studies

Setting the scene: escaping the orbit of Eurocentrism

by tapping into postcolonialism
The 1990s were a genuinely exciting time for translation professionals and translation schol-
ars alike. The unprecedented expansion of cross- cultural communication resulting from
the globalization of markets consolidated the localization industry as a major employer of
translators, and the number of commercially available computer-aided translation systems
exploded. Translation studies was likewise revolutionized by the paradigmatic shift to de-
scription propounded by the Israeli scholar Gideon Toury in his 1995 book Descriptive Trans-
lation Studies and Beyond. At the same time, the enhancement of the technical capabilities of
corpus research tools led to the emergence of a new paradigm that carried with it the promise
of identifying the ‘typical’ features of translation as a distinctive form of language produc-
tion: corpus-based translation studies.
The natural synergy between descriptivism and corpus-based translation studies was
noted by Tymoczko in another self-styled prophetic article about the future of translation
research in the era of electronic corpora (1998: 1–2). The trouble with descriptive corpus-
based research nevertheless lay in her view in the anachronistically positivist epistemology
that underpinned it, epitomized in the search for what Toury had termed ‘universal laws’
of translation with the ultimate goal of being able to theorize translation across languages,
cultures and times as a cognitive phenomenon.
To Tymoczko’s mind, the research programme laid out by Toury was driven by ‘the
presupposition of Western rationalism that science should be in the business of discovering
natural laws’, which had long been discredited by philosophers of science, who increasingly
came to realize ‘the way that the perspective of the observer or the researcher is encoded in
every investigation and impinges upon the object and the results of study’ (1998: 2–3). The
search for translation universals thus ran the risk of turning out at best to be a ‘positivist chi-
mera’ by identifying commonalities at such a high level that they would not be of any real
value and at worst to become a sad reflection of the ‘ hopeless ethnocentrism’ of ( Western)
researchers unaware of their own assumptions when it comes to identifying translations and
investigating their typical features (1998: 4, 5).
The first publication that reflected prospects for anything resembling an international
translation studies appeared against this background of growing scepticism about translation
universals and an ever more burning interest in the diversity of translation phenomena.
Beyond the Western Tradition ( Rose 2000) was a collective volume that was meant to over-
come the limitations of an earlier volume titled Translation Horizons: Beyond the Boundaries of
Translation Spectrum, which came out in 1996. The editor of both (the late North American
scholar Marilyn Gaddis Rose) noted that the earlier volume ‘was obviously Western in scope
and perspective’ and that ‘[t]he languages of reference were almost exclusively widely dis-
seminated European languages, each a lingua franca’. By contrast, the new volume featured
‘postcoloniality […] and translation theory, history and practice in languages and cultures
outside the chief Eurocentric orbit’ as the main ingredients ( Rose 2000: vii).
The opposition between ‘Western/Eurocentric’ and postcolonial perspectives was already
well established by the time that Rose made these remarks and would remain fundamental
to the theoretical claims upon which internationalization would come to be based (‘de-
Westernization’ later came to be used synonymously with internationalization, by oppo-
sition to the idea that ‘to internationalize is to Westernize’ [Cheung 2011a: 43]). The term
‘Eurocentrism’ had begun to appear here and there in translation studies in the early to
mid-1990s (specifically in some of the early works dealing with issues of power and ideology)

101
Jorge Jiménez- Bellver

and was defined in an introductory volume to postcolonial translation as ‘A collective belief

structure […] according to which Europe is the center of the globe and the rest of the world
forms its periphery’ ( Robinson 1997: 117).
As for ‘postcoloniality’ and the more widespread ‘postcolonialism’, the ambiguity of the
prefix post meant that the scope of these terms has been far from clear. For some, postcolo-
nialism deals with the predicament faced by formerly colonized societies in having to forge
a new national identity without falling back on their old colonial identity. For others, the
postcolonial predicament began with colonization, and postcolonialism should accordingly
begin with that fateful moment. Yet, others have used the label ‘postcolonial’ to refer more
generally to power relations between ( both colonized and non- colonized) societies. In this
last case, postcolonialism is not an object of study per se but a perspective from which to
examine power relations across the board. This perspective has come to dominate among
translation studies scholars, who have become ‘particularly sensitive to the politico-ethical
significance of translation in reference with the building, transforming, disrupting or de-
stroying of power relations’ ( D’hulst and Gambier 2018: 17).
Beyond the Western Tradition set the scene in this regard for the collection of arguments on
Eurocentrism and postcolonialism that came to coalesce around internationalization. The
volume nevertheless lacked the theoretical elaboration and the politico- ethical thrust of the
contributions that followed. Conversely, the condemnation of something monolithically
called ‘Western translation’ in those same contributions caused a good deal of criticism,
as will be seen below (for an overview of the broader debate on scholarly detachment and
political commitment, see Brownlie 2008).

The adjective ‘international’ comes on stage:

turning the tables on translation studies
The tropes of ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ were picked up by the scholar who first touched upon
internationalization in connection with power: the Turkish Şebnem Susam-Sarajeva (more
recently spelt Susam-Saraeva). She nevertheless began by dissociating these tropes from their
usual identification with Europe and ‘the rest of the world’, respectively. In a book chapter
that appeared in 2002, Susam-Sarajeva stressed the importance of postcolonial theories of
translation as ‘the only option […] [available] if one wishes to discuss matters of power’ (2002:
203), thus revealing her reliance on postcolonialism as a perspective.
Drawing (albeit indirectly) on the structural theory of imperialism developed by the so-
ciologist Johan Galtung, Susam-Sarajeva placed translation studies in the framework of an
international division of scholarly labour whereby a handful of languages (chiefly English)
play an instrumental role in the production and dissemination of knowledge. Galtung had
famously modelled international cooperation in the era of neocolonialism around the notions
of ‘Centre’ and ‘Periphery’ nations. In this regard, Susam- Sarajeva found the spatial yet non-
territorial metaphors of centre and periphery better suited to the understanding of power
differentials in translation studies than geopolitical constructs that, although prevalent in the
vocabulary of a good many scholars, are questionable from a cultural standpoint (namely, the
binary opposites ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’).
The general argument of Susam-Sarajeva’s chapter went roughly like this: in translation
studies, as in the vast majority of academic disciplines today, the need to be proficient in the
dominant languages of scholarly communication ( English, French, German and Spanish)
in order to reach an international readership plays to the advantage of native speakers and
scholars educated in those languages. Being a field where languages are not only means of

102
 Internationalization of translation studies

communication and publication but also the very fabric of research, she noted that translation
studies is particularly affected by this form of inequality.
Dominant languages are in this regard a doubly profitable resource for translation scholars
with native or professional proficiency due to the recursive relationship between the basic
skills needed to conduct translation research (i.e. command of at least two languages) and the
political economy of knowledge with regard to the languages of international dissemination.
‘Central’ scholars theorize translation from a repertory of languages that always includes at
least one dominant language by virtue of their proficiency. Moreover, their repertory is often
limited to dominant languages due to the privileged position of these languages in foreign
language education curricula around the world.
­

Scholars from across the world find themselves having to draw on central theories in order
to gain acceptance and recognition. This works to the detriment of ‘indigenous’ discourses
about translation that are better suited to the material at hand by virtue of their indigeneity but
may not qualify as proper theories because they are devoid of all pretense to universal validity.
Susam-Sarajeva proposed to call this body of knowledge ‘theorizing’ (2002: 204)— a term with
some history in the field of International Relations (see Reus-Smit and Snidal 2008: 11–16).
Her chapter concluded with an invitation for translation scholars to ‘move out of the [impe-
rialistic] structure’ by showing ‘what is being done and what has been done in […] peripheral
languages and cultures in terms of translation theory’ (2002: 204)—in other words, to turn their
attention away from (central) theories and towards ( peripheral) theorizing.
­

Somewhat ironically, a similar criticism was made by the Belgian scholar Luc van Doors-
laer apropos of Tymoczko’s assertion that historical and cross- cultural research should result
in ‘a refurbishing of assumptions in [translation] theory itself ’ (van Doorslaer 2010: 42). Van
Doorslaer noted that, whatever their geographical location, scholars exert their agency by the
mere act of testing universal theories on new data and finding out what their shortcomings
are, as well as their strengths, v is-à-v is their intended scope of application. For him, the in-
vestigation of indigenous discourses should not be an end in itself, as Susam- Sarajeva seems
to imply, but a means to foster greater reciprocity in the formulation of ‘an authentically new
intercontinental model’ of translation (van Doorslaer 2010: 42).
Van Doorslaer misinterpreted Tymoczko on this point as if she were arguing that non-
Eurocentric theories (which, besides non-Eurocentric, may be Sinocentric, Indocentric,

103
Jorge Jiménez- Bellver

Afrocentric, or whatever) should be championed at the expense of Eurocentric ones. As

will be seen in the next section, proponents of internationalization are not quite agreed as
to what the relationship between peripheral data and central theories should be. Contrary
to van Doorslaer’s impression, Tymoczko has staunchly defended integrating ‘non-Western’
data into ‘Western’ theories in order to strip them of their Eurocentric bias (see Tymoczko
2005b), whereas Susam-Sarajeva has been wary of the idea of an ‘all-inclusive theory’ (2002:
205) (for a middle-of-the-road approach between the two, see Marais 2011).
The most pointed criticisms of Susam-Sarajeva’s arguments have been made by the Chi-
nese scholar Chang Nam Fung, who has been the most prolific and vocal critic of interna-
tionalization (2015, 2017, 2018). Speaking as a Hong Kong-based Chinese scholar, Chang
remarked that power is not the exclusive prerogative of central cultures but is also exercised
within peripheral ones to enforce loyalty to the dominant ideology by restricting access to
foreign information and curtailing freedom of expression, as is the case in China today.
He noted in this regard that Susam-Sarajeva eschews the possibility that periphery scholars
deliberately choose to draw on theories that lie beyond their own cultural sphere out of dis-
satisfaction with the stagnant condition of the indigenous stock or simply because they find
these theories more sophisticated and altogether superior (2018: 467). To his mind, the call
to action in the name of periphery cultures conveniently overlooks the adverse conditions in
which periphery scholars often have to go about their business.
Its shortcomings notwithstanding, Susam-Sarajeva’s take on the power dynamics of trans-
lation studies fell on fertile ground. In a matter of just a few years after its publication, calls
to internationalize translation studies started to appear. One of the first to pick up on Susam-
Sarajeva’s ideas was the late Chinese scholar Martha Cheung, who made numerous contri-
butions on the topic of internationalization (2009, 2011a, 2011b) and was the first to call for
an ‘ international turn’.

Internationalization travels to (ancient) China: breaking

free from the straitjacket of contemporary translation
Three years after Susam-Sarajeva’s chapter, Cheung published an article that, as she wrote,
had been ‘motivated by a shared aspiration [with Susam- Sarajeva], i.e. the promotion of a
non-Eurocentric, international Translation Studies’ (2005: 39). Although Susam-Sarajeva’s
chapter did not contain any reference to Eurocentrism, the notion was hardly alien to her
arguments. Cheung, in turn, borrowed the term to refer to similar problems to those noted
by Susam- Sarajeva (i.e. the universalization of Western translation), but she took them in a
different direction by looking at how the Chinese word fanyi came to mean roughly the same
as the English translation. Cheung’s contribution specifically took the form of an examination
of four different words used in ancient China that could variously be said to correspond with
fanyi but fell into disuse.
Fanyi is a compound noun that derives from the character yi, which was the name given
in ancient China to the tribes located to the north and, by metonymic association, to the
Chinese officials in charge of ‘receiving the envoys’ and ‘convey[ing] the words of the King
and explain[ing] His meanings to the[m] […] so as to maintain a harmonious relation with
these tribes’ (Zhouli, quoted in Cheung 2005: 29). While there were other names ( ji, xiang
and Didi) for those officials who had to liaise with the tribes from the other cardinal points,
yi became widespread since the middle of the Han dynasty to refer to all of them due to the
greater frequency of the ‘dealings China had with the northern tribes’ (2005: 33). Yi later
came to be collocated with the character fan to refer specifically to the translation of Buddhist

104
 Internationalization of translation studies

sutras into Chinese so as to ‘draw a distinction […] [with] the lowly activity of the govern-
ment functionaries’ (2005: 35). However, fanyi eventually became established in Chinese for
translation tout court by ‘ frequency of usage’ (2005: 36).
Cheung’s non-Eurocentric agenda was aimed at both the Chinese historiography of trans-
lation and translation studies as an international discipline. With regard to the former, she
highlighted the crucial importance for the modern understanding of fanyi of an annotation
made by the seventh- century commentator Jia Gongyan that signalled a paradigmatic shift
of positionality with regard to the activity of translation: ‘ “to translate” [yi] means “to ex-
change”, that is to say, to change and replace the words of one language by another to achieve
mutual understanding’ (2005: 33). Unlike other early definitions, Gongyan’s did not position
yi in relation to China as the point of reference but instead depicted it as a form of communi-
cative exchange between any two parties speaking different languages. The reason for this,
according to Cheung, was sheer necessity at a time when the transmission of Buddhist sutras
had triggered a great deal of translation activity in China and a less restrictive notion of yi had
become necessary (one where translation would no longer be carried out exclusively between
Chinese officials and the surrounding tribes).
Cheung argued in this regard that the reason why Chinese historians have commonly
categorized Gongyan’s definition of yi as the earliest form of translation theory in China is
that it is amenable to Western views of translation as defined by equivalence (see Chesterman
2016: 4– 6). In her opinion, this has been to the detriment of the associations between yi prior
to Gongyan’s definition and the terms ji, xiang and Didi, which form ‘a network of inter-
related meanings’ (Cheung 2005: 36) about cross- cultural communication that merits being
investigated without recourse to contemporary ‘narrow’ views of translation.
With regard to translation studies as an international discipline, Cheung shared with
Susam- Sarajeva the intent to diversify what counts as knowledge about translation by look-
ing beyond the contemporary equivalents to translation in peripheral languages. Yet, she
also complemented Susam-Sarajeva’s contribution in two important respects. First, while
Cheung agreed that Eurocentrism exerts a detrimental influence on the ability of scholars to
survey translation in all its diversity, she also warned about the risk of challenging Eurocen-
trism with other kinds of ethnocentrism (specifically, Sinocentrism) by magnifying the dif-
ferences with Western translation at the expense of the actual similarities. Furthermore, she
emphasized theoretical integration as the ultimate goal of internationalization so as to arrive
at ‘the “ being”, as it were, of translation’ (Cheung 2005: 41). She thus concluded that only
through ‘a concerted effort to study the conceptualizations of “translation” as they evolved
in different cultures’ could ‘a general theory of translation that truly has general relevance’
be formulated (2005: 28).
The historical significance that Cheung attributed to Gongyan’s definition of yi has never-
theless been problematized by the Chinese scholar Tan Zaixi (2001) in a notable contribution
to the comparative study of the Chinese and Western translation traditions. Tan painted a more
complex picture of the reasons why the meaning of yi changed with sutra translation. The
shift of positionality noted by Cheung occurred not only because, coming as they did from
outside of China, the Buddhist sutras required a broader (i.e. culturally non-positioned) notion
of translation. As Tan noted, the Chinese government of the time also had an interest in the
spread of Buddhism ‘to consolidate their rule, and they needed the mystical supernatural forces
of religion to maintain longevity for themselves, and law and order for society’ (2001: 53).
The new meaning of yi was in this regard not necessarily any less ethnocentric or any
more neutral than its previous meaning, particularly in view of Tan’s assertion that Bud-
dhism ‘was amalgamated with Confucianism, Taoism and the “Dark Learning” ( Xuan Xue),

105
Jorge Jiménez- Bellver

domesticated[, ] and became a national religion’ ( 2001: 53). Cheung overlooked the political
motivations that lay behind the spread of Buddhism in her discussion of Gongyan’s defini-
tion. Furthermore, while this definition may perhaps be taken to be representative of a shift
at the level of discourse, it remains to be seen to what extent it was representative of Buddhist
translation practices, which according to Tan relied heavily on domestication. This relates
more generally to a problem in the attention to indigenous discourses propounded by Susam-
Sarajeva in that such discourses are taken to be somehow representative of translation practice
at large just by virtue of their indigeneity.
Cheung’s reflections on theoretical integration were closely informed by the work of
Tymoczko. The points of convergence between the two scholars were also reflected in their
extending the implications of internationalization to translation practice. Cheung expressed
her hope that the investigation of a greater variety of translation forms would help to ‘open
up what we can or cannot do as a translator and eventually exert an impact on our own
practice of translation’ (2005: 41). For her part, Tymoczko delved into this question by lay-
ing out a rationale for what she saw as the ultimate goal of internationalization: to empower
translators.

Translators take centre stage: repositioning translation back and

forth between the Middle Ages and the era of globalization
­

Tymoczko began by noting the growing obsolescence of theoretical notions like ‘source’
and ‘target’ (see Chesterman 2016: 3 – 4) to describe translation in light of contemporary
phenomena such as software localization, multilingual language policies and electronic hy-
pertexts. These phenomena had come in her view to pose an unprecedented challenge to
practitioners because ‘they seem to undermine all that people have learned about translation
as transfer’ over the centuries (2009: 404). By this, Tymoczko was referring to the defining
function of translation as coded in Western European languages towards the end of the
Middle Ages: to transfer (faithfully, accurately) the semantic content of a text into another
language— a function that she argued no longer prevails in the global translation industry,
where ‘[t]here is a keen demand for innovation, initiative and creativity […] rather than
mastery of a predetermined set of translation skills’ as a result of changes in technology and
communication (2009: 412). Tymoczko pointed out in this regard that internationalizing
translation studies could ultimately be of help for practitioners to meet the communication
needs of today’s society more effectively and responsibly (2009: 406).
Due to the metaphorical character of the word translation and its cognates in Western
European languages (which variously convey an image of carrying, leading or setting some-
thing across geographical space), one way in which Tymoczko suggested that practitioners
could find insight is by looking at equivalent words in other languages (such as fanyi) whose
underlying image- schemas lack the idea of transfer. Another way that she suggested is to
reflect critically on the role of contemporary translators from the perspective of the agency
that they have— e.g. in the case of group translation and oral translation, which have be-
come more frequent in professional contexts in recent times, in contrast to that of the indi-
vidual translator of written texts at the service of ‘ bureaucracies of various sorts, including

106
 Internationalization of translation studies

commercial organizations, governments, colonial regimes and even religious institutions’

(2009: 405). The conceptual and practical differences that emerge by comparing various
models of translation would, in turn, foster awareness of ‘the association of Western models
[…] with cultural and ideological dominance’ and therefore reveal ‘the ideological frame-
works within which translators operate in general’ (2009: 414).
Tymoczko went on to note how Western models could suffice neither as foundations for
an international discipline nor to practitioners in the current era of globalization, where ‘[t]he
world’s diverse ideas about translation are the [cognitive] reserves for dispositions and prac-
tices that human beings need […] and […] will need in times to come to meet the demands
of communication’ (2009: 417). She concluded that only a truly international discipline could
furnish practitioners with the necessary depth of historical and cross- cultural knowledge to
become empowered— a fi nal point that takes us back to her inclusion of internationalization
among the most promising trajectories of research in 2005.
Tymoczko’s article came last in the ( by necessity selective) series of publications presented
here on the theoretical foundations of internationalization that appeared during the 2000s:
Susam- Sarajeva’s on the power asymmetries thwarting internationalization, Cheung’s on the
variety of translation concepts and the circumstances whereby the contemporary meaning
of translation crystallized in China, and Tymoczko’s on the agency implications of inter-
nationalization for practitioners. Out of these three scholars, Tymoczko is the one whose
arguments have most struck a chord with scholars from around the world. Some nevertheless
have pointed out that her arguments are fundamentally flawed. Specifically, Chang and the
Australian scholar Anthony Pym have made complementary criticisms of her use of the cog-
nitive metaphors underlying fanyi and translation.
Chang has taken issue with Tymoczko’s claim that in the Chinese model, ‘[a] translation
is not expected to be equivalent in all respects to the original and transfer per se is not the
primary goal’ (2009: 406) due to the metaphorical association of fanyi with the art of bro-
cade weaving, where ‘the patterns are the same, only they face opposite directions’, as put
by the tenth- century Buddhist monk Zan Ning and discussed by Martha Cheung (2005:
35). Chang argued that, although Cheung characterized Zan’s statement as ‘quite clearly a
rhetorical move to elevate Buddhist sutra translations’ (2005: 35, emphasis added), Tymoczko
wrongly took it to mean that translations are seen in Chinese as ‘different from but comple-
mentary to the original’ (2009: 406, emphasis added).
Just what the nature of that difference is was not explained by Tymoczko at any point in
her article. Chang, by contrast, noted that Zan was referring to ‘the translation of theoretical
works, in which the retention of the original’s form and style is not as important’ and that
what underlay his metaphor of brocade weaving was the view that ‘a translated text and its
source text are the same in content, but different in form’ (2015: 225), like the two sides of
a piece of brocade. Chang went on to point out that Zan’s separation of form and content is
identical with the traditional separation of form and meaning in Western discourses on trans-
lation, which Tymoczko had elsewhere discredited as ‘Platonic’ and ‘essentialist’ ( Tymoczko
2007: 290). To Chang’s mind, this suggested that, at the level of discourse, fanyi is no less
narrow than translation.
Pym has offered an incisive counterpart to Chang’s criticism by claiming, in turn, that
Tymoczko’s depiction of translation in the West as having been historically guided by the
transfer model misconstrues Western translation history from the Middle Ages to the pres-
ent. Pym’s argument is that translation in medieval Europe had in fact much in common,
mutatis mutandis, with the type of translation that Tymoczko observes is currently displacing
the transfer model: localization. He thus set out to explore the commonalities between the

107
Jorge Jiménez- Bellver

two by mapping the characteristics of localization onto the practice of translation in medieval
times.
Pym found with varying degrees of coincidence with localization that medieval trans-
lations combined literalism with explanatory adaptation due to the incomprehensibility of
literal translations, that they were catered to highly specific linguistic and social locales, that
they were constantly rewritten in the process of copying, that it took a tremendous amount
of effort to find reliable manuscripts to be the source texts, and that group translation was
very much the order of the day. These features should suffice to do away with, or at least to
qualify, the monolithic view of Western translation as involving ‘close transfer of the mes-
sage ( particularly the semantic meaning) of the source text’, as well as being ‘ focused on the
individual’ ( Tymoczko 2009: 405, 415).
The most insightful part of Pym’s criticism lies in the reason why he points out that medi-
eval translation and localization could never be the same: technology. He noted that, despite
its apparent commonalities, medieval translation and localization fundamentally differ due to
the technology that shaped translation practice in each case ( parchment and non-print paper
in the former and electronic tools in the latter). The key implication of Pym’s attention to
technology is that the transfer model could never have emerged without the printing press
insofar as print culture created the conditions for ‘the double illusion of the established start
text and the final target text, and thus a regime of relative equivalence […] and of relative
individual responsibility for the target text’ (2015: 115). It is in this regard that Tymoczko’s
reference to the role of Western translation in ‘disseminating scientific and technical knowl-
edge over a large multilingual culture area’ and to the attractiveness of transfer ‘outside
Eurocentric contexts’ (2009: 405) begins to make more sense than by her repeated insistence
on transfer tout court.

Conclusion
Judging from the various criticisms noted above, the internationalization of translation stud-
ies may not after all have been quite as unanimously acclaimed as one might assume from
Tymoczko’s reports. To be sure, it has become standard practice for scholars of all persuasions
to condemn Eurocentrism, naïve universalism and narrow views of translation. The bone of
contention nevertheless is whether these malicious elements lie at the root of all the ails that
haunt translation studies in the t wenty-first century.
Ever since the publications presented here came out, there have been two main (and in
many ways opposite) types of response to the prospects of internationalization. One has
been the initiative championed by Susam-Sarajeva: to investigate indigenous theorizing in
periphery cultures. Susam-Sarajeva has herself contributed to this line of approach in a recent
article where she examines the production of blogs about motherhood in Turkey from the
lens of the Ottoman and Turkish conceptualizations of translation (Susam-Saraeva 2017).
The other type of response has been to compare different translation traditions in search of
common ground. The most recent contribution here has been the edited volume A World
Atlas of Translation (Gambier and Stecconi 2019), which features reports about twenty-one
different translation traditions with the aim of empirically testing the hypothesis that ‘a
workable, trans-cultural, and general notion of translation’ can be identified from the wealth
of ‘ historically and culturally determined ideas about translation that can be observed in the
different traditions’ (2019: 4).
If one may venture to predict the future of internationalization from these responses, it seems
clear that there is good reason to be optimistic about its continued success. Susam-Sarajeva’s

108
 Internationalization of translation studies

attention to blogs as a form of interlingual text production, for instance, is in line with the
recent push to include non-professional translation in the purview of translation studies (see
Antonini et al. 2017) and, more generally, with the current reorientation of the discipline
towards ‘wider segments of society’ as a result of the advent of free translation software ( Pym
2015: 117). Her article may therefore be seen as a promising example of the potential synergy
between internationalization and new areas of translation research, such as non-professional
and multimedia translation, in the near future.
The publication of the World Atlas is momentous in that no other study comparable in
scope had been conducted before. The editors ( Yves Gambier and Ubaldo Stecconi) secured
the participation of a large number of scholars (thirty in total, including some well-k nown
proponents of internationalization), who were selected for having the necessary ‘ inside
knowledge, understanding and sensitivity’ (2019: 466) to write synthetic reports on their
respective traditions that could be put at the service of testing their hypothesis.
This distribution of roles between, as it were, the editors as ‘theorists’ and the reporters
as ‘native informants’ may seem suspiciously similar to Susam-Sarajeva’s model of the inter-
national division of labour. However, Gambier and Stecconi expressly designed the project
with ‘minimal assumptions’ about what translation is and gave the contributors complete
freedom to choose the ‘theoretical underpinnings, methods and research agendas’ of their
reports (2019: 6, 466). Their decision not to dictate which theories and methods ought to
be used is a clear indication that ( Western) scholars have become much more alert to power
relations and open to drawing on a variety of theoretical and methodological sources.
On the downside of things, these responses suggest in different ways that translation
studies may not have become as global as it seems—not quite in Tymoczko’s sense of ‘ fully
international’, but instead in a cohesive sense. To take Susam- Sarajeva’s recent work as a rep-
resentative example, her exploration of the Ottoman terceme and its Turkish cognate tercüme
reproduces the same logic that Pym criticized about Tymoczko insofar as it ‘reduces Western
translation theory to something called “transfer”, which can then be opposed to a wealth of
more exciting ideas from elsewhere’ (2015: 117). It is revealing in this regard that the alleged
‘traces of older conceptions of [interlingual] text production’ that Susam- Sarajeva claims
‘erase[…] the difference between “translation”, “adaptation” and “original” writing’ (2017:
76, 78) in the production of blogs in Turkey (which range from reported forms of speech to
simplification, adaptation, summary, addition and omission) have all been regarded as transla-
tion strategies in contemporary Western theories (e.g. Chesterman 2016: 104–109)— and yet,
Susam- Sarajeva keeps portraying Western translation unequivocally as ‘a highly regulated
transfer of meaning’ (2017: 70).
As for Gambier and Stecconi, their venture sadly comes to a disappointing ending. This
is not because they end up finding that ‘a clear-cut notion of translation does not emerge
from the reports’ (2019: 465), which would be a perfectly sound conclusion if they did not
ascribe it to their initial decision to make use of ‘a broad range of methodologies, approaches
and styles that ma[de] synthesis difficult’ (2019: 466– 467) and leave it at that. Nowhere in
their conclusions do Gambier and Stecconi reflect on the possible reasons why methodolog-
ical plurality came at the expense of data comparability and synthesis, or explain why it was
necessary to champion methodological plurality in the first place. In this way, an initiative
that was explicitly conceived to compare translation traditions empirically on the basis of a
verifiable tertium comparationis ends up as a compilation of disparate case studies with no fur-
ther questions asked.
Translation studies thus appears to be still grappling with some serious methodological
problems some fifteen years after internationalization was hailed as one of the most promising

109
Jorge Jiménez- Bellver

research trajectories. One cannot help but wonder if the commendable intentions of the pro-
ponents of internationalization may have spuriously resulted in a return to methodological
nationalism in the name of difference and a likewise methodological impasse in the search
for commonalities across differences.
Around the turn of the twenty-first century, Tymoczko wrote apropos of corpus-based
translation studies that ‘[c]omparison is always implicit or explicit in inquiries about translation,
and there is often a tendency to focus on likeness rather than difference and to rest content
with similarity’ (1998: 5), adding that ‘C[orpus]T[ranslation]S[tudies] has the potential to be
one means of challenging hegemonic, culture-bound views of texts, translation, and cultural
transfer. It is a powerful tool for perceiving difference and for valorizing difference as well’
(1998: 6). Clearly, the tables have turned since then. Perhaps the main challenge for the future
of translation studies as an international discipline will be to strike a (greater) balance between
the valorization of difference and the inescapably comparative basis of translation research.

Further reading
Chesterman, A. (2014) ‘Translation Studies Forum: Universalism in Translation Studies’, Translation
Studies, 7(1), pp. 82–90, and the responses in that issue (pp. 92–107) and in issue 7(3) (pp. 335–352).
An informative and lively debate initiated by the British scholar Andrew Chesterman and contin-
ued by eight respondents (including Susam- Sarajeva and Tymoczko) on the issues than have been
addressed in this chapter, framed around the opposition between scientific universalism and cultural
relativism.
Robinson, D. (2017) ‘Towards an Intercivilizational Turn: Naoki Sakai’s Cofigurative Regimes of
Translation and the Problem of Eurocentrism’, Translation Studies, 9(1), pp. 51–66.
A follow-up to Robinson’s response to Chesterman’s position piece on universalism. Drawing on
the work of the Japanese scholar Sakai Naoki, Robinson traces the intellectual genealogy of Euro-
centrism and a nti-Eurocentrism and recasts them as part of the larger discourses of Orientalism and
Occidentalism.
Tymoczko, M. (2007) Enlarging Translation, Empowering Translators. Manchester: St. Jerome.
The only book-length and the most cogent study of translation from the lens of internationalization as
a cross-linguistic, cross- cultural and cross-temporal cluster concept, as well as a spirited manifesto on
the politico- ethical implications for translators.
Tyulenev, S. and Zheng, B. (eds.) (2017) ‘Toward Comparative Translation and Interpreting Studies’.
Special Issue of Translation and Interpreting Studies, 12(2), pp. 197–212.
A promising (if perhaps overly ambitious in scope) rationale for the comparative study of translation
at the meso- and macro- levels that picks up where most proponents of internationalization leave off
or fail to agree: what to do with the wealth of data collected on the diversity of translation practices
around the world.
van Doorslaer, L. and Flynn, P. (eds.) (2013) Eurocentrism in Translation Studies. Amsterdam and Phila-
delphia, PA: John Benjamins.
A collection of criticisms of the use of Eurocentrism in translation studies apropos of Edwin Gentzler’s
book Translation and Identity in the Americas: New Directions in Translation Theory from a variety of per-
spectives, such as scientific logic, linguistic justice theory and colonial historiography.

References
Antonini, R., Cirillo, L., Rossato, L. and Torresi, I. (eds.) (2017) Non-Professional Interpreting and Trans-
lation: State of the Art and Future of an Emerging Field of Research. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA:
John Benjamins.
Baer, B. J. (ed.) (2011) Contexts, Subtexts and Pretexts: Literary Translation in Eastern Europe and Russia.
Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Bandia, P. F. (2008) Translation as Reparation: Writing and Translation in Postcolonial Africa. Manchester:
St. Jerome.

110
 Internationalization of translation studies

Bassnett, S. and Lefevere, A. (eds.) (1990) Translation, History and Culture. London and New York: Pinter.
Brownlie, S. (2008) ‘Descriptive vs. Committed Approaches’, in Baker, M. and Saldanha, G. (eds.),
Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, 2nd ed. London: Routledge, pp. 77– 80.
Chang, N. F. (2015) ‘Does “Translation” Reflect a Narrower Concept than “Fanyi”? On the Impact
of Western Theories on China and the Concern about Eurocentrism’, Translation and Interpreting
Studies 10(2), pp. 223–242.
Chang, N. F. (2017) ‘A Polysystemist’s Response to Prescriptive Cultural Relativism and Postcolonialism’,
Across Languages and Cultures, 18(1), pp. 133–154.
Chang, N. F. (2018) ‘Voices from the Periphery: Further Reflections on Relativism in Translation
Studies’, Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice, 26(4), pp. 463–477.
Chesterman, A. (2016) Memes of Translation: The Spread of Ideas in Translation Theory. Revised edition.
Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Cheung, M. P. Y. (2005) ‘ “To translate” Means “to exchange”? A New Interpretation of the Earliest
Chinese Attempts to Define Translation (“ fanyi”)’, Target, 17(1), pp. 27–48.
Cheung, M. P. Y. (ed.) (2009) Chinese Discourses on Translation: Positions and Perspectives. Special issue of
The Translator 15(2), pp. 223–458.
Cheung, M. P. Y. (2011a) ‘The ( Un)Importance of Flagging Chineseness. Making Sense of a Recurrent
Theme in Contemporary Chinese Discourses on Translation’, Translation Studies, 4(1), pp. 41–57.
Cheung, M. P. Y. (2011b) ‘Reconceptualizing Translation – Some Chinese Endeavours’, Meta, 56(1),
pp. 1–19.
Clements, R. (2015) A Cultural History of Translation in Early Modern Japan. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge
University Press.
D’hulst, L. and Gambier, Y. (2018) ‘Introduction’, in D’hulst, L. and Gambier, Y. (eds.), A History of
Modern Translation Knowledge. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 17–18.
Echeverri, Á. (2017) ‘About Maps, Versions and Translations of Translation Studies: A Look into the
Metaturn of Translatology’, Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice, 25(4), pp. 521–539.
Gambier, Y. (2018) ‘Institutionalization of Translation Studies’, in D’hulst, L. and Gambier, Y. (eds.),
A History of Modern Translation Knowledge. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins,
pp. 179–194.
Gambier, Y. and Stecconi, U. (eds.) (2019) A World Atlas of Translation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia,
PA: John Benjamins.
Gentzler, E. (2008) Translation and Identity in the Americas: New Directions in Translation Theory. London:
Routledge.
Gürçağlar, Ş. T., Paker, S. and Milton, J. (eds.) (2015) Tradition, Tension and Translation in Turkey.
Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Inggs, J. and Meintjes, L. (eds.) (2009) Translation Studies in Africa. London and New York: Continuum.
Jansen, S. and Müller, G. (eds.) (2017) La traducción desde, en y hacia Latinoamérica: perspectivas literarias y
lingüísticas. Madrid and Frankfurt am Main: Iberoamericana/ Vervuert.
Kang, J. and Wakabayashi, J. (eds.) (2019) Translating and Interpreting in Korean Contexts: Engaging with
Asian and Western Others. London and New York: Routledge.
Marais, K. (2011) ‘Can Tymoczko be Translated into Africa? Refractions of Research Methodology
in Translation Studies in African Contexts’, Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies,
29(3), pp. 373–380.
Mazrui, A. M. (2016) Cultural Politics of Translation: East Africa in a Global Context. London: Routledge.
Mossop, B. (2016) ‘ “Intralingual Translation”: A Desirable Concept?’, Across Languages and Cultures,
17(1), pp. 1–24.
Patiniotis, M. and Gavroglu, K. (2012) ‘The Sciences in Europe: Transmitting Centers and the Appro-
priating Peripheries’, in Renn, J. (ed.), The Globalization of Knowledge in History. Berlin: Edition
Open Access, pp. 285–303.
Pym, A. (2015) ‘The Medieval Postmodern in Translation Studies’, in Fuentes, A. and Torres- Simón, E.
(eds.), And Translation Changed the World (and the World Changed Translation). Newcastle: Cambridge
Scholars, pp. 105–120.
­

Ricci, R. and Van der Putten, J. (eds.) (2011) Translation in Asia: Theories, Practices, Histories. Manchester:
St. Jerome.

111
Jorge Jiménez- Bellver

Robinson, D. (1997) Translation and Empire: Postcolonial Theories Explained. Manchester: St. Jerome.
Rose, M. G. (ed.) (1996) Translation Horizons: Beyond the Boundaries of Translation Spectrum. Translation
Perspectives IX. Binghamton: Center of Research in Translation, SUNY Binghamton.
Rose, M. G. (ed.) (2000) Beyond the Western Tradition. Translation Perspectives XI. Binghamton: Center
of Research in Translation, SUNY Binghamton.
Schippel, L. and Zwischenberger, C. (eds.) (2017) Going East: Discovering New and Alternative Traditions
in Translation Studies. Berlin: Frank und Timme.
Selim, S. (ed.) (2009) Nation & Translation in the Middle East. Special issue of The Translator 15(1), pp. 1–220.
Susam-Saraeva, Ş. (2017) ‘In Search of an “International” Translation Studies: Tracing Terceme and
Tercüme in the Blogosphere’, Translation Studies, 10(1), pp. 69–86.
Susam-Sarajeva, Ş. (2002) ‘A “Multilingual” and “International” Translation Studies?’, in Hermans,
T. (ed.), Cross-Cultural Transgressions. Research Models in Translation Studies II: Historical and Ideological
Issues. Manchester: St. Jerome, pp. 193–207.
Tan, Z. (2001) ‘The Chinese and Western Translation Traditions in Comparison’, Across Languages and
Cultures, 2(1), pp. 51–72.
Tymoczko, M. (1998) ‘Computerized Corpora and the Future of Translation Studies’, Meta, 43(4),
pp. 1–9.
Tymoczko, M. (2005a) ‘Trajectories of Research in Translation Studies’, Meta, 50(4), pp. 1082–1097.
Tymoczko, M. (2005b) ‘Reconceptualizing Western Translation Theory: Integrating Non-Western
Thought about Translation’, in Hermans T. (ed.), Translating Others, Vol. 1. Manchester: St. Jerome,
pp. 13–32.
Tymoczko, M. (2009) ‘Why Translators Should Want to Internationalize Translation Studies’, The
Translator, 15(2), pp. 401–421.
Tymoczko, M. (2016) ‘Trajectories of Research in Translation Studies: An Update with a Case Study
in the Neuroscience of Translation’, Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies, 3(2), pp. 99–122.
Tymoczko, M. (2018) ‘The History of Internationalization in Translation Studies and its Impact on
Translation Theory’, in D’hulst, L. and Gambier, Y. (eds.), A History of Modern Translation Knowledge.
Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 153–169.
van Doorslaer, L. (2010) ‘The Side Effects of the “Eurocentrism” Concept’, in Rao, P. and Peeters,
J. (eds.), Socio-Cultural Approaches to Translation: Indian and European Perspectives. New Delhi: Excel
India, pp. 39–46.
Wakabayashi, J. and Kothari, R. (eds.) (2009) Decentering Translation Studies: India and Beyond. Amsterdam
and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing.

112
 8
Transnational and global
approaches in translation studies
Methodological observations

Mattea Cussel

Introduction
This chapter takes a critical position against methodological nationalism and the use of bi-
nary categories to represent translation.1 Such methodologies have become so ingrained in
certain translation vocabularies that even some ethical and heterogeneous approaches still
rely on a dichotomic and/or national organization of languages, texts, cultures, and read-
ers. While Edwin Gentzler (2012) writes that the national period of translation ended in
the 1990s and 2000s, I suggest that it persists in the way that we imagine and represent the
encounters fostered by translation. I consider the development of the national story of trans-
lation to reveal the way in which it has reduced the latter to international exchange, which
limits its potential to facilitate much needed social and political solidarities in a globalized
world of interdependent fate. I argue that Lawrence Venuti’s ethical strategy of foreignization
succumbs to methodological nationalism and is inapplicable in contexts of multiple subject
positionings where the domestic/foreign binary does not hold. This leads me to explore and
wonder about the other stories of translation that are not being told: different paths of re-
ception and relationships that can be drawn between diverse groups, cultural narratives, and
texts. The key to pursuing these stories lies in more sociological approaches to actual readers
and the different groups on the sending and receiving end of translation. A transnational and
global revision of methodologies is crucial to tackle the difficult task of finding new ways of
thinking and framing translation processes that involve multiple and competing selves and
solidarities.

Translation as movement between nations

In a traditional binary approach to translation, there is a clear distinction between the source
and target languages, cultures, texts, and readers. They are separate, homogeneous, and exclu-
sive units between which movement is possible. This movement is from domestic to foreign
or vice versa. This understanding of translation is fundamentally challenged by globalization.
The availability of goods and immediacy of contact through global markets and communi-
cations have brought about the ‘entrenchment of enduring patterns of connectedness across

113
Mattea Cussel

the globe’ (Held and McGrew 2000: 3). This accelerating interdependence has ruptured
links that were previously seen as natural, such as the correspondence between the national
territorial unit and society, the economy, and political organization (2000: 8). Social space
has been deterritorialized or recast in the global frame, making the separateness of languages,
cultures, texts, and readers harder to sustain. This is not to say that a binary understanding
of translation has simply lost its former cogency. David Damrosch’s (2009) exploration of the
translated original Candide, the multilingual shifting original(s) 1001 Nights, and the multi-
dialectal Lysistrata shows that even the most canonical of translated world literature did not
initiate from a single homogeneously foreign original. Yet binary representations have dom-
inated critical imaginaries of translation. This is demonstrated by Friedrich Schleiermacher’s
image of the translative act, which is one of the most repeatedly invoked: on one side, the
author, and on the other, the reader of the translation; one is to be left in peace while the
other is to be moved; either the reader is moved to the foreign position or the author is moved
to the domestic position (translated in Lefevere 1977: 74). Venuti’s (2008) landmark criticism
of domestication in favour of foreignization to detract from the ethnocentrism of translation
practice develops upon this image of translation as enacting movement, in one direction or
another, between dichotomies. Where I start my critique is the way in which this representa-
tion of translation is unconsciously imbued with national significance: the domestic and the
foreign are assumed to be national entities.
Sherry Simon argues that during the Renaissance and German Romanticism, translation
activity reconfigured the relationship between language and national [or what would evolve
into national] culture (2002: 123). In the first period, centuries before the rise of the nation
state, translation played a key role in the constitution of vernacular languages, as in the case
of Luther who produced a unified German language from various dialects in his translation
of the Bible. In Europe, a discourse emerged according to which translations from Greek or
Latin into vernaculars were supposed to benefit the birth country, proving its people worthy
of knowledge and legitimizing their language ( Philemon Holland, translated in Lefevere
1990: 23). Translators were said to gift foreign speech styles to their nation ( Juan Luis Vives,
translated in Lefevere 1990: 51).
In the second period, against the backdrop of the rise of nationalism, the German
Romantics promoted translation as mutual exchange and dependence between nations. It
was seen as a tool to linguistically and culturally enrich the nascent national literary canons,
strengthening them in such a way that the nation could come more fully into itself (Simon
2002: 125). This was a fecund time for translation thinking: the plasticity of language and
the need for experimentation were reclaimed, and translation was discussed in terms of a
preoccupation regarding how to construe the relationship between self and other. However,
these reflections were made within the framework of the nation: the spirit of a language
was national, and each language had a people to which it belonged, such that the link be-
tween language, subjectivity, and national group was solidified. Through translation the
great works of a nation’s art and scholarship were traded, and one translation method or
another was preferred based on the value it provided to the national project (Schleiermacher,
translated in Lefevere 1977).
When the discipline of translation studies was established around the 1960s, the limited
yet long- standing view of translation as the exchange of texts written in vernacular/national
languages between circumscribed groups for the mutual benefit of their respective cultures
was accepted as natural. As translation had been enlisted to play a transformative role in the
development of national language and culture, the intimate relationship between transla-
tion and nation dominated representations. The uncritical adoption of this particular way of

114
 Methodological observations

organizing textual subjectivities and translation processes is an indication of methodological

nationalism. This term refers to the assumption that the world is naturally divided up into
nation- state societies, which are the primary unit of analysis ( Beck 2003: 453). When trans-
lation studies was consolidated in the mid-1970s, the descriptive scholars pursued national
objects of study such as national languages and literatures, the transfer between them through
polysystem theory, and the operation of translation norms in target systems.2 While the
descriptive approach made the positive contribution of moving beyond source-target equiv-
alence, promoting translation as a primary activity, and incorporating socio- cultural per-
spectives, it failed to recognize that ‘systems’ were not containers for reality. Rather, what
they did was construct national containers for translation processes. Systems or polysystems,
which were conflated with national cultures and literatures, were treated as sentient beings,
marking the conspicuous absence of actual agents, institutions, and stakes ( Hermans 1999:
118). False subjecthood and agency is still observed today in relation to cultures, which are
described as being able to do things, such as receive texts, or as having, for example, ideolog-
ical needs (e.g. Tymoczko 2007: 250).
Methodological nationalism is not isolated to translation studies; the term itself I am bor-
rowing from sociology. Ulrich Beck argues that sociology was developed under a nationalist
paradigm in which society was automatically equated with nation- state society and units of
analysis were the state and government (2007: 286–287). However, transnational and global-
ized experiences of (re)attachment, multiple belongings, belonging-at-a-distance, suprana-
tional agreements, diaspora cultures, and global cities reveal the limitations of the national
gaze for characterizing twenty-fi rst-century ways of life, as well as facing the challenges of
a world steeped in risks with global dimensions ( Beck 2003, 2007). While this is the case,
critics have rightly observed that Beck adds a historical gloss to methodological nationalism
in which it is supposed to be an optic that was once suitable but has now become obsolete.
However, the root problem of methodological nationalism is the same for our times as it was
for others: it treats the nation state as an ontology, naturalizing and rationalizing its existence,
and locating its development ‘ in a teleological framework as the apex of modern political
community’ ( Fine 2007: 10).
The anthropologist Arjun Appadurai also identifies a nationalist paradigm in area studies.
What has positively set area studies apart from most of the academy is the serious study of
foreign languages and genuine enquiry into alternative world views (Appadurai 1996: 17).
However, this ability has become something of a disability. Appadurai criticizes the tendency
to label difference as a national entity and ‘to refract processes through this sort of national-
cultural map of the world’ (1996: 16). Having gotten used to these old maps, area studies
has become ‘too insensitive to transnational processes both today and in the past’ (1996: 17).
The virtues and limitations of translation studies are similar. By focussing on the acqui-
sition of profound knowledge of languages and cultures, differences between cultures have
been emphasized, while diversity among cultures and shared global phenomena across cul-
tures have tended to be overlooked. While Appadurai emphasizes the failure to recognize
the transnational, I suggest that translation studies has explored international more than
transnational processes. According to Steven Vertovec, the international refers to the inter-
action and back-and-forth movement of goods and people between nation states, whereas
transnationalism is the sustained relationships, exchanges, and social groupings that span
different nation states (2009: 3). If we speak of worlds, the international world is a config-
uration of particular peoples and their respective national languages (Sakai 1997: 19), while
the transnational world is a web of messy entanglements that make collectivity more indeter-
minate. It is this messiness and indeterminacy that translation studies has lacked the tools to

115
Mattea Cussel

accommodate. It is not that the national map has become irrelevant, but rather that it must be
seen in interaction with local, regional, and global dynamics, which have often been ignored.
José Lambert makes this point in one of the earlier critiques of the national gaze from within
the discipline. In his article ‘In Quest of Literary World Maps’ (2006), originally published in
1991, he argues that literary scientists and institutions have organized and financed teaching
and research around static national— and often anachronistically national—but not dynamic
local and regional maps.
The most trenchant critique of methodological nationalism, though not termed as such,
by a translation theorist comes from Naoki Sakai in Translation and Subjectivity (1997). Sakai
and Beck are similar in that they stress the power of our methodology to produce the object
we are trying to observe. For Sakai, ‘translation is one of the most important instances in
the modern experience of language’ (Cussel 2018) as it has been institutionalized in such a
way that it functions as a tool to distinguish between national languages. The only way to
perceive languages as discrete entities is to set them off against one another in what Sakai calls
the ‘schematism of configuration’ (2010: 28). Translation or our representation of translation
is charged with performing this task. This conceptual framework produces the mainstream
understanding of translation as communication between one enclosed national language
community and another (1997: 6). Such an understanding has had the effect of putting cul-
tural difference, intercultural exchange, and national subjectivity at the heart of research
questions in translation studies, at the expense of many others. As Sakai and Neilson write,
this profoundly modern representation of translation is not descriptive but prescriptive (2014:
14). When descriptive translation studies sought to do away with value judgements about
equivalence by studying norms in target cultures, their descriptive methods were concep-
tually contradicted by an underlying prescription that language and culture are national,
hermetic, countable, and contrastable.
Has awareness of methodological nationalism increased in translation studies in the last
few decades? Lambert’s suggestions for future research in 1991 were smaller minorities, non-
standard languages, oral traditions, interconnected languages, regions, and cities. If we con-
sider research into translation and migration, postcolonialism, multilingual cities, and hybrid
language varieties (see Cronin 2003; Bandia 2014; Gentzler 2008; Simon 2011; Inghilleri
2017), Lambert’s calls have been answered. Much interesting research that does not perpetu-
ate methodological nationalism has been conducted. However, I argue that an overhaul of old
vocabularies and the development of alternative methodologies is still needed. In the follow-
ing, I will show that binary vocabularies such as domestication and foreignization are derived
from the national story of translation and are difficult to unpack in transnational and global-
ized contexts where multiple positionings blur the distinction between us and them. I will
also highlight how translation research that introduces heterogeneity into the source/target
binaries does not go far enough as it still fails to fully break with an understanding of trans-
lation as communication between, in this case, heterogeneous culture A and heterogeneous
culture B. What is at stake is a discourse of translation that is capable of producing social and
political relationships which are not based on international or intercultural encounter (Sakai
1997: 15). It is not that this view is wrong, but rather that it has become so widely adopted
that it is blocking the emergence of other ways of imagining and portraying translation. The
oft-repeated phrase ‘translation across languages and cultures’ blocks our view of the other
social positionings that are brought into contact. Globalization is shifting frameworks of
self and solidarity from nationalism to nonterritorial and hybrid intersections of faith, class,
gender, race, age, sexual orientation, bodily condition, etc., along with plurinational and/or

116
 Methodological observations

Of foreign national origin

Domestication and foreignization have received significant criticism for being vague, sim-
plistic, and dichotomic. Mona Baker proposes a narrative theory methodology to avoid re-
ducing a translator’s strategy to either domesticating or foreignizing (2007). Anthony Pym
argues that the borders of a chronically domesticating A nglo-American culture are difficult
to see (1996). Maria Tymoczko suggests that the object of resistance in ethnodeviant trans-
lation is extremely vague (2010: 210). While these critiques are important, they overlook
the most problematic aspect of Venuti’s dichotomy: its reliance on national paradigms. By
historicizing the domestic/foreign binary in German Romantic translation thinking, Venuti
(2008) reveals that the initial formulation of foreignization was entwined with nationalist
rivalries. This history is particularly significant since nationalized definitions of the foreign,
as I will now show, persist to this day.
Venuti demonstrates how Schleiermacher promoted foreignizing translation as a cultural
weapon in a nationalist and class struggle against France and the Gallicized Prussian ar-
istocracy (2008: 86–90). It is only a small section of society, the educated bourgeois, that
determines what is foreign and its inverse, along with its national name and usefulness for
a domestic imperialist project. In opposition to France and the domesticating strategies of
French neoclassicism, Schleiermacher highlights the essential learnedness and mediating na-
ture of German culture. A less cited example of nationalist sparring taking place through
translation discourse can be found in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who argued that the
Americans, French [contrary to what Schleiermacher holds], and Germans are much more
adaptable and sympathetic to foreign ways of thinking than the English (Gruesz 2002: 85–
86). Venuti suggests that the motivations and effects of Schleiermacher’s willingness to ac-
commodate the foreign, conceived as a kind of treasure in a newly cross-pollinated German
language, are dubious.

Ultimately it would seem that foreignising translation does not so much introduce the
foreign into German culture as use the foreign to confirm and develop a sameness, a
process of fashioning an ideal cultural self on the basis of an other, a cultural narcissism,
which is endowed, moreover, with historical necessity.
(2008: 92)

While Schleiermacher’s interest in the foreign as part of a process of national self- definition
is vastly different from Goethe’s artistic cosmopolitan desire to translate and be translated
( Bielsa 2014: 400), both envisage the foreign as a foreign nation, foreign national, and for-
eign national literature. What is more, in Schleiermacher’s famous lecture ‘On the Different
Methods of Translating’, the method of moving the reader towards the author is proposed in
terms of representing what is foreign in one’s mother tongue (translated in Lefevere 1977: 79).
As Pym (1995) writes, Schleiermacher’s lecture is more than anything about belonging. It is
clear who belongs and who does not, and any sort of non-belonging is eschewed. I argue that
such a circumscribed scheme of subjectivity based on the symbiosis of shared language and
mutual belonging has endured in Venuti’s foreignization, and is in fact essential to be able to
figure out what falls on either side of the domestic/foreign binary.

117
Mattea Cussel

To adopt or analyse a foreignizing strategy the translator or researcher must determine

what constitutes the domestic and the foreign. This can only be done by making normative
judgements about reading practices, including what is known, unknown, acceptable, or un-
acceptable from the point of view of a single subject position. This single subject position is
almost always national, i.e. the French, Chinese, Iranians, A nglo-Americans,3 etc. However,
while it may have been beyond Goethe and Schleiermacher’s time to imagine the domestic
and the foreign on non-national terms, it is certainly not beyond ours. A slightly exaggerated
example that demonstrates the absurdity of the single subject position of the average national
reader, or viewer in this case, can be found in the history of Japanese subtitling. To determine
how fast Japanese people could read a subtitle, a film was shown to a Shinbashi geisha, whose
personal reading speed set the three to four character per second rule ( Nornes 1999: 20). The
process of determining the domestic and the foreign does not culminate in the representation
of an already existing domesticity and foreignness, it is part of their ongoing construction
in a national distribution of subjectivities and meanings. It is in this way that translation is
constitutive of cultures (Gentzler 2008: 5), as is how we think and write about it. Venuti is
aware that the single subject position is controversial when he writes in ‘Translation, Com-
munity, Utopia’:

A translator may find that the very concept of the domestic merits interrogation for its
concealment of heterogeneity and hybridity which can complicate existing stereotypes,
canons, and standards applied in translation.
(2000: 469)

The domestic is no longer the cultural or academic elite or the status quo in the publishing
industry, as it was in The Translator’s Invisibility, but a heterogeneous community of readers
(2000: 477). However, this shift makes foreignization impossible. If the domestic is some-
thing other than dominant values enforced by powerful agents, how can it be disrupted? All
this does not mean that some of the effects associated with foreignization cannot be achieved,
we simply need less reductive and non-binaristic vocabularies to explore them.

The addition of heterogeneity does not go far enough

In Gentzler’s reading of the English translation of Tres Tristes Tigres, he praises Suzanne Jill
Levine’s transcreation of Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s ‘ hip, Afro- Cuban, streetwise Havana
Cuban- Spanish into an extremely local, equally streetwise, hip, New York City jargony,
Afro-A merican, gay-inflected US vernacular’ (2012). Translation, he argues, takes place be-
tween two multiply situated and interconnected living-literary languages. Levine plays with
Spanglish, the slangs of different regions and minoritized groups, and biblical and popular
culture references that are shared by both the context of the writer and the translator (2008,
2012). ‘Her translations both carry a text across from a complex Culture A to and equally
complex Culture B and also reveal the multilingual, multicultural, and myriad semiotic sign
systems underlying both’ (2012). As with foreignizing translation, Levine disturbs the regime
of fluency and standard usage, transforming and expanding the translating language. In his
analysis, Gentzler introduces into the domestic the masked heterogeneity and hybridity that
Venuti (2000: 469) referred to above. He situates what is different as simultaneously here,
within the reader’s macro-community, as well as there, in an alternative spatiotemporality.
He claims that Levine asks ‘readers to confront the other from within national borders’
(2008: 35). Consideration of the difference between languages and cultures as well as the

118
 Methodological observations

diversity among them is a step in the right direction. However, translation is still imagined
as movement from national culture A to national culture B; these sites have merely be-
come multicultural. What still needs to be explored further, as Gentzler also highlights, is
the implications for vocabularies and methodologies of the interconnectedness of languages,
cultures, and semiotic systems. If we remove the tired image of culture A and culture B al-
together, we could empirically construct the complex individuals and groups who read and
engage with source texts and translations.
The way in which Gentzler analyses Levine’s translation is very similar to the way Venuti
formulates foreignization through the example of the work of Victorian translator Francis
Newman. In what I will call the ‘Newman formulation’, a foreignizing strategy resists ac-
ademic literary values and disrupts the elitist concept of national culture by incorporating
popular forms and language that span the past and present, poetic and novelistic genres, and
English and Scottish ( Venuti 2008: 120–121). Both Gentzler and Venuti ascribe a similarly
Newmanesque value to the translations of two very different novels. I refer to Tres Tristes
Tigres, a Cuban novel by an exiled male writer from 1968, in the case of Gentzler, and
Kitchen, a Japanese novel by Banana Yoshimoto, a young female writer, from 1988, translated
by Megan Backus, in the case of Venuti (1998). The latter celebrates Backus’s mix of collo-
quialism and archaic formality and the way in which the narrator ‘sends [the protagonist’s]
language shifting through registers and references, from h igh-tech slang to Hollywood love
talk to mystical theology’ (1998: 85). This recalls Gentzler’s praise of Levine’s postmodern
potpourri of minoritized voices and high and low cultural tropes. Even though translation in
both cases is being conceived as a tool to reimagine the domestic and represent heterogeneity,
it is still understood as an activity whose sphere of action and influence is the nation state.
Another issue arising in Gentzler and Venuti is that heterogeneity is contemplated in rela-
tion to languages, cultures, and semiotic systems, but does not extend to assumptions about
audience. In Gentzler, the assumed target readers of Levine’s translation are a homogeneous
community of non-othered US readers who are confronted by the difference of the other
‘ from within national borders’. This translation hermeneutic displays a dualistic understand-
ing of who reads the translation and who is read in the translation: the reader comes from
the dominant social group while the read comes from minority, marginalized, or migrant
groups (see Inghilleri 2017: 25 for a similar critique of an observer/observed dichotomy in
multicultural societies). What alternative reading experiences has Levine’s translation created
for homosexuals, Afro-A mericans, and New Yorkers the world over or streetwise hip homo-
sexual Afro-A mericans living in New York City or even Havana? To answer this question,
we need to implement methodologies that investigate actual readers in real localities. We
must broaden our scope beyond the national and the centre and be open to surprises. When
conducting fieldwork at an Islamic satellite channel in Egypt, the anthropologist Yasmin
Moll remarks that the English subtitling centre imagines its target audience as Europeans and
North Americans, yet when reading their fan emails she finds that almost all of them come
from anglophone sub-Saharan African countries (2017: 400). Which translation readers and
their diverse insights are being systematically forgotten?
Though actual readers have seldom been addressed in translation studies, most existing
research adopts a national or cross-national comparative approach to test the assumption that
target readers from different national groups respond to texts and their cultural material in
different ways (see Leppihalme 1997; Carter 2014; D’Egidio 2015; Chesnokova et al. 2017).4
This can also be observed in Venuti (2000) who compares two groups: Italian academics at
US universities and ‘a domestic readership that is incommensurable with the interests of the
Italian academics’ (2000: 478), who are defined by US nationality, native English proficiency,

119
Mattea Cussel

and the prerogatives the latter lends to textual interpretation. I argue for a more sociological
approach to ‘networks of readers’ that are studied in relation to their localities, intersectional
complexity, and relationships to other readers. In the case of the English translation of Tres
Tristes Tigres, these networks, like the text, are transnationally distributed. I borrow the term
network of readers from Brian James Baer (2006, 2014). His work on the Soviet intelligentsia
as an alternative reading public that was defined by its intellect and non-participation in of-
ficial culture (2006: 539) is an excellent example of the diverse reading practices of different
groups within states who interpret and use translations in ways that are conditioned by their
social positioning. More research like this is needed to provide empirical evidence on who
reads translations and where, along with their particular motivations for and modes of read-
ing. This would increase the frames of encounter opened up by the act of translation, going
beyond the frame of nation encountering nation or culture encountering culture. In con-
sequence, the causes of difference and sameness are broadened, as well as the reasons for es-
tablishing contact. Translation would become a political labour and a ‘poietic social practice
that institutes a relation at the site of incommensurability’ (Sakai 1997: 13). The drawing of
new points of relation between readers would exploit the cosmopolitan possibility of global-
ization: to forge ‘new understandings, commonalities and frames of meaning’ among people
from different localities who have never come into direct contact without one another (Held
and McGrew 2000: 18). A good example can be found in Feminist Translation Studies: Local
and Transnational Perspectives (2017), which addresses the role of translation in the transforma-
tion of transnational feminism, exploring points of relation between different intersectional
feminisms in pursuit of the non-ethnocentric goal of justice and equality.

The fate of foreignization

I have argued that the domestic/foreign binary has been construed as two circumscribable
national cultures, and that foreignization has been pursued within the context of the nation.
If cultures were truly viewed as heterogeneous and interconnected, and readers were imag-
ined as diverse networks located across the globe, this would, to borrow Venuti’s (2000: 469)
words, seriously complicate the application of certain standards in translation studies. If I
adopted the domestic/foreign binary and its derived terms foreignization and domestication
in my current research on the translation of US Latina/o migration stories into Spanish, it
would force me to ravel out, against the facts, sustained entanglements of the domestic and
the foreign. As Pratt et al. argues, ‘[b]ecause it sustains difference, a translation paradigm is
too blunt an instrument to grasp the heterodox subjectivities and interfaces that come out
of entanglements sustained over time’ (2010: 95–96). In Days of Awe, a novel by Cuban-
American writer Achy Obejas, Barbarita, a red-haired Cuban with a life-long Chinese-
Cuban paramour, translates Bei Dao’s poems, recently read in Tiananmen Square, for a group
of young Chinese- Cubans (2001: 41– 42). The latter need the help of a ‘ foreigner’ to China
with whom they share their Spanish native language to unlock the present of a world whose
memory they have inherited from their migrant families. I am hard pressed to separately map
the domestic and the foreign onto this scene. The foreigner and second-language speaker has
the key to the ‘domestic’ and red hair and hyphenated selves announce the ghosts of former
foreign worlds. Examples such as this abound in US Latina/o migration stories and diasporic
literature in general.
The identity and location of the readers of the Spanish translations of US Latina/o mi-
gration stories are also indeterminate. When a resident of San José de Ocoa opens the short
story ‘Ysrael’ from Negocios, the Spanish translation of Drown by Junot Díaz, and finds Yunior

120
 Methodological observations

and his hermano running amuck in San José de Ocoa, is that reader having an experience of
the foreign? As Rebecca Walkowitz writes, ‘ because languages are not conduits or indices
for homes, we can no longer expect that reading should offer access to “ foreignness” ’ (2015:
177). Access to foreignness depends on the translation strategy, but it also depends on reader
positioning, which is more of a quagmire than a national monolingual view of literature
would have us believe. This has been demonstrated by Walkowitz’s ‘ born translated’ analysis
of texts that are written in English for a heterogeneous global audience (2015). Starting in
many languages and addressing many places, Walkowitz argues that the relationship between
these texts and their cultures or ‘ homes’ is unpredictable, dynamic, and subject to local-
global networks of interdependent meanings and consequences. The same is true of US Lati-
na/o migration stories, making it difficult to identify the hierarchy of values against which
Venuti might prescribe resistance. The source texts already disrupt US monolingualism and
publishing standards, using translingual syntax, a mélange of local and transamerican argots,
and non-italicized foreign words. Which hierarchy of values or publishing standards should
the hemispherically and transatlantically distributed translations into Spanish(es) challenge?
The ‘target culture’ of the Spanish translations of Junot Díaz is the Dominican Republic,
but it is also the rest of Latin America, Spain, the Spanish-reading public in Berlin and New
Jersey for that matter—the ‘ foreign’ setting in which much of the source text takes place.
What, then, is the fate of foreignization? I have shown that it is inappropriate as an analyt-
ical tool in translation contexts where the nation has become what Simon calls a ‘potentially
confusing and even dangerous category’ (2002). However, it would be a mistake to reject
foreignization without conserving in some form what I understand to be its cosmopolitan
purpose: to expose oneself to different ways of life, accepting the other as other and the self
as a relative other, and being open to self-criticism and change ( Bielsa 2010, 2018). In Biel-
sa’s understanding of foreignization, which is closer to Berman’s trial of the foreign than to
Venuti, she emphasizes difference but also sharing. In an excellent news translation example
borrowed from Roger Silverstone’s Media and Morality (2007), Bielsa and Aguilera (2017)
praise a foreignizing strategy in which an Afghani blacksmith speaks simultaneously to us
and about us, interpreting on his own unique terms, which are respected in the strange
translation, the state of the world that we hold in common. What is at stake is a position of
respect towards and a decision to care about the strange voices and ways of life of others in
the context of a shared world of interconnected problems. How this is worked out in practice
should be empirically shown without resorting to the abstractions of neat binaries or national
groups. ‘Foreignness’ will depend on each context and should be measured by distances. This
less reifying term does a better job at visualizing the relative and/or reciprocal strangenesses
that differing subject positions experience in relation to one another.
A less reductive and non-binaristic resignification of foreignization must also consider
the distances within the networks of readers of a translation. Such an attitude can be found
in Sakai’s theory of heterolingual address. He defends a form of address whereby one writes
for multiple readers at the same time. What is key to this attitude towards audience is that it
imagines a different sort of ‘us’, a collectivity among which partial comprehension, lack of
comprehension, and even misunderstanding are possible (1997: 4). This legitimates different
degrees of understanding as genuine reading experiences, while accepting that responses to
texts always vary. The heterolingual address shifts writers’ conceptions of their readers and
encourages a higher degree of flexibility when reading.5 Readers are asked to become aware
not that the original was not written for them, but that the translation was written for them
but also for others. For Sakai, the goal of heterolingual address is to produce a new type of
community: a non-aggregate community in which the ‘we’ of the subject is unstable and

121
Mattea Cussel

distances abound (1997: 9; 2010: 33). This community, unlike the one that Venuti imagines
in his ‘Newman formulation’ of foreignization, spans multiple nations and includes non-
native and multilingual speakers.
I am not suggesting that all translations should be carried out with the form of foreigniza-
tion that I propose. What is most important is the need to rethink the proper ethical aim of
translation. Since the cultural turn, this aim has been respect for the difference of the other.
However, I argue that an equally vital and pressing ethical aim is to imagine different forms
of collectivity and points of relation among heterogeneous local and transnational groups.
This would also broaden the types of encounters we imagine or portray between differently
situated readers which are facilitated by translation. In the face of our global ‘overlapping
communities of fate’ ( Held and McGrew 2000: 17), this opens up new possibilities for shar-
ing, learning, self-awareness, and feelings of solidarity and responsibility.

A constructivist approach to groups and cultural narratives

One of the recurring issues in my critique of the domestic/foreign binary and foreigniza-
tion is how to constitute the different groups that are on the sending and receiving ends of
translation. These groups are often conceived as cultures and, more often than not, national
cultures. I have suggested that it would make more sense to consider the reception of trans-
lation by actual networks of readers. However, I would still like to reflect in this final section
on some of the problems arising from an understanding of culture as the sender or recipient
of a translation. What this view does is reify culture, perceiving it as a cohesive whole and at-
tributing it with agency. The source text is treated as containing or belonging to a particular
culture, and the target text is expected to open a window onto it. This view is ingrained in
the basic language used to describe translation such as ‘source/target culture’ and ‘receiving
culture’. I observe this to be the case even in new research that confounds stable source/
target dichotomies, yet still adopts an essentialist approach to culture. I will illustrate this by
example.
In Translation as Reparation (2008), Bandia explores African intercultural writing and its
translation into colonizing tongues such as English and French. Cultures are said to assert
their identities (2008: 9), novels belong to peoples and regions (2008: 177), and writers and
their works are frequently alluded to as metonyms or porters of African culture. Culture is
referred to indiscriminately on essentialist and constructivist terms, conflating the follow-
ing words: identity, cultural identity, Africanness, essence, authenticity, national conscience,
life-world, way of life, world view, thought, and reality. I cite this example because Bandia’s
book is otherwise excellent: he considers linguistic and cultural hybridity, the breakdown
of binaries, and the complex relationship between language and geography. This leads me
to believe that, just as introducing heterogeneity to otherwise nationally delineated cultures
does not go far enough, it is insufficient to theorize hybridity and blurred binaries without
problematizing the way we approach culture and its relationship to different groups and texts
in the context of translation.
To problematize culture, the first step is to differentiate it from identity. Benhabib points
out that identity and culture have become conflated terms (2002: 1). Groups of people rally
around an identity label and demand that the state recognize and protect their cultural partic-
ularism. According to this dynamic, a group identity is defined by the culture that its mem-
bers are supposed to share. In other words, identity is a claim made about people’s culture
or, as in Bandia, cultures assert their identities (2008: 9). As a result of the conflation of these
terms, the problems associated with certain uses of them have become increasingly similar.

122
 Methodological observations

These include: the supposed essential attributes, boundedness, and sharing of the group, and
inside/outside distinctions that assume external difference, despite the multiple group posi-
tioning of members, internal heterogeneity, and pressure for conformity (see Young 2000:
87–90, on identity; Benhabib 2002: 4, on culture).
I will outline an approach to culture, which differs from identity insofar as identity relates
to an individual task, ‘something one needs to do something about’ ( Bauman 1996: 19), or a
claim, the naming of the ways in which ‘we are positioned by, and position ourselves within,
the narratives of the past’ (Hall 1994: 225); or a term so used and abused that it refers to
nothing and everything ( Brubaker and Cooper 2000). Culture, on the other hand, is a more
enduring structure that is already operating before we make a claim about it. To approach
groups in translation, some of the problems listed above in relation to culture can be avoided
by adopting Benhabib’s sociological constructivist approach that centres on contested cul-
tural narratives.
In this approach, the researcher is aware that the boundedness of a cultural group only ap-
pears from the perspective of an outside observer. ‘From within, a culture need not appear as a
whole; rather, it forms a horizon that recedes each time one approaches it’ ( Benhabib 2002: 5).
Thus, the reasons for performing the boundedness of the group must be specified. The
‘culture’ under observation is understood as a site of contested narratives where social agents
describe and evaluate the actions or types of activities that are informed by their cultural con-
text (2002: 7). The boundaries of the site are not given or fixed; rather, they are constantly
being created, recreated, and negotiated (2002: 8). The cultural, in the sense of patterns of
representation and symbolic codes, is considered in interaction with structural factors that are
the product of material systems such as the economy or social technologies (2002: 11). This
ensures a nexus between these overlapping spheres of social life.
By following this approach, complex relationships can be drawn between texts, groups,
and cultural narratives. This is necessary as the idea that most texts are produced within a
culture for people from that culture ( Tymoczko 2007: 228) is untenable if we consider Wal-
kowitz’s born-t ranslated texts, Sakai’s theory of heterolingual address, transnationally dis-
tributed translations, and global media flows. Instead of assuming that there is a one-to- one
relationship between a source text and a particular culture based on provenance,6 it must first
be asked: how does the source text articulate relationships to contested cultural narratives?
The cultural narratives in question may respect the boundaries of the nation state, fall within
its frontiers, and/or reach further outwards to the diasporic and the global. To explore these
relationships, social agents in the cultures must be identified, along with how they are narrat-
ing and judging their actions. This keeps the narration of culture in the present, as opposed
to letting it get bogged down in stereotypes and established histories. Writers cease to be
representatives of particular cultures. Rather, they become social agents who participate in
the construction and contestation of cultural narratives. Works also cease to be the represen-
tation or property of a culture, becoming part of the way cultural narratives are negotiated
and come into contact with other cultural narratives.
With its emphasis on fluidity, contact, and various local to global scales of influence, this
approach could be seen to be complicit with the degradation of minoritized cultures in the
context of the uneven playing field of globalization. However, views of culture that em-
phasize travel and borrowing suggest that cultures have always been constituted or changed
through contact. In his writings on culture, James Clifford considers travel, understood
broadly as ‘ inside- outside connections’ (1997: 28), and contact as fundamental to the pro-
duction of cultural meanings. Similarly, Walkowitz shows that in an age of world literature
local stories are not limited to the local and the particular, but dependent on the global and

123
Mattea Cussel

the different, including other languages, geographies, and literary histories (2015: 202). The
problem is not, as Cronin argues in relation to minority cultures and endangered languages,
‘the fact of contact’ but rather ‘the form of contact’ (2003: 167). He suggests that commu-
nities should have control over translation processes and be able to use them as an enabling
force. When noting that control can quickly slip into coercion, he sees translation and the
‘outside points of reference’ that it provides as an antidote to exclusionary definitions of com-
munity ( p. 168). However, this conclusion seems hasty as exclusionary definitions of commu-
nity can be written from the inside or the outside and, as Benhabib notes, are often clearer
from the outside. A translator can translate based on an exclusionary view of a community
represented in the source text, and a researcher can adopt that view when analysing it. This is
why it is so important to provide a justification for bounding a group of individuals together,
and to address culture as the narration and judgement of actions by different social agents.
Nothing is taken for granted and groupness is posited through methodology, not ontology. It
is precisely this shift from ontology to methodology that Beck recommended as a way out of
the unconscious habits of methodological nationalism.

Conclusion
This chapter has explored the ways in which translation is often visualized as movement
between binaries whose poles take on a national guise. This is due to the way translation has
been mobilized to establish a relationship on national terms between language and culture.
Based on previous critiques of methodological nationalism, I have argued for an alternative
conceptualization of translation processes that considers the national as one factor among
interconnected local/regional/global phenomena, including nonterritorial and hybrid frame-
works of self and solidarity. The problem with the national story of translation is that it has
become what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie famously calls a single story. Methodological
nationalism unconsciously but systematically excludes other stories of translation that fall
outside a national organization of texts, languages, cultures, and readers. As an alternative,
I have proposed an approach to readers that empirically addresses who reads translations,
where, and how, which opens up the cosmopolitan possibility of imagining and portraying
new social and political relationships between differently situated individuals and groups.
At a time when globalization has shattered certainties, drawing relationships between texts
and groups has become increasingly complex. In response, I have outlined a sociological
constructivist methodology to address groupness and the way in which texts manifest rela-
tionships to contested cultural narratives. It is only by revising our vocabularies and meth-
odologies that we will be able to fully realize the theoretical implications of the challenge to
methodological nationalism and binaries in translation studies.

Further reading
Gentzler, E. (2012) ‘Translation Without Borders’. Translation: A Transdisciplinary Journal. http://
translation.fusp.it/articles/translation-without-borders
This article provides a critical historical overview of translation studies to challenge the system of met-
aphors and binaries on which the discipline is based, revalorizing semiotic approaches and proposing
the study of translation through circuitous textual routes and smaller groups of ‘receivers’.
Inghilleri, M. (2017) Translation and Migration. London: Routledge.
This book draws on historical, ethnographic, and visual case studies to explore migrants’ multiple at-
tachments and modes of critical self-u nderstanding, and the way in which translating and interpreting
practices mediate their relationship to the host society and other migrant groups.

124
 Methodological observations

Sakai, N. (1997) Translation and Subjectivity: On “ Japan” and Cultural Nationalism. Minnesota: University
of Minnesota Press.
This demanding collection of essays critiques the historical and intellectual constructs of nation, na-
tional language, and civilization based on schemes of mutually reifying ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ “cofigurations”.
Walkowitz, R. (2015) Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature. New York:
Columbia University Press.
This book offers a study of contemporary anglophone world literature written for heterogeneous
global audiences, arguing that to read their literary form Romantic and multiculturalist concepts must
be eschewed in favour of global circulation dynamics and multiscalar social histories.

Notes

References
Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Baer, B. J. (2006) ‘Literary Translation and the Construction of a Soviet Intelligentsia’, The Massachusetts
Review, 47(3), pp. 537–561.
Baer, B. J. (2014) ‘Translated Literature and the Role of the Reader’, in Bermann, S. and Porter, C.
(eds.), A Companion to Translation Studies. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, pp. 333 –345.
Baker, M. (2007) ‘Reframing Conflict in Translation’, Social Semiotics, 17(2), pp. 151–169.
Bandia, P. (2014). Translation as Reparation: Writing and Translation in Postcolonial Africa. London:
Routledge.
Bauman. Z. (1996) ‘From Pilgrim to Tourist – Or a Short History of Identity’, in Hall, S. and Du Gay,
P. (eds.), Questions of Cultural Identity. London: Sage Publications, pp. 18–36.
Beck, U. (2003) ‘Toward a New Critical Theory with a Cosmopolitan Intent’, Constellations, 10(4),
pp. 453–468.
Beck, U. (2007) ‘The Cosmopolitan Condition’, Theory, Culture & Society, 24(7–8), 286–290.
Benhabib, S. (2002) The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Bielsa, E. (2010) ‘Cosmopolitanism, Translation and the Experience of the Foreign’, Across Languages
and Cultures, 11(2), pp. 161–174.

125
Mattea Cussel

Bielsa, E. (2014) ‘Cosmopolitanism as Translation’, Cultural Sociology, 8(4), pp. 392–406.

Bielsa, E. (2018) ‘Cosmopolitanism beyond the Monolingual Vision’, International Political Sociology,
pp. 1–13.
Bielsa, E. and Aguilera, A. (2017). ‘Cosmopolitismo y política de la traducción’, Revista Internacional de
Sociología, 75(2), e057. doi: 10.3989/ris.2017.75.2.15.58.
Brubaker, R. and Cooper, F. (2000) ‘Beyond “Identity” ’, Theory and Society, 29(1), pp. 1–47.
Caffrey, C. (2008) ‘Viewer Perception of Visual Nonverbal Cues in Subtitled TV Anime’, European
Journal of English Studies, 12(2), pp. 163–178.
Carter, E. (2014) ‘Imagining Place: An Empirical Study of How Cultural Outsiders and Insiders
Receive Fictional Representations of Place in Caryl Férey’s Utu’, Imaginations, 5(1), pp. 67–80.
Castro, O. and Ergun, E. (eds.) (2017) Feminist Translation Studies: Local and Transnational Perspectives.
New York: Routledge.
Chesnokova, A., Zyngier, S., Viana, V., Jandre, J., Rumbesht, A., Chesnokova, A.,  … Ribeiro, F.
(2017) ‘Cross- Cultural Reader Response to Original and Translated Poetry: An Empirical Study in
Four Languages’, Comparative Literature Studies, 54(4), pp. 824–849.
Clifford, J. (1997) Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Cronin, M. (2003) Translation and Globalization. London: Routledge.
Cussel, M. (2018) ‘In Conversation: Naoki Sakai’, Asymptote, June 21, 2018. https://www.asymptote
journal.com/blog/2018/06/21/in-conversation-naoki-sakai/
D’Egidio, A. (2015) ‘How Readers Perceive Translated Literary Works: An Analysis of Reader Reception’,
Lingue e Linguaggi, 14, pp. 69–82.
Damrosch, D. (2009) How to Read World Literature. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing.
Fine, R. (2007) Cosmopolitanism. London: Routledge.
Gentzler, E. (2008) Translation and Identity in the Americas. London: Routledge.
Gentzler, E. (2012) ‘Translation Without Borders’, Translation: A Transdisciplinary Journal. http://
translation.fusp.it/articles/translation-without-borders
Gruesz, K. S. (2002) Ambassadors of Culture: The Transamerican Origins of Latino Writing. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Hall, S. (1994) ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, in Williams, P. and Chrisman, L. (eds.), Colonial
Discourse and Post-colonial Theory. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, pp. 227–237.
Held, D. and McGrew, A. (eds.) (2000) The Global Transformations Reader. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hermans, T. (1999) Translation in Systems. Descriptive and System-oriented Approaches Explained. Manchester:
Routledge.
Inghilleri, M. (2017). Translation and Migration. London: Routledge.
Lambert, J. (2006) ‘In Quest of Literary World Maps’, in Delabastita, D. D’hulst, L. and Meylaerts,
R. (eds.), Functional Approaches to Culture and Translation: Selected Papers by José Lambert. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins Publishing, pp. 63–74.
Lefevere, A. (1977) Translating Literature: The German Tradition from Luther to Rosenzweig. Assen: Van
Gorcum & Comp. B.V.
Lefevere, A. (ed.) (1990). Translation/History/Culture: A Sourcebook. London: Routledge.
Leppihalme, R. (1997). Culture Bumps: An Empirical Approach to the Translation of Allusions. Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters.
Moll, Y. (2017) ‘Subtitling Islam: Translation, Mediation, Critique’, Public Culture, 29(2), pp. 333–361.
Nornes, A. M. (1999) ‘For an Abusive Subtitling’, Film Quarterly, 52(3), pp. 17–34.
Obejas, A. (2001) Days of Awe. New York: The Ballantine Publishing Group.
Osifo Osaze, O. (2018) ‘Native Tongue’, Aster(ix) Journal, October 10. https://asterixjournal.
com/native-tongue/
Pratt, M. L., Wagner, B., Cortés, O. C. i, Chesterman, A. and Tymoczko, M. (2010) ‘Translation studies
forum: Cultural Translation: Response’, Translation Studies, 3(1), pp. 103–106.
Pym, A. (1995), ‘Schleiermacher and the Problem of Blendlinge’, Translation and Literature, 4(1),
pp. 5–30.
Pym, A. (1996) ‘Venuti’s Visibility’, Target, 8(1), pp. 165–177.
Romero-Fresco, P. (2015) The Reception of Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Europe. Ber n:
Peter Lang.
Sakai, N. (1997) Translation and Subjectivity: On “ Japan” and Cultural Nationalism. Minnesota: University
of Minnesota Press.

126
 Methodological observations

Sakai, N. (2010) ‘Translation and the Figure of Border: Toward the Apprehension of Translation as a
Social Action’, Profession, 10, pp. 24–34.
Sakai, N. and Neilson, B. (2014) ‘Introduction’, Translation: A Transdisciplinary Journal, 4, pp. 9–29.
Scholte, J. A. (2005) Globalization: A Critical Introduction, 2nd ed. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Silverstone, R. (2007) Media and Morality: On the Rise of the Mediapolis. Cambridge, UK: John Wiley &
Sons.
Simon, S. (2002). ‘Germaine de Staël and Gayatri Spivak: Culture Brokers’, in Tymoczko, M. and
Gentzler, E. (eds.), Translation and Power. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, pp. 122–140.
Simon, S. (2011) Cities in Translation: Intersections of Language and Memory. London: Routledge.
Tymoczko, M. (2007) Enlarging Translation, Empowering Translators. London: Routledge.
Tymoczko, M. (ed.) (2010) Translation, Resistance, Activism. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Venuti, L. (1998) The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. London: Routledge.
Venuti, L. (2000) ‘Translation, Community, Utopia’, in Venuti, L. (ed.), The Translation Studies Reader.
London: Routledge, pp. 468–488.
Venuti, L. (2008) The Tranlator’s Invisibility, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
Vertovec, S. (2009) Transnationalism. Abingdon: Routledge.
Walkowitz, R. L. (2015) Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature. New
York: Columbia University Press.
Widler, B. (2004) ‘A Survey Among Audiences of Subtitled Films in Viennese Cinemas’, Meta, 49(1),
pp. 98–101.
Young, I. M. (2000) Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

127
 Part II
People
 9
Translation and the semiotics
of migrants’ visibility
Moira Inghilleri

Introduction
The immediate effects of migration on individuals are mostly experienced in synchronic
moments – events lived at particular points in time as a cluster of culturally, socially, and lin-
guistically managed encounters and entanglements with others. Migration is at the same time
an unfolding diachronic process: a singularly marked instantiation of social life involving
movement, transformation, and continuous becoming. Many of the same factors that have
historically shaped identities in migrant societies continue to do so, including specific forms
of socialization that first-, second-, and even third-generation migrants undergo. Though
these may differ across space and time, generally they still occur through interactions in
workplaces, schools, communities, or more intimate relationships with individuals from in-
side or outside of race, class, or ethnic groupings. The willingness of members of one com-
munity to recognize perceived outsiders as fellow human is challenged in these encounters,
and under certain circumstances, can be fraught with conflict or contradiction.
The sociologist Erving Goffman, in his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959)
called attention to the ways in which individuals present themselves to others in order to
project forms of identity, making a distinction between signs given, the things people do con-
sciously to make a specific impression of themselves in certain contexts, and signs given off, the
impressions given to others – the meanings others interpret – that an individual may or may
not consciously intend (1959: 2). Goffman’s interest in the presentation of the self was part
of his larger aim of investigating society beyond its presumed permanent structures and their
different forms of organization. In this endeavour, he was joining other influential sociologists
before him including Georg Simmel (1950: 9), for example, who claimed that ‘ if the concept
“society” is taken in its most general sense, it refers to the psychological interaction among
individual human beings’, however superficial or impermanent these moments might be.
Earlier Charles Horton Cooley (1922: 189) had introduced the concept of the ‘ looking glass
self ’ to distinguish ‘the imagination of our appearance to the other person, the imagination of
his judgment of that appearance, and some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or mortification’.
But whereas Cooley had understood this process to be confined to the mind of individuals,
Goffman, following Simmel, viewed this social interactionist approach as ‘anti-system’ as it

131
Moira Inghilleri

ignored the organizational and structural elements involved in how individuals ‘take each
other into consideration, the ways in which they construct joint action’ (Goffman 1959: 335–
336). As he would later elaborate,

I assume that the proper study of interaction is not the individual and his psychology,
but rather the syntactical relations among the acts of different persons mutually present
to one another. […] Not then, men and their moments. Rather, moments and their men.
(Goffman 1967: 2–3)

Goffman left the matter of the more intransigent structural issues affecting what he called
‘the interaction order’ an open question, and made little reference to its function within soci-
eties undergoing major population transformations due to migration, shifting demographics,
or globalization. Nevertheless, these larger social phenomena contribute significantly to the
interpretive shaping of signs given and signs given off.

The incommensurability of cultures and the question of translatability

In philosophical and social science debates in the m id-twentieth century the ‘incommensurability
of cultures’ argument emerged through the writings of Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend
(see Kuhn 1970; Feyerabend 1975). In applying the idea of incommensurability to science,
Kuhn suggested that scientists involved in competing scientific paradigms ‘practised their
trades in different worlds’, i.e. they imposed divergent, non-intertranslatable, and possibly
contradictory conceptual frameworks on the same ‘material’ world. The notion of incom-
mensurability would become equally relevant to debates about language, culture, and the
possibility of constructing meaningful dialogue across different interpretive or conceptual
frameworks. On the one hand, the notion of incommensurability challenged the idea that
common measures or sets of standards could come to exist with which to understand and
evaluate other cultures or languages. On the other hand, it raised the question of what hap-
pens when divergent cultures or languages do come into contact – of how or if it is possible to
translate the ideas, beliefs, and values from one culture or language into another (see Geertz
1973, 1983; Gellner 1982; Lukes 1982).
The idea that the conceptual frameworks of disparate cultures or languages are incom-
mensurable frequently carries with it the further implication that such frameworks are un-
translatable, i.e. that there are no practices or terms used in one culture that can be equated
in meaning and reference with any terms or cultural expression in the other ( Putnam 1981:
114) and that, therefore, communication itself is unlikely, if not impossible. This view of
incommensurability tends to presume or encourage a view of cultures or language users as
integrated wholes. The very idea of the incomparability of conceptual frameworks is based
on the belief that cultures and languages are fairly intact, non- evolving entities. This no-
tion, however, downplays the differences between members of the same culture as well as
the possibility that the distinctions between different cultures do not necessarily differ in
kind from the distinctions between members of a single culture. It is also challengeable on
the grounds that it leaves unresolved the question of how individuals from different cultures
or linguistic groups determine that they are different or the same if not by communicating
with one another. This version of incommensurability has been criticized by a diverse group
of scholars as self-refuting (see Chomsky 1965; Gadamer 1975; Apel 1977; Habermas 1979;
Putnam 1981; Davidson 1984; Rorty 1991), for the very fact of recognizing conceptual dif-
ferences would already imply that, to a certain degree, such differences had been overcome.

132
 Translation and migrants’ visibility

In the t wenty-fi rst century, the politics of multiculturalism have once again come under
scrutiny and interest in the question of (in)commensurability has reemerged, though framed
through the discourse of social cohesion and common values. In the belief that communities
have become divided and their differences entrenched, the image of unified and cohesive so-
cieties in which values remain stable, unchallenged, and non- contradictory, has entered the
public discourse and ushered in a new era of contraction with respect to migration. Under
these conditions, the cultivation of relationships of mutual respect between the sensibilities of
established residents and those of migrants and newer minority cultures becomes especially
important in strengthening and protecting the idea of multiculturalism. This idea – the pro-
posal of mutual respect – rests on a number of assumptions that have attracted much elab-
oration, comment, and critique from within cultural, political, and social discourses, parts
of which are not only relevant but remain central to the issue of translation. For migrants
attempting to have some agency over their reception, their articulation of familiar discourses
and engagement with new ones can bring challenges as they attempt to carve out their place
within communities, societies, and nations, possessing and altering them, consciously and
unconsciously, in meaningful ways. This chapter takes an historical approach to consider
how migrants – through the interplay of signs given and signs given off – engage in the task
of cultural and linguistic translation, and the crucial role that communication in all its forms
plays in the (re)construction of the interaction order in multicultural societies.

Migrant spectors and the landscape

In the field of cultural geography, landscapes have been identified as ‘the discursive terrain
across which the struggle between the different, often hostile, codes of meaning construc-
tion has been engaged’ ( Daniels and Cosgrove 1993: 59). These authors are referring to their
attempts to interpret the worlds they survey, but new migrants are involved in a similar

133
Moira Inghilleri

endeavour in the new places they come to inhabit – situating themselves into a new space,
regardless of the degree of assimilation permitted or desired, in which they must manage and
meld their identities onto new, unfamiliar settings, a process which involves different forms
of translation. Migration has always had an impact on human geography, serving an import-
ant function as the ‘eye of history’. Landscapes not only offer evidence of the enduring signs
of an earlier presence of migrants whose origins have gone unrecognized or underacknowl-
edged in the public consciousness – an archaeological record of visibility and invisibility in
the translation of cultures – they are forever shaped by this presence as well.
Of the major public works projects that made the first and second Industrial Revolutions
possible, two that remain visible are the canals and railroads built across Britain and the
United States. Their construction – a n arduous and sometimes deadly undertaking – was
accomplished by tens of thousands of migrants, the largest numbers of whom were Irish
and Chinese, both of whom constituted a sizeable part of the migrant labour force in two
of the largest burgeoning economies of the nineteenth century. Although accounts of the
Irish and Chinese migrants in the American West and on the railroads tend to foreground
the conflicts between them, their historic encounter, their labour and the landscape they
shared connect them through history and reveal much about the nature and construction of
the interaction order in migrant societies (see Inghilleri 2017: 108–148 for a fuller discussion
of these issues).

Irish ‘navvies’ and ‘Paddys’

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are considered the golden age of canal
building in Britain. The canals created the infrastructure that linked towns and cities, mak-
ing the first Industrial Revolution possible. Irish seasonal migrants, due to poverty and lack
of employment opportunities in Ireland throughout the year, joined the scores of British
men who were known as ‘navigators’ or ‘navvies’. Together they did the laborious work of
carving out waterways from rock and soil, blasting tunnels through solid rock using picks,
shovels and gunpowder. Despite their major contribution to the British economy, navvies
were mostly seen as a source of cheap expendable labour whose lost lives and limbs were
viewed largely with indifference (Cowley 2001: 68– 69). Although the navvies came from
many regions across Britain and elsewhere, it was the Irish navvies who

lodged in the public image because of their numbers and their ‘separateness’.
They spoke another language, had a particular cultural identity, different religious
practices (80 per cent were Roman Catholic) and, most importantly, were not bound
by family or community to England. If they wanted to behave badly, there wasn’t much
to stop them. Any settled community would be put out by the sudden appearance of
young, unattached men living in makeshift camps, working all day and, so it was said,
drinking all night.
(McIvor 2015: 162, 164)

The behaviour attributed to the Irish navvies who made up just under one-third of the labour
force of 16,000 men working on the canals was likely connected to deep-rooted prejudices
and latent xenophobia directed towards the Irish by the English in this period. Although the
English navvies were as disposed to drink and violence, the ‘settled communities’ of England
regarded the Irish alone with a mixture of fear and contempt (Cowley 2001: 44– 48), aided
by the tendency for English and Irish workers to monopolize different streets or settlements

134
 Translation and migrants’ visibility

with much of the company housing supporting a policy of segregation between the two
groups (2001: 65–67).
The Irish fared no better in the United States, another major destination for them in the
nineteenth century, with respect to the treatment they received by the anti- Catholic Prot-
estant majority. One and a half million arrived before the Famine, another one and a half
million during the Famine between 1846 and 1855, and 3 million more from 1855 to 1930
( Lee 2006: 16). The historian J. J. Lee and others have suggested that Irish migrants in the
nineteenth century lived one way or another ‘ in the Famine’s shadow’. Successive genera-
tions of migrants would have either lost parents, grandparents, or siblings to the Famine or
heard tales of its horrors from others or in the US press (ibid.: 18–19).
Francis Wyse, a prosperous Irish landowner, wrote a comprehensive guide for prospective
British and Irish emigrants to the United States entitled America, its realities and resources (1846)
in which he detailed the state of m id-n ineteenth- century social and political life there. His
book is more treatise than travelogue covering some of the major questions affecting the
country at the time, including slavery, the state of the union, and immigration. With regard
to the latter, he advises Irish immigrants to avoid the ‘vexed and angry feelings that are every
day springing up against him in this country’ ( Wyse 1846: 57).

He will find it necessary to remodel himself with more becoming care, to the practice,
and national peculiarities of the people he is amongst, than to which he has generally
been accustomed; to abandon, or at least modify, many of his peculiar notions, and to
identify more in spirit, as in his conduct, with the habits, and national feeling, than the
generality of those of his countrymen who have preceded him, have deemed it of im-
portance to attend to.
(1846: 57)

For the contemporary reader, Wyse’s writings provide both a synchronic and a diachronic
account of the strategic role that translation and assimilation played for the Irish, particularly
the less well off, in negotiating a place for themselves. Wyse’s observations about the signs
his fellow Irish nationals both gave and gave off reveal the competing narratives that vied for
control in the representations of their history and their character. Wyse also notes how the
established political parties were using the Irish immigrants as a political weapon: sympathiz-
ing with their treatment, inciting them to act, and then remaining silent when their character,
religion, and fitness for self-governance were called into question.
Canal construction was one of the principle ways the Irish helped develop the commercial
infrastructure required to support the Industrial Revolution in the United States. Though
many were highly skilled professional canallers due to their experience in Britain, they
were all referred to as ‘ditchdiggers’, perceived as ‘not merely ignorant and poor – which
might be their misfortune rather than their f ault – but drunken, dirty, indolent, and riotous’
( Dearinger 2015: 62). Kirby Miller reports how British visitors to the United States in the
1820s and 1830s remarked ‘with astonishment’ about the resemblances between the con-
gested shanty towns of the Irish excavating the canals in the United States and their villages
in Ireland, both characterized by ‘those sterling Irish comforts, a cow, a pig and a “praty
garden” ’ (Miller 1985: 274). Canal construction was associated with diseases like Asiatic
cholera brought on by the working and living conditions of canallers and their families
( Dearinger 2015: 24).
Despite the physical evidence of their hard work across the United States, native-born
American Protestants – t ranslating the Irish through their nativist lens – continually criticized

135
Moira Inghilleri

these immigrants for their poverty and manners, their supposed laziness and lack of disci-
pline, their public drinking style, their Catholic religion, and their capacity for criminality
and collective violence. The stereotypes of the Irish became so ingrained among individuals
about this group that the lines between Protestants’ theatrical or political cartoon parodies of
the Irish and the reality of Irish culture became blurred ( Williams 1996: 1).

An Irishman taking a drink, getting into a fight, or just generally having a high old
time, was not like other men who might drink, fight, or celebrate. He was acting an
elaborately scripted role. He was filling a grimly comic prophecy. He was playing the
stereotype of himself.
(1996: xx)

Addressing the Irish immigrants’ propensity towards collective violence, Kevin Kenny
writes that, coming from a predominantly rural country divided by territorial boundaries
and county loyalties, Irish men (and some women) had traditionally resolved land-related
and other types of disputes through both covert activity and violence. During the nineteenth
century, Irish immigrants in the United States fought each other not due to some innate
temperament, as the stereotypes suggested, but in a context where they were involved in ‘a
desperate struggle for access to employment with each side attempting to drive the other off
the job’ ( Kenny 2006: 373).
The Irish were the first ‘ethnic’ immigrant group to arrive in extremely large numbers
and to gain high visibility across the cities and towns along the east coast of the United States
where most settled. Ireland in the early nineteenth century remained ‘a colonial appendage
to the world’s most advanced industrial economy’ in which the great majority of farmers
were tenants at will or tenants on short lease labouring under a ‘grossly inequitable system of
landownership’ (Miller 1985: 32). Even before the Famine, for most of those who emigrated,
their scant holdings in Ireland were increasingly unable to sustain them or their families
where the poorest among them were ‘dressed in cast- off rags, through which naked arms and
legs protruded, and lived in one-room, mud-floored cabins without chimneys or windows’
in which ‘ beds were considered luxuries, and many poor families slept huddled together on
straw laid on the bare floor’. Many had taken to ‘eating only one meal per day or every other
day, and consuming their remaining potatoes “with a bone” in them – that is half raw – to
slow their digestion’ (1985: 53).
For Irish immigrants of the nineteenth century, like many other newly arrived immi-
grants, the cultural and physical impressions they gave of themselves were constituted in their
country of origin and by the conditions there that compelled them to leave. The signs or
impressions they gave off, on the other hand, were created and circulated through the repre-
sentations of members of the majority Protestant culture who depicted them as dull-w itted
but comic and harmless ‘Micks’ or menacing simianized ‘Paddies’, i.e. somewhere between
primitive man and monstrous apes ( Kenny 2006: 364). Signs given off also instigated com-
petition between the Irish and two other groups who were situated at the bottom rungs of
the social and economic ladder for much of the nineteenth century: free Blacks and Chinese
immigrants with whom they shared a place in history for their work in constructing the
transcontinental railroad. David Roediger has suggested that the mutually expedient rela-
tionship that Irish Americans entered into with the Democratic Party during that time ap-
pealed to Irish Catholics largely because the party’s view of American nationality stressed the
relevance of ‘race’, which placed them ‘safely within an Anglo- Celtic racial majority’, resolv-
ing the matter of their qualifications for citizenship. He adds, ‘Under other circumstances,

136
 Translation and migrants’ visibility

Chinese ‘Celestials’
At around the same time the second wave of Irish entered the port of New York, a much
smaller number of Chinese immigrants made a similar journey following China’s defeat by
the British in the first Opium War in 1842. The relatively small number of Chinese immi-
grants, especially the merchant class, were greeted with less hostility than their Irish coun-
terparts. New York merchants and traders who had benefited from the China trade approved
of the more ‘gentlemanly’ Chinese merchants among the new arrivals, at the same time
however they maintained ambivalence towards them due to the perceived resistance of the
Chinese to Western notions of progress and modernization.

Once admired for its splendors and wisdom, China became increasingly measured by
how friendly it was to Western economic and cultural expansion. Chinese workers
entering the port of New York at this time not only walked into a spatial hierarchy but
were also deemed targets of racial backwardness and ridicule, the perfect foil for progres-
sive, A nglo- Saxon, and Protestant patrician society becoming more and more assured of
its self-declared special destiny.
( Tchen 1996: 146)

Positive relationships between the Irish and Chinese were not uncommon in the m id-
n ineteenth century, including marriage. Both groups settled in the lower East side immigrant
neighbourhoods of New York where they formed alliances with thousands of other immi-
grants to whom they sold their goods and with whom, particularly the Irish, they married.
One in four Chinese men were married to Irish women during this period (1996: 128–129)
in part due to the fact that Chinese male immigrants were few in number, generally single,
of marrying age, and there were hardly any Chinese women among them, whereas Irish
woman of marrying age in New York far outnumbered Irish men.
Relationships between the Irish and Chinese were frequently satirized, however, in polit-
ical cartoons, popular songs on the minstrel circuit, and in vaudeville acts, most famously, T.
S. Denison’s ‘Patsy O’Wang: An Irish Farce with a Chinese Mix-Up’ (1895), a play about “Chin
Sun”, the son of a Chinese mother and an Irish father, who by the end of the play ‘transforms
into “Patsy O’Wang” by drinking from a bottle of brandy’ ( Lee 1999: 78–79). In the play,
Chin Sun is hired, much to the chagrin of the two Irish domestics, Mike and Nora, as a cook
in the home of Dr. Fluke who runs a ‘modern sanitarium’. When Chin Sun inadvertently
drinks some brandy, ‘the spirit of Hibernia’ [the Latin name for Ireland] is released and his
Irish self is revealed, much to Dr. Fluke’s chagrin (‘I hired you for a Chinaman. A bargain is
a bargain’.) who attempts to turn him back by ‘ feeding him great quantities of tea, measur-
ing progress by how obedient he perceives Patsy to be’ while ‘Patsy siphons off the tea and
declares that he has always been and is determined to remain “Irish forever” ’ ( Lee 1999: 79).
The play operates on the popular stereotypes of the Chinese and Irish working-class
communities and highlights the onus on both groups to prove their capacity to serve as loyal
citizens suitable for American democracy, while at the same time underscoring the growing
advantage of the Irish in the racialized politics and immigration policies in full force during
that period, culminating in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. As Robert G. Lee describes,

137
Moira Inghilleri

In the schizophrenic m ixed-race Chin Sun/Patsy O’Wang, the ‘wild’ Irish and the
‘docile’ Chinese together represent the duality of working-class nature as simultane-
ously fearsome and childlike, in need of both training and discipline. Irish wildness is
controlled and reformed by the presence of the Chinese. Once his true Irish nature is
unleashed by liquor, Patsy becomes potentially dangerous. Nevertheless, the plot must
end with Patsy choosing his Irish whiteness, however tainted it may be by ethnic ste-
reotype, because it alone offers a path into America. However divided by class, accent,
and religion the Irish might be, whiteness confers upon them the freedom to create a
unified ethnic identity as Irish Americans and use it as a vehicle for political power and
economic mobility.
(ibid.: 80)

Many more thousands of Chinese immigrants left China for the west coast of the United
States lured by the Gold Rush, fleeing conditions not unlike those suffered by the Irish: social
unrest, poverty, and increasing famine caused by the growing British economic penetration
of their country and the Taiping Rebellion against the ruling Qing dynasty which by 1864
had claimed the lives of tens of millions ( Dearinger 2015: 153). The majority were men
from Guangdong Province in the Pearl River Delta contracted to merchants who advanced
them ‘the rate of a ticket plus interest which the labourers contracted to repay’, with the help
of Chinese benevolent associations in San Francisco who coordinated their passage (2015:
154). Many of these associations eventually directed Chinese workers to the Central Pacific
Railroad which was in competition with the Union Pacific Railroad to lay the most rail lines
across the Great Plains.
Like canal work, railroad construction was a gruelling and dangerous occupation. Reports
of Chinese workers killed by snow slides, freezing to death, and disease, especially smallpox,
were not uncommon. A brief report entitled ‘Bones in Transit’ in the Sacramento Union in
1870 describes the transportation of ‘accumulated bones’ of perhaps ‘1,200 Chinamen’ nearly
all ‘the remains of the company who were engaged in building the road’. The report also
mentions the religious custom of the ‘Celestial Empire’ that ‘wherever possible, the bones of
its subjects shall be interred upon its own soil’, a tradition the benevolent societies honoured
as best they could (2015: 166).
Despite their enormous contribution to United States’ industrial progress throughout the
nineteenth century the Chinese remained at the bottom of the social and economic hierar-
chy and, like their Irish counterparts, subjected to denigration in words, images and in the
conditions of their labour.

Invariably cast as ‘John Chinaman’, epithets targeted male immigrants as a faceless ho-
mogeneous mass. A nti- Chinese commentators depicted Chinese immigrant laborers
as ‘coolies’ or forced contract laborers, no better off than slaves. The Chinese were
considered weak, feminine, and submissive, yet also uncivilized and loathsome. Politi-
cians such as Ohio representative William Mungen condemned them as a ‘poor, miser-
able, dwarfish race of inferior beings,’ who were ‘ docile…effeminate, pedantic, and …
cowardly’.
(2015: 155)

It was also during this period that the pejorative term ‘Celestials’ came to be used, a term that
had been used for thousands of years by China that reflected its view of itself as the Middle
Kingdom or Celestial Empire, ‘positioned between heaven above and all the rest of the world

138
 Translation and migrants’ visibility

below’ and whose emperor was understood to be the ‘Son of Heaven’ who ruled by divine
inspiration ( Dolan 2012: 29).

From John Chinaman to Chinese Americans

In a series of plays and short stories produced from the 1970s onwards, the Chinese American
writer Frank Chin reclaims a central role for Chinese Americans in the history of American
Western expansion, particularly their contribution to the construction of the transcontinen-
tal railroad. Chin’s work reveals the attempts made in eighteenth- a nd nineteenth- century
narratives of the American West to exclude the Chinese from that history. Highlighting the
pioneer spirit of the Chinese railroad workers, gold prospectors, and successful businesses,
Chin’s twentieth- century Chinese American characters challenge stereotypes of themselves
and their ancestors. In Chin’s novel Donald Duk (1991), the eponymous 11-year-old protag-
onist tangles with these spectres of history growing up in San Francisco’s Chinatown where
his father is a celebrated chef in their family owned restaurant. Donald attends a private
school which the narrator describes as ‘a place where the Chinese are comfortable hating
Chinese’. A visit from his uncle, an internationally renowned opera singer, precipitates a shift
in Donald’s perceptions as his uncle reveals that their real last name is not Duk but Lee, most
likely referring to the practice used by Chinese migrants to get around the exclusion laws in
which Chinese American citizens would claim family members, friends or fellow villagers
as their biological sons in order to help them enter the United States. Known as ‘paper sons’
even where no blood ties were shared; the ‘paper kinship’ established a bond and sense of
mutual- obligation between the bestower and the recipient of the family name ( Lee 2003:
195). Through his uncle, Donald learns that his g reat-great-grandfather Lee worked on the
Central Pacific Railroad.
In the novel, through a dream narrative Chin reconstructs an actual event that took place
involving the Union Pacific Railroad ( built mostly by Irish immigrants) and the Central
Pacific Railroad (constructed primarily by Chinese immigrants). In the historical record
the occasion is described as a competition that occurred on 10 May 1869 instigated by James
Strobridge, chief engineer and labour boss, and Charles Crocker, Superintendent of Con-
struction for the Central Pacific Railroad over whose workers could lay the most tracks in
a single day to achieve the world’s record. The focus of the event was the driving of the
‘Golden Spike’ at Promontory Point, Utah, the spot designated by Congress ‘at which rails
shall meet and form one continuous line’ from east to west.1 Taking place just a few years af-
ter the end of the Civil War, the event was to serve as a symbol of ‘a nation of diverse sections’
coming together to become ‘one nation, indivisible’ (Arrington 1969: 4) while reinforcing
the Western frontier as a place of economic opportunity.
In the history of Chinese railroad workers, however, the event has taken on a different
meaning due to the notable absence of any Chinese workers in a famous photo taken of the
event, Andrew J. Russell’s ‘East and West Shaking Hands at the Laying of Last Rail’, and the
omission of their names in a report in the press where eight of the Irish workers are men-
tioned by name. Chin introduces these facts in the novel, prompting Donald to complain to
his father about the injustice of it all, telling him, ‘We made history. Twelve hundred Chi-
nese. And they don’t even put the name of our foreman in the books about the railroad […]
It’s not fair’, to which his father responds, ‘Fair? What’s fair? History is war, not sport!’ (Chin
1991: 122–123). He tells his son that Chinese Americans have to write their own history to
counter the misconceptions about them that have persisted in histories of the West. If history
is war, Chin suggests, the Chinese need to fight back:

139
Moira Inghilleri

We seem to be ashamed of the railroad. And I was always taught to be proud of the
railroad because we built it, that the Irish were always leaving the railroad to get drunk
and they refused to work with nitroglycerin, which was just invented [laughs] and the
Chinese said, ‘Oh, any explosive, we’re not afraid of.’ and the Chinese weren’t afraid,
and they’d go out and they mastered it, but the Irish? No. There were accomplishments
to be proud of, we won the t rack-laying contest, etcetera. But no one had really gone
and looked. The Chinese seemed just to accept what Whites said about us and not look
for themselves.2

For Chin the most effective way to challenge these distortions is to re-t ranslate the unreliable
signs given off, and in Donald Duk, Chin constructively fills in these signs with historical
facts using references to legendary figures in Chinese history. He interprets the absence of
Chinese workers in the photo negatively, making the absence itself a crucial feature of the
sign, along with the fact that Chinese scholars had not seen fit to remark on it. There is an
implication of intentionality or at least neglect on the part of the photographer and/or in
the particular function the photograph has served within the dominant narrative. The first
reading of intention is materially contradicted, however, by the existence of a number of
related images by Russell and other photographers, artists, and illustrators in which Chinese
workers do appear in the record of that particular day.3 There is also other strong evidence
that, though absent from the one particular photo, the Chinese workers and their foreman
were celebrated at a separate more private occasion later the same day. The following was
reported in an issue of the San Francisco Newsletter. California Advertiser (May 15, 1869, IX:
XV) dedicated to the golden spike ceremony in the Transcontinental Railroad Postscript under
the dubious heading HONORS TO JOHN CHINAMAN:

Mr. Strowbridge, when work was all over, invited the Chinamen who had been brought
over from Victory for the purpose, to dine in his boarding car. When they entered all
the guests and officers present cheered the chosen representatives of the race which have
greatly helped to build the road – a t ribute they well deserved, and which evidently gave
them much pleasure.

Just above this section the report reads, ‘The Chinese really laid the last tie and drove the
last spike’.4
The second interpretation of the photo as a dismissal of the workers’ significance to the
railroad and a sign of broader public anti- Chinese sentiment is more complicated. While the
photo could well have contributed to existing sentiment, there are a number of other inter-
pretations given the historical context. Two additional readings are particularly plausible.
The golden spike ceremony was primarily intended to demonstrate to the commercial sector
and the US government, who had partly subsidized its construction, that the country was
open for business. The Pacific Railroad took four years to build with an estimated cost of
$500 million to the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads (Arrington 1969: 13). The
main credit for its completion went to the A merican-born railroad associates, industrialists,
financiers, and politicians. While some non- Chinese labourers do appear in the photo in
question, no details are given or can be discerned regarding their specific skills, their names,
cultures, or countries of origin. In this regard, they are almost as invisible as the Chinese. In
fact, the locals viewed the presence of all the migrant workers in their towns, as well as the
free Blacks and Mormons, as a necessary evil in the fulfilment of America’s Manifest Des-
tiny. The photo can thus also be translated as a sign of the threat that all immigrants posed

140
 Translation and migrants’ visibility

to a growing class of people who feared that these outside-others challenged the norms of
behaviour established within what remained a Protestant pluralist hierarchic order.

Spectral signs, seething glances

Landscapes as powerful spectral spaces are particularly vulnerable to multiple mappings of
meaning and susceptible to what the sociologist Avery F. Gordon has theorized as ‘ haunting’,
her proposed method for understanding ‘ how that which appears to be not there is often a
seething presence, acting on and often meddling with taken-for-granted realities…dense
sites where history and subjectivity make social life’ (Gordon 1997: 8). The absence of the
Chinese workers in the photograph at Promontory Point is a good example. Despite other
possible translations of the photograph, the one foregrounding the ‘seething presence’ of
the missing Chinese workers produced an opening for distinctly Chinese truths about the
railroads to be told. It demanded a proper acknowledgement, by their descendants and the
country as a whole, of these men’s place in history, delivering the type of justice to this gen-
eration of ghosts to which Derrida refers in Specters of Marx:

If I am getting ready to speak at length about ghosts, inheritance, and generations, gen-
erations of ghosts, which is to say about certain others who are not present, not presently
living, either to us, in us, or outside us, it is in the name of justice.
(1994: 15)

The railroads, like the canals, were constructed during a time when nativist sentiment was
high; all the railroad workers were perceived as cultural others by the white Protestant ma-
jority. This is evident in the denigrating statements that were frequently uttered about these
groups, the invidious comparisons invoked about their characters calculated to create ill will
between them, and in the negative, often parodic, representations of more positive relation-
ships that developed between them. Contrastive negative essentializing functioned to avert
any common cause among the teams in the same way that in other contexts, Irish whiteness
was used to drive a wedge between free Blacks and Irish. But what Chin gives voice to was,
in fact, an exaggerated rivalry between the Chinese and the Irish workers ( Dearinger 2015:
188–191), which draws attention away from the effort expended by both groups to accom-
plish the unforgiving task of laying 10 miles of track in a single day, described by David
Haward Bain as follows:

One by one, platform cars dumped their iron, two miles of material in each trainload,
and teams of Irishmen fairly ran the five-hundred-pound rails and hardware forward;
straighteners led the Chinese gangs, shoving the rails into place and keeping them to
gauge while spikers walked down the ties, each man driving one particular spike and not
stopping for another, moving on to the next rail; levelers and fillers followed, raising ties
where needed, shoveling dirt beneath, tamping, and moving on – ‘no man stops’ Char-
ley Crocker directed, ‘nor allows another man to pass’ – and no man, Irish or Chinese,
did more than one task, each a cog in that large dusty, sweating machine advancing up
the incline toward the summit.
(1999: 639, see also 658)

None of the workers had as much to gain by the joining of the rails as the men who drove
them to complete the task. In fact, for the vast majority, the ceremony meant the end of this

141
Moira Inghilleri

relatively lucrative employment. This is not to deny that the Irish were guilty of demonizing
the Chinese to improve their own status at the time, encouraged by the fact that the railroad
bosses’ vocal support for the Chinese superior workmanship was often used as a means of
demeaning and demonstrating hostility towards the Irish ( Tchen 1996: 132–134). However,
reproducing negative stereotypes of one or the other group’s character or courage can end up
supporting the nativist attacks on both the Chinese and the Irish workers which was likely
calculated to fuel their competition, as both groups fought to change the ‘outsider’ status they
occupied in the United States in the nineteenth century.
The Chinese workers on the Central Pacific Railroad can be said to have exemplified
in their expectation of and insistence on the essence of Chinese food, dress and opium (not
alcohol), the way the given can be collectively achieved beyond the competitive nature of
migratory life, as described below.

The cook obtained food, usually dried, from Chinese merchants in Sacramento and San
Francisco, and it was decidedly unlike anything the whites had ever seen before. The
cookfires sent up fragrant clouds of peanut oil and garlic of simmering white rice or
clear noodles, of stir-f ried cuttlefish, abalone, shrimp, and oysters, of mushrooms, bam-
boo shoots, bok choy, mung beans, snow peas, and kelp, and, most often on Sundays,
of pork or chicken slaughtered on the spot. Seeing this alien cornucopia, the Irishmen
shuddered-a nd turned smugly to their unvarying menus of boiled beef, boiled potatoes,
boiled beans, boiled coffee, and bread and butter. And the following day the mountain-
side was waiting for all.
(Bain 1999: 221–222)

Goffman has observed that, ‘there seems to be no agent more effective than another person
in bringing a world for oneself alive or, by a glance, a gesture, or a remark, shrivelling up
the reality in which one is lodged’ (Goffman 1961: 41). The smug glance and shudder of the
Irish workers can also be seen as a moment of what Goffman identified as ‘civil inattention’
in which

…one gives to another enough visual notice to demonstrate that one appreciates that the
other is present…while at the next moment withdrawing one’s attention from him so as
to express that he does not constitute a target of special curiosity or design.
(1963: 84)

There does seem to be more than simple disgust at the unfamiliar Chinese food here in the
Irishmen’s shudder and smug relish for their own food and drink (which were known to
cause dysentery). Chinese elaborations beyond beans and boiled beef may have seemed at one
glance to be merely a neutral sign given but could be taken by the defensive Irish workers
as a sign given off, unsettled as they were by racist discourses aimed at them. Where signs
given and given off are simultaneously in play, it seems, it can be difficult to extricate one
from the other.

Conclusion
It is clear that mass migration and the nativist response to certain ethnic groups including
the Chinese and the Irish contributed significantly to the interpretive shaping of signs given
and given off throughout the nineteenth century. For both the Chinese and Irish immigrants

142
 Translation and migrants’ visibility

who arrived during this period, the cultural and physical impressions they gave of themselves
were constituted in their countries of origin and by the conditions there that compelled
them to leave. The signs or impressions they gave off, on the other hand, were created and
circulated through the representations of members of the majority Protestant culture who
observed the Irish and the Chinese through a colonialist frame.
The different array of cultural markers that demonstrate a migrant presence in a particular
space and time play a critical role in the (re)construction of the interaction order in multicul-
tural societies. These markers can be important indicators of which aspects of migrant selves
or groups are selected for representation, by whom, for what or for whose purpose, and the
local and global factors influencing these. Whether viewed from a distance or in close prox-
imity, these signs create an impression and elicit some type of immediate response. In certain
contexts, the public appearance of multilingual signs or the sound of unfamiliar languages
unavoidably interrupts prior assumptions of homogeneity, opening them to diverse interpre-
tations or recontextualizations. Such signs have both a social and an interactional function,
i.e. they ‘signify’ beyond the particular groups they reference. And like all signifiers there
can be gaps between their intention and their interpretation (see Inghilleri 2017: 149–175 for
a fuller discussion of these issues).
In his essay entitled ‘The Public Realm’,5 the sociologist Richard Sennett suggests that in
large cosmopolitan cities where cultural markers of multiple migrant communities abound,
most residents are or appear indifferent to the culturally and linguistically diverse environ-
ments they inhabit. He describes a walk he took from lower Manhattan to the upper east side
where he observed his own and others’ interactions in the diverse neighbourhoods through
which he passed. He concludes that what the inhabitants of such spaces, himself included,
seemed to prize most was their anonymity which creates a ‘peculiar sort of neutralization’
disturbed only when some unwelcome proximity to an unknown person or unexpected
event occurs in which case he writes, one ‘need only keep walking to stop from feeling’. In
these comments, Sennett demonstrates a similar understanding of cultures to that implied
in Clifford Geertz’s proposed response to the challenge of living in the ‘collage’ of contem-
porary multicultural societies (Geertz 2000: 87). With respect to the encounters this entails,
Geertz suggested that we must ‘ learn to grasp what we cannot embrace’ by strengthening the
capacity of our imaginations to see and judge individuals and their cultures that are ‘alien to
us and likely to remain so’. He wrote,

To live in a collage one must in the first place render oneself capable of sorting out its
elements, determining what they are (which usually involves determining where they
come from and what they amounted to when they were there) and how, practically, they
relate to one another, without at the same time blurring one’s own sense of one’s own
location and one’s own identity within it.

Sennett seems to follow Geertz’s thinking in the following description included in his essay
where he reinforces a ‘we’ and ‘they’ view of social relations in multicultural societies that
leaves aside the possibility of a more extended dialogue between diverse others or a role for
translation in altering cultural meanings and historical relationships from one social and geo-
graphical setting to another. He writes,

In the upper Twenties along Lexington Avenue bags of spices lie in ranks with the shops
run by Indians and Pakistanis; when the doors are open in spring and fall, the combined
scents waft out to the street, but like most of the ethnic enclaves in New York these

143
Moira Inghilleri

sensuous sights and smells are not beacons to the outside world. In the Indian shops few
of the bags of spice are identified by explanatory labels; the tourists who, upon asking
for an explanation of the mysterious bags, will be smilingly informed by perfectly polite
shopkeepers that one is ‘ hot spice’ or another an ‘ imported ingredient.’ The shop owners
stand in their doorways in summer, making jokes or comments – could it possibly be
about us? – which are met by their neighbors with the faintest parting of the lips, the
slight smile that acknowledges more, and perhaps more condemns, than a loud laugh. 

Reminiscent of the silent exchange between the Chinese and the Irish workers, the sensu-
ous sights and smells and the shop owners’ use of their impenetrable language – their signs
given  – stymy the tourists and raise suspicion in the neighbours that the laughter comes
at their expense. What is missing in this account is what comes next, accepting that even
seemingly precarious interactional moments can establish the initial conditions for further
contact, and thus the possibility of more than a permanent ‘we’ and ‘they’.
The essence of interaction is the process of translation. Translation hinges on the search
for relevant correspondence between terms and practices understood in their familiar situated
meanings, a search for matching nuance, on the one hand, and practical purpose on the other.
The work involved for migrants, like all people, in translating space into place, of developing
a sense of belonging, is ongoing. For Goffman, the interaction order served as a ‘membrane’
or set of ‘transformational rules’ for the conduct of society (Goffman 1983: 11) that were both
pliable and structuring, allowing some things to pass through while stopping others, depend-
ing on the existing norms regulating social actors and the social order. Goffman highlighted
the ‘potentially infinite cycle of concealment, discovery, false revelation, and rediscovery’
(Goffman 1959: 8, italics added) present in our encounters with others. This more dialectical
view suggests the potential for the growth of mutual understanding between diverse others in
their everyday routine encounters – whether fleeting or recurring – and communication and
by implication, translation are essential to this process.

Further reading
Dearinger, R. (2015) The Filth of Progress. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Focusses on the immigrant workers who constructed the canals and railroads that made nineteenth-
century American expansion to the West possible, highlighting the opportunities, hardships, and chal-
lenges faced by the different groups involved.
Inghilleri, M. (2017) Translation and Migration. New York and London: Routledge.
Examines the role translation plays in helping to ensure human rights and justice for migrating individ-
uals across the globe. It analyses and reframes the issues emerging from different forms of translation,
covering transnationalism, assimilation, and hybridity.
Lee, E. (2003) At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882–1943. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press.
Documents the unjust treatment of Chinese American citizens and their families who lived under the
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its extension into the mid-t wentieth century drawing on historical
sources including immigration records, oral histories, interviews, and letters.

Notes
1 http://cprr.org/Museum/Done!.html#Shaking_Hands (Accessed July 2019).
2 http://chintalks.blogspot.com/search?q=railroad (Accessed July 2019).
3 http://cprr.org/Museum/Chinese.html (Accessed July 2019).
4 http://cprr.org/Museum/Newspapers/SF_Newsletter_1869.html (Accessed July 2019).

144
 Translation and migrants’ visibility

5 https://www.richardsennett.com/site/senn/templates/general2.aspx?pageid=16&cc=gb (Accessed
July 2019).

References
Apel, K.- O. (1977) ‘The A Priori of Communication and the Foundation of the Humanities’, in Dall-
mayr, F. and McCarthy, T. (eds.), Understanding and Social Inquiry. Notre Dame, IN: University of
Notre Dame Press, pp. 292–315.
Arrington, L. J. (1969) ‘The Transcontinental Railroad and the Development of the West’, Utah His-
torical Quarterly, 37(1), pp. 3–15.
Bain, D. H. (1999) Empire Express: Building the Transcontinental Railroad. New York: Penguin Group.
Chin, F. (1991) Donald Duk. Saint Paul, MN: Coffee House Press.
Chomsky, N. (1965) Aspects of a Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Cooley, C. H. (1922) Human Nature and Conduct. New York: Scribners.
Cowley, U. (2001) The Men Who Built Britain: A History of the Irish Navvy. Dublin: Wolf hound Press Ltd.
Daniels, S. and Cosgrove, D. (1993) ‘Spectacle and Text. Landscape Metaphors in Cultural Geography’,
in James, S. and Ley, D. (eds.), Place/Culture/Representation. New York and London: Routledge,
pp. 57–77.
Davidson, D. (1984) Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 183–198.
Dearinger, R. (2015) The Filth of Progress. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Denison, T. S. (1997) ‘Patsy O’Wang: An Irish Farce with a Chinese Mix-Up’ (1895), in Williams,
D. (ed.), The Chinese Other 1850–1925: An Anthology of Plays. Lanham, MD: University Press of
America, Inc., pp. 126–145.
Derrida, J. (1994) Specters of Marx. Trans. P. Kamuf. New York and London: Routledge.
Dolan, E. J. (2012) When America First Met China. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation.
Feyerabend, P. (1975) Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge. London: NLB.
Gadamer, H.-G. (1975) Truth and Method. London: Sheed and Ward.
Geertz, C. (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, Inc., pp. 33–54.
Geertz, C. (1983) Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. New York: Basic Books,
Inc., pp. 55–70.
Geertz, C. (2000) Available Light. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gellner, E. (1982) ‘Relativism and Universals’, in Hollis, M. and Lukes, S. (eds.), Rationality and Rela-
tivism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 181–200.
Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books.
Goffman, E. (1961) Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.
Goffman, E. (1963) Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Organization of Gatherings. Glencoe, IL: The
Free Press.
Goffman, E. (1967) Interaction Ritual. New York: Anchor Books.
Goffman, E. (1983) ‘The Interaction Order: American Sociological Association 1982 Presidential
Address’, American Sociological Review, 48(1), pp. 1–17.
Gordon, A. F. (1997) Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
Habermas, J. (1979) Communication and the Evolution of Society. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Inghilleri, M. (2000) ‘Intersubjectivity: The Holy Grail of Mutual Understanding?’, Language & Com-
munication, 20, pp. 133–148.
Inghilleri, M. (2012) Interpreting Justice: Ethics, Politics, Language. New York and London: Routledge.
Inghilleri, M. (2017) Translation and Migration. New York and London: Routledge.
Kenny, K. (2006) ‘Race, Violence, and Anti-Irish Sentiment in the Nineteenth Century’, in Lee,
J. J. and Casey, M. R. (eds.), Making the Irish Americans. New York: New York University Press,
pp. 364–378.
Kuhn, T. (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
Lee, R. G. (1999) Orientals. Asian Americans in Popular Culture. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Lee, E. (2003) At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882–1943. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press.
Lee, J. J. (2006) ‘Introduction: Interpreting Irish America’, in Lee, J. J. and Casey, M. R. (eds.), Making
the Irish Americans. New York: New York University Press, pp. 1– 61.

145
Moira Inghilleri

Lukes, S. (1982) ‘Relativism in Its Place’, in Hollis, M. and Lukes, S. (eds.), Rationality and Relativism.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 261–305.
Malmkjaer, K. (1993) ‘Underpinning Translation Theory’, Target 5(2), pp. 133–148.
Malmkjaer, K. (1999) ‘Language and Literature: Englishes in Translation’, in Kribb, T. J. (ed.), Imagined
Commonwealths. New York: St. Martin’s Press Inc., pp. 89–104.
McIvor, L. (2015) Canals: The Making of Nation. London: BBC Books.
Miller, K. A. (1985) Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Putnam, H. (1981) Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Roediger, D. (1991) The Wages of Whiteness. New York: Verso Books.
Rorty, R. (1991) Objectivism, Relativism and Truth, Philosophical Papers, vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge
University Press, pp. 21–34.
Simmel, G. (1950) The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Translated, edited and with an introduction by Wolff,
K.G. New York: The Free Press.
Tchen, J. K. W. (1996) ‘Quimbo Appo’s Fear of Fenians: Chinese-Irish-A nglo Relations in New York
City’, in Bayor, R. H. and Meagher, T. J. (eds.), The New York Irish. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press, pp. 125–152.
Williams, Williams H. A. (1996) ‘Twas Only an Irishman’s Dream. Urbana and Chicago: University of
Illinois Press.
Wyse, F. (1846) America, Its Realities and Resources, vol. 1, London: T.C. Newby.

146
 10
Living in translation
Siri Nergaard

Introduction
The increased mobility of people is one of the many effects of globalization. More frequently
than ever before in human history, people today displace to greater distances, which means
that growing number of people live and work away from their birthplace, or travel to and fro,
crossing borders, changing homes, unsettling and resettling, establishing relations above and
beyond national allegiances. Our present societies are thus characterized by a wide range of
diverse people on the move – such as migrants, global businessmen, refugees, tourists, guest
workers, travellers, global culture managers, asylum seekers, global academics or victims of
human trafficking – to name but a few. Goods, finance, media, trade, commodities and in-
formation are all crossing borders even more frequently and faster than people.
This exponential growth of mobility, in so many senses, challenges traditional identities
based upon the principle of separate and demarcated nationalities with distinct populations,
politics, economies and languages. When people, cultural practices, economies and goods
transcend traditional boundaries, the world appears more fragmented, since ownership and
belongings become blurred and plural. It is a multidimensional phenomenon that radically
complicates existing divisions and configurations, both practically and epistemologically,
questioning our very definitions of national, cultural and linguistic identities. The global-
izing forces go in different, even opposite directions. On the one hand, global flows seem
to homogenize the world making people speak the same language, wear the same clothes,
eat the same food, use the same goods and communicate through the same channels, erasing
differences and, hence, facilitating mobility. Traveling the world you are always still at home,
since all that surrounds you is somewhat known and familiar.
On the other hand, as an effect, but also as an active response to globalization, a plurality
of local dimensions emerges in the many gaps and interstices of these same flows. At the
crossroads of centre and periphery, and in the border zones where differences meet, local
and alternative interpretations develop in a never- ending process creating new intersections
and relations. Plurality, heterogeneity and fragmentation are also strong forces in the global
phenomenon.

147
Siri Nergaard

Globalization’s two opposing forces – unity and diversity – both question and problema-
tize the paradigms through which the world has been interpreted and categorized in modern
times: of these paradigms the category of the nation- state is undoubtedly the most powerful.
The principles underlying the political structure of the nation- state, such as territorial sover-
eignty, autonomy, singular and monolingual national identities, and clearly defined borders
separating the included citizen from the excluded other, all of which have shaped our mo-
dernity significantly, are challenged by globalization.
While translation is undoubtedly a core concept as well as a core practice in the globalized
world, for the aforementioned reasons, it is also profoundly challenged by it too. The frame-
work that has dominated is once again that of the nation- state, which has conceptualized
translation as a practice that seeks to overcome the linguistic barriers between language-
culture-nation A and language-culture-nation B, while confirming the clear distinctions
between them. The most powerful ideal, and ideology, underlying translation has the will
to create seamless transferences of clear meanings between text A and B. From such a per-
spective each nation- state unit, comprising one national, distinct identity together with the
language, literature and traditions, can communicate through translation with other units,
with no loss of integrity or contamination through contact with otherness.
For many different reasons alternative perspectives on translation have emerged in the
increasingly transdisciplinary field of translation studies, and globalization has clearly trans-
formed the conditions for both the theory and practice of translation: both are haunted by
the conflict between the opposing forces of the global and the local (Cronin 2003). But it is
a conflict with no winner, since the very premise of translation is rather one of continuous
tension: an ambivalence characterized by forces that mutually depend on each other. The
ambivalent nature of translation which has probably always been there becomes more evident
in the context of globalization since so many contradicting energies and interests come to
the surface.
In this context, we may say that the very principles of what translation is and how it
comes about are being destabilized and replaced by alternative, looser definitions and, more
importantly, by a plurality of different and even opposite perspectives. While cultures, lan-
guages and texts are considered less often to be expressions of clearly defined identities, be
they national, or even individual, translations are increasingly seen as practices that negotiate
between textualities, highlighting the hybrid and fragmentary features which connect and
overlap.
In general, we may say that ‘translation (…) is less something that happens between sepa-
rate and distinct cultures and more something that is constitutive of those cultures’ (Gentzler
2008: 5). This does not mean of course that globalization is the only reason for the trans-
formation of how translation is practised and considered today, but what interests us here is
the countless links between the two phenomena. In a cultural and linguistic setting which is
more transnational than national, more diverse than united, more plural than singular, more
heterogeneous than uniform, the binary conception of translation as going from A to B is
progressively replaced by alternative descriptions of various forms that venture in different
directions.

Mobility and displacement

Movement is probably the feature that shapes both globalization and translation most pro-
foundly and this shared characteristic creates a particularly strong relationship of mutual
influence and transformation. The change in one phenomenon has repercussions on the

148
 Living in translation

other, and vice versa. For instance, the increased numbers of people in movement inherent
in globalization necessarily causes changes in translation, both as a practice and as a theory,
requiring broader frameworks capable of comprising people’s transcultural and translinguis-
tic crossings and existences, so that their mobility across and among cultures and languages
can be seen as a form of translation ( Inghilleri 2017). The global flows of people as well as of
goods depend so strongly on translation that they consequently generate new forms of trans-
lation, which, in turn, transform, replace and broaden existing definitions.
In a world characterized by movement and crossings that intersect cultures and languages
across and beyond borders, the translation of written texts remains only one expression of
a variegated and heterogeneous landscape of translative processes. So many practices, expe-
riences and lives assume a translative character in their negotiating between differences and
distances that for many people their condition is one of living in translation. Our increasingly
cosmopolitan cities are, as Sherry Simon argues ‘translational urban spaces’ in which ‘cultural
realities are brought into dialogue’ (2006: 7). It might be the case for the refugee seeking
protection in a new country, as well as for the transmigrant who grows up plurilingual in a
transcultural neighbourhood, for the ‘accidental immigrant’ ( Kelley 2013) who happens to
live in a foreign country by chance, but also by choice, and for the transnational subject who
never has felt they belonged in one language or in one culture. The experience of transna-
tionalism and transmigrancy is extreme and violent for some, while common and ordinary
for others, freely chosen by some, while forced on others.
The primary role of mobility in connection with translation is certainly relevant for the
increasing numbers of people migrating, displacing and moving to and between new and
different places. However, in the globalized world, translation probably affects all people,
even those who remain in the same place their entire life, since global communication  –
which cannot but rely on translation – affects all people, mobile as well as stable. Through
movement and translation, or rather translative movements across and beyond both national
borders and transnational border zones, novel forms of belonging, and cultural interaction
emerge, stimulating shifts in our understanding. The dynamic translation space we inhabit
has blurred borders which mutate through our interventions, negotiations and encounters,
with each subject involved in the creation of new relations. And the transformations that oc-
cur are so profound that in many cases they change our way of thinking about the other and
about ourselves, provoking undoubted consequences for our understanding of translation, as
a cultural phenomenon, as a practice, and as a condition.
Although translation can thus be said to impact on everybody in the globalized word
today, becoming a condition that shapes the lives of the many people in movement, it
certainly affects them in radically different ways. The global condition of living in trans-
lation comprises all possible declinations, including the impossibility of translation, lack
of translation, failed translations, and untranslatability, driven more often – a s we shall see
below – by social inequalities, political antagonism and constructed incompatibilities than
by incommensurable words and worlds. Moreover, translation is not  – and never is  – a
process that exclusively guarantees new and increased comprehension across borders, while
on the contrary it may yet underscore and even create discrepancies, contradictions and
inequalities between cultures, slippage and non- correspondence between cultural codes,
dissonances and residual gaps.
Globalization is an uneven process and both the translation processes and movements that
people undertake occur in deeply unequal conditions, privileging some and disadvantag-
ing others. Globalization tends to increase the already strong social, political and economic
asymmetries, confirming instead of dismantling old paradigms of colonial and national

149
Siri Nergaard

domination. Investigating how globalizing processes have both social roots and conse-
quences, Zygmunt Bauman (1998) sees mobility as one of its pivotal features, underlining at
the same time how the ‘ freedom to move’ is unequally distributed and ‘the main stratifying
factor’ of our times. Mobility as a ‘ free choice for some descends as cruel fate upon others’
( Bauman 1998: 70). The globalizing processes of ‘new freedom of movement’ are divisive,
Bauman continues, since they ‘rebound in the redistribution of privileges and deprivations,
of wealth and poverty, of resources and impotence, of power and powerlessness, of freedom
and constraint’ ( Bauman 1998: 70). Freedom of movement is a privilege reserved for the
wealthy citizens of the first world; others, instead of being free to choose are rather forced to
move, fleeing war and famine, begging for hospitality in a foreign country which is likely to
refuse their request.
Paradoxically, in this global era of free flow and movement, over the last 30 years, the
right to emigrate has been granted more frequently, for example, in many ex- communist
countries, but at the same time border controls have become stricter. There is a completely
unequal distribution of the right to migrate which, in turn, exemplifies the porosity of
borders: they are closed to some, and open to others (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013). Some
people are permitted to enter while others are excluded: those who are excluded are denied
the permission to translate themselves, and even to get translated. According to Article 14 of
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) ‘Everyone has the right to seek and to
enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution’, but in reality migrants today are refused
and stopped at borders and checkpoints more frequently than ever, depriving them of this
fundamental right.
Access to global mobility, the degree of freedom one has over choosing where to be and
where to go, is extremely stratified and unequal; the differences which separate the experi-
ences of movement are profound.

For the inhabitants of the first world – the increasingly cosmopolitan, extraterritorial
world of global businessmen, global culture managers or global academics, state borders
are levelled down, as they are dismantled for the world’s commodities, capital and fi-
nances. For the inhabitant of the second world, the walls built of immigration controls,
of residence laws and of ‘clean streets’ and ‘zero tolerance’ policies, grow taller.
(Bauman 1998: 89)

The same divisive process or power geometry haunts translation: while the travellers of the
first world have the freedom to use their global English – Globish – wherever they go, com-
pletely ignoring the existence of local languages, they can move and act as if translation were
irrelevant or even obsolete, as if their own translation into that global language did not imply
any form of transformation, being a sort of continuation of a common global jargon. Their
communication flows smoothly, with no obstacles, as they move among protected spaces that
have already been translated into the global language for them. Hotels, airports, menus, and
tourist sites are presented to the global traveller as items of a world beyond translation. The
financial world knows only one language, as do the worlds of science, academia, the media
and communications: English, as such, is also beyond, and thus, without translation.
On the contrary, the travellers who come from, linguistically, economically and socially
more marginal countries encounter myriad forms of translation, which constantly confirm
their secondary position: they have to accept being translated as objectified others by the
majority culture. They have to translate themselves into the languages of the majority cul-
tures, into the roles and categories imposed on them – m igrant, asylum seeker, refugee or

150
 Living in translation

guest worker. This is, as Jacques Derrida argues, the first act of violence that this traveller
has to undergo:

He has to ask for hospitality in a language which by definition is not his own, the one
imposed on him by the master of the house, the host, the king, the lord, the authorities,
the nation, the State, the father, etc. This personage imposes on him translation into
their own language, and that’s the first act of violence.
( Derrida 2000: 15)

Having to abandon their language translating themselves into that of the host is the condi-
tion of the migrant, the figure that embodies the traveller of the second world, but also the
traveller who belongs to an inferior social class or minority community. In their movement,
marked by their secondary position, the obstacles to translation are numerous: check points
and walls negate any translation, since they exclude them from any contact with the trans-
lation zone of negotiation and interconnection. Forced translation into roles and categories
that they do not belong to are other expressions of translation for the unwelcomed migrant
perceived as, and translated into, an invading and threatening enemy.

Migration and transmigrancy

In the space between the extremes of these opposite travellers separated by the freedom, or
lack of freedom to choose whether and where to move, we find a variety of intermediate po-
sitions in which people experience global movement and translation. M igrants – the political
figure of our time, according to Nail (2015) – definitely represent the most significant cate-
gory, simply because there is more migration today than ever before. We live in The Age of
Migration, Castles, Haas and Miller (1993/2013) argue, since we are all, both individually and
socially, affected by the phenomenon, even if we have not experienced migration personally.

There can be few people in either industrialized or less developed countries today who
do not have personal experience of migration and its effects; this universal experience
has become the hallmark of the age of migration.
(2013: 5)

So maybe we can say that it is through the ‘universal experience’ of migration that the con-
dition of living in translation takes place, although it is important to underline that universal
does not mean equal, and that the universality of the migrant experience affects people un-
evenly. Access to mobility, as well as to translation, is never equal.
Migrants and refugees flee their countries due to famine, war, persecution and climate
change and while the majority displace within the boundaries of their own country, others
face long and often dangerous journeys to go to foreign countries. In 2018, the International
Organization for Migration ( IOM) estimated that there were 258 million international mi-
grants globally and approximately 25.9 million registered refugees. In addition, the much
higher number of internal migrants is estimated at more than 763 million. Those forced to
displace internally account for another 40 million people. Altogether, those migrating are
thus over a billion – the highest level ever recorded – a nd the number is estimated to increase
over the next few years.
Each individual experiencing migration has a unique personal story, and it is impossible to
register the innumerable experiences of global movement and translation that migrants and

151
Siri Nergaard

refugees go through. However, we may single out certain distinctive, yet common features
in the figure of the transmigrant (Glick Schiller et al. 1995), which coincide with certain
typical features of globalization. Transmigrants no longer identify with a nation, but rather
with localities, places, as well as displacement, multiple belongings and ties, and move among
and between different languages and spaces, developing dynamic and plural identities. Their
cultural identity is partly formed by, and in, the transitional experience itself, and is not
something formed prior to the very act of movement. The experience of migration, which in
our terms is translational, becomes part of the migrant’s own identity. The question of home
and belonging becomes utterly problematic due to the fact that many transmigrants do not
have one ‘authentic’ home country that they belong to, since they might have one national-
ity, but have been raised in other countries, and have moved yet again as adults. As global,
cosmopolitan citizens, they negotiate different spaces belonging to both each one, and none.
Technological innovations regarding transport and communication have facilitated such
plural belongings increasing people’s ability to be ‘present’ in more than one place at a time,
enabling them to share experiences despite borders and distances, to connect with ‘sending’
and ‘receiving’ societies, and to create and maintain social, economic, cultural and political
relations across spaces and countries. The transmigrant is actively and simultaneously en-
gaged in diversified and continuously transforming transnational spaces, not located here or
there, but in a zone of blurred and porous borders: a ‘translational transnational zone’ (Apter
2006). The notion of transmigrant underscores exactly the nature of in-betweenness which
many scholars see as a feature of translation, a state of not belonging, neither here nor there,
but connecting to and negotiating a plurality of places and identities.
Defining the migrant as a transmigrant, means considering them as a person who in-
tervenes in transnational communities based on migration, which, in turn, means they are
negotiating different communities, belonging and not belonging to each. By moving out, it
was deemed that the migrant had left the community, since membership of community was
conceived in terms of proximity and contact with the centre of that space. Such a concen-
tric and territorial construction of community, based on separations and national borders,
presence and absence, centre and periphery, has nevertheless been challenged, with a shift
towards the idea of the transmigrant, living in-between sending and receiving societies, and
maintaining strong ties to both throughout the migration process ( Papastergiadis 2000).
With their multiple allegiances and belongings, the transmigrant is redefining the diasporic
space, questioning and reformulating the relationship between origin and destination. The
(trans)migrant has, as Rushdie (1991) claims, a stereoscopic vision, which enables them to
look at the world from different angles, developing a capacity to undermine totalizing van-
tage points. This transnational immigrant ‘whose daily lives depend on multiple and constant
connections across international borders’ is, according to Glick Schiller et al. (1995: 48), the
authors who coined the term transmigrant, actually engaged in ‘the paradox of our times’
caught between transnationalism and nation- state building processes. They argue that trans-
migrants’ ‘public identities are configured in relationship to more than one nation- state’ and
to transnationalism, while the dominating political discourse follows a ‘ bunker mentality’,
continuing to insist on the necessity of defending national borders (1995: 48). The paradox
could not be more striking today, underlining how translational negotiations inevitably take
place in a climate of contradiction, ambivalence and even hostility. This is also underscored
by Papastergiadis who argues that ‘(d)espite the contradiction between the rhetoric of global
connectedness and the practice of exclusionary policies on immigration, complex migration
networks are constantly emerging’ (2010: 350).

152
 Living in translation

Although being a transmigrant is probably the most ordinary state for people in this glo-
balized world, it is nevertheless marked by ambiguity and ambivalence caused by contrasting
forces and interests: traditional nation- state ideologies of unity, homogeneity, monolingual-
ism and fixed borders, on the one hand, and the reality of plural heterogeneous, transnational
localities and plurilingualism, on the other. Certain approaches only view hybridity and in-
betweenness positively, meaning that the image of the transmigrant of multiple attachments
risks appearing unproblematic and solved, while for many people living in translation means
staying in a constant state of tension between contradicting and conflicting loyalties. There
can be no any winning side, since there is no solution, their condition being loaded with am-
biguity. The condition of being in translation is frequently precisely this, a precarious tension
between conflicting yet connected forces. The condition of living displaced, translingual and
transnational lives creates contacts, encounters and connections beyond and across former
divisions and borders, but, at the same time, it may also generate loss, marginality and exclu-
sion, together with a sense of distance and rootlessness, which puts the subject in a peripheral
zone of insecurity.
Is it still true, as Appadurai suggested time ago, that the imagery of nation- state continues
to be so powerful that transmigrants are unable to escape it, and thus feel somewhat trapped?

No idiom has yet emerged to capture the collective interests of many groups in translocal
solidarities, cross-border mobilizations, and postnational identities. Such interests are
many and vocal, but they are still entrapped in the linguistic imaginary of the territo-
rial state. The incapacity of many deterritorialized groups to think their way out of the
imaginary of the nation- state is itself the cause of much global violence because many
movements of emancipation and identity are forced, in their struggles against existing
nation- states, to embrace the very imaginary they seek to escape.
(1996: 166)

While Appadurai touches on the political difficulty of creating an alternative identity for
the transmigrant citizen, capturing its transitional nature, there may be another more
philosophical-psychological dimension to this condition of being in translation. It is the
somewhat unsettling sense of being out of place, of being other to oneself, of being on an
unstable terrain where alterities and unbelongings collide.
The difficulty of the transmigrant’s condition reminds us of a latent, if not yet radical,
ambivalence with no solution. This seems to be what Bauman (1991) concludes when he
discusses the stranger’s ambivalent existence, or what Derrida alludes to with the formulation
of a constitutive foreignness of any language, positing that ‘our language is always the lan-
guage of the other’, problematizing thus any possible belonging ( Derrida 1998). Studying the
literature of exiled authors, Karpinsky (2012: 22), similarly speaks about the experience of
‘the ‘ foreignness’ of any language, of its structural otherness’. The transmigrants we are dis-
cussing here certainly have much in common with the transnationals Ulrich Beck describes
(2006) as unsettling beings, since they experience and also remind us of the fundamental and
existential foreignness of any individual.

Because they contradict the established order, transnationals continually remind us that
the world could also be different. Anyone who wants to clarify and demystify the cat-
egory of ‘transnational’ must in any case reject the current equation of transnationals
with foreigners, and hence also the expectations of ‘assimilation’ and ‘ integration’ and

153
Siri Nergaard

the denigratory evaluations they imply. Transnationality is a form of integration of what

is foreign as one’s own, which is both alarming and enticing.
(Beck 2006: 65–66)

Let us also avoid the error of overlooking the power relations against which displacement and
deterritorialization are set, such power relations lead to the underestimating of the resources
necessary for the subject to connect and relate to a place when the options are many and
varied, or, on the contrary when the options are non- existent, when the transmigrant, or
the ‘want-to- be’ transmigrant, is blocked in their trajectory by different forms of exclusion
( Papastergiadis 2000). Borders, camps and immigration restrictions as well as institutional,
linguistic and symbolic exclusion are practices that seek to impede the migrant’s admission
to the interactive translation space. Indeed, as the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben
observes (2000), the migrant lives in a fundamental constitutive ambivalence between the
capacity to produce and act on the one hand, and of being subject to exploitation and social
segregation on the other.

Transmigrant subjectivities
Many transmigrants grow up in a different place to where their parents did, learning a differ-
ent language to that their parents learnt at school, living in and between at least two different
languages and cultures. If the condition of multiple attachments and loyalties, as we have
seen, is more than common, if not yet almost constitutional in our global world of transmi-
grancy, what is special, albeit increasingly common, is intergenerational difference between
parents and children who do not share a home country or first language, therefore sharing
neither background nor memories. The condition of such people is thus one of being in trans-
lation at home, between the culture(s) and language(s) of their parents/family and the culture
and language(s) of school, education and friends, which might be very different and even
distant. Growing up with different standards for human behaviour and relationships, different
norms regarding work, l ife-style codes and perspectives on communication are things that
may shape individuals’ lives deeply. As different generations of transmigrants both share and
do not share these norms and codes, the child’s condition (often more than their parent’s) is
that of translating and negotiating between differences that do not always allow for concili-
ation and sometimes even appear incommensurable. Such translation processes are naturally
delicate, since the child, at least during their first years, tends to identify with their parents’
universe, while they are progressively exposed to different, sometimes contrasting, universes.
It is in literature, especially so-called migration literature, that we find the most intimate
accounts of what it is like to live among and across languages, cultures, places and identities.
Literature is where the psychological impact of lives in translation is narrated, a dimension
that often transcends more sociologically oriented approaches, often telling of lack and loss,
of the difficulty of putting the many different and fragmented lives and belongings together,
of the sense of exclusion and uncertainty, and even the sense of betrayal. There seems, thus,
to be another ambivalence here, between the ‘ordinariness’ of heterogeneous and plural be-
longings and the difficulty of experiencing these same heterogeneous and plural belongings
as ordinary.
In the book In altre parole (In other Words) (2015/2016), written in Italian, Jhumpa Lahiri,
the American writer of Indian parents, describes why she had to seek a third option stating
that she was lacking ‘a language to identify with’ (2016: 111). Unable to identify with either
of the languages she grew up with, she feels suspended rather than rooted. She has always

154
 Living in translation

wanted to feel like ‘a whole person, not a fragmented one’, since she has always felt divided,
incomplete and in some way deficient.

As a girl in America, I tried to speak Bengali perfectly, without a foreign accent, to

satisfy my parents, and above all to feel that I was completely their daughter. But it was
impossible. On the other hand, I wanted to be considered American, yet, despite the
fact that I speak English perfectly, that was impossible, too. I was suspended rather than
rooted. I had two sides, neither well defined. The anxiety I felt, and still feel, comes from
a sense of inadequacy, of being a disappointment.
(2016: 111–112)

This feeling of not belonging ‘completely’ to any language is in Karpinsky’s terms a tension
between ‘mother tongue and borrowed tongue’ (2012: 21–22) and what Lahiri describes is
common to many second generation immigrants. In contrast with what have we until now
seen as an ambivalent condition which gives room to new and innovative identifications,
relations, and socializations, they appear as a paradox, as a backlash which recalls models of
separate and exclusive mono-identities. They are frequently present in migration literature,
but why? Is it because such feelings continue to be conditioned by old ideologies? Or maybe
the ambivalent condition of living in translation, of being other, is for some psychologically
too hard to bear? These authors often experience alienation both towards their parents and
their schoolmates; they are different to each, they do not fit in, and translation seems impos-
sible. They feel trapped in a gap, neither understanding nor being understood by either of the
groups, and questioning themselves, who they are and where they belong. The difficult ne-
gotiation between differences sometimes gives the transmigrant the feeling of being a failure,
unable to identify with contradictory expectations and desires. Living in translation in such
situations often means living in untranslatability, marked by misunderstandings, incompre-
hension and incommensurability.
Belonging to families characterized by dislocation or displacement, transmigrants appear
to be genuine products of a globalized world living across and among languages, cultures and
localities. It is therefore somewhat surprising that so many testimonies of migrancy tell of the
difficulty of dealing with multiple belongings. It is one of the global world’s paradoxes that
the transcultural translational condition, so common and seemingly so ordinary in today’s
cosmopolitan metropolises with their mixed neighbourhoods and plurality of languages and
communities, is evidently difficult for some to cope with. Or maybe it is only because the
many people who live their transcultural translational existences without difficulty simply
do not speak of, having nothing to claim, exactly because their condition feels so ordinary?
The experience of loss and lack, of not feeling ‘enough’, of not belonging anywhere, are on
the contrary richly documented and frequently thematized in so- called immigrant literature,
and, in particular, in literature written by the emerging class of second- and third-generation
transmigrant authors. Does this mean that only one position – the problematizing one – is
expressed, or might there be other, deeper reasons? I suppose that we are again dealing with
the fundamental impossibility of belonging completely to any language, place or culture,
which some people perceive more than others. Accordingly, Lahiri’s choice of a third lan-
guage, a language to which by definition she does not ‘ belong’, can be seen as accepting the
consequences of the impossibility of belonging to any language. This sense of not belong-
ing, and also impossibility, is a psychological dimension in many senses transcending the
transmigrant’s political and social identity, and one which cannot be ignored if we want to
understand the complex condition of living in translation.

155
Siri Nergaard

But the sense of loss and not belonging is undoubtedly strongly related to political issues
connected to the ideology of a presupposed homogeneous and monolingual culture of a
profoundly binary nation- state that continues to make the separation between same and
other, us and them, included and excluded. This ideology shows hostility towards difference
and alterity, or rather to certain differences and expressions of alterity, in particular those
connected to religion and colour of skin. Jhumpa Lahiri, for instance, reports that there is
only one ‘wall that will remain forever between me and Italian, not matter how well I learn
it. My physical appearance’ (2016: 137). She comments that even if she ‘were able to speak a
polished, impeccable Italian, that wall, for me, would remain’ (2016: 141). Lahiri looks differ-
ent, her skin is darker that of the Italian people around her, creating an insuperable wall that
can never be broken down. She will always be excluded, staying on the outside of a shared
language, community and appearance. And this is a condition that follows her everywhere:

Those who meet me for the first t ime – when they see me, then learn my name, then
hear the way I speak English – a sk me where I’m from. I have to justify the language I
speak in, even though I know it perfectly.
(2016: 143)

Even in India, in Calcutta, where the wall of appearance disappears, that of language emerges
again: ‘ in the city of my so- called mother tongue’ (2016: 143), everybody thinks Lahiri
speaks only English. ‘No one, anywhere, assumes that I speak the languages that are part of
me’ (2016: 143).
Similarly, many people with a history of migration, whose names are different and whose
skin colour is different, or rather, darker from the majority, are often asked where they re-
ally come from, even though they were born in the country and thus speak the majority
language perfectly and act and behave in the same way as their peers. This cannot but be
the confirmation that transculturalism has, in many cases, not succeeded, haunted as it is by
racist politics and discourses which have a strong presence in our societies. The inability to
accept plural, transcultural and divided citizens is actually one of the greatest contradictions
of globalization.
In the recent book Third Culture Kids ( Naqvi 2019), 29 Norwegians with transcultural
backgrounds narrate their experiences of growing up in different cultures. The book’s
declared ambition is to give space to a variety of narratives that go beyond stereotypical
depictions of culture clash, marginality and criminality. While succeeding in this intent,
what emerges however is a recurring difficulty in being accepted as different, especially –
again – for being browner than average Norwegians, and for belonging to a Muslim culture.
There are basically two kinds of problem, one that of being judged and classified as differ-
ent, the other of the consequent feeling of not belonging, and of being neither Norwegian
enough nor foreign enough to be a complete person, and of course never white enough,
never ‘authentic’ enough, never Christian enough. It is as if the ‘white gaze’ that Franz Fanon
described in 1952 is still haunting the person that differs from the majority, especially when
it comes to the colour of their skin. This white gaze is a colonial gaze, it is a racist gaze, it is
a gaze that stigmatizes and excludes.
Negotiating translation processes between identities and differences is thus suppressed by
essentialist binarisms that repeatedly negate the transmigrant’s expression of her plural be-
longings across blurred boundaries. In the Norwegian writer Zeshan Shakar’s contribution
to the above-mentioned book, he writes about being stigmatized in each of the cultures
he belongs to: his cousins laugh when he speaks his parents’ language with a heavy accent,

156
 Living in translation

considering him a complete, strange foreigner, and seeing him as totally belonging to the
majority culture he lives in. On the other hand, people from the majority culture consider
him to be totally part of his parents’ minority culture. Again, there is this feeling of never
being enough in either of the communities, and the wish to be included as a member of
the majority culture to which he belongs (2019: 283). Aon Raza Naqvi, the book’s editor,
eloquently describes how his existence is marked by ‘ feeling like someone I don’t look like
( Norwegians), and of looking like someone I don’t feel like ( Pakistanis)’, and how this is a
‘source of much bewilderment’ (2019: 135, my translation). Expressions like, ‘I have lived
here all my life, but don’t feel completely at home’ are extremely frequent among these sub-
jects, representing yet another paradox of the globalized world, where the promises of free
movement and plural identities again collapse.
Reversing the paradox, one could argue that this sense of not belonging completely to any
place in the end is the most genuine translational situation, as it puts you in a kind of limbo
where no identity is ‘complete’ while rather mixed, contaminated, plural and provisional. It
is once again the necessary to recognize that translation and transcultural negotiations are
bound to take place in a state of ambiguity where heterogeneous and contrasting encounters
occur in a never-ending tension. The desire to belong to one place, or one identity is con-
tradicted by the impossibility of such exclusive belongings, since translational transcultural
belongings are by definition plural. Will this condition of living in translation ever be rid
of its negative connotations? Or may it be that this sense of estrangement which is a deep
psychologically universal feeling cannot but be perceived negatively? Authors who thematize
the condition of living in translation probably deal with these deep questions more than
others, not because transmigrants are lacking more than others, but because their condition
obliges them to ask questions that many others avoid, or ignore.
Yet another dimension of translation emerges among many first generation immigrants
who are often considered, and consider themselves as foreigners, even after many years in the
host country and after having learned the majority language, or having become ‘naturalized’.
For many of these migrants exile is their life condition, which in many ways does not cor-
respond to the condition of the transmigrant, since the life they have left behind tends to be
related to a traumatic past of dispersed, cancelled and repressed stories.
The American writer Elaine Castillo, born in California and daughter of Philippine im-
migrants, author of America Is Not the Heart (2018) talks about her parents being so distant
from her, not only because of their remote home country, but also because their history of
diaspora – like so many of the histories of migration and exile – is marked by the trauma of
colonialism. Her parents’ narrations often turned into silence since there were so many pieces
of their lives that they were unable to reconcile with their present life. So many hidden and
silent pieces, and as such untranslatable. Castillo belongs to the second generation of immi-
gration, which would be able to put together and translate the few remaining fragments of
this remote life, however such a translation will always be somewhat inadequate, since the
lives her parents live through hers is an archive that goes beyond the logic of archives. The si-
lences, the empty spaces of the parent’s narrations become gaps of incomprehension between
generations: untranslatable because incommensurable.
For the first generation of these exilic migrants translation assumes yet another dimen-
sion, since past and present, homeland and host land, new and old narratives are experienced
as completely separate. Instead of linking and interconnecting them through translation
processes, as we have seen transmigrants typically do, their solution is rather to keep their
memories silent, not attempting to translate them into present narratives. For some, on the
contrary, translation is precisely the experience and condition that puts them in connection

157
Siri Nergaard

with their traumatic migratory past. Translating, being a practice that resembles and some-
what represents migration, connects the subject to their traumatic experiences. This is re-
flected by translator and editor Madhu H. Kaza’s account:

At some point I began to understand that my discomfort with translation was connected
to the trauma of immigration. Something went quiet in me when I was brought to the
U.S from India as a child. Although I assimilated and lost my accent, a vital part of me
got stopped at the border. My inner life remained untranslated, its contours beyond what
the receiving culture wanted to or could comprehend. As an immigrant child I felt an
aura of illegitimacy about my claim to be an American. At times I lived with radical
insecurity. As an adult, when I translated from Telugu, my first language (which I’d
learned to read in college), I experienced a repetition of the loss I’d felt as a child. (…)
What does it mean to be a translated self, I wondered? What does it mean to live with
this untranslatability, this silence between languages within you?
(2017: 12–13)

Conclusion
The world is haunted by numerous contradicting imageries, one of which is that of a bor-
derless common globe of continuous and uninterrupted flows, and of a world divided into a
plurality of localities which spring up out of the necessity to create sites of identification for
minority communities and local distinctions. Alas, while the first is a reality only for finance
and trade, the latter is very often characterized by binarism, and strict boundaries between
those who are included and those who are excluded.
Is it the case that even in our globalized, transnational world, having one’s origins, history,
or memory in one place, belonging to something local is a human necessity? Does it rather
depend on a more conformist desire to be like others, like the majority? Or is it a demonstra-
tion of the fact that the ideology of the nation- state still dominates, both despite globalization
and, in a certain sense, as a constitutive element of that same globalization?
As things stand today, we cannot consider the consequences and effects of globalization
and its relationship to translation without viewing it in connection with the current partic-
ularly polarized political climate and spread of hate rhetoric, especially regarding the Other,
minority communities, immigrants and refugees who are depicted as threatening enemies
‘ invading our spaces’, and ‘menacing the integrity of our identities’. What we currently see
is constant border-work trying to separate the wanted from the unwanted, the imagined
barbarians from the ‘civilized’, and the global rich from the global poor.
Widespread ideology and the politics of separation are increasing the distance between
populations, discriminating, excluding, considering immigration as a massive assault, using
a rhetoric based on an imagery of ‘waves and floods’ of illegal immigrants attacking Western
countries, and their security, their integrity, their identity. Although there are encouraging
signals among young people who translate themselves and each other in productive and in-
ventive ways, creating new forms of cohabitation and cosmopolitanism, we have to acknowl-
edge that this occurs somewhat despite a dominating tendency that pulls in the opposite
direction.
The younger generation is, nevertheless, our hope: the children and grandchildren of
migrants are becoming subjects for whom negotiating translations among a plurality of

158
 Living in translation

differences will be both the most ordinary and reasonable way to live. Behind and beyond
the loud polarizing rhetoric, we glimpse a more silent reality of young people who perceive
themselves as transmigrants who are perfectly able to convert a sense of not belonging neither
here nor there, into a belonging both here and there, creating their own plural belongings
and allegiances.

Further reading
Bauman, Z. (1998) Globalization: The Human Consequences. New York: Columbia University Press.
Bauman offers here important instruments to critically consider the effects of globalization on people’s
lives. He questions the contradictions of a world in which we are all on the move, insisting on both its
dividing and uniting features.
Inghilleri, M. (2017) Translation and Migration. London: Routledge.
In this book, Inghilleri looks at the many links between translation and migration through multiple
examples, from past and present, showing how people in translation create multilingual identities and
transcultural communities that present a potential for social disruption and reorganization.
Papastergiadis, N. (2000) The Turbulence of Migration. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
This book is an important contribution towards a renovated and broader understanding of the turbu-
lent patterns of global migration as constitutive features of the social, leading to hybrid cultural forma-
tions, multiple and scattered affiliations, and transformations of community life.

References
Agamben, G. (2000) Means Without End: Notes on Politics. Minneapolis and London: University of
Minnesota Press.
Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
Apter, E. (2006) The Translation Zone. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Bauman, Z. (1991) Modernity and Ambivalence. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Bauman, Z. (1998) Globalization: The Human Consequences. New York: Columbia University Press.
Beck, U. (2006) The Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge: Polity.
Castillo, E. (2018) America Is Not the Heart. London: Viking.
Castles, S., Haas, H. and Miller, M. J. (1993/2013) The Age of Migration. London: Red Globe Press.
Cronin, M. (2003) Translation and Globalization. London and New York: Routledge.
Derrida, J. (1998) The Monolingualism of the Other: Or, The Prosthesis of Origin. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Derrida, J. (2000) Of Hospitality. Anne Defourmantelle Invites J. Derrida to Respond. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Fanon, F. (1952/2008) Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press.
Gentzler, E. (2008) Translation and Identity in the Americas. New Directions in Translation Theory. London
and New York: Routledge.
Glick Schiller, N., Basch, L. and Szanton Blanc, C. (1995) ‘From Immigrant to Transmigrant: Theo-
rizing Transnational Migration’, Anthropological Quarterly, 68(1), pp. 48–63.
Inghilleri, M. (2017) Translation and Migration. London and New York: Routledge.
Karpinsky, E. C. (2012) Borrowed Tongues. Life Writing, Migration and Translation. Waterloo, CA: Wilfrid
Laurier University Press.
Kaza, M. H. (ed.) (2017) Kitchen Table Translation: Aster(ix) Journal. Pittsburgh, PA: Blue Sketch Press.
Kelley, C. E. (2013) Accidental Immigrants and the Search for Home. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University
Press.
Lahiri, J. (2015) In altre parole. Milano: Guanda ( English translation: In Other Words. New York and
Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016).
Mezzadra, S. and Neilson, B. (2013) Border as Method, or the Multiplication of Labor. Durham, NC and
London: Duke University Press.
Nail, T. (2015) The Figure of the Migrant. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

159
Siri Nergaard

Naqvi, A. R. (ed.) (2019) Third Culture Kids. Oslo: Gyldendal.

Papastergiadis, N. (2000) The Turbulence of Migration. Cambridge: Polity.
Papastergiadis, N. (2010) ‘Wars of Mobility’, European Journal of Social Theory, 13(3), pp. 343–361.
Rushdie, S. (1991) Imaginary Homelands. London: Granta.
Simon, S. (2006) Translating Montreal. Episodes in the Life of a Divided City. Montreal and Kingston:
McGill-Queen’s University Press.

160
 11
Interpreting in a globalized world
Current perspectives and future challenges

Paola Gentile

Introduction: global perspectives in the evolution of interpreting

Interpreting as an activity originated from the human need to communicate, which has al-
ways existed and will continue to exist every time speakers of different languages come into
contact. What is generally taken to be the profession of interpreting, however, developed in
the twentieth century thanks to specific circumstances (Gaiba 1998; Baigorri Jalón 2004;
Baigorri-Jalón 2014) that transformed this “ancestral societal practice into a recognized pro-
fession” ( Boéri 2015: 29). If we consider the evolution of interpreting in the last two centu-
ries, it is difficult to identify any time at which developments and changes in the profession
have not been determined by the effects of globalization, which is understood as “the process
of world shrinkage, of distances getting shorter, things moving closer, the increasing ease
with which somebody on one side of the world can interact, to mutual benefit, with some-
body on the other side of the world” ( Larsson 2001: 9). In the field of Translation and Inter-
preting Studies, several authors emphasize the link between globalization and the evolution
of the profession, which originated from the need to put in communication companies and
organizations that were developing thanks to the intensification of commercial networks,
new technologies and a new world order (Cronin 2003).
It was precisely the social, political and economic changes in the globalized world that
made the profession develop along two tracks. While on the one hand the positive changes
of globalization allowed interpreting (conference interpreting) to gain prestige and recogni-
tion in the international arena, the other side of g lobalization – which creates yawning gaps
between the rich and the poor – is the background against which public service interpreting
developed. The two professional specialisms have grown in different ways with different
objectives: conference interpreting rose and developed to satisfy the demand for networking
in post-industrial societies, which is why it has always been “on the winning side of global-
ization” (Prunč 2012: 4); whereas public service interpreting “ has been left to deal with the
wasted lives and the outcasts of modernity” (ibid.), defined by Bauman (1998) as the collateral
damage of globalization.
Several scholars (Gaiba 1998; Baigorri Jalón 2004; Takeda and Baigorri Jalón 2016) iden-
tify the birth of conference interpretation with the use of simultaneous interpretation in

161
Paola Gentile

the Nuremberg trials first and subsequently in international organizations. Interpreting in

the Nuremberg trials is a milestone in the history of the profession, not only because it cre-
ated a clearer division between professional interpreters and amateurs, but also because, after
WWII, countries started to cooperate in and join an ever-increasing number of organizations
whose main purpose was the safeguarding of international peace and security. Against this
backdrop, heads of state and government needed to communicate with each other as quickly
and effectively as possible, and simultaneous interpretation was well suited to this need. It
can therefore be said that the birth of conference interpretation was determined by two key
elements of globalization: technological development and the establishment of international
organizations.
Public service interpreting developed in a completely different way: in the twentieth
century, globalization brought about new waves of migration, which have reached an un-
precedented level in recent decades. This has created the need to have language professionals
for communication between migrants/immigrants and the public services in host countries
( hospitals, clinics, courtrooms, police stations, schools, refugee camps, etc.). As Bancroft
(2015: 221) maintains, “community interpreting has evolved largely in response to two often
co- existing needs: the need for interpreters for native-born and indigenous speakers; and the
need for interpreters for migrant or immigrant populations, including refugees and asylees.
Globalization and migration are strong driving forces as well”.
The present chapter – whose theoretical framework sits at the intersection between so-
ciology and interpreting studies – w ill describe not only how conference and community
interpreting have been shaped by sweeping changes in an increasingly globalized labor mar-
ket, but also the way in which they are responding to these changes. A general overview of
professional scenarios and the challenges of globalization will be complemented by interpret-
ers’ personal perspectives.

Interpreting and the challenges of globalization

An overview of recent studies in Interpreting Studies has revealed that, over the years, much
research has focused on three key factors that are closely related to globalization:

1 Technological developments. The publication of a special issue of the journal Translation

and Interpreting Studies entitled “Community Interpreting, Translation, and Technol-
ogy” ( Pokorn and Mellinger 2018) testifies to the growing interest in the impact of
technology in Translation and Interpreting Studies. Recent studies have also scrutinized
interpreters’ perceptions of challenges in telephone interpreting ( Wang 2018a, 2018b)
and the use of technology to train interpreting students ( Ehrlich and Vance 2015; Peter-
son 2016). Regardless of the topic of study, the pairing “ interpreting and technology”
is becoming increasingly frequent in the discipline, with currently 909 entries in the
Translation Studies Bibliography ( Translation Studies Bibliography n.d.).
2 English as a lingua franca. The growing pervasiveness of English in the provision of language
services is perhaps one of the major changes in the history of the profession – and espe-
cially of conference interpreting – for at least three reasons: “for the extent of its diffusion
geographically; for the enormous cultural diversity of the speakers who use it; and for
the infinitely varied domains in which it is found and purposes it serves” ( Dewey 2007:
333). Some studies in the field of Translation and Interpreting (Gentile and Albl-Mikasa
2017) look at conference interpreters’ perception of the impact of ELF on their profes-
sion and the ensuing changes, others analyze the need to establish a new discipline called

162
 Interpreting in a globalized world

ITELF (A lbl-Mikasa and Ehrensberger-Dow 2019), which points to the areas where in-
terpreting and translation converge with respect to the challenges professional interpreters
and translators have to meet when confronted with non-standard spoken and/or written
input. Others investigate the implications of ELF for interpreter and translator training
(Taviano 2013).
3 Migration flows. Globalization is intimately connected with international migration, since
it has made migration much easier through better communications and improved trans-
port, among other things. While ELF has considerably influenced the way in which
conference interpreting is practiced, the free movement of people has given momentum
to the development of public service interpreting, emphasizing the need for its institu-
tionalization. The need for interpreters in the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe ( Valero
Garcés and Tipton 2017), in emergency departments in hospitals (Cox 2017), in cases
of migrant children ( Böser and LaRooy 2018) and victims of gender violence ( Valero
Garcés 2015) has been studied from different theoretical and methodological perspec-
tives, which combine sociological, ethnographic, and sociolinguistic perspectives.

To better analyze these perspectives, we will draw from the theorizations of sociologist
Anthony Giddens (1991). As Giddens maintains, one of the most significant impacts of glo-
balization is that it has brought about an “ intensification of worldwide social relations which
link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many
miles away and vice versa” (1990: 64) and that “the individual’s biography […] must contin-
ually integrate events which occur in the external world, and sort them into the ongoing
‘story’ about the self ” (2016: 513). Therefore, in order to have a clearer view of the future of
the interpreting profession, we have to integrate its past and present narratives by looking at
how globalization and all the social, political, and economic events related to it shape the in-
terpreters’ sense of self and how they perceive global developments. A graphic representation
of how these theories will be applied to the sociological analysis of the interpreting profession
is provided in Figure 11.1.

Major social
changes in the
20thcentury

Crucial changes
in the profession

Interpreters'
perception of the
profession

Figure 11.1 Representation of the model of analysis.

163
Paola Gentile

A series of external factors influence the current perception that interpreters have of their
own profession: the m acro-level (the globalized world) has an impact on the intermediate
level of the circumstances and the places in which interpreting has grown and is developing
as a profession which, in turn, have determined the way in which the professional cate-
gory of interpreters perceives its social identity. Although interpreting research has made
strides in recent years with unprecedented advancements in insights and scope, we can see a
fragmentation of Interpreting Studies, which are focused either on the challenges faced by
conference interpreting or on those dealt with by community interpreting. The following
sections aim to integrate the two perspectives by discussing them in the light of the three
main globalization- driven changes mentioned earlier, i.e. technology, ELF and migration.

Technological developments
Technology has affected not only the way in which interpretation has been (and still is) per-
formed, but also the way in which interpreters began to perceive their profession ( Baigorri-
Jalón 2004). Arguably, the most crucial turning point in the history of interpreting is the
advent of the simultaneous mode: from the first experiments carried out at the League of
Nations in 1926 by Filene and Finlay, the technological turn in the history of the profession
“can be seen as a metaphor of ‘modern times’, with microphones and headsets as forerunners
of future sophisticated technologies, and as a sign of democratization by giving voice to trade
unions representing their own language” ( Baigorri-Jalón 2014: 20).
Despite these indisputably positive changes, simultaneous interpreting raised quite a few
concerns about the image that others (and interpreters themselves) had of the profession,
since the interpreter’s voice was delivered through mechanical equipment, which could have
given rise to the impression that the interpreter was only a part of a machine. As Baigorri-
Jalón (2004: 110–111) points out:

The feeling of “anonymity” associated with simultaneous interpreting, which accord-

ing to some interpreters was the cause of their stress, may be related to the change
of image of the profession. They felt that the automatism of the translations would
deteriorate – this was what they perceived, and compared to the “ brilliance” of con-
secutive interpreting – until interpreting became no more than a “manual” task, which
psychologically for them was degrading, a loss of prestige associated with the feeling of
“blue-collarisation” of their work.

This historical moment is fundamental to understanding a key passage in the history of the
profession: the spatial displacement of interpreters from the center to the periphery of the
communicative event  – brought about by a technological revolution  – caused a sense of
alienation and estrangement, which was in sharp contrast to the prestige attached to the first
generation of interpreters – mainly consecutivists – who were physically placed close to the
important personalities of the time. Hence, simultaneous interpreters experienced a sense of
powerlessness and self-estrangement, also because they were physically detached from the
decision-making center and could not receive adequate feedback on their work.
More recently, some studies have confirmed that this sense of alienation is present among
conference interpreters still today: in their study on the status of conference interpret-
ers, Dam and Zethsen (2013: 248) showed empirically that although 78% of interpreters
declared that they work close to the center of decision- a nd policy-m aking  – i ndicating
that their physical visibility rate is rather high – they perceive themselves as professionally

164
 Interpreting in a globalized world

invisible, a result which suggests that there is a lack of feedback on their job. Hence, it
could be postulated that the spatial disconnection brought about by technology has lowered
the social prestige once associated with conference interpreting, which, in turn, may have
shaped conference interpreters’ attitudes toward Information and Communications Tech-
nologies (ICT).
In Gentile’s global survey about the interpreter’s status (2016), a high number of confer-
ence interpreters indicate that there is a great deal of pessimism about ICT among conference
interpreters, regardless of gender, age, and work experience. The spread of new technology
in the interpreting profession is associated with:

- decreasing demand (“Although not necessarily soon, the demand for interpreters may
eventually dwindle, due to IT”),

As one of the respondents commented:

Video conferencing will increase. Whether that is a valid alternative remains to be seen.
My fear is that by eliminating personal contact, messages will become more confusing
and interpreters will be seen increasingly as an expensive machine, not as human beings
who could contribute to social communication. We'll end up BEING [sic.] machines,
like so many of my younger colleagues already are. Brilliant at keeping up with un-
stoppable floods of words, incapable of or indifferent to understanding the message and
therefore incapable of or unwilling to establish whether the message has actually got
through!

In general, the technological developments in conference interpreting appear to have given

rise to mixed feelings: while interpreters acknowledge that the Internet greatly facilitates
their work, that the sound quality has improved thanks to cutting- edge consoles and booths,
they point out several disadvantages which are liable to jeopardize not only interpreting
quality – as Moser-Mercer (2003) and Braun (2013) highlight – but also the survival of the
profession itself.
In the historical development of public service interpreting, the use of technology in
court, police and healthcare interpreting has been often regarded as a necessity, mainly be-
cause of “the shortage of qualified interpreters for many of the languages that are required
in these settings and the short notice at which many interpreting assignments need to be
scheduled” ( Braun 2015: 355). If, on the one hand, technology is sometimes the only way
to enable communication in public services, scholars (e.g. Fantinuoli 2019) point out that
service providers should resist the temptation to replace interpreting in presentia with video
and remote interpreting. Also, as Braun (ibid.: 364) argues, industrialization of interpreters
who could be expected to be available “at the push of a button” should be avoided at all
costs, because it has an impact on their working conditions and job satisfaction. Gentile’s

165
Paola Gentile

survey (2016) pointed out that public service interpreters seem to adopt a slightly more pos-
itive attitude toward ICT compared to conference interpreters (“Technology has opened up
communication avenues as well”). Gentile also emphasizes that there will always be space in
the market for qualified interpreters and translators and that the use of ICT in public service
interpreting may be beneficial to the profession (“ but also reduces the costs”). The same
differences between conference and public service interpreters in their attitudes toward ICT
were found by Mellinger and Hanson (2018): for example, court interpreters were “more
technologically averse than medical interpreters” (ibid.: 384). As in Gentile’s survey, the
interpreters interviewed by Mellinger and Hanson were concerned about increasing invisi-
bility due to the spread of ICT.
These results indicate that there are considerable differences in perceptions and attitudes
toward technology between conference and public service interpreters, which can be seen
in the difference in the number of comments in the surveys written by the two groups. The
rather pessimistic attitude shown by conference interpreters in their comments, which lean
toward an outright rejection of ICT in their professional practice, could derive from certain
biases against the use of technology. Moreover, the recurring theme of the disappearance
of the profession because of ICT may conceal a certain fear of losing their status quo, as was
already shown in the historical analysis conducted by Baigorri-Jalón (2014) and partly con-
firmed by the surveys carried out by Dam and Zethsen (2013) and Gentile (2016). On the
contrary, public service interpreters do not seem to be as hostile to technological changes:
some of the comments in the surveys displayed a certain curiosity about toward ICT in their
professional practice. Since the data shown and discussed herein cannot be said to be exhaus-
tive, further investigations into interpreters’ perceptions and attitudes toward technological
changes may offer interesting insights into the way interpreters believe that technology will
shape the profession in the future.

English as a lingua franca

The extraordinary spread of English as a lingua franca is one of the most significant devel-
opments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The predominance of Anglo-American
culture, the multiplication and diversification of cultural products in English (films, TV
series, books, music, etc.) and the intensification of English courses at all educational levels
has resulted in a greater knowledge of English, especially among the generations born since
the 1980s. In a context in which the (supposed) knowledge of English is spreading (Görlach
2002) not only in international institutions and in private companies but also in public ser-
vices, where migrants often use English to communicate with officials, what scenarios are to
be expected for the future development of the interpreting profession?
Historically, the “ battle of the languages” at the United Nations described by Baigorri-
Jalón ushered in an era in which English began to be used as a lingua franca, and this struggle
represented the watershed from the mythical perception of interpreting as a “marvel” to its
more ordinary and unexceptional perception as a “profession”. As Albl-Mikasa (2010: 142)
points out: “In the 21st Century, interpreters have had to come down a bit from such lofty
ideals and positions. There is a decline in the prestige of the profession, the glamour and
glitter have vanished, the “diplomat’s aura” is no longer part of the interpreter’s image”.
This evolution is to be partly attributed to the spread of English as a global lingua franca.
What is commonly accepted to be a better knowledge of English and the financial pressure
resulting from the 2008 crisis have led to a situation where the participants in a meeting – be

166
 Interpreting in a globalized world

it institutional or in the private sector – speak in English. Therefore, interpreting from and
into English and other languages is increasingly being dispensed with.
Even though several studies have analyzed the implications of the use of ELF in pedagogy,
politics, business ( Jenkins et al. 2017) and sociolinguistics (Seidlhofer 2009), the impact of
ELF on the interpreting profession (especially on conference and business interpreting) has
only recently become an object of study. One of the first interpreting scholars, Danica Sele-
skovitch, speculated that interpreters would become redundant with the global spread of
ELF: “In future it can be expected that to a large degree interpreting will disappear from the
international scene. With time the universal use of a single language in international con-
ferences will make resorting to interpreters less necessary” (1996: 306). This hypothesis has
been investigated empirically by means of questionnaires. Albl-M ikasa (2010), who surveyed
32 German- speaking interpreting cases and freelance private market interpreters, found that
“69% of respondents report a decrease in the number of assignments due to an increase in
English- only events” (ibid.: 129), with 82% replying yes to the question “Does globalisation
and the spread of English as a lingua franca have a noticeable effect on your work as an in-
terpreter?”. Moreover, 78% of respondents agree that foreign accents make their work more
stressful and demanding, with considerable decrease of overall job satisfaction due, as one
interpreter replied, to “ increased strain and annoyance at having to submit oneself to more
and more subpar levels of English” (ibid.: 141).
More recently, the special issue of Cultus entitled Multilingualism, Lingua Franca or What?
included two papers exploring the implications of the use of English in conference settings.
The paper by Tieber (2017) interviewed young participants in the Model European Union,
a simulation of EU policymaking, and asked them the reasons why they preferred to use
English. The results showed that familiarity with the subject in English and the impression
that the message is better conveyed in a more widely spoken language were the main argu-
ments used by respondents. The prestige of English was another interesting reason given by
the interviewees (“I have to admit that the language choice at these kinds of events is also a
question of status. You get the impression that many speakers want to show the others how
good their English is when they take the floor”, ibid.: 47).
Nevertheless, the advantages of using the first language ( L1) are also discussed: the use of
the mother tongue allows better development of concepts and a greater focus on the content
(the message) rather than on the form ( perfect English). In addition, some respondents admit
that if there are no interpreters and a participant does not feel confident about his/her level
of English, the likelihood of him/her taking the floor is greatly reduced. Tieber enhanced
awareness of the potential advantages and disadvantages of using ELF and interpreting in the
context of international conferences.
The paper by Gentile and Mikasa (2017) in the same Cultus issue analyzed the 51 introspec-
tive comments made on ELF in Gentile’s global survey (2016) on interpreters’ perceptions of
their professional status. The remarks made by the conference interpreters surveyed are par-
ticularly interesting because they mentioned ELF without any explicit reference to this topic
in the survey questions. The factors addressed in the answers fell into three broad categories:

1 ELF and market conditions (“Many international organizations now have English as
their only working language as opposed to several working languages”),
2 a decline in interpreter status (“Many potential users see interpreters as a necessary evil,
so most people would prefer to communicate directly in bad English rather than to pay
for an interpreter”),

167
Paola Gentile

These studies show that the tendency to use ELF in communicative situations is present not
only in the private market, but also in the European Institutions. However, research has
shown empirically that language policies fostering monolingualism based on the exclusive
use of English would be unfair, since “50% of EU citizens aged 15 or more do not speak
English” (Gazzola and Grin 2013: 102). The scholars therefore conclude that “a multilingual,
translation-based language regime is more effective and fairer than a unilingual regime based
on English – even if it is dressed up as ELF” (ibid.: 104).
Other studies offer a silver lining, because they have shown that interpreters are adapting
to changes imposed by ELF and are demonstrating that the use of the mother tongue is still
more effective. For example, Reithofer (2010) carried out an experimental study involving
58 native German subject-matter experts who said that they could understand a speech in
English just as well as in their L1. They were divided into two groups: one listened to an
English non-native speaker and the other listened to the interpretation into German. The
results showed that the group listening to the interpretation into their mother tongue un-
derstood the content significantly better than the group listening to the non-native original
speech. A study by Chang and Wu (2014) showed that interpreters adopt several strategies
to familiarize themselves with different accents and ways of speaking. Moreover, “as for the
concern that use of ELF may make conference interpreters redundant, the Chinese/English
interpreters in Taiwan who were interviewed here seem at present to see no such prospect”
(ibid.: 187), a statement that suggests that perceptions about the professions may vary from
country to country. Some scholars have also pointed to the need to train interpreting students
to understand Globish (A lbl-M ikasa 2013) based on the fact that ELF mostly affects the in-
terpreters’ tasks, and call for an ELF pedagogy in interpreter training. Exposing students to a
wide range of different accents may indeed be a useful solution to get them used to interpret-
ing discourses in situations where accent and speed are major obstacles to text comprehension.
Even though the use of ELF seems to be a matter of more urgent concern in conference
settings (and has been the object of little study in the field of public service interpreting),
the growing importance of ELF is also underlined by public service interpreters in Gentile’s
survey (“In Denmark, I could envision a future where more users of interpreters request
interpreting in languages that are their second or third languages ( English, French...) rather
than their first native language”). This makes us reflect on the fact that recent migration
flows, the lack of qualified public service interpreters or the lack of a common language to be
used even in the presence of a qualified interpreter has created different situations in which
the participants in the interaction turn to ELF in order to be able to communicate.

Migration flows
International and domestic inequalities, combined with the demand for migrant labor in
Western societies, the lack of opportunities, poverty, oppression, and violent conflicts in de-
veloping countries, have contributed to giving momentum to migration flows. In the words
of Castles et al. (2009: 11–12):

168
 Interpreting in a globalized world

The widely assumed acceleration of global migration would have occurred along with a
diversification of migration in terms of composition of immigrant populations not only in
terms of countries of origin, but also in terms of migration categories, in which labor,
student, family, and asylum migration as well as temporary and permanent migration
would increasingly coexist (italics in the original text).

Public service interpreting is the branch of the profession that has been most affected by the
recent migratory flows. Interpreting research in migration contexts after the “social turn” of
the 1990s ( Pöchhacker 2016) – w ith the consequent shift of focus from the neuroscientific to
the interactional approach – has hardly touched upon conference settings. As Bancroft points
out, public service interpreting aims at “giving a voice to those who seek access to basic ser-
vices but do not speak the societal language” (2015: 217). Several researchers illustrate that
public service interpreting arose from the need to satisfy the communication requirements
of immigrants, who very often do not speak (at least at the outset) the language of the host
country. These societal changes brought about by globalization have led to a rapid growth
of interpretation activities in public services, which are more often than not still carried out
by ad hoc interpreters.
There has therefore been an urgent need in recent years to train qualified public service
interpreters, whose presence becomes essential to fulfilling the need to communicate, not
only because they can bridge linguistic gaps, but also because they are an instrument facil-
itating the integration process and at the same time safeguarding democracy. In the Final
Report drawn up by the Special Interest Group of Translation and Interpreting for Public Services
( hereinafter SIGTIPS), the connection between interpreters and the protection of language
rights (also enshrined in national legislations all over the world) is expressed very clearly. The
study underlines that when interpreters have a huge impact on the lives of individuals and
may even become crucial to the point of deciding questions of life or death, interpreting is
“not just a matter of communication, but a matter of natural rights, of human rights: rights
to be promoted, defended and guaranteed” (SIGTIPS 2011: 7).
A growing body of literature in the field of interpreting ( Bischoff and Loutan 2004;
Valero Garcés 2014a, 2014b) points out that there is a connection between open access to
public services and an increased sense of acceptance and integration of immigrants, and that
adequate language assistance is beneficial not only to the allochthonous people  – thereby
providing equal access to hospitals, courts, etc. – but also to the service providers, because
poor communication can jeopardize patient safety or can sentence the wrong people to jail.
Indeed, several studies demonstrate that the use of qualified interpreters in the medical sec-
tor “ lowers admission and readmission rates, shortens hospital stays, decreases referrals for
unnecessary diagnostic tests, and increases clinic through-put, all of which have implications
for the cost of care” ( Roat and Crezee 2015: 242). Another study carried out by Flores et al.
(2012) analyzed 57 encounters including 20 with professional interpreters 27 with ad hoc
interpreters, and 10 with no interpreters. 1,884 interpreter errors were noted, and 18% had
potential clinical consequences. The authors’ conclusion was that “professional interpreters
result in a significantly lower likelihood of errors of potential consequence than ad hoc and
no interpreters” (ibid).
In hospital emergency departments, Cox and Lázaro Gutiérrez (2016) discuss the pitfalls
of working with non-professional interpreters or no interpreters at all, while pointing to
the main reasons why they are often not used. These include, among others, overestimation
of the patient’s language skills or difficulties in identifying patients’ languages: in a context
in which communication is already difficult in itself due to very emotional and stressful

169
Paola Gentile

situations, in which the suffering patient has difficulty expressing him/herself in the lan-
guage of the host country, professional interpreters help not to waste precious time through
an accurate and rapid translation which, in some cases, can make a difference between life
and death (Cox and Lázaro Gutiérrez 2016).
In the field of justice, several cases of unqualified interpreters who fail to show up in court
and whose wrong interpretations result in severe miscarriages of justice are increasingly hit-
ting the news. Also in this case, the need for professional interpreters is acutely felt. For ex-
ample, while describing the interaction between the English monolingual border patrol and
the Spanish monolingual detainee at the Tijuana (Mexico)- San Ysidro (San Diego County,
CA) international border through an ad hoc interpreter, Angelelli (2015) calls attention to
the fact that when qualified interpreters are not provided, access to justice is hindered. Sev-
eral other cases of miscarriage of justice due to ineffective interpreting are reported by other
studies. One carried out by Martinsen and Dubslaff (2010) cites the instance of a French-
speaking defendant in a Danish court where one of the judges declared that “during the
questioning of the witness the interpretation was criticized” (ibid.: 153), then pointing out
that another interpreter should be hired in case of appeal.
In gender violence contexts, the SOS-VICS project data ( Toledano-Buendía and Del
Pozo-Triviño 2015) in police and court settings shows that interpretation for victims of
gender violence has special characteristics that are distinct from other types of interpretation,
whereby interpreters “must be trained to handle emotionally- charged situations, since they
can lead them to either reject the victim or over- empathize with her” ( Del Pozo-Triviño
and Toledano-Buendía 2016: 199). Large- scale studies have been conducted by Valero Garcés
(2015) and by Valero Garcés and Lázaro Gutiérrez (2016) among the main agents involved
in the communication process with foreign victims of gender violence who do not speak
Spanish with the aim of understanding the service providers’ experience with interpreters
and the interpreters’ role(s). The results showed that professional interpreters are hardly ever
used in these situations and that there is a severe lack of awareness of institutional ethical
conduct: “[victims] are attended in corridors where the family members of the aggressor or
the aggressor himself are present” (ibid.: 88).
The effect of socio-political changes on the professionalization of public service interpret-
ing is clearly visible in recent years, since the resurgence of xenophobic parties that advocate
the closure of national borders has taken hold in various countries in the Western world. The
consequence of these policies is cuts in public interpretation services, already implemented in
the UK long before Brexit (Gentile 2017) and in the USA, where a 2016 survey of 4,586 hos-
pitals by the American Hospital Association (American Hospital Association 2016), suggested
that only 56% offered some sort of linguistic and translation services, but 97% of physicians
see patients who have difficulty understanding English.
Over the years, several authors in the field of interpreting and translation studies (Ozolins
2000; Hertog 2003; Hertog and Van Gucht 2008) have indicated that these institutional con-
straints are hindering the development of the profession. As Ozolins (2000: 21) points out,
“unlike conference interpreting, which grew as a profession- driven field, public service in-
terpreting has grown essentially as an institution- d riven field, with important consequences
for status and professional issues”. The survey on the status quaestionis of the provision of legal
interpreting in the EU (Hertog and Van Gucht 2008: 189) showed that in most European
Member States, “sufficient legal interpreting and translation skills and structures are not yet in
place” (emphasis in the original), which is why in 2009 the non-profit association EULITA
was established under the Criminal Justice Programme of the Directorate- General Justice,
Freedom, Security of the European Commission. Among other things, EULITA “ is further

170
 Interpreting in a globalized world

committed to promoting quality in legal interpreting and translation through the recogni-
tion of the professional status of legal interpreters and translators” ( EULITA 2015). In this
respect, the implementation of the European Directive 2010/64/EU on the right to interpre-
tation and translation in criminal proceedings marks a turning point in the implementation
of a consistent and adequate provision of legal interpreting services in all EU Member States.
As a resource whose development largely depends on national constraints and welfare
policies, public service interpreting is a sector in which the status of practitioners is more
likely to vary at national level than is that of conference interpreters. Some countries (such as
Australia, Norway, Denmark, Canada, the UK, and Sweden) have succeeded in establishing
a National Register of Interpreters, with the consequent enhancement of the interpreters’
social recognition. A recent survey carried out in Norway – addressed to the interpreters of
the Norwegian National Register – indicates that most interpreters are proud of their profes-
sion. “They find that the job offers interesting challenges and they accept most assignments.
Most interpreters wish to continue working as interpreters as long as there is a demand
for their language” (IMDI 2015: 12). The findings demonstrate that where the relevant
educational and legal provisions are implemented, public service interpreting can become
professionalized.
Besides legal interpreting, a field in which steps forward have been t aken – at least at in-
stitutional level – the professionalization of public service interpreters appears to be largely
uneven, undocumented and understudied, especially in healthcare settings. Nevertheless,
the recent publication of the special issues of MonTI (“Legal Interpreting at a Turning Point”
2015) on the status of the interpreting profession and of JoSTrans (“Professional Translation”
2016) dedicated to the status of translators have shown that the trend is beginning to be
reversed.

Conclusion
The aim of this chapter has been to illustrate how the interpreting profession is changing in
the light of recent socio-political developments caused by globalization: technology, ELF, and
migration flows. The studies quoted in this chapter show that the spread of English as a lingua
franca, the pervasiveness of technology, the growing need for less widely spoken languages
in migration contexts, and the slow professionalization of public service interpreting – which
is compounded by national policies aiming to cut costs or to dispose of language services
altogether – are only some of the hindrances currently working against the recognition of
the profession. Therefore, in- depth empirical studies of the socio- economic situation of the
translation and interpreting market are needed now more than ever before, for they may
propose concrete and feasible ways to regulate it.
Although the surveys quoted indicate that interpreters seem to be wary of technology,
more congresses and focus groups can be organized between service providers and interpret-
ers to establish points of convergence. More information on the possibilities offered by new
applications and technological devices could clarify some doubts held by interpreters, who
may then more favorable to their introduction in their working lives.
The first part of the previous section has also shown that interpreting does not develop in
a social or, above all, political vacuum, with shifting political forces deciding on the imple-
mentation of language policies. An EU language regime slowly moving toward a linguistic
oligarchy (Gazzola 2016) and national governments implementing cuts in interpreting ser-
vices are only a few examples which demonstrate that the impact of language policies should
not be underestimated when it comes to foreseeing possible developments in the profession.

171
Paola Gentile

As a result, an analysis, within the EU, of the actual costs and benefits of professional inter-
pretation services could demonstrate that investing in professional interpreters creates long-
term benefits.
As for ELF in particular, the academic community should focus more persistently on the
use and the opinions of practitioners and laypeople alike on this phenomenon. In addition,
an analysis of the use and impact of ELF in public services is fundamental to obtain a broader
picture of this phenomenon in a hitherto understudied communication setting.
To conclude, since recent research reveals that in several Arab countries ( Taibi 2014) and
in China (Setton and Guo 2011) interpreting is a thriving profession, future research could
focus on the comparison between Eastern and Western perspectives on professional develop-
ments and on possible new markets where interpreters can offer their services in the future.

Further reading
Dal Fovo, E. and Gentile, P. (2019) (eds.) Translation and Interpreting: Convergence, Contact, Interaction.
Oxford: Peter Lang.
This volume combines translation and interpreting in relations of overlap, hybridity, and contiguity in
professional practices, strategies, and translation/interpreting processes.
Dam, H. V., Brøgger, M. N. and Zethsen, K. K. (2018) (eds.) Moving Boundaries in Translation Studies.
London: Routledge.
This volume offers a w ide-ranging overview of recent developments in translation and interpreting
practice/research through the lens of globalization.
Federici, F. (2016) (ed.) Mediating Emergencies and Conflicts. Frontline Translating and Interpreting. London:
Palgrave Macmillan.
This book calls for enhanced focus on the role of translators and interpreters in emergencies by discuss-
ing existing research and offering innovative empirical studies. Contributions in this volume demon-
strate the need for interdisciplinarity in multilingual contexts.

References
­

Albl-Mikasa, M. and Ehrensberger-Dow, M. (2019) ‘ITELF – (E)merging Interests in Translation and

Interpreting Studies’, in Dal Fovo, E. and Gentile, P. (eds.), Translation and Interpreting: Convergence,
Contact, Interaction. Oxford: Peter Lang, pp. 45–62.
American Hospital Association. (2016) ‘AHA Hospital Statistics, 2018 Edition.’ Available online:
https://www.aha.org/statistics/2016-12-27-aha-hospital-statistics-2018-edition [Accessed 2 March
2019].
Angelelli, C. (2015) ‘Justice for All? Issues Faced by Linguistic Minorities and Border Patrol Agents
during Interpreted Arraignment Interviews’, MonTI. Monografías de Traducción e Interpretación, 7,
pp. 181–205. doi: 10.6035/MonTI.2015.7.7
Baigorri Jalón, J. (2004) Interpreters at the United Nations. A History. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad
de Salamanca.
Baigorri-Jalón, J. (2014) From Paris to Nuremberg: The Birth of Conference Interpreting. Amsterdam/
Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Bancroft, M. (2015) ‘Community Interpreting. A Profession Rooted in Social Justice’, in Mikkelson,
H. and Jourdenais, R. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Interpreting. London: Routledge, pp. 217–235.
Bauman, Z. (1998) Globalization: The Human Consequences. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Bischoff, A. and Loutan, L. (2004) ‘Interpreting in Swiss Hospitals’, Interpreting, 6(2), pp. 181–204.
Boéri, J. (2015) ‘Key Internal Players in the Development of the Interpreting Profession’, in Mikkelson,
H. and Jourdenais, R. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Interpreting. London: Routledge, pp. 29–43.

172
 Interpreting in a globalized world

Böser, U. and LaRooy, D. (2018) ‘Interpreter-mediated Investigative Interviews with Minors’, Transla-
tion and Interpreting Studies, 13(2), pp. 208–229. https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.00012.bos
Braun, S. (2013) ‘Keep your Distance? Remote Interpreting in Legal Proceedings: A Critical Assess-
ment of Growing Practice’, Interpreting, 15(2), 200–228.
Braun, S. (2015) ‘Remote Interpreting’, in Mikkelson, H. and Jourdenais, R. (eds.), The Routledge
Handbook of Interpreting. London: Routledge, pp. 352–367.
Castles, S. de Haas, H., and Miller, ‎ M. J. (2013). The Age of Migration. London: MacMillan Press.
Chang, C. and Wu, M. M. (2014). ‘Non-Native English at International Conferences: Perspectives
from Chinese–English Conference Interpreters in Taiwan’, Interpreting, 16(2), 169–190. https://doi.
org/10.1075/intp.16.2.02cha
Cox, A. (2017) The Dynamics of Misunderstandings in Language Discordant Multi-party Consultations in the
Emergency Department. Brussels: VUB.
Cox, A. and Lázaro Gutiérrez, R. (2016) ‘Interpreting in the Emergency Department: How Context
Matters for Practice’, in Federici, F. (ed.), Mediating Emergencies and Conflicts. Frontline Translating and
Interpreting. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 33–58.
Cronin, M. (2003) Translation and Globalization. London: Routledge.
Dam, H. V. and Zethsen, K. K. (2013) ‘Conference Interpreters - The Stars of the Translation Profes-
sion? A Study of the Occupational Status of Danish EU Interpreters as Compared to Danish EU
Translators’, Interpreting, 15(2), pp. 229–259. https://doi.org/10.1075/intp.15.2.04dam
Del Pozo-Triviño, M. and Toledano-Buendía, C. (2016) ‘Training Interpreters to Work with Foreign
Gender Violence Victims in Police and Court settings’, Language and Law/Linguagem e Direito, 32(2),
192–203.
Dewey, M. (2007) ‘English as a Lingua Franca and Globalization: An Interconnected Perspective’,
International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 17(3), pp.  332–354. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1473-4192.
2007.00177.x
Ehrlich, S. and Vance, K. (2015) ‘Innovative Interpreting: iPad Technology as a Bridge to Interpreting
Services in a Post- Secondary Setting’, Translation and Interpreting, 7(2), pp. 60–74. https://doi.org/
10.12807/T&I.V7I2.333
EULITA. (2015) Mission Statement. Available online: http://www.eulita.eu/sites/default/files/Katschinka_
text.pdf [Accessed 17 April 2020].
Fantinuoli, C. (ed.) (2019) Interpreting and Technology. Berlin: Language Science Press.
Flores, G., Abreu, M., Barone, C. P., Bachur, R, and Lin, H. (2012) ‘Errors of Medical Interpretation
and Their Potential Clinical Consequences: A Comparison of Professional Versus Ad Hoc Ver-
sus No Interpreters’, Annals of Emergency Medicine, 60(5), pp.  545–553. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
annemergmed.2012.01.025
Gaiba, F. (1998) The Origins of Simultaneous Interpretation: The Nuremberg Trial. Ottawa, ON: University
of Ottawa Press.
Gazzola, M., and Grin, F. (2013). ‘Is ELF More Effective and Fair than Translation? An Evaluation of
the EU’s Multilingual Regime’, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 23(1), pp. 93–107.
Gazzola, M. (2016). ‘Multilingual Communication for Whom? Language Policy and Fairness in the
European Union’, European Union Politics, 17(4), pp. 546–569.
Gentile, P. (2016) The Interpreter’s Professional Status. A Sociological Investigation into the Profession. Trieste:
University of Trieste.
Gentile, P. (2017) ‘Political Ideology and the De-Professionalisation of Public Service Interpreting: The
Netherlands and the UK as Case Studies’, in Valero Garcés, C. and Tipton, R. (eds.), Translating Conflict:
Ethics and Ideology in Public Service Interpreting and Translation. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, pp. 63–83.
Gentile, P. and A lbl-M ikasa, M. (2017) ‘ “Everybody Speaks English Nowadays”. Conference Inter-
preters’ Perception of the Impact of English as a Lingua Franca on a Changing Profession’, Cultus,
5(10), pp. 53–66.
Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity. Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. London: Polity Press.
Giddens, A. (2016) ‘Modernity and Self-Identity’, in Longhofer, W. and Winchester, D. (eds.), Social
Theory Re-Wired: New Connections to Classical and Contemporary Perspectives. London: Routledge,
pp. 512–522.
Görlach, M. (ed.) (2002) English in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hertog, E. (2003) Aequalitas. Equal Access to Justice across Languages and Cultures in the EU. Grotius Project
2001/GRP/015. Antwerp: Lessius Hogeschool, Departement Vertaler-Tolk.

173
Paola Gentile

Hertog, E. and Van Gucht, J. (2008) Status Quaestionis. Questionnaire on the Provision of Legal Interpreting
and Translation in the EU. Antwerp: Intersentia.
IMDI. (2015) Public Service Interpreting in Norway. Available online: https://www.regjeringen.no/
contentassets/a47e34bc4d7344a18192e28ce8b95b7b/no/pdfs/nou201420140008000dddpdfs.pdf
Jenkins, J., Baker, W. and Dewey, M. (eds.) (2017) The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca.
London: Routledge.
Larsson, T. (2001) The Race to the Top: The Real Story of Globalization. Washington, DC: CATO Institute.
‘Legal Interpreting at a Turning Point - La traducción en el ámbito judicial en un momento de cambio’.
(2015) (special issue) MonTI. Monografías de Traducción e Interpretación. Available online: https://dti.
ua.es/es/documentos/monti/indice-y-resumenes-de-monti-7-2015.pdf [Accessed 17 April 2020].
Martinsen, B. and Dubslaff, F. (2010) ‘The Cooperative Courtroom. A Case Study of Interpret-
ing Gone Wrong’, in Pöchhacker, F. and Shlesinger, M. (eds.), Doing Justice to Court Interpreting.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 125–163.
Mellinger, C. D. and Hanson, T. A. (2018) ‘Interpreter Traits and the Relationship with Technol-
ogy and Visibility’, Translation and Interpreting Studies, 13(3), pp. 366–392. https://doi.org/10.1075/
tis.00021.mel
­

Ozolins, U. (2000) ‘Communication Needs and Interpreting in Multilingual Settings: The Interna-
tional Spectrum of Response’, in Roberts, R. P., Carr, S. E., Abraham, D. and Dufour, A. (eds.),
The Critical Link 2. Interpreters in the Community: Selected Papers from the 2nd International Conference on
Interpreting in Legal, Health and Social Service Settings. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins,
pp. 21–33.
Peterson, M. (2016) ‘Virtual Worlds and Language Learning: An Analysis of Research’, in F. Farr and
L. Murray (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Language Learning and Technology. London: Routledge,
pp. 308–319.
Pöchhacker, F. (2016) Introducing Interpreting Studies. London: Routledge.
Pokorn, N. and Mellinger, C. (2018) ‘Community Interpreting, Translation, and Technology’, Trans-
lation and Interpreting Studies, 13(3), pp. 337–341.
‘Professional Translation’ (special issue). (2016) Journal of Specialised Translation, 25. Available online:
http://www.jostrans.org/archive.php?display=25 [Accessed 17 April 2020].
Prunč, E. (2012) ‘Rights, Realities and Responsibilities in Community Interpreting’, The Interpreter’s
Newsletter, 17, 1–12.
Reithofer, K. (2010) ‘English as a Lingua Franca vs. Interpreting: Battleground or Peaceful Coexis-
tence?’, The Interpreter’s Newsletter, 15, pp. 143–157.
Roat, C. E. and Crezee, I. H. M. (2015) ‘Healthcare Interpreting’, in Mikkelson, H. and Jourdenais,
R. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Interpreting. London: Routledge, pp. 236–253.
Seidlhofer, B. (2009) ‘Accommodation and the Idiom Principle in English as a Lingua Franca’, Intercultural
Pragmatics, 6(2), pp. 195–215.
Seleskovitch, D. (1996) ‘Interpretation and Verbal Communication’, in Lauer, A., Gerzymisch-
A rbogast, H., Haller, J. and Steiner, E. (eds.), Übersetzungswissenschaft im Umbruch. Festschrift für
Wolfram Wilss zum 70. Geburtstag. Tübingen: Narr, pp. 301–306.
Setton, R. and Guo, A. L. (2011) ‘Attitudes to Role, Status and Professional Identity in Interpreters
and Translators with Chinese in Shanghai and Taipei’, in Sela- Sheffy, R. and Shlesinger, M. (eds.),
Identity and Status in the Translational Professions. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins,
pp. 89–118.
­
Sigtips. (2011) Special Interest Group for Translation and Interpreting for Public Services Final Report. Available
­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ​­ ­­ ­​­­
online: http://www.celelc.org/archive/Projects-and-Reports/038-Vassiliou-Final-report/index.­​­­ ​­ ­
html [Accessed 17 April 2020].
Taibi, M. (2014) ‘Community Interpreting and Translation in the Arab World’, Babel, 60(1), ­ pp. 52–69.
­ ­ ​­
Takeda, K. and Baigorri Jalón, J. (2016) New Insights in the History of Interpreting. Amsterdam/Philadelphia,
­
PA: John Benjamins.
Taviano, S. (2013) ‘English as a Lingua Franca: Implications for Translator and Interpreter Education’,
The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 7(2),
­ pp. 155–167.
­ ­ ​­
Tieber, M. (2017) ‘English as a Lingua Franca vs. Interpreting – Perspectives of Young Conference
Participants on Two Competing Means of Communication’, Cultus, 10(1), ­ pp. 39–52.
­ ­ ​­

174
 Interpreting in a globalized world

­Toledano-Buendía,
​­ C. and Del ­Pozo-Triviño,
​­ M. (eds.)
­ (2015)
­ Interpretación en contextos de violencia de
género. Valencia: Tirant Humanidades.
Translation Studies Bibliography. (n.d.) Available online: https:// benjamins.com/online/tsb/ [Accessed
17 April 2020].
Valero Garcés, C. (2014a) Communicating Across Cultures: A Coursebook on Interpreting and Translating in
Public Services and Institutions. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Valero Garcés, C. (2014b) Health, Communication and Multicultural Communities: Topics on Intercultural
Communication for Healthcare Professionals. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Valero Garcés, C. (2015) ‘Insights from the Field. Perceptions of the Interpreter’s Role(s) in Cases of
­Gender-Based​­ Violence’, Cultus, 8, pp. 76–95.
­ ­ ​­
Valero Garcés, C. and Lázaro Gutiérrez, R. (2016) ‘Perceptions from the Outside in Cases of Gender
Violence. “What Are You [the Interpreter] Doing Here?” ’, European Journal of Applied Linguistics,
4(1),
­ pp. 57–72.
­ ­ ​­ https://doi.org/10.1515/eujal-2015-0023
­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ​­
Valero Garcés, C. and Tipton, R. (eds.) (2017) Ideology, Ethics and Policy Development in Public Service
Interpreting and Translation. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Wang, J. (2018a) ‘ “It Keeps Me on My Toes.” ’, Target, 30(3), ­ pp. 430–462.
­ ­ ​­ https://doi.org/10.1075/
­ ­ ­
target.17012.wan
Wang, J. (2018b) ‘ “Telephone Interpreting Should Be Used Only as a Last Resort.” Interpreters’ Per-
ceptions of the Suitability, Remuneration and Quality of Telephone Interpreting’, Perspectives, 26(-
1), pp. 100–116.
­ ­ ​­ https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2017.1321025
­ ­ ­

175
 12
Translation in contexts of crisis
Federico M. Federici

Introduction
The t wenty-fi rst century sees a tangible overlap between the constant feeling of crisis and
the cascading effects of crises on a global scale. Whether perceived, represented, or real these
contexts of crisis have grown in prominence. The impact of global warming has determined
extreme weather phenomena thus making natural hazards more widely distributed and
seemingly more recurrent, as triggers of cascading crises ( Pescaroli and Alexander 2016). The
unrelenting speed of economic globalization has been accompanied by a growth of aware-
ness that people have equally become subject to unpredictable risks due to changing natural
hazards, which, in turn, have an impact on larger social and economic geographical areas.
The interconnectedness of societies and the limited capacities of regions and countries to
deal with large- scale events contribute to heightening socio- economic vulnerabilities and
stretching the sense of continuous crisis on a global scale, as it often entails large displacement
of people among its effects. The increasingly global nature of the impact of crises calls for
global responses even when very specific regions are affected. In this landscape, two initia-
tives of the United Nations emerged that underpin current commitments in international
collaboration to support crisis-affected communities. First, the international commitment
to reduce inequalities before disasters was adopted at the Third UN World Conference in
Sendai, Japan, on March 18, 2015. The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction
(UNDRR) with its Sendai Framework aims to change the supra-governmental, international,
and humanitarian perspective on engagement with affected communities (UNDRR 2015).
Second, the United Nations General Assembly committed its members to achieving 17 Sus-
tainable Development Goals (2015) by the year 2030 to reduce inequality and enhance quality
of life world-wide, while engaging with climate change. Community engagement has be-
come the key operational word to revisit power relations between developed and lesser devel-
oped countries, as much as between the entities supporting humanitarian and developmental
actions and the populations they are intended to serve.
The chapter will argue that through these changed conceptualizations of collaboration in
crises and in development, both the international humanitarian and developmental sectors
have shifted towards a preventative and risk reduction paradigm. Remaining involved in

176
 Translation in contexts of crisis

emergency response, most organizations focus on culturally appropriate cycles of work on

preparedness, mitigation, response, recovery, and reconstruction via community engagement
practices. Translation is here broadly intended, in all its multimodal facets – f rom audiovisual
translation and sign language, via interpreting and speech recognition, to leaflet translation;
in short, all forms of language translation (oral/written/multimodal/multisemiotic). Subdi-
vided into four parts, the chapter starts by defining multilingual crises in a globalized world.
Then, it focusses on areas of crisis communication in which translation ought to become
more central. It continues by focussing on the relevant literature that engages with healthcare
and risk communication in multilingual crises. Finally, the chapter reflects on some of the
paradoxes surrounding multilingual communication in crisis settings, as well as promising
signs of growing awareness of the role of language in multilingual cascading crises.

Accommodating language needs in crises

For Sellnow and Seeger (2013: 4–20), three conditions must be present for a situation to be
considered as a crisis: the situation (1) violates social expectations of daily routines; (2) poses
threats; and (3) requires responses. O’Brien (2016) adapted the term ‘crisis’ to contexts of
translation by specifying that a crisis is an event or series of events that are non-routine, pose
a significant threat, and require a response to mitigate the harm often involving commu-
nication across multilingual barriers, or crisis translation (see O’Brien and Federici 2019).
Crisis is here preferred to ‘disaster’. Definitions of ‘disaster’ abound and extensively ponder
the multifaceted factors that have an impact when an event disrupts the ordinary routines of
a society. From Quarantelli’s landmark definitions (Quarantelli 1978, 2005) to UNDDR’s
definition, the characterization depends on duration, resources needed, geographical impact,
consequences, and so on. Crises require extensive, efficient, and effective communication of
information. Access to and circulation of information are of central importance to support
crisis-affected populations, even more so in multilingual contexts.
This section defines the relationship between language-related issues and general principles
of crisis communication, which has until recently predominantly focussed on monolingual
issues of communication (Coombs and Holladay 2012; Steelman and McCaffrey 2013; Lit-
tlefield and Sellnow 2015). Schwarz et  al. (2016) provide a broader, international outlook.
However, for linguists and translation and interpreting scholars, the focus of these studies very
rarely engaged with significant evidence, case studies, and concerns in relation to crisis man-
agement in multilingual contexts. The conceptualization here proposed draws on O’Brien and
Federici (2019) and focusses on two common denominators of crisis and risk communication:
(1) appropriate perception of risks to improve societal resilience (risk perception); (2) clear
information on risk to diminish morbidity and mortality ( healthcare risk communication).
Many natural hazards are unpredictable (volcanic eruptions, earthquakes) or only partially
predictable (storms, floods, droughts) but people create (some avoidable) vulnerabilities in
their societies, hence no disaster is a natural disaster ( Birkmann et al. 2013; Kelman 2020).
Poor communication in multilingual contexts is one of such avoidable vulnerabilities (Federici
2020). Accommodating language needs can be planned around available information – which
languages are spoken locally, how they are distributed, which language minorities are partic-
ularly at risk, what the literacy levels look like, and so on – if there is awareness that commu-
nication in multilingual crises poses risks for responders and affected populations.
Focussing on cascading crises, it becomes easier to see how translation has a role to play
when the effects of a disaster are worsened by the increased complexity of the context of

177
Federico M. Federici

communication (see Alexander and Pescaroli 2019). The definitions nevertheless matter at
legal and operational levels: ‘emergency’, ‘crisis’, ‘disaster’, and their near equivalents in local
languages often initiate different response protocols. Triggering one response protocol rather
than another has social, economic, and organizational consequences after a disaster. Different
budgets can be released, different donors become involved, different response organizations
enter or exit the context, as the initial event may remain a socio-economic crisis for decades
(Alexander 2014; Cornia et al. 2014). This complexity amplifies, depending on the size of the
event, the processes that need to be activated and the crisis’ impact on civil society. Once the
protocols for large international crises are activated, the ‘ international community’ can be
called on to support the response to the crisis. As soon as a large- scale event occurs, resources
are needed from outside the local areas and the public become more involved (Alexander
2016b), communication needs soon emerge between local affected populations and the relief
operations, or for the local vulnerable groups such as culturally and linguistically diverse
(CALD) communities. In the t wenty-fi rst century, large- scale international collaborations
have brought to the fore the importance of multilingual communication. However, the focus
was initially on interpreting as ‘a problem’ that delayed efficient communication strategies
(Crowley and Chan 2011).
From 2016 onward, additional focus on community engagement for d isaster-affected re-
gions raised awareness of the fact that translation and interpreting are necessary and not just
an unexpected problem. On translation of needs from the local communities to international
humanitarian aid organizations rests successful activation of suitable protocols. In turn, pro-
tocols entail emergency planning (Alexander 2002, 2016a), so that coordination, collabo-
ration, and communication strategies mitigate the ‘cascading effects’ of any crisis. Yet these
plans consider language translation in part, even when they are plans for action world-wide.
The more international the response, the more multilingual the communication; the next
section discusses how poorly served multilingual needs become global risks, before consid-
ering the positive signals coming from the formal recognition of the role of translation and
interpreting in The Sphere Project: Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitar-
ian Response ( Project Sphere 2018).

Communicating in crisis contexts: a succinct literature review

The cascading crisis definition means that conflict- specific situations of translation and inter-
preting can be studied as a form of crisis translation (e.g. Ebola awareness campaigns in the
Democratic Republic of Congo in 2019 cannot ignore the ongoing civil conflict). It is fair
to say that translation and interpreting in contexts of conflict have received more attention,
and issues and concerns about interpreting and translating in such contexts have been under
investigation for longer than problems and challenges concerning written translation in di-
saster and crisis settings. Conflict contexts for translators and interpreters rely on a richer bib-
liography (a non-exhaustive list includes Baker 2006; Dragovic-Drouet 2007; Palmer 2007;
Salama- Carr 2007; Inghilleri 2008, 2009; Footitt and Kelly 2012a, 2012b; Footitt and Tobia
2013; Kelly and Baker 2013). The study of interpreters in humanitarian contexts has been pi-
oneered by the activities of the InZone Centre (Moser-Mercer and Bali 2007; Moser-Mercer
et al. 2014; Moser-Mercer 2015) and case studies have focussed on disaster and refugee in-
terpreters (e.g. Tipton 2011; Todorova 2016, 2017). A steadily growing body of evidence
focussing on the role of translators and interpreters in Non- Governmental Organizations is
emerging demonstrating the complex relationships between conflict, communication, devel-
opment, and the humanitarian sector (Footitt et al. 2018; Tesseur 2018, 2019).

178
 Translation in contexts of crisis

The distinction between conflict and crisis becomes irrelevant however when we look
at who the interpreters and translators in the different contexts of crisis are. All crises in-
clude language mediation that involves trained, untrained, paid, unpaid, professional, non-
professional, family/non-family language brokers, community, citizen, and many other
forms of translators and interpreters. This plethora of language services is at the same time a
characteristic and one of the major problems of translation in crisis contexts. Furthermore,
if we take stock of emergency plans as designed to deal with cascading crises, then the dis-
tinction based on triggers (natural hazards vs conflict, mass displacement, and so on) is even
more irrelevant.
As the different language services entail different levels of attainable and expected quality
of translation, those who use the services of these language mediators ought to be aware
that not everybody who translates is a translator and not everybody who interprets between
two languages is an interpreter. Major problems include risks to public health due to lower
quality forms of language translation, short-term and long-term mental and physical effects
on the linguists involved, ethical concerns regarding quality of product, and concerns about
managing expectations. These are only the macroscopic problems. The range and seriousness
of each language-related communication issue varies from causing loss of life (in the USA,
studies on badly setup interpreting provision in emergency healthcare make grim readings,
see Ng et al. 2017) to endangering the linguists’ own and their families’ lives, with a raft of
issues ­in-between.
​­
Regardless of defining risks as global events, the perception of risk remains culture-
bound, and so do the shapes and features that risk perception and risk avoidance assume
( Wisner et  al. 2003). Language barriers hamper evacuation at the time of response ( Field
2017; Howard et al. 2017) and so language-related issues become visible. Language barri-
ers hamper in more than one way the collection of data when international disasters and
catastrophes are assessed (Cadag 2019). Pioneering work on interpreting in disasters ( Bulut
and Kurultay 2001; Moser-Mercer and Bali 2007; Kurultay and Bulut 2012; Moser-Mercer
et al. 2014) highlighted the legal, humane, and practical necessity for accommodating CALD
language mediators. The role of pre-prepared or written translation in supporting accessi-
bility for impaired audiences (such as sign language, Makaton, audio- description) is widely
accepted in translation studies. Yet knowledge of, or references to, these solutions to support
access to information in a format and language that is understandable was very scattered
when assessing debates on crisis contexts at the beginning of the t wenty-fi rst century. Argu-
ably, the extremely narrow focus on response could be considered partially responsible for the
limited use of translation to pre-record warning messages, to create subtitled warning videos,
to record signed evacuation procedures, or to educate recently arrived members of CALD
communities (as advocated, for instance, in Shackleton 2018). Translation and interpreting
scholars would presume that many forms of language translation, as well as interpreting, have
roles to play in enhancing the resilience of multilingual societies by reducing exposure to
risks and also mitigating the impact of natural and local hazards, yet this awareness is not as
noticeable for crisis managers, or disaster experts, operating in global contexts.
Awareness of anthropological differences in conceptualizing risk emerged in the 1980s
(Oliver- Smith 1996). But their impact on crisis communication did not entail a preoccu-
pation with effective communication strategies to support CALD communities until much
later – with dominant US-focussed publications, as shown above, prompted by the CALD-
specific impact of Hurricane Katrina (Muñiz 2006; Pastor et al. 2006; Tierney 2008). Ethnic
minorities and multilingual language g roups – which are not always one and the same – m ay
become vulnerable groups when there has been little or no planning, or no awareness of

179
Federico M. Federici

the impact of limited access to trustworthy information when the disaster strikes. Access
to reliable information has been discussed in a human-rights-based paradigm (Greenwood
et al. 2017).
Only in 2018, however, the need of language translation for the humanitarian sector was
embedded in the Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response. Its
2011 predecessor barely mentioned the multilingual operational contexts of the humanitar-
ian sector: the 2018 revisions leaped forward. The 2018 Charter includes pertinent references
to connecting language needs to core principles of humanitarian action. According to the
charter, language awareness in the sector is needed for impartiality towards affected popula-
tions (ibid.: 12), for training of local communities (ibid.: 24), for reducing barriers to access
(ibid.: 41, 43), for communication strategies and modes (ibid.: 63, 98–99), for coordination
(ibid.: 72), for distribution of goods (ibid.: 201, 207), and for healthcare measures (ibid.: 301–
304, 329). The 2018 Humanitarian Charter recognized among its common principles, rights,
and duties that crisis-affected populations cannot be discriminated because of their language
(ibid.: 29–31, 77, 376), hence translation has to be used for documentary information to en-
gage the community (ibid.: 25, 175). The role of translation and interpreting in community
engagement is recognized by including commitment 6.4 to enhance practices in the sector:
Share necessary information with partners, coordination groups, and other relevant actors
through appropriate communication channels.

• Respect the use of local language(s) in meetings and other communications. Examine
barriers to communication so that local stakeholders are enabled to participate.
• Communicate clearly and avoid jargon and colloquialisms, especially when other partic-
ipants do not speak the same language.
• Provide interpreters and translators if needed. (2018: 71)

Language needs in disasters represent incremental factors of vulnerability.1 The more multi-
lingual the society, especially if its social groups are partially integrated, the harder to educate
and prepare most members of that society to the natural hazards or social risks (e.g. terrorism)
that could trigger a crisis in the area. With access to information considered a human right in
crises (Greenwood et al. 2017), then translation is also a human right (O’Brien et al. 2018) to
avoid discrimination because of language on the basis of UN Declaration of Human Rights
(1948; Art. 2 (equality) and Art. 3 (right to security). In turn, lack of support to accommodate
language needs ought to be viewed as discriminatory ( Uekusa 2019).
Lack of integration, lack of participation, lack of access to information expands vulnerabil-
ities for CALD communities. Translation would mitigate some of these pre-existing vulnera-
bilities, by enabling crisis managers to rely on efficient multilingual communication. However,
the impact of translation is underestimated, as noted in the World Disasters Report 2018 of the In-
ternational Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC): ‘Speakers of minority
languages who are not fluent in the official national language(s) are at a structural disadvantage
in many countries’ (IFRC 2018: 103); lingua francas (especially English) remain default posi-
tions of limiting efficacy. As a result, language translation rarely, if ever, features among plans
to increase resilience but its absence increases the cascading effects of crises. Paradoxically, it is
almost a common place to consider communication strategies in crisis contexts as vital. Or, as
Lundgren and McMakin (2018: 433) put it, ‘planning for communication before, and during
an emergency is especially important, for vulnerable or at risk populations’. As reduced access
to information on risks and on actions to perform to mitigate such risks is determined by the
means (radio, television, internet, text messages, leaflets, and word of mouth) as much as the

180
 Translation in contexts of crisis

modes of communication (oral, signed, written, multimodal, etc.), translation into a language
and a mode that is understood by the affected communities ought to be central to planning for
communication. Currently, it is not central. Thus, language barriers in the context of multi-
dimensional cascading crises widen existing vulnerabilities or engender new ones by means of
miscommunication. Miscommunication entails misconceptions on risk perception, which give
rise to further dangers, when such miscommunication takes place in healthcare contexts or for
health-related matters, as it will be discussed in the next section.

Cascading effects and risk communication

With 7,000 plus languages spoken daily and 50% of the world population being at least bilin-
gual (Eberhard et al. 2019), most societies are multilingual. In cross-boundary cascading crises,
the multilingual needs increase. Also, it could be argued that migration further emphasizes the
multicultural and multilingual needs of the globalized world. An increase in people displace-
ment and migration illustrates how crises cascade in further disruptive events. Unparalleled
numbers of people have become forced migrants in the last decade (over 70.8 million, according
to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, henceforth UNHCR 2019); a decade in
which countries that were migrants’ destinations were afflicted by the worst economic crisis in
recent history. The 2014–2016 European Migrant Crisis was a phenomenon linked to many dif-
ferent causes, a proper cascading crisis. It exposed the problem of migrants becoming exposed
to known risks, which demand concerted efforts by the society to ensure recently displaced
communities are educated to the risks of their new area of residence, thus increasing overall
local resilience (Guadagno 2016; Guadagno et al. 2017).
Superdiverse societies, in a way, engender a risk of developing super- exposed vulnerable
groups. The new linguistic contexts for migrants becoming members of (or creating new)
CALD communities might, and generally do, heighten vulnerabilities as displaced popu-
lations may find themselves in new contexts, with different rights and exposed to different
viruses, and acquire new statuses of citizenship (from migrant to refugees, to the generic
‘displaced’). People falling in these categories often experience more directly linguistic dif-
ferences and cultural barriers that could affect access to information – they are not necessarily
more vulnerable, as often forced migrants develop and possess resilience, however limited
access to information might cause temporal or partial vulnerabilities.
One of the domains in which the barriers are very visible is that of public health. Depicting
risks to health caused by imminent hazards or contagious contexts in multilingual societies
is getting harder. The complexity of multilingual communication rose to prominence in the
2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak, when linguistic and cultural factors diminished the im-
pact of a well-resourced response. ‘Good communications and community engagement are
urgently needed to combat denial, rumors, and behaviors that fan new transmission chains’
(Chan 2014: 1184); the effects of preventive measures to public health had lesser impact be-
cause of ‘minimal community engagement; poor awareness of the people about the different
aspects of the disease’ (Shrivastava et al. 2015; see also Bastide 2018). These are problems of
trust in communication with affected communities (Cadwell 2015). The Global Humani-
tarian Summit of 2016 stressed the centrality of community engagement and accountability
to affected communities through the Grand Bargain Commitment ( WHO 2016). The Sendai
Framework finds its extension in the Grand Bargain Commitment that acknowledges the duty
to interact with local cultures and communities when providing aid. Recent analysis of this
commitment shows that awareness is growing but the international humanitarian sector
needs more time to be able (or plan) to accommodate language needs ( Federici et al. 2019).

181
Federico M. Federici

Focussing explicitly on crisis-related healthcare and multilingual communication, there

are studies about the USA (Andrulis et al. 2016; Schwei et al. 2016), with illustrations also
coming from the emergency services in Australia (Coles and Buckle 2004; Slade et al. 2011;
Ryan et al. 2017), in the UK ( El Ansari et al. 2009), and in New Zealand (Zorn et al. 2016).
There are substantial differences among the healthcare systems of the countries in which
these studies were conducted, as well as in their multilingual contexts, and the institutional
support to accommodate language needs. Nevertheless, there is evidence that emergency
procedures and mortality rates can be linked to poor language support ( Ng et  al. 2017).
For instance, increased rates of fatality are recorded in CALD women and they are associ-
ated to socio-economic factors including linguistic difficulties in accessing healthcare and
support ( Keygnaert et al. 2016; Semenzato et al. 2018). In the European Union, directive
2011/24/EU acknowledges the patient’s right to access information in a language they un-
derstand in any member state they travel to or reside in. However, the available language
provisions of member states in ordinary contexts fall short of this commitment (Angelelli
2015); it is fair to deduct that the same limitations exist in crisis contexts.
When the focus moves onto pandemic on a world- scale then programme plans of the
World Health Organization indeed consider multilingualism in crisis settings ( WHO 2003,
2012; Drabek 2010). However, WHO has also recognized its own deficiencies in underesti-
mating the role of language- specific and culture- specific healthcare communication ( Bastide
2018; Federici et  al. 2019). There are also related issues when it comes to regional crises,
with evidence of poorer public health in migrant camps in Europe ( Keygnaert et al. 2016;
Puthoopparambil and Parente 2018). When these crises happen in lesser developed countries,
the global response adds to the ordinary complexity of supporting the language needs of local
CALD or multilingual communities, the additional need to communicate with international
humanitarian aid workers. The multi-agency dialogue among these stakeholders requires ef-
fective access to information as well as efficient exchange and sharing of information. These
communicative interactions presume understanding of one (or multiple) languages accepted
and used ( lingua francas) by all the stakeholders. These interactions must have recourse to
language translation, thus delaying and altering the message. For the populations at risk, it
is crucial to understand and react to relevant messages from evacuation warnings, to drills
and training exercises to build resilience and reduce risk by increasing preparedness and
mitigating health risks from immediate physical risks (collapsing building) to risks of conta-
gion (e.g. cholera or Ebola outbreaks). These interactions hinge on continued and sustained
multidirectional engagement between all the stakeholders when working on risk reduction,
as well as when responding to the disaster, and later cooperating in the reconstruction phase.

Conclusion
It is accepted that accommodating language needs in cascading crises is extremely com-
plex (Federici et al. 2019). It is necessary to ensure complex systems are in place to support
communication in multilingual crises; even some of the solutions adopted in the globalized
translation industry (24/7 agency work) are underused in global crises. Yet the awareness of
multilingual communication and its significance is often confined to last-m inute requests
for language services from anybody who could offer them. Those interpreting (and at times
translating) in crisis contexts may be professional and trained. Their efforts however are too
often hidden, and their activity is invisible, time-pressed, and underpaid. Their tasks and
activities are often defined as fundamental in the continuum of commercial exchange driven
by the interests of corporations and multinationals to trade peacefully (read, regularly, and

182
 Translation in contexts of crisis

profitably) across the world – even though such significance dos not entail appropriate remu-
neration for the impact that translation and interpreting have on trading. Regardless of one’s
own views of economic globalization, its economic success in the form it took in the first two
decades of the twenty-fi rst century rested on much activity of translators and interpreters
to circumvent the very cultural and linguistic barriers that create, feed, and aggravate crisis
contexts. Hence, in many multilingual and multicultural contexts, linguistic and cultural
mediation by translators and interpreters is expected in ordinary times. Interpreters and
translators enable social, cultural, and economic interactions and transactions in multilingual
societies. The very same needs however seem to represent a surprise when a crisis occurs. So,
for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, ‘the people we un-
intentionally exclude’ in crisis response tend to be those more vulnerable and marginalized.
The report continues by saying that:

Generic programming approaches often fail to meet the specific needs of particular
groups. For example, they often use language and communication tools that work for
humanitarians but are not understood by the people in need, or assistance may be pro-
vided in a way that is easiest for humanitarians but cannot be physically accessed due to
physical, cultural, social or political limitations affecting the target population.
(IFRC
­ 2018: ­11–12)
​­

These situations are endemic and, in multilingual countries, are predictable. Multilingual
resources ( pre-t ranslated materials, videos, and so on) could be prepared as part of ordinary
emergency planning activities; yet the report continues by saying that ‘People most at risk
do not always receive the assistance and information they need in a manner that meets their
need’. Linguistic support in crisis contexts for multilingual populations has to be viewed in
relation to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Lack of access to information in a lan-
guage that is understood is to be recognized as a form of discrimination and marginalization;
the SDGs aim to address these issues as CALD communities within populations affected by
disasters became classified as vulnerable; as a result, the Grand Bargain commitment recog-
nizes the centrality of accountability to affected populations and community engagement to
build up resilience, reduce risk, and mitigate the impact of crises.
There are examples of structured, concerted, and (intended as) sustainable ways of de-
veloping resources that will enable communities to be engaged with central messages from
civil protection agencies. These perspectives presuppose a gradual growth of human re-
sources, human networks that culturally and linguistically mediate for their own groups.
They do not replace, substitute, or antagonize other technology-led solutions (for an over-
view, see O’Brien 2019). Development of an ad hoc machine translation solution was cru-
cial in Haiti (Munro 2010, 2013; Lewis et al. 2011; Munro and Manning 2012). The use
of machine translation systems and even of pivot machine translation engines cannot be
ruled out as a poor-quality option, as it could represent an excellent point of departure for
post- editing and crowdsourcing alternatives to no translation at all ( Liu et  al. 2019; Silva
et al. 2018). Response simulations have engaged with machine translation solutions to enable
communication among responders working remotely in cross-border simulations of response
(Howe et al. 2013). New practices of citizen participation include crowdsourcing translation
(Sutherlin 2013), crowdsourcing language resources to create machine translation for rare
language combinations ( Lewis 2010; Lewis et  al. 2011), translations of geographical data
sources (Mulder et al. 2016), and developing long-term CALD resources through training
(Federici and Cadwell 2018). The lists are bound to grow; the question that remains open

183
Federico M. Federici

is whether the number of skilled translators and interpreters in low-resourced languages in

combinations outside the market will grow in proportion to the growth of globalized, mul-
tilingual societies.
After having considered the significance of the global perspective for risk reduction and
cascading crises, this chapter discussed how discourse on translation and interpreting in crisis
contexts remain disjoint from major conceptualizations of crisis communication in disaster
research. Possibly it is not as fragmented as described in Federici (2016) but certainly no
robust and coherent communication strategy to support CALD communities in cascading
crises exists. The limited perception of the role played by translation and interpreting in
risk communication during crisis situations has to be challenged. The option that must be
avoided is expecting to be able to oversimplify the importance of accessible information in
a language that crisis-affected populations understand because somebody will pick up the
pieces of poor risk communication ( Bredenkamp and Ansari 2017).
Responses are multi-agency and depend on communication to function. There is a clear
need and there are new roles to play for translation. One significant shift would be to include
linguists in training scenarios for crisis managers. Humanitarian personnel who have seen
the difference that language translation makes should lobby politicians and decision-makers
to ensure that the role of translation is better understood, so to enhance risk communication.
This enhancement might start with better awareness, but it needs to move to direct collab-
oration and training with crisis managers, and translation and interpreting experts and pro-
fessionals should then educate crisis response experts on what translators and interpreters can
and cannot do, and how and why, so as to avoid a mechanistic conceptualization of language
translation. Focusing on the mechanics of translation justifies limited efforts at planning by
simultaneously considering language translation as too complex to include in planning and
‘easy’ to achieve so that anybody who knows two languages can do it.

Further reading
Mercer, J. (2012) ‘Culture, Hazard and Disaster’, in Wisner, B., Gaillard, J. and Kelman I. (eds.), The
Routledge Handbook of Hazards and Disaster Risk Reduction. London: Routledge, pp. 97–108.
­ ­ ​­
This chapter offers an overview of perception of cultural differences in disaster risk reduction research
and is accessible to people new to this discipline; it offers excellent ground for comparison with notions
of context and culture in translation and interpreting.
­
­

This particular paper focusses on creating resources for humanitarian interpreters. It reports the findings
of a course that set the standards for conducting research over humanitarian interpreting by including also
details about typology of students and fieldwork, as much as life experience of the interpreters.
O’Brien, S. (2019) ‘Translation Technology and Disaster Management’, in O’Hagan, M. (ed.), The
Routledge Handbook of Translation Technologies. London: Routledge, pp. 304–318.
­ ­ ​­
The international humanitarian sector seeks solutions to multilingual crisis communication in tech-
nologies; O’Brien’s chapter is an accurate overview of the state of play for translation technologies in
crisis and disaster settings.
Schwarz, A., Seeger, M. W. and Auer, C. (2016) The Handbook of International Crisis Communication
Research. Oxford and Malden: John Wiley & Sons.
Edited by the most prominent experts in crisis and risk communication, leading a team of con-
tributors from across the world and the disciplinary spectrum, this is the reference volume for the
field. Furthermore, it is one of the first publications to acknowledge the dangers of using only an-
glophone paradigms and Western conceptualizations to discuss communication of risks and crisis
communication.

184
 Translation in contexts of crisis

Note

References
Alexander, D. E. (2002) Principles of Emergency Planning and Management. Oxford: Oxford University
Press on Demand/Terra Publishing.
Alexander, D. E. (2014) ‘Communicating Earthquake Risk to the Public: The Trial of the “L’Aquila
Seven”.’ Natural Hazards, 72(2), ­ pp. 1159–1173.
­ ­ ​­
Alexander, D. E. (2016a) ‘Disaster and Emergency Planning for Preparedness, Response, and Recov-
ery’, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science. Oxford and New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Alexander, D. E. (2016b) How to Write an Emergency Plan. Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press.
Alexander, D. E. and Pescaroli, G. (2019) ‘The Role of Translators and Interpreters in Cascading Crises
and Disasters’, Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal. doi:10.1108/DPM-12– ­­ ­​­­ ­​
­­2018–038, ​­ online ­pre-print. ​­
Andrulis, D. P., Siddiqui, N. J., Stelter, A. and Turner, M. (2016) In the Wake of the Affordable Care Act:
Understanding Community Barriers and Facilitators to Health Care Access. Austin: Texas Health Institute.
Angelelli, C. V. (2015) Study on Public Service Translation in Cross-border Healthcare: Final Report for the European
Commission ­Directorate-General ​­ for Translation. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.
Available from: https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/6382f
­ ­ ­­ ​­ ​­ ­ ­­ b66-
8387-11e5-b8b7-01aa75ed71a1/language-en
­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ ­­ ​­ [Accessed 29 July 2019].
Baker, M. (2006) Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account. London: Routledge.
Bastide, L. (2018) ‘Crisis Communication During the Ebola Outbreak in West Africa: The Paradoxes
of Decontextualized Contextualization’. In M. Bourrier & C. Bieder (eds.), Risk Communication for
the Future (pp. 95–108). Cham: Springer.
Birkmann, J., Cardona, O. D., Carreño, M. L., Barbat, A. H., Pelling, M., Schneiderbauer, S.,
Kienberger, S., Keiler, M., Alexander, D. E., Zeil, P., and Welle, T. (2013) ‘Framing Vulnerability,
Risk and Societal Responses: The MOVE Framework’, Natural Hazards, 67(2), ­ pp. 193–211.
­ ­ ​­
Bredenkamp, A. and Ansari, A. (2017) Translators Without Borders. 2016/2017 Report. Danbury: Transla-
tors without Borders. Available online: https://translatorswithoutborders.org/annual-report/2017/
­ ­­ ​­ ­
[Accessed 29 July 2019).
Bulut, A. and Kurultay, T. (2001) ‘Interpreters-i n-A id at Disasters: Community Interpreting in the
Process of Disaster Management’, The Translator, 7(2), ­ pp. 249–263.
­ ­ ​­
Cadag, J. R. D. (2019) ‘Participatory Research Methods for Language Needs in Disaster Research’,
in Federici, F. M. and O’Brien, S. (eds.), Translation in Cascading Crises. London: Routledge,
­ ­
pp. 177–198. ​­
Cadwell, P. (2015) Translation and Trust: A Case Study of How Translation Was Experienced by Foreign
Nationals, Resident in Japan for the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Dublin
City University, Dublin.
Chan, M. (2014) ‘Ebola Virus Disease in West Africa—No Early End to the Outbreak’, New England
Journal of Medicine, 371(13), ­ pp. 1183–1185.
­ ­ ​­
Coles, E. and Buckle, P. (2004) ‘Developing Community Resilience as a Foundation for Effective
Disaster Recovery’, Australian Journal of Emergency Management, 19(4), ­ pp. 1–4.
­ ­ ​­
Coombs, W. T. and Holladay, S. J. (2012) The Handbook of Crisis Communication. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Cornia, A., Dressel, K. and Pfeil, P. (2014) ‘Risk Cultures and Dominant Approaches towards Disasters
in Seven European Countries’, Journal of Risk Research, 2, pp. 1–17. ­ ­ ​­
Crowley, J. and Chan, J. (2011) Disaster Relief 2.0: The Future of Information Sharing in Humanitarian
Emergencies. Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. UN Foundation and Vodafone Foundation Technol-
ogy Partnership, Washington, DC and Berkshire, UK. Available online: http://hhi.harvard.edu/
­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­
publications/disaster-relief-20-future-information-sharing-humanitarian-emergencies ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed
16 April 2019].
Drabek, T. E. (2010) The Human Side of Disaster. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

185
Federico M. Federici

­ ­ ​­
Eberhard, D. M., Simons, G. F., and Fennig, C. D. (2019) Ethnologue: Languages of the World. Dallas,
TX: SIL International.
El Ansari, W., Newbigging, K., Roth, C., and Malik, F. (2009) ‘The Role of Advocacy and Interpreta-
tion Services in the Delivery of Quality Healthcare to Diverse Minority Communities in London,
United Kingdom’, Health & Social Care in the Community, 17(6), ­ pp. 636–646.
­ ­ ​­
Federici, F. M. (ed.) (2016) ‘Introduction: A State of Emergency for Crisis Communication’, in Medi-
ating Emergencies and Conflicts. Frontline Translating and Interpreting. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
pp. 1–29.
­ ­ ​­
Federici, F. M. (2020) ‘Managing Vulnerability During Cascading Disasters: Language Access Ser-
vices’, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science. New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press. doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199389407.013.342.
Federici, F. M. and Cadwell, P. (2018) ‘Training Citizen Translators: Red Cross Translation Needs
and the Delivery of a Bespoke Training on the Fundamentals of Translation’, in Tesseur, W. (ed.),
Translation in ­Non-Governmental
​­ Organisations. Special issue of Translation Spaces, 7(1), ­ pp. 20–43.
­ ­ ​­
Federici, F. M., Gerber, B. J., O’Brien, S. and Cadwell, P. (2019) ‘The International Humanitar-
ian Sector and Language Translation in Crisis Situations. Assessment of Current Practices and
Future Needs’, London and Dublin: INTERACT Network. Available online: https://tinyurl.com/
INTERACT-INGO [Accessed 17 October 2019].
Field, J. (2017) ‘What is Appropriate and Relevant Assistance after a Disaster? Accounting for Cul-
ture(s) in the Response to Typhoon Haiyan/ Yolanda’, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction,
22, pp. 335–344.
­ ­ ​­
Footitt, H. and Kelly, M. (2012a) Languages and the Military: Alliances, Occupation and Peace Building.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Footitt, H. and Kelly, M. (2012b) Languages at War: Policies and Practices of Language Contacts in Conflict.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Footitt, H. and Tobia, S. (2013) WarTalk: Foreign Languages and the British War Effort in Europe, 1940–47.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Footitt, H., Tesseur, W., Crack, A., Brehm, V. and Delgado Luchner, C. (2018) Respecting Communities
in International Development: Languages and Cultural Understanding – EN. Final Report Listening Zones
Project. Available online: https://www.reading.ac.uk/web/files/modern-languages-and-european-
­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​
­studies/Listening_zones_report_-EN.pdf
­­ ​­ [Accessed 17 October 2019].
Greenwood, F., Howarth, C., Poole, D. E., Raymond, N. R. and Scarnecchia, D. P. (2017) The Signal
Code: A Human Rights Approach to Information During Crisis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Humanitar-
ian Initiative. Available online: http://hhi.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/publications/signalcode_
­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­
final.pdf [Accessed 29 July 2019].
Guadagno, L. (2016) ‘Human Mobility in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction’, Inter-
national Journal of Disaster Risk Science, 7(1), ­ pp. 30–40.
­ ­ ​­
Guadagno, L., Fuhrer, M. and Twigg, J. (2017) Migrants in Disaster Risk Reduction: Practices for Inclusion.
Geneva: International Organization for Migration/Council of Europe.
Howard, A., Agllias, K., Bevis, M. and Blakemore, T. (2017) ‘ “They’ll Tell Us When to Evacuate”:
The Experiences and Expectations of Disaster-Related Communication in Vulnerable Groups’,
International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 22, pp. 139–146.
­ ­ ​­
Howe, A. W., Jennex, M. E., Bressler, G. H. and Frost, E. G. (2013) ‘Exercise24: Using Social Media
for Crisis Response’, in Jennex, M. E. (ed.), Using Social and Information Technologies for Disaster and
Crisis Management. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, pp. 232–250.
IFRC. (2018) World Disasters Report 2018. Leaving no one behind. Geneva: International Federation of
Red Corss and Red Crescent Societies. Available online: https://media.ifrc.org/ifrc/wp-content/
uploads/sites/5/2018/10/B-WDR-2018-EN-LR.pdf [Accessed 23 October 2018].
Inghilleri, M. (2008) ‘The Ethical Task of the Translator in the Geo-political Arena: From Iraq to
Guantánamo Bay’, Translation Studies, 1(2), ­ pp. 212–223.
­ ­ ​­
Inghilleri, M. (2009) ‘Translators in War Zones: Ethics under Fire in Iraq’, in Bielsa, E. and Hughes, C.
(eds.),
­ Globalization, Political Violence and Translation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 207–221. ­ ­ ​­
Kelly, M. and Baker, C. (2013) Interpreting the Peace. Peace Operations, Conflict and Language in Bosnia-
­Herzegovina. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

186
 Translation in contexts of crisis

Kelman, I. (2020) ‘Islands of Vulnerability and Resilience: Manufactured Stereotypes?’ Area, 52(­1),
pp. 6–13.
­ ­ ​­
Keygnaert, I., Ivanova, O., Guieu, A., Van Parys, A.- S., Leye, E. and Roelens, K. (2016) What Is the
Evidence on the Reduction of Inequalities in Accessibility and Quality of Maternal Health Care Delivery
for Migrants? A Review of the Existing Evidence in the WHO European Region. Copenhagen: WHO
Regional Office for Europe.
Kurultay, T. and Bulut, A. (2012) ‘Re- evaluating Community Interpreting: Emergency and Disaster
Interpreting’, I. U. Journal of Translation Studies, 3(6),
­ pp. 75–102.
­ ­ ​­
Lewis, W. D. (2010) ‘Haitian Creole: How to Build and Ship an MT Engine from Scratch in 4 Days,
17 Hours,  & 30 Minutes’, Proceedings of the 14th Annual Conference of the European Association for
Machine Translation ( EAMT 2010). Saint-Raphaël, France, May 27-28, 2010. Available online:
http://www.mt-archive.info/10/EAMT-2010-Lewis.pdf
­ ­ ​­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 16 April 2020].
Lewis, W. D., Munro, R. and Vogel, S. (2011) ‘Crisis MT: Developing a Cookbook for MT in Crisis
Situations’, Presented at Proceedings of the Sixth Workshop on Statistical Machine Translation, Edinburgh,
Scotland, July 30–31, 2011. Available online: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2132960.2133030
[Accessed 29 July 2019].
Littlefield, R. S. and Sellnow, T. L. (2015) Risk and Crisis Communication: Navigating the Tensions between
Organizations and the Public. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Liu, C.-H., Cruz Silva, C., Wang, L. and Way, A. (2018) ‘Pivot Machine Translation Using Chinese as
Pivot Language’, in Chen, K. and Zhang J. (eds), Machine Translation. 14th China Workshop, CWMT
2018, Wuyishan, China, October 25-26, 2018, Proceedings. Cham: Springer, pp. 74–85.
Lundgren, R. E., & McMakin, A. H. (2018) Risk Communication: A Handbook for Communicating Envi-
ronmental, Safety and Health Risks (6th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
­
­ ­ ​­
­
­

­
­ ­ ­ ​­
Mulder, F., Ferguson, J., Groenewegen, P., Boersma, K. and Wolbers, J. (2016) ‘Questioning Big Data:
Crowdsourcing Crisis Data towards an Inclusive Humanitarian Response’, Big Data & Society, 3(2), ­
­ ­ ​­
pp. 1–13.
Muñiz, B. (2006) In the Eye of the Storm: How the Government and Private Response to Hurricane Katrina
Failed Latinos. National Council of La Raza ( NCLR). Available online: http://publications.unidosus.
org/handle/123456789/1365 [Accessed 29 July 2019].
Munro, R. (2010) ‘Crowdsourced Translation for Emergency Response in Haiti: The Global Col-
laboration of Local Knowledge’, Presented at AMTA Workshop on Collaborative Crowdsourcing for
Translation. Denver, CO, Oct 31, 2010. Available online: https://www-nlp.stanford.edu/pubs/
munro2010translation.pdf [Accessed 23 October 2019].
Munro, R. and Manning, C. D. (2012) ‘Short Message Communications: Users, Topics, and In-
language Processing’, Presented at Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Symposium on Computing for Devel-
opment, Atlanta, Georgia, March 11–12, 2012. Available online: http://dl.acm.org/citation.
cfm?id=2160601.2160607 [Accessed 29 July 2019].
Munro, R. (2013) ‘Crowdsourcing and the Crisis-Affected Community: Lessons Learned and Looking
forward from Mission 4636’, Journal of Information Retrieval, 16(2), pp. 210–266.
Ng, J. H., Ye, F., Ward, L. M., Haffer, S. C. C. and Scholle, S. H. (2017) ‘Data on Race, Ethnicity, and
Language Largely Incomplete for Managed Care Plan Members’, Health Affairs, 36(3), ­ pp. 548–552.
­ ­ ​­
O’Brien, S. (2016) ‘Training Translators for Crisis Communication: Translators Without Borders as
an Example’, in Federici, F. M. (ed.), Mediating Emergencies and Conflicts. Frontline Translating and
Interpreting. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 85–111.
­ ­ ​­
O’Brien, S. (2019) ‘Translation Technology and Disaster Management’, in O’Hagan, M. (ed.), The
Routledge Handbook of Translation Technologies. London: Routledge, pp. 304–318.
­ ­ ​­
O’Brien, S. and Federici, F. M. (2019) ‘Crisis Translation: Considering Language Needs in Multilin-
gual Disaster Settings’, Disaster Prevention and Management, 29(2), pp. 129–143. doi: 10.1108/ DPM-
­­11–2018–0373
­​­­ ​­ [online ­pre-print].
​­

187
Federico M. Federici

O’Brien, S., Federici, F. M., Cadwell, P., Marlowe, J., & Gerber, B. (2018) ‘Language Translation
During Disaster: A Comparative Analysis of Five National Approaches’. International Journal of Di-
saster Risk Reduction (31), pp. 627–636. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2018.07.006
­
­ ­ ­ ​­
Palmer, J. (2007) ‘Interpreting and Translation for Western Media in Iraq’, in Myriam, S.- C. (ed.),
Translating and Interpreting Conflict. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, pp. 13–28.
Pastor, M., Bullard, R. D., Boyce, J. K., Fothergill, A., Morello-Frosch, R. and Wright, B. (2006) In the
Wake of the Storm: Environment, Disaster and Race after Katrina. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Pescaroli, G. and Alexander, D. E. (2016) ‘Critical Infrastructure, Panarchies and the Vulnerability
Paths of Cascading Disasters’, Natural Hazards, 82(1), ­ pp. 175–192.
­ ­ ​­
Project Sphere. (2018) The Sphere Handbook: Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Human-
itarian Response. Geneva: The Sphere Project. Available online: https://spherestandards.org/w p-
­content/uploads/Sphere-Handbook-2018-EN.pdf
­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 23 October 2019].
Puthoopparambil, S. J. and Parente, P. (2018) Report on the Health of Refugees and Migrants in the WHO
European Region: No Public Health without Refugee and Migrant Health (2018). Copenhagen; Geneva:
WHO Regional Office for Europe. Available online: https://apps.who.int/iris/ bitstream/handle/
10665/311347/9789289053846-eng.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y&ua=1
­ ­­ ​­ [Accessed 29 July 2019].
Quarantelli, E. L. (1978) Disasters: Theory and Research. London: Sage.
Quarantelli, E. L. (ed.) (2005) What Is a Disaster? A Dozen Perspectives on the Question. London and New
York: Routledge.
Ryan, J., Abbato, S., Greer, R., Vayne-Bossert, P. and Good, P. (2017) ‘Rates and Predictors of Pro-
fessional Interpreting Provision for Patients with Limited English Proficiency in the Emergency
Department and Inpatient Ward’, INQUIRY: The Journal of Health Care Organization, Provision, and
Financing, 54, doi: 10.1177/0046958017739981.
­Salama-Carr,​­ M. (ed.)
­ (2007)
­ Translating and Interpreting Conflict. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Schwarz, A., Seeger, M. W. and Auer, C. (2016) The Handbook of International Crisis Communication
Research. Chichester and Malden: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Schwei, R. J., Del Pozo, S., Agger- Gupta, N., Alvarado-Little, W., Bagchi, A., Chen, A. H., Diamond,
L., Gany, F., Wong, D. and Jacobs, E. A. (2016) ‘Changes in Research on Language Barriers in
Health Care since 2003: A Cross- sectional Review Study’, International Journal of Nursing Studies,
54, pp. 36–44.
­ ­ ​­
Sellnow, T. L. and Seeger, M. W. (2013) Theorizing Crisis Communication. Oxford and Malden: John
Wiley & Sons.
Semenzato, C., Crisma, M., Sorz, A. and Scrimin, F. (2018) ‘Il lavoro in ospedale. Buone pratiche in
campo sanitario’, in Delli Zotti, G. (ed.), Stato di salute sessuale e riproduttiva delle donne migranti: diffi-
coltà e buone pratiche. Trieste: EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, pp. 96–109.
Shackleton, J. (2018) ‘Preparedness in Diverse Communities: Citizen Translation for Community
Engagement’, in Understanding Risk, Risk Reduction, Consequences and Forecasting Track. Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences. Wellington, New Zealand: Massey University, pp.  400– 4008.
Available online https://spherestandards.org/wp-content/uploads/Sphere-Handbook-2018-EN.pdf
­ ­­ ​­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
[Accessed 17 October 2019].
Shrivastava, S. R., Shrivastava, P. S., and Ramasamy, J. (2015) ‘Lessons Learnt from the 2014 Ebola
Outbreak in ­West-Africa’, ​­ Journal of Research in Medical Sciences 20(1), ­ ­107–108.
​­
Silva, C. C., Liu, C.-H., Poncelas, A. and Way, A. (2018) ‘Extracting In-Domain Training Cor-
pora for Neural Machine Translation Using Data Selection Methods’, Presented at Proceedings of
the Third Conference on Machine Translation: Research Papers. Available online: https://www.aclweb.
org/anthology/W18-6323.pdf
­ ­­ ​­ [Accessed 16 April 2020].
Slade, D., Stein-Parbury, J., Scheeres, H., Widin, J., Smith, V., Townsend, L., Stanton, N., Woodward-
Kron, R., Flynn, E. and Macqueen, S. (2011) CHEC Communication for Health in Emergency Contexts.
Sydney: Australian Learning and Teaching Council.
Steelman, T. A. and McCaffrey, S. (2013) ‘Best practices in Risk and Crisis Communication: Implica-
tions for Natural Hazards Management’, Natural Hazards, 65(1), ­ pp. 683–705.
­ ­ ​­
Sutherlin, G. (2013) ‘A Voice in the Crowd: Broader Implications for Crowdsourcing Translation
during Crisis’, Journal of Information Science, 39(3), ­ pp. 397–409.
­ ­ ​­
Tesseur, W. (2018) ‘Researching Translation and Interpreting in Non- Governmental Organisations’,
Translation Spaces, 7(1), ­ pp. 1–19.
­ ­ ​­

188
 Translation in contexts of crisis

Tesseur, W. (2019) ‘Local Capacity Building after Crisis: The Role of Languages and Translation in the
Work of Development NGOs in Kyrgyzstan’, Disaster Prevention and Management: An International
Journal. doi:10.1108/DPM-12–2018–0378.
­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
Tierney, K. (2008) ‘Hurricane Katrina: Catastrophic Impacts and Alarming Lessons’, in Quigley, J. M.
and Rosenthal, L. A. (eds.), Risking House and Home: Disasters, Cities, Public Policy. Berkeley, CA:
Institute of Governmental Studies Publications, pp. 119–136.
Tipton, R. (2011) ‘Relationships of Learning between Military Personnel and Interpreters in Situa-
tions of Violent Conflict’, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 5(1), ­ pp. 15–40.
­ ­ ​­
Todorova, M. (2016) ‘Interpreting Conflict Mediation in Kosovo and Macedonia’, Linguistica Antver-
piensia, New Series–T hemes in Translation Studies (15). ­ ­­ ​­
Available online: https://lans-tts.uantwerpen.
­ ­­ ​­
be/index.php/LANS-TTS/article/view/392 ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 29 July 2019].
Todorova, M. (2017) ‘Interpreting at the Border: “Shuttle Interpreting” for the UNHCR’, CLINA:
An Interdisciplinary Journal of Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Communication, 3(2), ­ pp. 115–129.
­ ­ ​­
Uekusa, S. (2019) ‘Disaster Linguicism: Linguistic Minorities in Disasters’, Language in Society, 48(3), ­
­ ­
pp. 353–375. ​­
UN. (1948)
­ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. New York: UN General Assembly. Available on-
line: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Documents/UDHR_Translations/eng.pdf
­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 17
October 2019].
UNHCR. (2019) ­ Global Trends Report. Forced Displacement in 2018. Geneva: United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees.
UNDRR. (2015) ­ Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030. Geneva: United Nations
Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. Available online: https://www.undrr.org/publication/sendai-
framework-disaster-risk-reduction-2015-2030 [Accessed 17 September 2020].
WHO. (2003) ­ Words are Important. Geneva and New York: World Health Organization.
WHO. (2012) ­ Toolkit for Assessing Health-System Capacity for Crisis Management - Part 1. User Manual.
World Health Organization. Geneva: World Health Organization.
WHO. (2016)­ Global Diffusion of eHealth: Making Universal Health Coverage Achievable: Report of the Third
Global Survey on eHealth. Geneva: World Health Organization.
Wisner, B., Blaikie, P., Cannon, T. and Davis, I. (2003) At Risk. Natural Hazards, People’s Vulnerability
and Disasters. London: Routledge.
Zorn, T., Comrie, M. and Fountaine, S. (2016) ‘Crisis Communication Research in Aotearoa/New
Zealand’, in Schwarz, A., Seeger, M. W. and Auer, C. (eds.), The Handbook of International Crisis
Communication Research. Chichester and Malden: Wiley Blackwell, pp. 347–356.

189
 13
­Non-professional
​­ translators in
the context of globalization
Michał Borodo

Introduction
­

­ ​­ ­­ ​­ ­ ​­

On the one hand, this is related to the maturing of translation studies as a discipline,
currently preoccupied with the examination of the subjects so far considered of marginal
interest; on the other, this is connected with the awareness of and growing interest in ‘the
rapidly developing and ever- densening network of interconnections and interdependencies
that characterize modern social life’ ( Tomlinson 2004: 2). Such interconnectedness is ob-
servable in numerous spheres of communication and exchange and can be understood in
terms of global networks and flows ( Held et al. 2004: 16). In the Information Age, networks
constitute ‘the new social morphology of our societies, and the diffusion of networking logic
substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of production, experience,

190
 Non-professional translators

power, and culture’ (Castells 2000: 500). Flows pertain to the multidirectional distribution
of, among other things, Internet content, software, information, media entertainment, in-
fotainment, blockbuster films, bestselling books, calls for action and political manifestos
occurring in what Appadurai (1990) refers to as mediascapes, ideoscapes, and technoscapes.
Networks and flows can also be discerned behind non-professional translators’ practices.
Equipped with new technologies and organized into networks, Internet users respond to
and intervene in the globally circulating content, facilitating, strengthening, remoulding or
redirecting global cultural flows and generating their own informational flows. Their actions
challenge the mechanisms of power, production, mediation, and distribution and may be
perceived, depending on the perspective, as a form of empowerment, for example in the case
of fan initiatives and social activist communities, or as a form of exploitation, especially with
regard to non-professionals collaborating with social media companies.
This chapter begins with a discussion of some of the key concepts related to non-
professional translation: it will discuss terminological issues, the categories and characteristics
of this kind of translation, its relation with new technologies, and the professional world. The
chapter will then concentrate in more detail on three types of non-professional translation
activities, distinguishing grass-roots
­ ​­ ­entertainment-oriented
​­ translation projects, ­grass-roots
​­
social activist translation initiatives, and top- down crowdsourcing translation enterprises.
They will be illustrated with examples drawn from practices related to scanlating, fansub-
bing, and the translation of Harry Potter, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, TED Talks, and
social activist groups such as Babels, Translator Brigades, or Tlaxcala. The chapter will also
hypothesize on the future directions in which non-professional translation may develop.

Key concepts and major characteristics of non-professional translation

Depending on the context, agenda, and research perspective, non-professional translation
has been defined and referred to with different names by translation and interpreting schol-
ars. This ‘terminological ambiguity’ is mentioned by O’Hagan (2011: 13–14), who points to
such partly overlapping terms as community translation, translation crowdsourcing, user-
generated translation, or collaborative translation. According to O’Hagan (2011: 14), whose
preferred term is community translation, what all these labels have in common is that they
refer to ‘translation performed voluntarily by Internet users and (…) usually produced in
some form of collaboration often on specific platforms by a group of people forming an
online community’. Pym (2011: 5) and Olohan (2013), on the other hand, use the term vol-
unteer translation, which highlights the willingness to perform translation tasks by people
who are sufficiently motivated to devote their free time and creative energies to translation
of their own accord. Other names include pro bono translation, social translation, amateur
translation, fan translation, pirate translation, wiki-t ranslation, activist translation, and more
specific terms, such as scanlating (the translation of comics), romhacking (the translation of
video games), fansubbing, and fandubbing (the creation of subtitles and dubbing by fans).
Depending on the context, all of them may be legitimate terms that either draw attention to
the specific type of material that is translated or metonymically refer to different aspects of
translation activity. In the world of interpreting, which is beyond the scope of this chapter,
there are still other terms, such as natural translation, a long- standing term introduced by
Harris (1976: 96) to denote ‘the translation done in everyday circumstances by bilinguals
who have no special training for it’, ad-hoc interpreting or child language brokering. All
these terms ‘serve as a powerful reminder of the fact that non-professional translation and

191
Michał Borodo

interpreting are as widely established and diversified, if not more so, than professional trans-
lation and interpreting’ (Susam-Saraeva
­­ ​­ and Pérez-González
­ ​­ 2012: 157).
The terms interchangeably used in this chapter are non-professional translation, in line
with Susam-Saraeva and Pérez- González (2012) and Antonini et  al. (2017), and volunteer
translation, in line with Olohan (2013). Non-professional translation is a broad term covering
a wide range of translation practices. As pointed out by Antonini et al. (2017: 7), unlike the
word ‘unprofessional’, ‘non-professional’ focusses on ‘who’ rather than on ‘ how’. Rather than
drawing attention to the allegedly poor quality of the translated product and the supposed
lack of translation skills, it draws attention to ‘who’ performs translation, that is, to translators
characterized by a specific socio-cultural positioning who do not possess formal training,
institutionally and educationally sanctioned qualifications or an affiliation with a professional
association or institution. Volunteer translation, which may be defined as ‘translation con-
ducted by people exercising their free will to perform translation work which is not remuner-
ated, which is formally organized and for the benefit of others’ (Olohan 2013: 3), is another
term which adequately describes the nature of many translation activities. It is even broader
than non-professional translation, also encompassing practising translators with professional
background and some formal training, who may decide to voluntarily take part in collabora-
tive translation projects, if they are motivated enough to translate for free.
It should also be clarified that it would be misleading to assume that there is a clear- cut
demarcation line between professional and non-professional translation, as they may in fact
share a number of characteristics. A standard set of attributes ascribed to professionals in-
clude being recruited for a job, receiving remuneration for translation services, abiding by
a specific code of conduct, enjoying a certain degree of prestige, but non-professionals may
possess some of these attributes as well (Antonini et al. 2017: 7– 8). For example, they may
be recruited by an online translation community before they are admitted as members, they
may be required to abide by a set of linguistic, technical and ethical rules generally accepted
by this community, for their actions they may receive symbolic capital or, in some cases,
their actions may translate into making a profit. The lack of remuneration is not, after all, an
essential prerequisite for non-professional translation (O’Hagan 2011: 14). Professional trans-
lators, on the other hand, do not always enjoy the cultural prestige that is sometimes ascribed
to them, and certainly not of the same kind across different cultures. As mentioned above,
they may also occasionally decide to voluntarily participate in (fan, crowdsourcing, activist)
translation projects for free. The list could go on.
It could be perhaps inferred from the above that non-professional translation is a fairly
recent phenomenon. It should rather be viewed, however, as a long- standing human activity.
Involved in a variety of cultural and commercial exchanges, translators and interpreters with
no formal training and institutionally sanctioned qualifications have been with us for ages.
Susam- Saraeva and Pérez- González (2012: 157) even posit that perhaps ‘ it is professional –
rather than non-professional – translation that should be taken as the exception within the
wider context of translation’, constituting ‘merely one sub-type of translation, rather than
the norm- setting, prototypical form’. The scale and diversity of non-professional translation
seem indeed to indicate that perceiving translation as a predominantly professional activity
may be too narrow. It rather seems to be an essential and deeply ingrained aspect of human
activity that surfaces in favourable conditions.
What is new in the historical development of non-professional translation is exactly that
it has been recently provided with such favourable conditions, materially facilitated by tech-
nological tools widely and easily accessible in the context of Web 2.0. In the sphere of in-
formation, communication and entertainment, Internet users are no longer simply recipients

192
 Non-professional translators

but are generating content in the form of Wikipedia encyclopaedic entries, WordPress blogs,
YouTube video clips, Amazon reviews, etc. They have taken over some of the tasks previ-
ously reserved for professionals and are actively involved in creating the Web, which may
be viewed as a new promising stage in the evolution of the Internet (O’Reilly 2005), or as a
negative phenomenon, an invasion of untrained, and often anonymous, amateurs making in-
roads into the territories traditionally dominated by professionals ( Keen 2007). Such content
is generated thanks to social networking and the Internet, a rich source of texts and media
products, an environment offering software tools and online MT services, a space for collab-
orating, sharing resource, hosting websites, and an efficient distribution network. From this
angle, present-d ay non-professional translation is radically different from how it was practised
in the past.
Are volunteer translators a threat for professionals? According to Susam-Saraeva and Pérez-
González (2012: 151), it is translating and interpreting non-professionals ‘without formal
training in linguistic mediation but also working for free, who have always represented the
biggest threat to labour market structures, as well as to the identity and livelihood of transla-
tion professionals’. This may be even more true today, when a non-professional, in symbiosis
with advanced computer technology, penetrates the territories of a professional translator,
similarly equipped with new technologies, when one ‘translational cyborg’ (Cronin 2003:
116) competes against the other. In the case of non-professional subtitling or such crowdsourc-
ing projects as the translation of Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn the interests of professionals
and non-professionals may indeed conflict, as these are alternative ways of obtaining trans-
lations, which bypass professionals. On the other hand, crowdsourcing is only possible when
the Internet crowd is sufficiently motivated to devote their time to working on a project. This
may be considered worthwhile in the case of some fashionable social networking platforms
and desirable media products, but not necessarily with many other products and businesses. It
may contribute, however, to the image of translation as an activity that anyone with an even
average knowledge of a foreign language, but possessing advanced technological skills, can do.
A pertinent question asked in this context by McDonough Dolmaya (2012: 187) is: ‘how does
this affect the perception of translation by the general public, if translation becomes an activity
performed for commercial organizations by volunteers without formal training in the field?’
This could be potentially damaging for the translation profession, may lead to the underesti-
mating of professional translators and to the undervaluing of professional translators’ services.
­

193
Michał Borodo

In some cases, they take legal action against translating volunteers, although this does not
seem to be common practice (see the next sections for a more detailed discussion).
In what follows, three types of non-professional translation will be discussed. They are to
some extent overlapping with those suggested by Susam- Saraeva and Pérez- González (2012:
152), who distinguish the categories of (a) forms of civic engagement in the public sphere and
public services in the face of the dwindling financial commitment of the state, ( b) forms of
engagement in the re-configuration of the media and publishing sector in today’s digital cul-
ture, and (c) forms of non-professional linguistic and cultural mediation related to migration,
resettlement, and displacement. The categories discussed below mainly overlap with ( b), that
is with non-professionals’ activities in the media and publishing sector (referred to below as
­grass-roots
​­ ­entertainment-oriented
​­ translation projects and ­top-down
​­ crowdsourcing trans-
lation enterprises), but also include activist translation initiatives in public life (referred to as
grass-roots social activist translation initiatives). This division is based on who initiates the
translation process: g rass-roots projects are initiated and implemented cooperatively by vol-
unteer translators themselves, whereas top- down crowdsourcing enterprises, though largely
carried out by non-professionals, are usually initiated by business.

­Grass-roots
​­ ­entertainment-oriented
​­ translation projects
This is a broad category of non-professional translation performed by fans, which includes
such forms as scanlating, fansubbing, fandubbing, romhacking, and the translations of fan-
tasy fiction, most notably of the Harry Potter series. Initiated at a grass-roots level, they are
fuelled by the creativity of fans, who devote their time to making popular culture products
available in translation for free. Created without the consent of the original author, pub-
lisher or distributor, such projects may sometimes conflict with the commercial interests of
copyright holders, who may nevertheless tolerate them for the long-term benefit of wider
dissemination of their products.
According to Díaz Cintas and Muñoz Sánchez (2006: 37–38) it is fansubbing that is
‘nowadays the most important manifestation of fan translation, having turned into a mass so-
cial phenomenon on the Internet, as proved by the vast virtual community surrounding them
such as websites, chat rooms, and forums’. Its origins may be traced to the mid-1990s, when
fansubbing communities, dissatisfied with the officially released, commercial translations of
culturally suppressed anime, started to circulate their own amateur subtitled versions ( Pérez-
González 2007: 265). Just like other forms of fan translation, fansubbing is based on teamwork.
Fansubbers perform a variety of roles, acting not only as translators, but also ‘raw’ provid-
ers, typesetters, timers, encoders, editors, and proofreaders ( Díaz Cintas and Muñoz Sánchez
2006: 38–39), being responsible for either linguistic transfer or graphic and technical issues.
Their translations may sometimes differ from professional versions, being more foreignizing
and interventionist, ‘more creative and individualistic’ and ‘far less dogmatic’, lying ‘at the
margin of market imperatives’ ( Díaz Cintas and Muñoz Sánchez 2006: 51). For example, fan-
subbers may use colours to differentiate between various characters, introduce different font
types within the same programme, use non-standard subtitles that are longer than two lines or
insert notes at the top of the screen ( Díaz Cintas and Muñoz Sánchez 2006: 47).
Fansubbers not only intervene in the accepted standard methods of audiovisual translation,
but also ‘ in the traditional dynamics of the audiovisual industry by acting as self-appointed
translation commissioners’ ( Pérez- González 2007: 265). As noted by Bogucki (2009: 49),
they ‘rarely work with classics, as the intention behind their work is to make local viewers
familiar with recent film productions’, which may have a negative impact on official film

194
 Non-professional translators

distribution. In some cases, distributors and copyright holders may even take legal steps to-
wards volunteer translators. For example, several people running a popular subtitling website
were arrested by Polish police in 2007 on the charge of illegal distribution of translations
for pirate films ( Borodo 2017: 192–195). However, the relationship between fansubbers and
copyright holders does not always lead to a conflict of interests. It may also be a symbiosis.
Firstly, some fansubbers will stop distributing their versions when it is announced that offi-
cially licensed translations will be launched on the market ( Díaz Cintas and Muñoz Sánchez
2006: 44). Secondly, their illegal, unofficial versions may in fact increase the popularity of a
given title before it is officially released. Thus, despite the fact that producers and distributors
sometimes warn fansubbers about the consequences, they will usually not take legal action.
It is possible to find certain similarities between fansubbers and scanlators, that is, non-
professional translators of comics. Their translations are also created cooperatively. Specific
group members are responsible for concrete stages of the translation process, adopting the
roles of scanners, translators, proofreaders and graphic artists ( Deppey 2005). For scanlators,
translating is also above all a creative pastime. They are enthusiasts of comics who enjoy
sharing their favourite manga or super hero comic books and often wish to fill the gap by fo-
cussing on the titles overlooked or unlikely to be released in translation by official publishers.
Many of them try not to interfere with official publishers’ interests and abide by an unofficial
code of ethics, which delineates the boundaries of their activities with regard to the pub-
lishing sector ( Deppey 2005; Borodo 2017: 190). This ethical code stipulates that scanlating
groups do not translate comics officially available on the market and remove completed scan-
lations from their websites or abandon projects in progress when they find out that a given
title or series has been licensed by official publishers. In such situations, scanlators may also
inform comic book fans about publishers’ plans and encourage readers to purchase the official
translation ( Borodo 2017: 191). Scanlators even argue that they have developed a symbiotic
relationship with official publishers ( Deppey 2005; Borodo 2017: 191), claiming that their
actions may contribute to the popularization of particular titles before their official publi-
cation. To some extent, this may be true, as after scanlators withdraw a partially translated
series from their platform some readers may indeed purchase official translations to continue
reading. It is also possible, however, that some of them will develop a habit of reading at no
cost and lose interest in a series no longer available on a scanlation website.
Still other grass-roots non-professional translation projects were initiated by Harry Potter
fans. Commenting on this phenomenon, Nogueira and Semolini (2010) note that ‘[d]ozens
of Harry Potter enthusiasts will band together to beat the publishers to the bookshelves – but
this is more of a teenager prank than crowdsourcing proper’. Such initiatives are not nec-
essarily simply a teenage prank, however, but may be viewed as an angry local response to
the global publishing industry, a form of dissatisfaction and protest against being treated as
a ‘second-rate readership’ ( Borodo 2017: 196). It may be viewed as an attempt to redirect,
remould and accelerate global cultural flows of a highly desirable text by networking fans in
a situation when they can officially read the series translated into their own languages long
after the privileged English-speaking audience. Such initiatives took place on an interna-
tional scale. In Germany (‘Harry Potter Speaks German’ 2003), the unofficial translation
was collaboratively created by some 1,000 networking fans responsible for a variety of tasks,
such as translating, proofreading, editing, coordinating emails, managing the project web-
site, and receiving email messages with copies of successive chapters as a reward. In Poland,
thousands of irritated fans took part in translation-related actions, such as ‘The Emerald
Revolution’ and ‘Harry Potter for Everyone’, while teams of networking fans released their
own unofficial translations within less than a month, and several months before the official

195
Michał Borodo

translation was published ( Borodo 2017: 195–196). Such translations were dismissed by offi-
cial publishers as violation of copyright. However, as a rule, no punitive measures were taken
against non-professional translators involved in these projects, although a Harry Potter fan
was arrested by police on charge of posting an unofficial translation on the Internet in France
(Willsher
­ 2007).

­Top-down
​­ crowdsourcing translation enterprises
­

One of the earliest translation crowdsourcing enterprises, which started at the end of
2007, was the translation of Facebook:

Facebook is the biggest social network in the world, so it may come as a surprise to some
that up until early 2008, it didn’t offer any localized versions of the site at all. The com-
pany managed to jumpstart its international presence with an application fittingly called
Translations, which took the t ime-consuming and costly task of translating the site and
crowd- sourced it, asking the network’s millions of users to lend a hand.
(Kincaid
­ 2009)

In practice, Facebook registered users were invited to submit versions of words and expres-
sions in their own languages and then had a chance to vote for the best translations. Thanks
to this massive, combined effort of the Internet crowd, first contributing ideas, then critically
examining a set of available alternatives and filtering out less successful options through
voting mechanisms, the company obtained free translations ‘that were not simply techni-
cally accurate, but this also helped to eliminate awkward and excessively formal expressions’
( Kincaid 2009). Twitter followed in Facebook’s footsteps, introducing their Twitter Trans-
lation Center in 2011:

Today we’re announcing a product that is a major step toward making Twitter more
easily accessible by people around the world  – the Twitter Translation Center. The
Translation Center allows us to crowdsource translations from our passionate users in
order to more quickly launch Twitter in additional languages.
(Parfeni
­ 2011)

As in the case of Facebook, registered users could contribute to creating localized versions of
Twitter websites in their language for free.
This raises a number of ethical questions, especially from the perspective of professional
translators. Facebook or Twitter could have commissioned professionals to translate their web-
sites into numerous world languages, but they didn’t. Volunteer translators thus made inroads
into the territory that could potentially belong to professionals. It may also be asked whether
in such a configuration Internet users are empowered individuals, given a voice and oppor-
tunity to actively shape their social media and networking platforms, or are they members of
local communities exploited by profit-making global companies? As noted by O’Hagan (2011:
15), while it would be simplistic to perceive such user-generated translations as ‘dilettante,

196
 Non-professional translators

In the case of Wikipedia, most of the texts contributed to the 300 language versions of the
online encyclopaedia are non-translations, but some are translated articles. These articles are
selected for translation by Wikipedians themselves, who may decide what article to translate,
whether to translate all of it or only part of it, and who may then revise it, using Wikipe-
dia’s open- editing platform, achieving fairly positive results (McDonough Dolmaya 2014).
According to an online survey carried out among translating Wikipedians by McDonough
Dolmaya (2012: 173), about 70% of them did not have formal training in translation. When
enquired about their motivations, they mentioned such reasons for involvement as dissem-
inating information for the benefit of other language users, participating in an intellec-
tually stimulating activity, developing translation skills and supporting the organization
(McDonough Dolmaya 2012: 187). Volunteer translators possessing some translation training
were less altruistic, sometimes perceiving their translations as potential career enhancement
options (McDonough Dolmaya 2012: 188).
What differentiates the translation of Wikipedia from translating TED Talks is not only the
form of translation, that is translating articles versus translating videos using the subtitling plat-
forms offered in the TED Open Translation Project. The latter is also perceived as a more pres-
tigious activity, with greater symbolic capital, and it is not anonymous (McDonough Dolmaya
2012: 188). The motivation behind participating in both these projects are partly overlapping,
as they both aim at facilitating global flows of information or infotainment through extensive
networks of cooperating volunteers, but they also differ. Based on volunteer subtitlers’ blog
entries, Olohan (2013: 8) identified six categories of motivation, including ‘(1) sharing TED
benefits; (2) effecting social change; (3) deriving warm glow; (4) participating in communities;
(5) enhancing learning; and (6) deriving enjoyment’, referring to TED’s recruitment campaign,
appealing to these very motives, as ‘persuasive and effective’ (Olohan 2013: 13). The successful-
ness of the campaign is also confirmed by figures: the project was launched in 2009 with 300
translations and 200 translating volunteers, reaching, in mid-2012, about 30,000 translations
and about 8,000 translators (Olohan 2013: 6), and rising to more than 120,000 translations
and more than 33,000 translators in 2020 ( based on TED Translators 2019). The international
community of volunteer translators have apparently found the project devoted to ‘ideas worth
spreading’ worth their time.

­
It is not only such g rass-roots initiatives as fansubbing or translation crowdsourcing that
have attracted the attention of translation studies scholars, but also grass-roots social activ-
ist translation initiatives. According to Olohan (2013: 1) the studies concerned with such
initiatives ‘tend to focus on the narratives of communities of translators and to foreground
the relationship between translation or interpreting and social movements, particularly with
anti-m ilitary and alterglobalization stances’. The functioning and social positioning of these

197
Michał Borodo

groups, collectively engaged in different forms of political activism, was described in some
detail by Mona Baker (2013).
Recognizing that translation and language ‘constitute a space of resistance’, and relying
on Internet technology to communicate, coordinate work and circulate translated materi-
als, translating activists use their language skills to ‘empower voices made invisible by the
global power of English and the politics of language’ ( Baker 2013: 25). Baker (2013: 26)
distinguishes between two categories of activist translation groups, depending on the trans-
lated materials and the setting where translation is performed, that is those concerned with
written materials circulated via mailing lists and websites, as well as those who engage in
interpreting activities at organized events. Examples of such groups of networking activist
translators examined by Baker include: Babels, Translators for Peace, Translators United for
Peace, ECOS, Translator Brigades, and Tlaxcala, that is the International Network of Trans-
lators for Linguistic Diversity. These communities differ with regard to their size and scale of
operation. Some of them are restricted to specific countries, while others operate on a global
scale. With regard to membership, in 2005 the activist group Babels consisted of 9,000 vol-
unteers, constituting ‘an impressive coalition of translators and interpreters, or people with
the requisite language skills’ ( Baker 2013: 35), whereas other groups, such as Translation for
Peace and Translators United for Peace, consisted of several dozen members ( Baker 2013: 27).
The networking communities in question concentrate on different themes, such as mil-
itary conflicts in ‘Kosovo in the case of Translators for Peace and Iraq in the case of TUP’
( Baker 2013: 26) or are responsible for disseminating materials presenting alternative socio-
political views, countering mainstream narratives on ‘the siege of Gaza, continued poverty
in Africa and drug trafficking in Latin America’ ( Baker 2013: 32). As argued by Baker (2013:
36), even when they focus on specific local events, this is done within a larger framework
of globality, as ‘[t]heir aims and praxis are fundamentally global in reach, even when they
make space for specific local struggles’. This is also noticeable in these communities’ charters,
constitutions or manifestos. For example, members of Tlaxcala describe themselves as ‘a nti-
m ilitarists’ and ‘anti-imperialists’ who ‘stand against “neoliberal” corporate globalization’,
while Translator Brigades state: ‘We come from different contexts but have a common con-
cern for global inequality and human suffering’, adding ‘We believe our creative use of social
networking and commitment to translating will serve to spread valuable ideas and empower
struggles for justice by creating and reinforcing bonds among social movements across the
globe’ (as cited in Baker 2013: 27–28).
Many activist translators are professional translators and interpreters, translation students
and lecturers, which gives rise to some tensions with the professional world. Volunteer trans-
lators’ may be treated with suspicion or even perceived as a threat by professional commercial
translators. They may be associated with undermining the profession, depriving professionals
of potential work, offering low-quality interpretation services and undermining the trust
of potential clients, especially in view of the fact that the politically engaged activities run
counter to such values as neutrality and partiality, traditionally ascribed to professional trans-
lators (2013: 37). As observed by Baker (ibid.) such communities of volunteer translators ‘are
caught between the world of activism and the politics of professional competition and ethos
of the service economy’.

Conclusion
­

198
 Non-professional translators

level, some are initiated by global non-profit or for-profit entities. Some are concerned with
the circulation of information, other with facilitating access to entertainment. Some of them
treat translation activities as a creative hobby, a linguistic exercise or intellectually stimu-
lating pastime, others translate because they identify with a particular organization and its
goals, still others hope that their m icro- scale activities may effect macro- scale social change.
Volunteer translators’ actions create tensions with the professional world, both with trans-
lators and copyright holders, challenging certain well- established practices. Offering their
translations for free, translators cooperating with profit-m aking organizations, such as Face-
book, are making inroads into the territories traditionally belonging to professional transla-
tors. Social activist translators are treated with suspicion as their actions stand in opposition
to the neutrality and non- engagement, traditionally regarded as professional behaviour, and
because they also offer their translation skills for free. Non-professionals’ actions may also
be problematic from the perspective of copyright holders, as they call into question well-
established mechanisms of distribution. It is no longer the publisher, producer, and distribu-
tor who decide about how a given text or product should be made available to the public, but
also the communities of fansubbers, harrypotterians, and scanlators. Of these, it is perhaps
scanlators in particular who seem to comply with market rules, refraining from distributing
the works in the sphere of interest of official publishers, whereas fansubbers and harrypot-
terians have displayed more subversive attitudes towards the professional world. This was
particularly noticeable in the case of harrypotterians, who exhibited the most radical atti-
tude, throwing down the gauntlet to the publishing world and competing with professional
translators since the professional world did not meet their expectations.
It is possible that under the influence of non-professional translators’ actions professional
translation and publishing practices will undergo certain changes. For example, in the sphere
of entertainment, the non-standard, innovative conventions of unofficial anime fansubs may
influence the professional translation practices on the audiovisual market ( Díaz Cintas and
Muñoz Sánchez 2006: 51; Pérez- González 2007: 276). The same processes may be found in
the professional translations of comic books under the influence of scanlations ( Rampant
2010). With regard to the latter it may also be hypothesized that certain controversies may
arise between official comic book distributors and scanlating groups in the face of the ongo-
ing shift from print versions to digital formats and the advent of such portals as comiXology.
Scanlators, and publishers will increasingly compete on the same ground making use of the
same comic book medium. It is also possible, however, that translating fans, often with ex-
cellent knowledge of the comic book worlds, will be in some way embraced by the industry.
Then, although Harry Potter was certainly atypical with regard to its extraordinary popu-
larity, one may hypothesize that the actions of translating harrypotterians will influence the
world of professional publishing. After all, in some countries Harry Potter books were not
translated by individual literary translators but by teams of professionals translators ( Borodo
2017: 30). Will a shift from individuals to teams take place on a larger scale in the future,
especially in the context of global bestsellers for young readers, who are not only increasingly
competent in their use of English, but also capable of networking and spontaneously gener-
ating their own unofficial translations ahead of professionals?
The question of the relation and impact of non-professional translation on the professional
world is generally one of the most interesting questions in this context. Some influences of
volunteer translators on professionals are noticeable already, others may be hypothesized
about. For example, according to Pym (2011: 6–7) it is possible to ‘envisage workflow sce-
narios where the serious advantages of voluntary translators coexist with services by language
professionals: volunteer translators might postedit MT output, then have their work revised

199
Michał Borodo

by professionals’. This leads Pym (2011: 7) to assert that ‘there is no need to choose between
one and the other; the electronic world becomes big enough for both’. Katan (2015), on the
other hand, is less optimistic, predicting that non-professionals equipped in new technologies
will not necessarily develop a symbiotic relationship with professionals. He argues that ‘[i]f
we move to the year 2025 (or thereabouts), the Google Translator apps will have improved
to the extent that technical, low-r isk, low ambiguity, translating and interpreting can be
safely delivered with minimal human intervention’, and that ‘[c]rowd- sourcing will have
increased in both quantity and quality so that most social media and much audiovisual trans-
lation will bypass the professional T/Is’( Katan 2015: 12). Whatever the future will bring,
rather than being excessively preoccupied with the issues of professional status and adher-
ence to professional norms, professional translators and translation scholars should approach
non-professionals with an open mind and can possibly learn something from translating
volunteers, often members of the audiences they address, often unconventional, creative,
and innovative in their translation practices (Susam- Saraeva and Pérez- González 2012: 158).

Further reading
Baker, M. (2013) ‘Translation as an Alternative Space for Political Action’, Social Movement Studies:
Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest, 12(1),
­ pp. 23–47.
­ ­ ​­
An in- depth analysis of social activist anti-war and alter-g lobalization translation communities in the
context of globalization.
O’Hagan, M. (ed.) (2011) Translation as a Social Activity. Community Translation 2.0, Linguistica Antverpi-
ensia New Series – Themes in Translation Studies, 10, pp. 11–23.
­ ­ ​­
A collection of articles presenting a variety of perspectives on community translation, from translation
studies researchers as well as industry and platform designers, with a comprehensive introduction by
Minako O’Hagan.
­Susam-Saraeva,
​­ Ş. and Pérez-González,
­ ​­ ­
L. (2012) ­­ ​­
‘Non-professionals Translating and Interpreting:
Participatory and Engaged Perspectives’, The Translator, 18(2), ­ pp. 149–165.
­ ­ ​­
An analysis of non-professional translation and interpreting in today’s informational networked so-
ciety shaped by global flows, with an insightful introduction by Şebnem Susam-Saraeva ­ ​­ and Luis
­Pérez-González.
​­

References
Antonini, R., Cirillo, L., Rossato, L. and Torresi, I. (2017) ­Non-Professional
​­ Interpreting and Translation.
Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Appadurai, A. (1990) ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’, Theory Culture
Society, 7, pp. 295–310.
­ ­ ​­
Baker, M. (2013) ‘Translation as an Alternative Space for Political Action’, Social Movement Studies:
Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest, 12(1),
­ pp. 23–47.
­ ­ ​­
Bogucki, Ł. (2009) ‘Amateur Subtitling on the Internet’, in Díaz Cintas, J. and Anderman, G. (eds.),
Audiovisual Translation: Language Transfer on Screen. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 48–57.
­ ­ ​­
Borodo, M. (2017) Translation, Globalization and Younger Audiences. The Situation in Poland. Oxford:
Peter Lang.
Castells, M. (2000) The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell.
Cronin, M. (2003) Translation and Globalization. London: Routledge.
Deppey, D. (2005) ‘Scanlation Nation: Amateur Manga Translators Tell Their Stories’, The Comics
­Journal, 269. Available online: https://www.insidescanlation.com/etc/tcj/n_scan [Accessed 25
April 2020].
Díaz Cintas, J. and Muñoz Sánchez, P. (2006) ‘Fansubs: Audiovisual Translation in an Amateur Envi-
ronment’, Journal of Specialised Translation, 6, pp. 37–52.
­ ­ ​­ ­
Available online: http://www.jostrans.org/ ­
issue06/art_diaz_munoz.pdf [Accessed 25 April 2020].
Harris, B. (1976) ‘The Importance of Natural Translation’, Working Papers in Bilingualism, 12, pp. 96–114.
­ ­ ​­

200
 Non-professional translators

‘Harry Potter Speaks German’ (2003) Deutsche Welle World, 6 July. Available online: http://www.
dw.com/en/harry-potter-speaks-german/a-913160
­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ ­­ ​­ [Accessed 25 April 2020].
Held, D., McGrew, A., Goldblatt, D. and J. Perraton (2004) Global Transformations: Politics, Economics
and Culture. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Katan, D. (2015) ‘Translation at the Cross-roads: Time for the Transcreational Turn?’ Perspectives, 24(3), ­
pp. 1–16.
­ ­ ​­
Keen, A. (2007) The Cult of the Amateur. New York: Doubleday.
Kincaid, J. (2009) ‘Facebook Wants to Own Idea of Crowdsourced Translations’, Techcrunch. Avail-
­ ­ ­ ­ ­­
able online: https://techcrunch.com/2009/08/26/facebook-files-for-patent-on-crowdsourced- ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​
translations [Accessed 25 April 2020].
McDonough Dolmaya, J. (2012) ‘Analyzing the Crowdsourcing Model and Its Impact on Public Per-
ceptions of Translation’, The Translator, 18(2), ­ pp. 167–191.
­ ­ ​­
McDonough Dolmaya, J. (2014) ‘Revision History: Translation Trends in Wikipedia’, Translation Stud-
ies, 8(1),
­ pp. 1–19.
­ ­ ​­
Nogueira, D. and Semolini, K. (2010) ‘Crowdsourcing’, Translation Journal, 14(2), Available online:
http://translationjournal.net/journal/52crowd.htm [Accessed 25 April 2020].
O’Hagan, M. (2011) ‘Community Translation: Translation as a Social Activity and Its Possible Con-
sequences in the Advent of Web 2.0 and Beyond’, Linguistica Antverpiensia New Series – T hemes in
Translation Studies, 10, pp. 11–23.
­ ­ ​­
Olohan, M. (2013) ‘Why Do you Translate? Motivation to Volunteer and TED Translation’, Translation
Studies, 7(1),­ pp. 1–17.
­ ­ ​­
O’Reilly, T. (2005) ‘What Is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation
­ ­
of Software’. Available online: http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed
25 April 2020].
Parfeni, L. (2011) ‘Twitter to Crowdsource Translations, Like Facebook’, Softpedia. Available online:
­ ­ ­­
https://news.softpedia.com/news/Twitter-to-Crowdsource-Translations-Like-Facebook-184306.
­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
shtml [Accessed 25 April 2020].
­
­ ­ ­ ​­
Pym, A. (2011) ‘What Technology Does to Translating’, Translation & Interpreting, 3(1), ­ pp. 1–9.
­ ­ ​­
Rampant, J. (2010) ‘The Manga Polysystem: What Fans Want, Fans Get’, in Johnson-Woods, T. (ed.),
Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives. New York: Continuum. pp. 221–232. ­ ­ ​­
­Susam-Saraeva,
​­ Ş. and ­Pérez-González,​­ L. (2012)
­ ‘Non-professionals
­­ ​­ Translating and Interpreting:
Participatory and Engaged Perspectives’, The Translator, 18(2), ­ pp. 149–165.
­ ­ ​­
TED Translators. (2019) TED. Available online: www.ted.com/about/programs-initiatives/ted- ­ ­­ ​­ ­­ ​
t ranslators [Accessed 15 December 2019].
Tomlinson, J. (2004) Globalization and Culture. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Willsher, K. (2007) ‘Harry Potter and the Boy Wizard Translator’, The Guardian, 8 August. Available
online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/aug/08/france.harrypotter [Accessed 25 April 2020].

201
 14
The impact of globalization
on translator and
interpreter education
Marc Orlando and Leah Gerber

Introduction
­

In this article, we discuss how globalization has affected the T&I industry at large, and
T&I education in particular. We will first present a macro analysis of the international impact
of globalization on T&I, followed by a case study, illustrating how postgraduate T&I pro-
grammes can adapt to these new educational realities as well as respond to industry needs and
demands at the same time. Here, we will discuss how we have adapted our teaching approach
in the Master of Interpreting and Translation Studies (MITS) programme at an Australian
tertiary institution with a view to meeting the recommendations highlighted by the Bolo-
gna Process implementation and the Australian Qualifications Framework. The case study
highlights how student-learning outcomes were enhanced, particularly in the articulation
of theory into practice, through the wider implementation of metacognitive and problem-
solving strategies, blended and situated learning, innovative assessment practices, the use of
new technologies, as well as industry readiness activities.

The effect of globalization on the T&I industry

Before discussing the elements mentioned in the introduction, we will provide a snapshot of
the current T&I profession. The world in which translators and interpreters operate today is

202
 Translator and interpreter education

vastly different to that of the 1980s or 1990s. Economic, societal and technological changes
have affected both practice and training in recent decades, at a global level.
Market growth and an increase in demand and reach in the T&I field have been evidenced
in various surveys ( Kelly et al. 2010; Drugan 2013). Although growth figures are difficult to
firmly establish and compare globally, Drugan reports that the average annual growth of the
language service provision ( LSP) sector between 1950 and 2004 (5%) was higher than that of
international trade (4%). She also notes:

From US $9 billion in 2006, the market for outsourced language services grew by one-
third in a single year, reaching US $12 billion by 2007, and further compound annual
growth rate of 14.6 per cent between 2008 and 2012 [was predicted]. The largest recent
European study estimated annual compound rate at 10 per cent minimum from 2009–
15, giving a European language industry valued at a conservative 16.5 billion € by 2015,
with the real value likely to be above 20 billion €.
( Drugan 2013: 9)

According to the survey undertaken by Kelly et  al. (2010), the global language services
industry was worth more than US$26 billion in 2010. The Annual Review of the Translation,
Localization, and Interpreting Services and Technology Industry carried out every year by Common
Sense Advisory analysts report that the language services market and the translation industry
have continued to grow in complexity and extension because of an apparently ongoing global
demand for information sharing (Common Sense Advisory 2015). The industry is estimated
to be worth over US$46 billion globally in 2018, with experts predicting it could reach $56
billion by 2021 (Common Sense Advisory 2018). Such predictions have also impacted on the
career outlook for T&I professionals. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts an 18% job
growth in this industry between 2016 and 2026, compared with an average 7% growth for
all other careers ( US Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018).
These large- scale studies clearly show that the sector is not affected by economic down-
turns. The reasons behind this growth and for the industry’s relatively stable position are
multiple; the purpose here is not to draw up an exhaustive list of reasons, but two main causes
of these changes that can be singled out are the globalization and technologization of our
contemporary world.
Globalization enables the circulation of people, goods, services, ideas and cultures  –
sometimes f reely  – and the internationalization of the economy. This may also occur as
a result of forced migration following conflicts or disasters. In the last two decades, it has
resulted in an increasing number of exchanges between people from different regions of the
world who would not have been in contact before. A globalized world with facilitated com-
munication has imposed massive challenges on populations and governments, and a fortiori on
the mediators who help them communicate. Market growth in translation has therefore been
an important outcome of the penetration of free- or mixed-m arket economies across the
globe. And despite the widespread use of English as a lingua franca, or of global English, the
demand for translation has increased, particularly since large new markets opened in Eastern
Europe, Russia, Brazil, India and China since the early 1990s ( Drugan 2013). Most high-
level communication needs (e.g. data reports, business contracts, international meetings) or
­migration-related
​­ services (immigration
­ and ­community-related
​­ assignments) require the
services of professional communicators with sound linguistic and cultural skills: translators
and interpreters. The way in which international business is conducted has also had an effect
on the growth of translation volumes: anyone involved in global business operations needs

203
Marc Orlando and Leah Gerber

to stay informed of developments in markets and therefore requires translated information

round the clock.
Moreover, increased migration flows have increased the demand for translated materials.
For example, international cooperation in fields like drug or people trafficking, immigration,
counter-terrorism or peacekeeping, means that more and more international multilingual
organizations require translators and interpreters to assist with communication. In 1909, the
world had 37 intergovernmental and 176 non-governmental international organizations; by
1989, there were 300 and 4,200 respectively (Cronin 2003: 109), and by 2006, the number
of international non-governmental organizations ( INGOs) exceeded 27,000 ( Turner 2010:
84). The scope of the work carried out by these organizations has also broadened due to the
need for international collaboration in areas like environmental protection and conservation,
natural resources exploitation and renewable energies development, climate change manage-
ment, human rights, health, education, etc.
In terms of reach, it is remarkable that multilingual translations are in such high demand
( Drugan 2013: 10) given that one of the outcomes of globalization is an increased use of
English. This can be explained by the fact that web users often prefer and expect online con-
tent to be available in their mother tongue and, as a consequence, translated online materials
are in increasingly high demand ( Drugan 2013: 12; Taviano 2013: 161). As shown by these
researchers, online expansion in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East in recent
years also explains such developments. In many countries in these regions, a larger, wealthier
middle class will access commercial and tourism products online. These new web buyers are
more likely to ‘consume’ from their digital devices and computers if the sites and platforms
they visit are multilingual. As for the non-commercial sector, one can explain the rise in
translation needs as follows: as the number of international multilingual organizations has
grown, their membership has grown too, and the need for more language combinations has
followed this trend.
Other developments that might have affected translation reach are the trend towards the
protection of cultures, and therefore of languages, and the increased visibility of translations.
This protective urge may be motivated by a desire to counter the fear that the English lan-
guage will dominate global communication. As Drugan notes, ‘ irrespective to the use of
the English language as lingua franca, a further development is also becoming apparent – the
protection of cultures and languages. The translation market will without a doubt profit from
this tendency’ (2013: 14). Pym echoes this by suggesting that ‘ localisation might actively par-
ticipate in the saving of difference’ (2010: 140). As far as translation visibility is concerned,
many factors may have contributed to increased awareness of its existence. With facilitated
communication and transport, increased accessibility to the Internet, the global reach of
media, the lowering of international trade barriers, and greater travel opportunities, people
have been more and more exposed to multilingualism and multiculturalism. This has pro-
moted translation in its various forms. As Drugan reports (2013: 16), even a nti-g lobalization
movements, by mobilizing activists and disseminating their arguments at local, regional and
global levels, have contributed to an increased awareness of translation. As shown by Juris
(2005: 191), activists easily communicate internationally and across language barriers in the
Internet Age.
In all cases, these changes have substantially affected the way professional translators and
interpreters work. For all t wenty-first-century T&I practitioners, adaptability is a key ele-
ment. Today’s professionals must be aware of the differing norms and standards of the mar-
kets in which they work, whether local or global. They have to accept to work in different
contexts and environments and be at the same time global and local – glocal – professionals.
​­

204
 Translator and interpreter education

For example, in the twentieth century, professional translators and interpreters would often
work in-house in their companies’ translation departments. Today, this is rare. The majority
of professionals are freelancers who work directly for clients or language service providers,
and are in direct competition with practitioners from all over the world. Anthony Pym’s re-
port on the status of the translation profession in the European Union (2012) shows that the
proportion of freelancers in the profession ‘would generally appear to have grown since the
1990s when many large companies took to outsourcing their translation demands’. Accord-
ing to the report, the average proportion of freelancers globally is around 78%, ranging from
50% in China to 89% in the UK ( Pym et al. 2012: 88).
Professionals understand that the geographical region in which they reside does not nec-
essarily determine their only area of work. Translators in the t wenty-first century can work
for agencies or clients from various parts of the world ( Katan 2009; Pym et al. 2012). Today
translation services operations are managed 24/7 by shifts from different platforms based in
different parts of the globe. Different time zones are no longer a problem but can become an
asset when the deadlines to submit a translated piece are getting stricter and shorter. Trans-
lators of the twenty-first century can be based more or less where they want, provided they
have an internet connection and a computer at hand. Thanks to recent advances in digital
technology and videoconference facilities and platforms, and to a broader acceptance of the
modality, interpreters can also be asked to interpret remotely, provided acceptable working
conditions are respected (see, e.g. a 2018 position paper by the International Association of
Conference Interpreters on Remote Simultaneous Interpreting: AIIC 2018). Practitioners
of the t wenty-first century have undoubtedly become translators and interpreters without
borders (Orlando 2016).

The effect of globalization on higher education and on T&I training

Because of the abovementioned professional demands and expectations, and as a result of
shifts in the profession, the twenty-first-century T&I practitioner is subjected to pressures
that their predecessors would not have known. Logically, such changes have affected the
training of future professionals. Training contexts are also different today, compared to what
they were one or two decades ago (Hurtado Albir 2007). It is relevant to mention that glo-
balization and changing market needs have also had an impact on location of T&I training
courses, as well as training programmes developed for these locations ( Pöchhacker 2016: 46).
As identified by Gouadec, there are two types of countries:

Those where there is a real dearth of properly trained specialised professional translators
(i.e. China, Cambodia, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, Mozambique…) and where there
is a vital need for translator training courses in the national languages; and those where
the question is mainly training those who will take over from the outgoing generation
of translators and who will be able to meet the new market needs and challenges.
(Gouadec 2007: 330)

T&I training today is provided mainly by universities, and Masters programmes are offered
all over the world ( Pöchhacker 2016: 46), as the broadening membership of CIUTI (The
Conférence Internationale permanente d’Instituts Universitaires de Traducteurs et Inter-
prètes) over the recent years indicates (CIUTI 2019). Founded in the early 1960s to represent
a select group of T&I institutions in Europe, CIUTI now includes universities in Eastern
Europe, North America, Latin America, the Middle East and the Asia Pacific region. In the

205
Marc Orlando and Leah Gerber

past, T&I professionals were commonly trained within T&I schools based mainly in Europe:
Geneva, Heidelberg, Paris, Trieste, Vienna ( Pöchhacker 2004: 31). However, most of these
schools have now been absorbed into the greater university system and ‘ have been more
closely integrated with research oriented departmental structures’ ( Pöchhacker 2016: 47).
Even if the basis of their curricula remains – to a certain extent – the same, they are now
structured as Masters degrees, in line with new qualification frameworks, appropriate to
the country in which they are based. These frameworks have also imposed another change
to a specialized training: it is no longer solely vocational and, today, most T&I students are
‘ increasingly exposed to theoretical analysis and reflection’ ( Pöchhacker 2016: 47) and are
required to fulfil a research component of the degree. As reported by Torres- Simón and Pym
(2017: 17), ‘at least 85 percent of the [EMT] programmes offer theory courses and 90 percent
include research work of some kind’. Consequently, the nature of T&I studies has changed
and is not focussed only on professional competence and skills. Research- oriented activities
that complement the more practical elements of the training help students and staff to theo-
rize and conceptualize some aspects of the profession. This ‘academization’ of the field means
that students of T&I Studies today are much more exposed to theory and research in their
field than T&I students of the past ( Pöchhacker 2016: 32).
The multiplication of training programmes worldwide has induced researchers, trainers
and educators, in collaboration with the professional associations and representatives of T&I
employers or institutions that hire translators and interpreters, to develop benchmarks and
recognizable labels to ensure that courses teach the necessary aptitudes and skills, and to dif-
ferentiate and classify masters’ degrees and postgraduate courses offered in T&I. It is in this
context that frameworks and labels like the European Master’s in Translation ( EMT) or the
European Masters in Conference Interpreting ( EMCI) have been developed for European
programmes in T&I to apply for, to show how they comply with standardized training and
research norms. The EMT project, for example, was established as ‘a quality label for uni-
versity translation programmes that meet agreed professional standards and market demands’
in order ‘to improve the quality of translator training’ ( EMT n.d., European commission
website). The EMCI is

a programme designed to equip young graduates with the professional skills and knowl-
edge required for conference interpreting. It seeks to meet the demand for h ighly-
qualified conference interpreters, in the area of both widely and the less widely-used and
­less-taught
​­ languages.
( EMCI n.d., website)

As briefly mentioned earlier, to respond to the need to benchmark excellence in training and
research in university T&I programmes internationally, CIUTI has broadened and diversified
its membership to reach a more global audience and to recognize that high-level training,
education and research in T&I exist in various parts of the world and contexts of work. Full
membership of CIUTI is restricted to institutions of higher education offering degrees in
translation, interpretation and multilingual or intercultural communication and is acquired
upon successful completion of a quality-based admission procedure. The ‘membership requires
fulfilment of strict quality criteria and is a distinct seal of quality’ (CIUTI website 2019).
Translator trainer scholars like Kelly (2005) or Gouadec (2007) were somewhat hostile
to the idea of translators being trained in a specific kind of university environment – and
even more against translators being taught by academics only (a ‘preposterous’ idea, Goua-
dec 2007: 355). Their argument is based on the notion that universities cultivate academic

206
 Translator and interpreter education

rationalism/conservatism and do not respond to today’s society training needs. Despite such
views, translator training will very likely remain in university environments. Even if trans-
lator training is an activity ‘ falling firmly within the purview of vocational technical col-
leges’, Kearns rightly pointed out that the ‘ harmonization of higher education under the
Bologna Process will inevitably involve re-conceiving undergraduate and graduate studies in
many ways’ and will ‘challenge directly many of the preconceptions of academic rationalism’
( Kearns 2008: 186).
The 1999 Bologna Convention ( known as the Bologna Process) laid foundations for edu-
cation to be homogenized and offered in such a way that Europe could be more competitive
in a globalized educational environment ( European Higher Education Area 1999). Partici-
pating universities committed to structure higher education according to specific frameworks
and cycles, to adopt a system of credits transfer (the ECTS), and to develop highly transparent
and student- centred curricula ( European Higher Education Area 2007). For more than 20
years now, its implementation has allowed for more homogenization in teaching and has fa-
cilitated students’ mobility in Europe and globally. It has ensured and enhanced ‘quality and
relevance of learning and teaching’ and strengthened ‘cooperation in innovative learning and
teaching practices’ but also focussed on the importance of lifelong learning, staff and student
mobility, or employability ( European Higher Education Area, Paris Communiqué 2018).
Forty- eight European full members (and the European Commission) have implemented the
Bologna Process so far, and several consultative members are also involved in its efforts
at recognizing qualifications and degrees (through the EQF, the European Qualifications
Framework) and at promoting students’ mobility. Globally, some non-European countries
have decided to amend their higher education systems to enhance and facilitate coopera-
tion and mobility opportunities with Europe. For example, Australia has engaged with the
Bologna Process reforms and reshaped its qualifications framework ( The AQF) accordingly
(Australian Department of Education 2016).
The directions recommended by the reform have affected curricular structures and con-
tent in T&I training and education. Even if the focus on student- centred learning or the
concept of competence in T&I education was nothing new at the time, the Bologna Process
required ‘a profound transformation of the higher education system as we have known it’
( Rico 2010: 92). Following the implementation of the Bologna Process and of its framework,
even beyond European boundaries, as well as the desire to internationalize the activities of
universities and to establish cross-border transparency of qualifications, transnational im-
provement of quality assurance and interregional mobility of scholars and students, many
institutions have had to re-evaluate their practices in T&I training and education. Especially
when most vocational institutions have been merged into university institutional models
( Kearns 2008; Pöchhacker 2016). Today’s T&I curricula are designed to reflect the need for
both the vocational and the academic. The vocational/academic dichotomy in T&I courses
has been already discussed (Orlando 2016: 48–54), and it is essential to note that universities
today have to respond to societal demands and to include vocational, experiential compo-
nents in their programmes ( Kiraly et al. 2016). Training in T&I must be market- oriented,
and still focus on specific competence, skills, and specializations ( Liu and Hale 2018). Ter-
tiary education institutions are expected to provide graduates with skills that can be applied
immediately in specific work environments ( Way 2008; González-Davies and Enríquez-
Raído 2016; Echeverri 2017). On top of that, universities also have to ensure they teach
transferable skills, seen as preparing the student to be mobile and adaptable between various
jobs, whereas traditional vocational skills equip the student for a more specific job (Calvo
2011: 11; Orlando 2016: 68).

207
Marc Orlando and Leah Gerber

Responding to changes within T&I programmes

As discussed in the previous sections, the impact of globalization within the T&I industry
and educational shifts have directly affected T&I training programmes globally. Programmes
are now pushed to face the challenges presented by the profession, and address them di-
rectly within the teaching and learning context. The MA in Interpreting and Translation
Studies (MITS) at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia), established in 2004, presents
an example of a Master course responding directly to such needs. The course is a t wo-year
one, the first year (M1) focussing mainly on academic content (more ­ ­process-oriented
​­ and
formative, more theoretical) and the second year (M2) on vocational content (more practical
and summative, more product and market- oriented). The curriculum is scaffolded with
various units that follow the different streams. With a diverse student cohort – students from
as many as 15 countries are enrolled in the same suite of units – the MITS engages directly
with the idea that students are, more than likely, going to practise in a range of different
global environments. Like many other postgraduate programmes offered throughout the
world, the MITS must not only provide the necessary cultural and linguistic training to fu-
ture professional translators and interpreters, but respond to the reality that its graduates will
be working in an array of markets, as well as linguistic and geographical spheres. A recent
CIUTI study on T&I Graduate Employability Strategies, carried out among the members of
the association, showed that 89% of the 27 responding institutions took various curricular
and/or organizational measures to meet the contemporary challenges their graduates face
( global competition, diversity of work contexts, range of required skills and competence,
etc.) The curricular measures consist of training in technologies, in pre- and post- editing, in
writing and editing, in localization, in entrepreneurship, in broader awareness of contexts of
interpreting; the organizational measures offer more opportunities for access to technology
or for experiential, collaborative or independent learning (Massey et  al. 2018). Addition-
ally, many universities are moving towards blended modes of delivery, thus significantly
improving their outreach, and potentially saving space, time and money. Here, the effects
of globalization (and technologization), as much as T&I specific training, are at the fore of
curriculum design.
Moreover, and again responding to the impact of globalization and technologization
within the tertiary training sector, one of the major shifts in twenty-fi rst- century teach-
ing and learning has been driven by so- called ‘virtual learning environments’, operated by
‘ learning management systems’, which are being used by universities to drive more student-
centred learning. These platforms have become key access points for both students and ac-
ademics: students access teaching and learning resources, while academics deposit lecture
material and readings online, post to forums and provide online video content. Moodle pow-
ered by Blackboard is the primary Virtual Learning Environment ( VLE) utilized by Monash
University. With over 70,000 students university wide and teaching spaces in great demand,
the effective utilization of Moodle as a VLE rather than a file repository is important to
recognize, allowing the VLE to act as an ‘extension’ of the classroom. At Monash Univer-
sity, globalization has meant increased student mobility and greater numbers of fee-paying
students, mainly from South East Asia (Gardner 2016). This, coupled with the so-called
‘massification of higher education’ and the ‘shift to provide higher education to a larger pro-
portion of the population in recognition of the need for higher skills for future employment’
(Gardner 2016), has drastically changed the teaching and learning landscape in Australia and,
arguably, much of the Western world. In many universities, digital platforms are now being
pushed as a way of moving towards a more student- centred learning model.

208
 Translator and interpreter education

A crucial point to make here is that changes to teaching and learning practices in the
globalized world need not be radical. Instead, if shifts to teaching approaches are done with
pedagogies in mind that change according to the unique needs of the learners (Osguthorpe
and Graham 2003: 227), aiming for a ‘ blend that favours the learner and plays to the strengths
of different media in different contexts’ ( Donnelly and McAvinia 2012: 6), then academic
adoption of technology- enhanced delivery becomes more attractive. The idea is to promote
blended learning principles that complement existing teaching practices, instead of radically
altering personal teaching approaches.
Though the notion of what constitutes blended learning in terms of technology-
enhanced delivery (e.g. pre/in/post- class learning activities) is well researched ( Laurillard
2012; Gleadow et al. 2015), it is important to emphasize that academic adoption – as shown
in all cases – is reliant on moulding the technology to the units’ specific needs, and by provid-
ing tailored solutions for individual areas of study. Most importantly, innovators need to be
supported to share their practice with others (Gleadow et al. 2015), through the publication
of their experiences in academic journals. The proliferation of information technology in the
tertiary education setting is by no means a new phenomenon ( Warren and Holloman 2005;
Richardson 2009; Toni Mohr et al. 2012; Porter et al. 2014), and it seems like it is here to stay.

The Monash MITS

In the MITS, we combined this new educational philosophy with challenges posed by the
globalization and technologization of the profession: our aim was to trial blended learning
approaches across three core units, forcing students to increase their interaction with online
spaces and to drive their own learning. In these units, we replaced the traditional lecture
with online seminars, which were pre-recorded
­ ​­ by the academic in a state-of-the-art
­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ studio
at the university, released week by week to students. Removing the face-to-face lecture al-
lowed for more practical, hands- on workshops, directly benefitting students’ translation and
interpreting skills training. In such cases, the online seminar acts as a ‘pre-class activity’, and
students are expected to come to class prepared to put into action their prior learning. Across
the MITS, major curricular changes were also made to respond to contemporary training
and education new realities, in particular around metacognitive activities and feedback, as-
sessment, or the consideration of English as a lingua franca ( ELF) in the course.
The issue of teaching and of supporting student learning and empowerment in T&I has
been dealt with in depth by various trainers such as Kiraly (2000), González-Davies (2004) or
Choi (2006) who have indicated that the emancipation of trainees depends on their capacity
to reflect on their progress and their practice and to become actors in the learning process.
The programme team thought that to gain this aptitude, metacognitive and self-regulation
strategies needed to be introduced into our MITS curriculum. The rationale is that trainees
will better understand and conceptualize the practice of T&I if they understand the learning
and acquisition process of T&I competence and skills, and how theory participates in the
acquisition of such competence and skills. In a classroom where students come from different
continents, countries and academic backgrounds, and have different languages, such a strat-
egy is seen a way to make them all learn ‘ from a clean slate’.
Metacognition is the awareness of the learning process by the learner and the ability to
adapt to challenges that occur during this process through effective strategies. Metacognitive
knowledge and metacognitive skills are complementary components of the broader notion of
metacognition ( Veenman 2006). Metacognitive knowledge refers to the information learners

209
Marc Orlando and Leah Gerber

acquire about their learning, while metacognitive skills, i.e. strategies for planning, mon-
itoring and evaluating, are general skills through which learners manage, direct, regulate
and guide their learning. The interest for students in developing their metacognitive knowl-
edge and skills is for them to better understand their personal difficulties for specific tasks
(metacognitive knowledge) and to adopt a strategy (metacognitive skills) to monitor and
improve their performance. Feedback being central to any metacognitive approach, teaching
and learning activities are most effective when organized around metacognitive skills (as op-
posed to metacognitive knowledge) which ‘ have a feedback mechanism built-in’ ( Veenman
2006: 5). In the MITS curriculum, this is done through collective, peer or individual as-
sessment and feedback activities that facilitate and improve remediation strategies, using,
for example, process- oriented activities with digital pen technology in interpreting prac-
tice (Orlando
­ 2010), or rubric-based
­ ​­ formative/process-oriented
­­ ​­ and summative/product-
­­ ​
oriented evaluations grids in translation practice (Orlando 2011).
Some changes were also introduced for our assessment tasks: except in the case of the
practical translation and interpreting units, exams have been removed. Traditional essays
have been replaced with reflective pieces, podcast and vodcast assignments, research master-
classes, collaborative translations, student-led project management assignments, as well as in-
terdisciplinary situated learning activities with students from Medicine and Health Sciences,
Law, Journalism and Social Work.
The challenges pertaining to the use of English as a lingua franca ( ELF) compel T&I cur-
ricula to prepare students to the variety of ‘Englishes’ they would have to deal with in their
future professional practice. This implies considering ELF as ‘a dynamic and hybrid lan-
guage whose complexity cannot be fully grasped without taking into account its interaction
with other languages and cultures’ ( Taviano 2013: 156). For Taviano, ‘the spread of English,
combined with globalization processes and practices, should encourage us to reflect on what
translating means today and to rethink our pedagogical approaches from new and more chal-
lenging perspectives’ (2013: 156). One way to do so is to balance equally practice and theory
in T&I curricula as ‘students need to become aware of and reflect on the rapidly changing
nature of their future profession’. We share Taviano’s view that

one major consequence of the impact of ELF and globalization on translation is that
traditional notions of texts written in a clearly identified language and addressed to a
specific culture and readership are no longer valid, and translators are hence more often
than not required to translate hybrid texts.
( Taviano 2013: 160)

In the MITS, dealing with such considerations was facilitated by the fact students come from
various countries, that instructors are not all English native speakers, and that the course is
taught in languages groups always paired with English. Collective T&I activities in English
allow therefore an exposure to all sorts of accents, writing styles, syntactic and grammatical
particularities, etc.
At a course design level, two new units were consequently added, which again responded
directly to current professional needs: Global Translation and Interpreting Professional Practices,
which teaches vital project management and business skills, applicable in different global con-
texts, and places translation and interpreting students together with various industry represen-
tatives and stakeholders at various touch-points over the semester. Translation Trends in the Digital
Age, which not only teaches students to use CAT tools, MT and translation memory software,
but explores the challenges and ethical dilemmas of translating in the online sphere. It includes

210
 Translator and interpreter education

collaborative translation practice, international and technological frameworks for translation in

a digital age, knowledge about the localization industry, and it helps students develop exper-
tise in multimodal translation and the associated requirements, sensitivities and opportunities.
So-called ‘Work Integrated Learning’ ( WIL) also forms part of the MITS curriculum for all
students, who are required to undertake 50 hours of professional (remote or on-site) practical
work experience alongside the degree. Students are encouraged to source out WIL opportuni-
ties by themselves from potential future employers not only in Australia but also in their native
country, or in countries where T&I work in their language combination(s) is required.

Case study: Introduction to Interpreting and Translation Studies

As a core unit in the MITS, Introduction to Interpreting and Translation Studies provides students
with a comprehensive overview of theoretical approaches to translation studies within one
12-week semester. As mentioned earlier, new educational frameworks have meant that T&I
training is no longer viewed as solely vocational, with most T&I students required to fulfil
a research component of the degree. Most T&I training courses include an introduction to
the area of ‘translation studies’, which includes a study of both pure and applied branches of
translation studies research, as well as professional ethics. At Monash, this unit is taught to
students in their first semester of study, which allows for the vital contextualization of their
practice into a theoretical study area. Students are not only exposed to a range of historical
and twentieth-century
­ ​­ theories, including many recent ‘shifts’
­ in twenty-first-century
­ ­​­­ ​­ trans-
lation studies, but asked to practically apply these approaches to their own translation practice
or experience. Writing in 2013, Saldanha and O’Brien note that with the ‘ increase in the
number of translation training programmes across the world’, there has been an ‘explosion in
the number of masters and doctoral students and […] a concomitant move towards explicit
forms of research training in Translation Studies’ (Saldanha and O’Brien 2013: 1). Theo-
retical units are therefore vital in helping to form the basis of students’ exposure to relevant
theories, debates and discussions in the area of translation studies.
Like many similar postgraduate programmes in T&I Studies, the MITS attracts a highly
diverse local and international student cohort, which results in great cultural and linguistic
diversity, and varied learning styles. Moreover, such MA programmes are now marketed to
students from an array of different academic backgrounds: Engineering, Law, Medicine, Fine
Art, Accounting, Business, Education, as well as Humanities. No doubt, with the aforemen-
tioned massification of education, T&I training programmes all over the world find themselves
in similar waters: student learning styles and preferences can be vastly different, creating great
challenges to delivery of content according to the needs of all students. Given this diversity,
as well as the often complex content of theoretical units, we had previously struggled with
student engagement and performance in this unit.
As with other units taught in the MITS, this unit had previously been delivered in the
traditional mode of a weekly two-hour seminar and two-hour workshop. We decided to im-
plement a blended approach in this unit, moving the ‘seminar’ ( lecture) content to an online-
mode, while maintaining weekly face-to-face workshops. The pedagogical premise behind
this shift was very clear: to consolidate a wealth of complex material into a more compact 45-
minute online seminar, allowing students to watch, pause and replay at any time, to take notes
at their own self-determined speed, and to view the material as many times as needed for clar-
ification if required (this
­ would particularly benefit non-English-speaking-background
­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ stu-
dents). The approach would then encourage more active learning in the workshop, allowing
the lecturer more productive group or one-on-one time with struggling students. The first

211
Marc Orlando and Leah Gerber

hour would be spent on activities completed during the online seminar, asking students to
form discussion groups. The second hour was used to undertake additional activities prepared
and lead by the Lecturer, which are also undertaken in pairs or groups.
We traced responses from students in the first three semesters of implementation, and
found that students were overwhelmingly positive about the blended approach. They liked
the flexibility provided by the online content, the ease with which they could review content
after their initial viewing (and again over the semester), as well as the engaging and ‘ fun’
workshops, which offered them the chance to actively participate in engaging theoretical dis-
cussions and practical activities ( Feedback on Teaching Approach for APG5875, Arts Faculty
Education Designers 2017). Students also responded well to changes made to assessments,
especially the removal of a final exam and various essays in place of a series of innovative for-
mative tasks that were directly relevant to the learning objectives of the unit, and spread out
over the semester (Monash University, Faculty of Arts, SETU, s2 2017). Negative comments
were few, with a small number of students expressing the need for more detailed explanations
of theoretical content (Monash University, Faculty of Arts, SETU, s1 2017).
After the initial two semesters using this blended approach, two changes were made: the
first was to extend the workshop to 2.5 hours per week, and the second was to use this extra
30 minutes to revise and re- explain the key theories addressed in the online seminar, before
beginning the activities (responding to negative student feedback). It is clear that the incor-
poration of activities into the online seminar has worked extremely well, providing students
with the opportunity to practise applying theories and problems on their own, before dis-
cussing them with classmates in the workshop. It also made the workshop more active and
enjoyable. The lecturer noticed that students were overwhelmingly presenting handwritten
(rather than typed) notes, and that their performance in assessment tasks was improving.
After the success of the blended approach in the introductory theory unit, it was imple-
mented in two other units from the M1: Applied Translation and Translation for Special Purposes.

Conclusion
In this article, we have discussed how globalization has affected the T&I industry at large,
and T&I training and education in particular. We have indicated that, in order to respond to
current industry needs and to the many challenges it is facing, T&I programmes will con-
tinually need to adapt and rethink their pedagogical approaches. When programmes enrol
trainees who come from different continents, or different countries, and have different aca-
demic backgrounds, they need to ensure their training responds to such diversity. To do so,
most use English as a lingua franca either as language of instruction or for teaching materials (as
source or target language of the trainees). Therefore, we are of the view that today’s training
and education of future T&I professionals demand shifts in teaching practice to be considered
and require student- centred curricula and syllabi that include a well-balanced mix of practi-
cal and theoretical elements, of vocational and academic activities, and blended learning, thus
mirroring the contemporary realities of today’s globalized T&I industry. Future practitioners
must be able to work beyond geographical boundaries and adapt to global and local market
demands and expectations, and be made aware of the diversity of standards and norms in
their profession. They must also be able to deal with the hybridity of global/international
English. The case study presented in this article may provide T&I instructors and course de-
signers with concepts and ideas that will help them to respond to the needs of our globalized
industry and globalized student population.

212
 Translator and interpreter education

Further reading
Jenkins, J., Baker, W. and Dewey, M. (2018) The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca.
­London: Routledge.
This large volume provides a comprehensive overview of the research field of ELF over many research
areas, including T&I Studies. The 47 chapters discuss the multi-f aceted scope of ELF worldwide, from
the perspective of educationalists, researchers, professionals and industry stakeholders.
Laurillard, D. (2012) Teaching as a Design Science, Building Pedagogical Patterns for Learning and Technology.
London: Routledge.
Taking teaching as a ‘design science’, Laurillard discusses the challenges to teachers in the twenty-first
century, who are faced with an ever- changing cultural and technological environment. Laurillard
argues that a t wenty-first- century education system needs teachers who work collaboratively to design
effective and innovative teaching.
Schnell, B. and Rodriguez, N. (2017) ‘Ivory Tower vs. Workplace Reality: Employability and the
T&I Curriculum. Balancing Academic Education and Vocational Requirements: A Study from the
Employers’ Perspective’, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 11, pp. 160–183.
­ ­ ​­
Drawing on the Spanish higher education context, the authors discuss issues relating to the tense
balance between academic and professional practice knowledge in curricular development and the
embedding of employability enhancing contents and activities into the T&I curriculum.

References
AIIC. (2018) ‘AIIC Position on Distance Interpreting’. Available online: http://aiic.net/p/8538
[Accessed 23 September 2019].
Australian Department of Education (2016) Comparative Analysis of the Australian Qualifications Frame-
work and the European Qualifications Framework for Lifelong Learning: Joint Technical Report. Available
online: https://internationaleducation.gov.au/News/Latest-News/Documents/ED16-0165%20-
­ ­ ­­ ​­ ­ ­­ ​­ ­ ​
­%20693040%20-%20Joint%20Technical%20Report_ACC.pdf
­ ​­ [Accessed 8 September 2019].
Calvo, E. (2011) ‘Translation and/or Translator Skills as Organising Principles for Curriculum Devel-
opment Practice’, Journal of Specialised Translation, 16, pp. 5–25. ­ ­ ​­
Choi, J. Y. (2006) ‘Metacognitive Evaluation Method in Consecutive Interpretation for Novice Learn-
ers’, Meta, 51(2), ­ pp. 273–283. ­ ­ ​­
CIUTI Conférence internationale permanente d’instituts universitaires de traducteurs et interprètes
(2019). ‘Members’.Available online: https://www.ciuti.org/members/ [Accessed 2 February
2019].
Common Sense Advisory Global Customer Experience Study (2015). ‘Global Customer Experi-
ence Comes Down to Content but Not Just in English’. Available online: https://csa-research.
com/More/Media/Press-Releases/ArticleID/24/Global-Customer-Experience-Increasingly-
­ ­ ­­ ​­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​
­­Comes-Down-to-Content%E2%80%94But-Not-Just-in-English
­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ ­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 10 May 2020].
Common Sense Advisory Annual Language Industry Study (2018). ‘Global Market for Outsourced Trans-
lation and Interpreting Services and Technology to Reach US$46.52 Billion in 2018’. Available online:
https://csa-research.com/More/Media/Press-Releases/ArticleID/7/Global-Market-for-Outsourced-
­­ ​­ ­ ­ ­­ ​­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​
­­Translation-and-Interpreting-Services-and-Technology-to-Reach-US-46-52-Billion-in-2018
­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
[Accessed 6 January 2019].
Cronin, M. (2003) Translation and Globalization. London: Routledge.
Donnelly, R. and McAvinia, C. (2012) ‘Academic Development Perspectives of Blended Learning’,
in Anastasiades, P. S. (ed.), Blended Learning Environments for Adults: Evaluations and Frameworks.
Hershey,
­ PA: IGI Global, pp. 1–18. ­ ­ ​­
Drugan, J. (2013) Quality in Professional Translation. New York: Bloomsbury.
Echeverri, Á. (2017) ‘Le discours sur la formation des traducteurs’, in Belle, M.-A. and Echeverri, Á.
­
(eds.), Pour une interdisciplinarité réciproque, recherches actuelles en traductologie. Arras Canada: Artois
Presse Université, pp. 155–178. ­ ­ ​­
EMCI. (n.d.) ­ European Masters in Conference Interpreting. Available online: www.emcinterpreting.org
[Accessed 6 January 2019].
EMT. (n.d.) ­ European Master’s in Translation. Available online: https://ec.europa.eu/info/resources- ­ ­ ­­ ​
­partners/european-masters-translation-emt_en
­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 10 May 2020].

213
Marc Orlando and Leah Gerber

European Higher Education Area. (2018) Paris Communiqué. Available online: http://www.ehea.
info/Upload/document/ministerial_declarations/EHEAParis2018_Communique_final_95277
­ ­ ­ ­ 1.
pdf [Accessed 2 September 2019].
European Higher Education Area. (1999) Bologna Declaration. Available online: http://www.ehea.
info/Upload/document/ministerial_declarations/1999_Bologna_Declaration_English_553028.
­ ­ ­ ­
pdf [Accessed 2 September 2019].
European Higher Education Area. (2007) London Communiqué: Towards the European Higher Education
Area: Responding to Challenges in a Globalised World. Available online: http://www.ehea.info/Upload/
document/ministerial_declarations/2007_London_Communique_English_588697.pdf
­ ­ [Accessed
2 September 2019].
Feedback on Teaching Approach for APG5875, Arts Faculty Education Designers 2017.
Gardner, M. (2016) ‘Education in the Age of Disruption’, Address to the Melbourne Press Club, 8 June.
Available  online:  https://www.monash.edu/about/structure/senior-staff/president-and-vice-
­ ­ ­ ­­ ​­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​
­chancellor/profile/vice-chancellors-speeches/education-in-the-age-of-disruption
­ ­­ ­​­­ ​­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 22
February 2019].
Gleadow, R., Macfarlan, B. and Honeydew, M. (2015) ‘Design for Learning: A Case Study of Blended
Learning in a Science Unit’, F1000Research, 4(898), ­ ­ ­ ​­
pp. 1–17.
­González-Davies, ​­ M. (2004)
­ Multiple Voices in the Translation Classroom. Amsterdam: John Benjamins
­
­
­ ­ ​­
Gouadec, D. (2007) Translation as a Profession. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Hurtado Albir, A. (2007) ‘Competence-Based Curriculum Design for Training Translators’, The Inter-
preter and Translator Trainer, 1(2), ­ pp. 163–195.
­ ­ ​­
Juris, J. (2005) ‘The New Digital Media and Activist Networking Within A nti- corporate Global-
ization Movements’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 597, pp. 189–208. ­ ­ ​­
Katan, D. (2009) ‘Occupation or Profession: A Survey of the Translators’ World’, Translation & Interpret-
ing Studies: The Journal of the American Translation & Interpreting Studies Association, 4(2), ­ pp. 187–209.
­ ­ ​­
Kearns, J. (ed.) (2008) ‘The Academic and the Vocational in Translator Education’, in Translator and
Interpreter Training. London: Continuum, pp. 185–214. ­ ­ ​­
Kelly, D. (2005) A Handbook for Translator Trainers. Manchester: St Jerome.
Kelly, N., Stewart, R. G. and Hegde, V. (2010) The Interpreting Marketplace: A Study of Interpreting in
North America Commissioned by Interpret America. Lowell, MA: Common Sense Advisory.
Kiraly, D. (2000) A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education: Empowerment from
Theory to Practice. Manchester: St Jerome.
Kiraly, D., et al. (2016) Towards Authentic Experiential Learning in Translator Education. Mainz: Mainz
University Press.
Laurillard, D. (2012) Teaching as a Design Science, Building Pedagogical Patterns for Learning and Technology.
London: Routledge.
Liu, X. and Hale, S. (2018) ‘Achieving Accuracy in a Bilingual Courtroom: The Effectiveness of Specialised
Legal Interpreter Training’, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer. doi:10.1080/1750399X.2018.1501649 ­
Massey, G., Orlando, M. and Rösener, C. (2018) ‘T&I Graduate Employability Strategies in the 21st
Century ( TIGES 21)’. Available online: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326805718_
TI_graduate_employability_strategies_in_the_21st_century [Accessed 22 June 2020].
Monash University, Faculty of Arts, SETU, s1 2017.
Monash University, Faculty of Arts, SETU, s2 2017.
Orlando, M. (2010) ‘Digital Pen Technology and Consecutive Interpreting: Another Dimension in
­Note-taking
​­ Training and Assessment’, The Interpreters’ Newsletter, 15, pp. 71–86. ­ ­ ​­
Orlando, M. (2011) ‘Evaluations of Translations in the Training of Professional Translators: At the
Crossroads between Theoretical, Professional and Pedagogical Practices’, The Interpreter and Trans-
lator Trainer, 5(2), ­ pp. 293–308.
­ ­ ​­
Orlando, M. (2016) Training 21st Century Translators and Interpreters: At the Crossroads of Practice, Research
and Pedagogy. Berlin: Frank & Timme.
Osguthorpe, R. and Graham, C. (2003) ‘Blended Learning Environments: Definitions and Direc-
tions’, Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 4, pp. 227–233. ­ ­ ​­
Pym, A. (2010) Exploring Translation Theories. London: Routledge.

214
 Translator and interpreter education

Pym, A., Grin, F., Sfreddo, C. and Chan, A. L. J. (2012) The Status of the Translation Profession in the
European Union. European Commission, Luxembourg. Available online: https://op.europa.eu/en/-
​­ ​­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­
publication-detail/-/publication/4e126174-ea20-4338-a349-ea4a73e0d850­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 10 May 2020].
Pöchhacker, F. (2004) Introducing Interpreting Studies. London: Routledge.
Pöchhacker, F. (2016) Introducing Interpreting Studies, 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge.
Porter, W. W., Graham, C. R., Spring, K. A. and Welch, K. R. (2014) ‘Blended Learning in Higher
Education: Institutional Adoption and Implementation’, Computers & Education, 75, pp. 185–195. ­ ­ ​­
Richardson, J. T. (2009) ‘Face-to-f ace versus Online Tutoring Support in Humanities Courses in Dis-
tance Education’, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 8(1), ­ pp. 69–85.
­ ­ ​­
Rico, C. (2010) ‘Translator Training in the European Higher Education Area’, The Interpreter and Trans-
lator Trainer, 4(1), ­ pp. 89–114.
­ ­ ​­ ­
doi: 10.1080/1750399X.2010.10798798
Saldanha, G. and O’Brien, S. (2013) Research Methods in Translation Studies. London: Routledge.
Taviano, S. (2013) ‘English as a Lingua Franca and Translation’, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer,
7(2),
­ pp. 155–167.
­ ­ ​­
Toni Mohr, A., Holtbrügge, D. and Berg, N. (2012) ‘Learning Style Preferences and the Perceived
Usefulness of E-Learning’,
­ ​­ Teaching in Higher Education, 17(3), ­ pp. 309–322.
­ ­ ​­
­
­ ­ ­­ ​­ ­ ­

Turner, E. A. L. (2010) ‘Why Has the Number of International Non- Governmental Organizations
Exploded Since 1960?’, Cliodynamics, 1, pp. 81–91.­ ­ ​­
US Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2018) ‘Interpreters and Translators’. Available online: https://www.bls.
­ ­­ ­​­­ ​­ ­­ ­​­­ ​­
gov/ooh/media-and-communication/interpreters-and-translators.htm#tab-6 ­ ​­ [Accessed 6 January
2019].
Veenman, M. V. J. (2006) ‘Metacognition and Learning: Conceptual and Methodological Consider-
ations’, Metacognition and Learning, 1, pp. 3–14.
­ ­ ​­
Way, C. (2008) ‘Systematic Assessment of Translator Competence: In Search of Achilles’ Heel’, in
Kearns, J. (ed.), Translator and Interpreter Training. London: Continuum, pp. 88–103.
­ ­ ​­
Warren, L. L. and Holloman Jr, H. L. (2005) ‘On-Line Instruction: Are the Outcomes the Same?’,
Journal of Instructional Psychology, 32(2),
­ pp. 148–152.
­ ­ ​­

215
 Part III
Culture
 15
Globalization, cultural
hegemony, and translation
The paradoxical complexity of
translation theory and practice in
the emerging world order

Maria Tymoczko

Introduction
It is frequently said that ‘the world is getting smaller’. This aphorism is often used to indi-
cate that during the past several decades fewer cultures are isolated and most countries have
a good deal of access to information about many other cultures. Almost every culture in
the world is connected to a network of other cultures that touches all the individuals in the
network even if minimally and in indirect ways. Trade, technology, religion, development,
increased travel, the media, and many other factors bring populations into contact whether
those contacts are direct or indirect via the reports of others, representations in the media,
and so forth. Both large and small countries – many of which are themselves multilingual and
multicultural – are increasingly intertwined in cultural networks. These changed relations
are true of cultures with a great deal of power and also those with little global influence and
power. Networking as a type of interconnection is characteristic of both wealthy and poor
countries, as well as big and little nations. Today’s networking has been in the making for
more than 200 years, and some of it is a legacy of more than a millennium.

Globalization and the nature of cultural networks

As a result of the various possible parameters of difference between nations, we can say that
nations in such a network are of different ‘value’ to the network. That is, there are not just
similarities and differences between the nations within a network, but there are also clear dif-
ferences in the roles played by the various countries in each network. Those differences can
range from food production and technical skills, to religious practices, arts, natural resources,
and more, all of which can influence status and power within the network.
One result of globalization and the current patterns taking shape in the world is that
the changes bring both benefits and losses to many cultures. The benefits are considerable.
An important strength of the networks associated with globalization is that small or poor

219
Maria Tymoczko

countries in a network potentially have access to advances taken for granted by the larger,
more powerful, and wealthier nations in the network. Thus, for example, they might be
beneficiaries of medical advances and practices that are taken for granted in many areas of
the world. Such medical advances are often provided to a small or poor nation by others in
the network: vaccinations for children to prevent deadly diseases, water purification systems,
medicines that cure diseases, operations that correct birth defects, and more. Similarly the
network might give access to technologies, information, education, lifeways, and so forth
that the more powerful or wealthy nations take for granted and can either model or supply for
other nations in the networks. Benefits of this sort include such things as literacy, skills with
machines that afford better employment, advanced methods that result in greater agricultural
production, and more secure conditions of life that lower child mortality rates, provide more
comforts, and so forth.
In addition to the benefits of globalization, there are also risks and problems that can
result. The globalized interconnections of nations and cultures in a network can exert hege-
monic pressures on vulnerable, small, less wealthy, but resource rich countries and cultural
groups. As a result the beneficial promises inherent in networking might be vacuous, re-
quiring conformity to both the demands and the practices of cultures with more power and
wealth. Those demands might also be designed to keep a less powerful nation in a network
subservient and thus vulnerable to the needs and desires of those with power. This robs a less
powerful country of the ability to be focused on the internal needs of its own population,
and it can lead to the corruption, malfeasance, and misallocation of resources and funds by
its leaders as well.1 Thus the demands of powerful nations in a globalized network might
actually result in patterns of dominance that could undermine the sovereignty of less wealthy
and smaller countries linked together by the network.
We can note that in some ways the beneficial aspects of globalized networks are similar
to and grow out of the networks created during the last two centuries that were associated
with colonization. Those benefits were touted by the colonizers as ‘civilizing’ and offering
‘improvements’ to a colonized country, a claim that was generally self-serving. In many if
not most colonial contexts, the claim was also bankrupt in comparison with cultural losses
suffered by the colony. The same risks are present in the current networks and patterns of
globalization.
Although we could pursue this line of inquiry about problems of globalized networks at
some length, these issues will be set aside in order to focus on aspects of globalized connec-
tivity that are most relevant to the theory and practice of translation.

Network practices
Practices that tend to become generalized in a globalized network are those that are wide-
spread in networked cultural blocs. A good example is the commonality of many practices in
the European Union that all members of the EU are required to subscribe to, ranging from
rules pertaining to agriculture and crops to rules dealing with transportation and sanitation.
These practices tend to be normalized to the standards of the powerful and wealthy countries
in the network, to have a long life, to be generally durable, and to benefit most countries,
though some countries benefit more than others.
Practices that become normative are also often keyed to the power of specific dominant
nations that might be high in the pyramid of power, for example, the United States, Russia,
or China in many circumstances. Again examples of these effects of globalization are easy
to supply. Political favors, concessions to a powerful nation, and so forth are often apparent.

220
 Cultural hegemony and translation

Thus, not only has Donald Trump, President of the United States, asked for concessions and
tried to pressure nations for political favors and deference, Russia has also expected various
kinds of concessions from its satellites. Similarly China has built sea ports and other facilities
that enable more complex trade for African countries lacking the expertise or the wealth
to develop these assets, but then has insisted on exercising control of those same assets, thus
interfering with the sovereignty nations have over their territories. Links in globalized net-
works can thus bind nations together within a structure and hierarchy of power.
A widespread example is the supply chains of weapons provided by many of the most
powerful nations to other nations in their networks. The weapons link and obligate recipient
countries to the providers of those weapons. In this case often it is almost impossible for a
dependent nation to exit the network because of technical incompatibilities with the weap-
onry of other potential suppliers. As a result, once an obligation begins, a recipient country
can find it exceedingly difficult to regain sovereignty in this domain and to change networks.
Thus globalized networks often make it very difficult for a small country to leave a net-
work because of vectors of power and influence that are associated with food supplies, med-
ical expertise, industry, technical know-how, weapons, and so forth.2 Such benefits come
to shape practices in recipient nations, are supply lines for expertise and resources, serve as
models of research and technical development, and often become the frameworks for educa-
tion, skills, and learning. Networks also establish lines of obligation that sustain globalization
and structure a country’s orientation within the context of the globalized networks of the
world. This is particularly the case for nations that play a small role on the world stage and
that have limited resources.
Rather than an inclusive universal form of globalization or universal globalizing net-
works, what we have thus far created is a system of limited networks or ‘silos’ of globaliza-
tion. These silos are often heirs to the networks created by colonization: they are improved
and broader, less oppressive and less exploitative, but nonetheless it is clear that many if not
most current forms of globalization are a legacy inherited from the past and many are inher-
ited from colonialism with only minor differences.3

Cultural asymmetry in a globalized world

The term globalization suggests that in a globalized world, there will be a great deal of unifor-
mity of knowledge, awareness, customs, values, and so forth. That is, the implicit assertion is
that globalization will open the world to knowledge of the practices, skills, advances, values,
and conditions of the world’s nations and that a gradual (or sudden in some views) conver-
gence will result to the improvement of all. Moreover, differences will be respected in many
areas including art, religion, customs, and so forth. The implication is that comity will also
be increased. Thus far, globalization has failed to deliver on these diverse promises.
It is probably more accurate to say that thus far globalization has highlighted and contrib-
uted to awareness of gradients of cultural asymmetry in both general and specific domains.
This is the case in part because as globalization makes world culture more transparent, na-
tions and peoples cease to use neighboring people as their primary standards of comparison.
The result is that nations, leaders, and citizens around the world – particularly in less pow-
erful and less privileged countries – become much more aware of the pyramidal structure
of wealth, privilege, and power in the world as an entirety. Thus, as the world globalizes,
citizens of most countries – particularly those not in the upper echelons of the world order –
look further afield for standards supplied by other nations and cultures. They also become
much more aware of asymmetries of standards of living and structures of culture.

221
Maria Tymoczko

One result is that conceptions of power are shifted away from a focus on the local, par-
ticularly in the case of smaller and less wealthy countries. Awareness of the larger globalized
contexts of a nation’s standing and a person’s life sets a framework for perceiving cultural
matters, but also for understanding ecological standards, social conditions, cultural practices,
material indices, and so forth.
Far from leveling the playing field among cultures, thus far globalization has highlighted
global inequities and differences. It makes visible the asymmetries and privileges enjoyed by
specific cultures with wealth and power.4 Globalization privileges specific languages as well,
particularly those associated with the powerful nations of world networks. As such, global-
ization also implicitly establishes a hierarchy of texts and a gradient of informational materials
that get disseminated or published for global circulation.5
The utopian hopes for globalization are not yet within reach, nor do the indices of that
utopian vision seem to be under construction.

Globalization necessitates a strong web of communication networks

Although many of the hopes for globalization and many of the anticipated or desired features
of globalization are not yet within grasp, in fact there has been an increase in the number
of cultures that are in contact with each other as a result of initiatives associated with larger
cultural frameworks. There has also been a demonstrable increase in communication around
the world, particularly since the development of the Internet.
With increased communication, the number of cultures and individuals networking and
in contact with each other has risen. Although much of this increase in communication takes
place in the pinnacle languages most commonly used globally, digital communication has
invigorated communication across the globe in many minority languages as well. As a result
more languages are being used and interfaced in global communication. It follows as well
that there is a larger number of interactions and types of interactions that entail increased
multilingualism and translation globally.
The interactions of our globalizing world depend thus far on the multilingual facilities of
specific key members of the societies being networked. This includes not just multilinguals
but translators as well.

Translation as an essential and complex feature

of globalized communication
Clearly translation is an essential element that will support networks of communication as the
world becomes globalized. Translation networking, however, is an enormously complex fea-
ture of human culture globally. The mathematics alone of possible vectors of translation and
types of mediations across languages and cultures that are required in fully globalized com-
munication can serve as an index of the complexity. If we consider that there is a minimum
of 6,000 human languages globally to be connected with each of the others, the interface of
languages alone is an immense number of types of translation mediations required simply as
a result of language asymmetries.
Moreover, because there are different types of translation tasks, that huge number must, in
turn, be multiplied by the number of task types (e.g. literary translation, scientific translation,
legal translation, and so on). In addition there is no single correct method of translating with
respect to each task: every culture has its own traditions of translation and each translator
practices those methods in a somewhat different manner. Here we also want to add cultural

222
 Cultural hegemony and translation

constraints on and formal requirements for translation, ranging from censorship to the tem-
plates of government. In turn, all these variations within a single language tradition change
with respect to time, place, and cultural evolution. Variations are also driven by the ‘tech-
nologies’ of translation; thus, for example, oral translation, written translation, and machine
translation all differ.
We will return to the question of the complexity of globalized translation below.

Changing parameters of translation in a globalizing context

The parameters of translation practices are changing to meet the demands of globalization.
Locally oriented multilinguals and oral interpreters who work primarily between two neigh-
boring languages no longer suffice to support the vast globalized networks of languages that are
now developing and becoming intertwined. Increasingly such globalized language networking
continues to grow, and networks constitute very complex agglomerations that require different
frameworks from earlier patterns of both translation management and theoretical analysis.
Languages at the pinnacle of what we can call the pyramid of languages internationally
often serve as vehicles of communication and transfer between two countries, neither of
which depends on the particular languages used by its native populations. Thus, a document
in language A is translated into, for example, English, Spanish, French, Chinese, or Russian,
and then, in turn, it is translated from such a pinnacle language into language B, rather than
moving between languages A and B directly. As a result languages of top pyramid cultures
are becoming the serial intermediaries for much of global communication and dissemination
of knowledge in the world.6
It is important to acknowledge the vectors of power implicit in these patterns. Translations
both into and out of the languages of power are becoming increasingly essential for many
if not most transactions in globalized contexts. Paradoxically at the same time that global
communication is increasing, the languages used in many forms of information exchange,
negotiations, and other types of international communication are becoming more restricted
in number primarily because the principal mediating language between two cultures is typ-
ically one of the international pinnacle languages. Thus, for example, languages A and B
which are the native languages used in a small network might communicate via language X
which is one of the pinnacle languages used to mediate communication globally, as follows.

Text in language A
is translated to language X
which is a widely known or translated language in the culture of language B.

International and global discourse of this sort tends to require education and training in a
fairly narrow range of pinnacle languages rather than promoting more inclusive and direct
communication between local cultures. The result is that globalization has both increased
the complexity of translation and decreased the flexibility in the channels of global and in-
ternational communication in many cultures. Globalization also privileges far-distant con-
nections over local ones. Formal training in foreign languages around the world supports
these trends.
The top pinnacle languages that have become the vehicles for most international communi-
cation (and that serve to mediate between many minority languages and the rest of the global-
ized world) are increasingly the medium of information transfer around the world. As a result,
to have independent access to new and relevant information and knowledge, most people in

223
Maria Tymoczko

our globalizing world will have to learn one of those international pinnacle languages in order
to be full citizens and participants in the global community that is networked together.
In relying on a relatively limited number of transfer languages in translation, our emerg-
ing world increasingly turns on normative frameworks and standards of translation practice
for global translation and information dissemination. The volume of these essential transla-
tions is increasing as the world globalizes and, in turn, the increased need for translation is
thus spurring the increased importance internationally of a relatively limited number of the
6,000 or more languages still in use, as well as the use of machine translation for producing
translations in the key pinnacle languages.
It seems likely, moreover, that insofar as translation standards can be normalized through
machine translation, they will conform to the needs of the dominant power structures of the
world to a significant extent. Note as well that one advantage of machine translation is that it
is much easier to control machines (and thus to be certain about the meaning and tenor of the
translation produced) than to control individuals who can decide to set their own norms of
translation. Such individual norms range from personal decisions to censor certain materials,
on the one hand, to decisions to contravene established rules for censorship on the other.
By contrast machine translation norms are generally keyed to the values of the programmers
who usually are citizens of the cultures that speak the pinnacle languages used in translation
internationally.

Globalization and indigenous languages

As a result of the dependence on pinnacle languages, globalization can undermine the ‘value’
of indigenous or minority languages. This can occur because ‘foreign’ languages can acquire
greater prestige and value than minority native languages, particularly in circumstances re-
lated to knowledge transfer. Thus, for example, a particular language might be in common
use in a culture, specifically in public and domestic contexts such as marketing and neigh-
borhood communication, even as formal education and government speech are conducted
in a ‘world’ language, often the dominant language of an earlier colonial regime. In many
instances the ‘world’ language acquires prestige because it is associated with formal systems of
education that are often a legacy of colonization. This sort of linguistic hegemony is found,
for example, in former colonies where textbooks are still primarily available in the language
of the former colonizers (e.g. French, English, German, or Italian) rather than in the native
languages of the students.7 The result is that native languages paradoxically can come to have
diminished value and be seen as of less importance and prestige than foreign ones.
Formal education and knowledge of foreign languages, specifically pinnacle languages,
generally bring status with them in most countries, and as a result the educated tend to marry
the educated who also know these languages.8 In a former colony that is a multilingual na-
tion, when young people speak different local languages at home but are educated in a lan-
guage inherited from a colonial authority, they often speak the foreign language together at
school. Thus people raised in different native languages often communicate in the dominant
language of education. When a couple of this sort marries, the dominant language of the
home often becomes the former colonial language because it is the common language that
both parents are equally proficient in. Children raised in a family that has a legacy of more
than one local language, as well as a language associated with a former colonizer, usually
become multilingual in the family’s two native languages and generally also learn the lan-
guage of the educational structure at home as well. The result can be the effacement of local
languages in public speech.9

224
 Cultural hegemony and translation

Although this sort of effect is common in former colonies, it is also a side effect in coun-
tries that are disadvantaged in the frameworks of globalization in terms of power and pres-
tige, as well as size or wealth. Such perceived disadvantages pertaining to local culture and
language undermine the prestige of native languages. Recursively the perceived status and
importance of the native languages are diminished in a global context, undermining the sta-
tus of the native languages in the native context as well. These are merely some of the factors
that can result in native languages being seen as characteristic of speakers who are ‘unedu-
cated’, a common phenomenon throughout the world. The trajectory is often found both
among Native American populations and immigrants in the United States, for example.10
Note that this sort of shift in cultural values is not restricted to the present. It was almost
surely associated with the ascendancy of many ancient empires including Babylon, Egypt,
Rome, and so forth. It is also often associated with the migrations of populations. Thus
groups that have immigrated to the United States since the late nineteenth century have gen-
erally given up their legacy languages by the second or third generation after immigration.11

The diversity of translation practices globally

Translation practices can and generally do diverge across almost all cultural contexts. Although
this was already apparent in translation practice when translation studies focused primarily on
Eurocentric languages, as translation studies has expanded beyond its Eurocentric focus, such
divergences have attracted more scholarly attention, examination, and acknowledgment. This
wider range of translation norms and practices is generally assumed among translation stud-
ies scholars at present. Because each language and nation has a somewhat distinct concept of
‘translation’ (often reflected in the terms used for ‘translation’ as well as in normative practices),
the understanding of translation and the theory of translation have expanded significantly as
translation studies has increased its purview beyond Eurocentric cultures and languages.
There is now consensus that a huge variety of modes of translation have been used in
human cultures, many of which have been discussed in descriptive studies of translation.
In many cultures the heritage practices of translation derive from oral traditions rather than
norms associated with literacy. Such heritage practices often reflect traditional expectations
of formal speech including such things as its ability to hold interest, to be striking, to have
artistic qualities, to incorporate music and song, and more. Often the form of a translation is
as important as the precise rendering of the content: adjustment of content is at times permis-
sible in order to hold the attention and interest of the recipients of the translation. Textual and
cultural representations in translation often display cultural adherence to receptor standards
of communication.12
Divergence and specific adaptations to the receivers of translations of a text are common
as information travels. This is not only able to be documented in materials from earlier cen-
turies: descriptive studies have repeatedly shown that translators in the modern period often
take significant liberties in their translations of source materials in order to gain the accep-
tance of a translation in the target culture.

The complexity of translation and the current global context

Complexity theory is a useful tool for exploring questions and issues raised by the globaliza-
tion of translation. In earlier work I’ve argued that the heritage translation practices of cul-
tures around the globe – as well as idiosyncratic and creative practices of individuals – make
translation theory and practice extremely complex and diverse.13

225
Maria Tymoczko

Cognitive generativity is one of the principal features that distinguish human beings from
animals, and it is foundational to human language, which developed minimally between
350,000 and 600,000 years ago (see Tymoczko 2019: 239; Tymoczko forthcoming: chapter 2).
Generativity in thought and language has facilitated the adaptation of human beings to all
the inhabited parts of the globe and the development of all the variations of human cultures
related to those adaptations through time. In turn, generativity has resulted in the divergence
of human languages, which at present number between 6,000 and 7,000.14
The complexity of translation practices is evident with respect to the basics of communi-
cation among populations that speak diverse languages. This complexity can be posited as a
challenge to human communication as far back in time as human language has existed and
human languages began to diverge in response to diverse habitats that required new terms
and new types of articulation. Thus the complexity of translation is not specific to written
communication, to translation in academic and scholarly fields of any type, or to profes-
sional contexts, though specialized translation skills pertaining to language can be required
in some contexts.15 Thus it follows that the complexity of issues related to translation at
present is not simply a result of globalization. Nonetheless, it is also clear that globalization
has introduced additional parameters that contribute to the complexity of translation and
that the complexity of translation will accelerate as globalization continues and the process
intertwines populations speaking many of the thousands of languages still used in human
cultures.
In a global context the complexity of translation is extreme and globalization is making
that complexity inescapable.

The ascendency of foreign translation practices

over native practices: hub translations
Globalization is resulting in paradoxical effects in emerging practices of translation that will
require important shifts in the theory of translation. A major paradoxical change that has
already emerged is apparent in widely disseminated globalized exchanges: although more
nations are part of such globalized exchanges and are communicating via translation, trans-
lation practice is also being simplified and normalized in significant ways. Already because
more cultures are being included in nets of communication, vectors of translation between a
source text and each receiving language are often becoming less direct. The practice of trans-
lating communications for a related group of cultures is often simplified, with a translation
into one pinnacle language (e.g. English) serving as the proxy source text for translations of
the text into the other languages in the group.
Substituting for the source text in the original language, the use of a proxy text for trans-
lation into a broad range of receiving languages can be called ‘hub translation’. The result
is a type of ‘normalization’ of translation practice that ensues with respect to translation of
the text, such that the interpretation of the actual source text (found in the hub translation)
is standardized to the norms of the primary receiving culture and often to its cultural or
political reception context. Thus, hub translation narrows the possible interpretations of the
source text, as well as the dispersion of meanings that can be attributed to the text in its pri-
mary context. The practice of depending on hub translations already occurs in situations that
vary widely, ranging from translations of formal documents that are, for example, outsourced
to professional translators by the European Union (e.g. new regulations being promulgated
that must be translated in lesser used languages) to translations of popular novels written in
languages that are less widely known than the dominant European languages.

226
 Cultural hegemony and translation

An example of the use of a hub translation for a literary work might be the translation of a
novel in Polish into English. In turn, this translation into the language of a dominant culture
becomes the functional ‘source text’ for further translations of the novel that are disseminated
across the globe. The use of a hub translation simplifies the representation of the source text
because it has already been processed through the interpretations of a dominant culture (English
in this case) and has been adapted textually to the norms of a dominant language and culture.
Translations of the hub text – an English translation of the Polish text in this case – are then
created and disseminated in a dozen languages that purport to ‘represent’ the original text. In-
evitably the English translator has made choices that other translators might contest, but none-
theless those choices inevitably shape the further reception of the text and become so to speak
‘canonical’ in understanding the text in translation internationally in subsequent target cultures.
Translation patterns of this sort require an immense shift in the conceptual understanding
of the theory and practice of translation. The ascendancy and normalization of hub transla-
tions associated with dominant languages and cultures is both a form of simplification and
a redistribution of power in cultural exchanges. Via translations from the hub language,
the intermediary culture in effect normalizes texts and discourse to its own standards; as a
result these practices, in turn, buttress the hegemony of a culture that has a hub language as
its native language. Thus the practice of using hub translations contributes obliquely to the
prestige and status of a hub culture and the views of the culture as normative.16
Shifts of this sort in the practice of translation will almost certainly become more com-
mon as the world globalizes, particularly in the case of source texts from small and less
powerful cultures in the global hierarchy. This form of translation is implicitly framed by
the hegemony of the cultures central to hub translation, potentially resulting in diminished
allegiance that translators normally accord to frameworks of reception of their own cultures,
including social practices, perspectives on life, and specific linguistic meanings. Thus such
practices can lead to the abandonment in receiving cultures of historical norms established
through habit, pedagogy, and so forth, undercutting cultural autonomy and severing cultural
traditions. Such results and cultural shifts will not necessarily be easy, productive, or fruitful
for subordinate cultures in a globalized framework. They could in fact be culturally destruc-
tive in many situations. Moreover, awareness of such cultural hegemony and dominance can
result in a translator’s abandonment of the privilege that would normally be accorded to her
own target culture’s linguistic meanings, social practices, and perspectives on life.

Conclusion: globalization, translation practices, and translation theory

The beginnings of globalization are apparent, but we cannot yet claim that we live in a global-
ized world: there are too many nations, peoples, and languages that still remain peripheral to
global inclusion and too many networks that are alienated and antagonistic rather than cooper-
ative, intertwined, and unified at a globalized level. Our nations and our lives still play out in
silos with important areas of essential global concerns failing to benefit from actual and essential
global attention and agreement. The perils of climate change and the inability of nations to agree
on and execute necessary steps to block ecological disaster are perhaps the most glaring examples
of the distance between current conditions and the necessary conditions of globalization. The
failures to cooperate globally are to a large extent attributable to the most powerful nations of
the world who resist globalization in favor of their own interests and dominance and to their
leaders such as the presidents of the United States and Brazil at present who deny the dangers of
climate change. Nonetheless, although globalization is structurally quite different from the social
contexts we live in at present, we can already begin to see some of the directions it will take.

227
Maria Tymoczko

In this essay I have argued that hegemony and dominance remain a major concern in the
practices of our shrinking world. There can be no true globalization unless we can address
those issues and find solutions that will not exclude small cultures, languages with relatively
few speakers, and people with fewer resources, among many other factors essential to bring-
ing us together as one world. The question of gender is a major issue that must be addressed
on a global scale so that it will no longer be true in any culture of the world that only half the
population has a voice, education, and an equal place in the polity.
Globalization will bring new contexts and new patterns for translation practice; in turn,
it will shift translation theory as well. In many ways we have begun to perceive this new
context. We are already taking up new translation practices that fit with contexts prefiguring
globalization and that demand revision of past translation theory and practices. With full
globalization, however, we will construct a new context for translation theory and practice,
hopefully with egalitarian commitments of globalization shaping both.

Further reading
All of the following volumes give a broad variety of translation strategies in minority cultures or cul-
tures that are not Indo-European:
Hung, E. and Wakabayashi, J. (eds.) (2005) Asian Translation Traditions. Manchester: St. Jerome.
Sato-Rossberg, N. and Wakabayashi, J. (eds.) (2012) Translation and Translation Studies in the Japanese
Context. London: Continuum.
Tymoczko, M. (1999) Translation in a Postcolonial Context: Early Irish Literature in English Translation.
Manchester: St. Jerome.
Wakabayashi, J. and Kothari, R. (eds.) (2009) Decentering Translation Studies: India and Beyond. Amster-
dam: John Benjamins.

Notes

228
 Cultural hegemony and translation

References
Aarne, A. and Thompson, S. (1964) The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography. Helsinki:
Academia Scientiarum Fennica.
Marais, K. and Meylaerts R. (eds.) (2019) Complexity Thinking in Translation Studies: Methodological Con-
siderations. New York and London: Routledge.
Tymoczko, M. (1999) Translation in a Postcolonial Context: Early Irish Literature in English Translation.
Manchester: St. Jerome.
Tymoczko, M. (2019) ‘Translation as Organized Complexity: Implications for Translation Theory’, in
Marais, K. and Meylaerts R. (eds.), Complexity Thinking in Translation Studies: Methodological Consid-
erations. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 238–258.
Tymoczko, M. (2020) Neuroscience and Translation. Tartu: Tartu Semiotics Library.

229
 16
World translation flows
Preferred languages and subjects

Annie Brisset and Raúl E. Colón Rodríguez

Introduction
In his famous work, The Translator’s Invisibility, Lawrence Venuti (1995: 14) emphasized the
predominance of English as a language of translation – about 43% of all the books listed
in UNESCO’s Index Translationum were translated from English. A few years later, the
proportion of translations from English rose to 49% (Venuti 1998: 160).1 The prevalence of
English no longer needs to be proven (De Swaan 2001; Barré 2010; Crystal 2012 [1997]), but
to take stock of its evolution and to better understand the volume and nature of exchanges
between languages and regions of the world, we based our research on the latest data avail-
able from the Index.2 The present study begins in 1979, coinciding with the launch of the
electronic database, and ends in 2009, spanning a period of 30 years.3
The Index is far from exhaustive considering that it only includes 150 countries and not
all the 228 countries of the world, nor all the 193 Member States of the United Nations. In
addition, of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken around the world, only 1,100 are
mentioned.4 This disparity must be nuanced. According to Ethnologue, only about half of the
world’s languages have developed a writing system (3,995) and for those with writing systems,
very little is known about the extent to which they are actually used – depending on literacy
rates among speakers.5 According to Abram de Swaan (2001), proponent of a sociological hi-
erarchy of the languages of the world, about a hundred ‘central’ languages have the privilege
of being used in education, law and administration, media, industry, or technology, unlike
the ‘peripheral’ languages, which nevertheless constitute 98% of all languages. Among these
100 languages, only 13 are said to be ‘supercentral’. Among the 13 are the 6 UN languages
(Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Spanish, Russian) to which are added two other European
languages (German, Portuguese) as well as Japanese, Malay, Hindi, Swahili and Turkish.
Many countries do not have copyright, and books in original language or in translation
are not systematically recorded. Or sometimes countries, do not have the human, technical or
financial resources to establish an annual list of publications or to transmit one to UNESCO.
Other countries are at war and the official listing of publications, if any exists, is suspended.
As a result, there are gaps in the Index, but these mostly relate to less widely translated lan-
guages. The Index also does not reflect all translation activities since only books are listed,

230
 World translation flows

to the exclusion of any other document. As an indication, translation’s market share in the
global economy is estimated at 40 billion US dollars, which greatly exceeds the market share
of translated books. This figure includes machine translation, which is becoming increas-
ingly widespread, and whose projected growth approached 25% per year between 2014 and
2019 according to the prospective and marketing firm Wintergreen Research (2015, 2011).6
It is also difficult to assess the volume of machine translation that is carried out confidentially
within certain public or private organizations for scientific, financial or state security moni-
toring operations. Added to these activities is the translation of documents written in foreign
languages, in particular the translation of web pages, using free online software by many or-
dinary users.7 Over a decade ago, Gaspari and Hutchins (2007: 3–5) estimated that 50 million
words, especially single words and phrases, were translated every day by users, of which only
between 3% and 7% were translators. Finally, both the formal and informal translations that
have spread across social networks, for example, in the context of activist communications
(Bogenç Demirel and Görgüler 2019; Colón Rodríguez 2019), are unaccounted for.
The Index is a database meant to gather data on all translated books in the world and is
a repository that is available worldwide. It is constantly updated with information provided
by the various countries, which sometimes do not submit data for certain years.8 Updates are
therefore not at the same level for all languages, and some figures may vary from day to day.
Furthermore, the Index is limited to translated books. It does not report the total number of
books published in each country, which calls for a prudent interpretation of the percentages
indicated (Pym 1999). Even though the figures are disparate or lack precision, over the long
term, they reveal trends. The Index’s forte lies in the fact that it indicates the author, trans-
lator, publishing references for both the original and translation, the country of origin, the
source and target languages as well as the subjects treated according to detailed categories.
Despite its shortcomings, it therefore remains the best indicator of translation flows on a
global and regional scale, even within multilingual states, and, overall, it is a good indicator
of literary, functional and knowledge translations.

Preferred source and target languages

In the first instance, we wanted to check the source and target languages the most in demand.
Given that these languages are predominantly European languages, it seemed necessary to
widen the spectrum and to match the tables with graphs depicting the distribution of the
six UN languages, namely English, Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), Spanish, French and Rus-
sian, as source and target languages. The six ‘supercentral’ languages are a first and second
language for close to half of the world’s population, and an official language in close to a
100 countries. Secondly, we sought to identify the most translated genres by reducing the
numerous UNESCO categories to four only (literature, humanities and social sciences, sci-
ences, miscellaneous), reverting to the details whenever we deemed it useful. According to
the Index, the total number of translations stood at around 2 million.9
Table 16.1 shows, in descending order, the 20 languages from which we translate the
most. The second column indicates the total number of books translated from each language,
while the third column gives the percentage calculated in relation to the 50 most popular
source languages.10
The following graph (Figure 16.1) highlights the significant gap between English and the
languages immediately following it as the original languages of the translated books listed
in the database.

231
Annie Brisset and Raúl E. Colón Rodríguez

Table 16.1 Top 20 source languages

Language No. of translations Percent of top 20 SL

 1 English 1,266,110 55.35

 2 French 226,123 9.88
 3 German 208,240 9.10
 4 Russian 103,624 4.53
 5 Italian 69,555 3.04
 6 Spanish 54,588 2.38
 7 Swedish 39,984 1.74
 8 Japanese 29,246 1.27
 9 Danish 21,252 0.92
10 Latin 19,972 0.87
11 Dutch 19,667 0.85
12 Greek, Ancient (to 1453) 18,077 0.79
13 Czech 17,161 0.75
14 Polish 14,663 0.64
15 Norwegian 14,276 0.62
16 Chinese 14,071 0.61
17 Arabic 12,410 0.54
18 Portuguese 11,583 0.50
19 Hungarian 11,297 0.49
20 Hebrew 10,279 0.44
Total 2,182,178 95.4
Other source languages 105,070 4.59

Figure 16.1 Top five source languages.

English continues to be the source language of more than half of the translated books in
the Index (over 55%). Far behind, in second place, comes French (barely 10%), and in third
place, German (9%). According to the Index, these languages alone are the source languages

232
 World translation flows

Table 16.2 Speakers of the world’s languages (L1) 201711

Rank Language (L1) Millions Main country spoken

1 Chinese (Mandarin) 897 China

2 Spanish 436 Mexico
3 English 371 USA
4 Hindi/Urdu 329 India/Pakistan
5 Arabic 290 Egypt
8 Russian 153 Russia
9 Punjabi 148 India
10 Japanese 128 Japan
11 Hausa 85 Nigeria
17 French 76 France
18 German 76 Germany
24 Italian 63 Italy

of almost 75% of all translated books worldwide. When Russian (4.5%) and Italian (3%) are
added, the top five source languages represent close to 82% of all translated books worldwide.
All five are European languages.12
Latin and Ancient Greek are in tenth and twelfth position respectively, each with a score
close to 1% (0.85% and 0.79%). Japanese ( just over 1%), Chinese (0.61%), Arabic (0.54%) and
Hebrew (0.44%) are the only non-European languages that appear among the first 20 source
languages.13 Japanese, with a very small share, is the only non-European language belonging
to the top ten. However, a language which appears to be a minority as a language of transla-
tion on a global level can change status at the regional level and appear as a ‘central language’
or even a ‘supercentral’ language to use Abram de Swaan’s terminology. This is particularly
the case for Japanese, the source language of almost 6% of translations into Korean, and
especially of more than 25% of translations into Chinese.14
Particularly noteworthy is the minute portion (4.59%) of languages that do not appear
among the top 20 original languages, which is to say, the vast majority. Despite the short-
comings of the Index, this proportion signals the extent of the gap that separates the world’s
languages as exporters of works of art and knowledge.
The importance of a language due to its number of speakers has little effect on its status
as a language of translation, source language or target language, at least if we stick to the
listed books. A study carried out in 2017 by the Chair for the development of research on
culture (CEFAN, Laval University, Canada) drew up a table of the most spoken languages
in the world (Table 16.2). A comparison of this table with the graph showing the relative
importance of the six UN languages as source languages (Figure 16.2) reveals the disparity
between the two factors.
Although Mandarin comes first in terms of the number of speakers for whom it is the
first language (L1), it only ranks sixteenth among the source languages (0.61%). Conversely,
English is the most translated language, but only comes third (Table 16.2), in terms of the
number of speakers for whom it is the dominant language. Let’s turn for the moment to the
top target languages (Table 16.3; Figure 16.3).
When compared to the difference observed for source languages, the difference for tar-
get languages is less spectacular. However, mostly the same languages are involved, that is,
European languages. German (301,935 translations or 13.27%) comes first as target language,

233
Annie Brisset and Raúl E. Colón Rodríguez

Figure 16.2 Distribution of the six UN languages as source languages (SL).

Table 16.3 Top 20 target languages

Language No. of translations Percent of top 50 TL

1 German 301,935 13.27

2 French 240,045 10.55
3 Spanish 228,559 10.05
4 English 164,509 7.23
5 Japanese 130,649 5.74
6 Dutch 111,270 4.89
7 Russian 100,806 4.43
8 Portuguese 78,904 3.46
9 Polish 76,706 3.37
10 Swedish 71,209 3.13
11 Czech 68,921 3.03
12 Danish 64,864 2.85
13 Chinese 63,123 2.77
14 Italian 61,087 2.68
15 Hungarian 55,214 2.42
16 Finnish 48,311 2.12
17 Norwegian 35,161 1.54
18 Greek, Modern (1453–) 30,459 1.33
19 Korean 28,168 1.23
20 Bulgarian 27,457 1.07
Total 1,987,356 87.39
Other target languages 286,729 12.60

234
 World translation flows

Figure 16.3 Top five target languages.

Figure 16.4 Respective shares of the six UN languages (TL).

English comes in fourth place with almost half the total number of books translated (164,509
translations or 7.23%). Even though the number of books translated into English is on the rise,
the percentage remains disproportionate for translations from English into other languages
(slightly above 55%). Given that English speakers (L1 and L2) are spread out, it would be
interesting to find out the countries responsible for translations both from and into English.
When the list is limited to the six UN languages, the position of each language changes
(Figure 16.4). With 897 million speakers (L1), Chinese (Mandarin) comes first as the most
spoken language in the world but comes second to last as a target language. The reported
number of books translated into Mandarin totals 63,123 or 2.77%. On the other hand, with
436 million speakers (L1), Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world. Along
with French (240,045 translations or 10.55%), Spanish (228,559 translations or 10.05%) is
clearly ahead of the other four UN languages as target language.15 As such, for the different

235
Annie Brisset and Raúl E. Colón Rodríguez

languages, geographical distribution rather than the total number of speakers should be taken
into consideration.

Preferred subjects
Because of its predominance and geographical distribution, it is necessary to examine the
countries of origin and the nature of translations done from and into English.16 With English
as a source language, French would serve as an example of a target language. This choice
might seem random given that German is the top target language in the Index – about 13% of
all the translated books listed. German (L1) is however limited to a few countries, mainly Ger-
many, Austria and Switzerland. French is spoken in the 57 Member States of the Organisation
internationale de la francophonie (OIF), and even though it comes in second place as a target lan-
guage (10%), it has long overtaken German in terms of world diffusion. And, borrowing from
Abram de Swaan’s terminology, French has overtaken German in ‘communication value’.
Which countries translate books from English to French and what is the nature of the
books they translate? To keep things simple, the 19 subjects in the Index are grouped into
four categories: (1) Literature; (2) Humanities and Social Sciences (history, geography, biography,
law, social sciences, education, philosophy, psychology, religion, theology); (3) Sciences (natu-
ral, exact, applied); (4) Miscellaneous (arts, games, sports, generalities, bibliography).17
It is not surprising that France translates the most from English to French in all four
categories (Table 16.4). It is however noteworthy that France clearly translates many more
literary works than works of knowledge from English to French. Literature alone accounts
for about 63% of all the books translated from English to French (122,271), while sciences
and humanities and social sciences (including law and education) account for 11% and a little
over 16% respectively. France is immediately followed by Canada, Switzerland and Belgium,
countries in which French is one of the official languages. Of these three countries, Can-
ada is the only one in which English is an official language and that, with equal status with
French. About 80% of translations are done from English, the dominant language, to French,

Table 16.4 Translating country and subject of books translated from English to French18

Translating country Literature Humanities & Social sciences Sciences Miscellaneous Total

 1 France 76,705 20,349 13,736 11,481 122,271

 2 Canada 6,712 7,206 62,71 1,665 21,854
 3 Switzerland 717 1,366 524 315 2,922
 4 Belgium 2,026 1,049 1,037 301 4,413
 5 Germany 26 129 54 135 344
 6 UK 94 99 67 35 295
 7 Monaco 145 115 10 10 280
 8 Spain 14 30 21 18 83
9 USA 16 36 5 9 66
10 Algeria 2 13 9 3 27
11 Cameroon 2 4 4 0 10
12 Luxemburg 2 0 0 0 2
Total/Subject 86,461 30,393 21,538 13,972 152,567
%/Subject 56.67 14.11 28.23 9.15 100

236
 World translation flows

a minority language.19 In comparison, in Cameroon where English and French coexist as of-
ficial languages in similar proportions but in the reverse order (Echu 2004; Anchimbe 2010:
132), the volume of translations toward the minority language is far from comparable. While
Canada recorded 21,854 books translated from French to English, Cameroon registered only
ten books translated from English to French (Table 16.4).20 Countries that are neither anglo-
phone nor francophone like Germany or Spain mainly translate books in the humanities and
social sciences from English to French.
In the opposite combination (Table 16.5), 9 out of the first 15 countries have English as
a dominant language like the UK, the USA and certain Commonwealth countries (Aus-
tralia, Cameroon, Canada, India, Kenya, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa). Most often
inherited from colonization, this language is spoken by most of the population (Mufwene
2004). The USA and the UK are the anglophone countries that translate from French the
most. They mainly translate books in the humanities and social sciences (more than 40%) and
literature (34%). The number of books translated from French in the domains of anthropol-
ogy, philosophy, semiotics, sociology, psychoanalysis, etc., or in women’s studies (Beauvoir,
Cixous, Irigaray, etc.) in the 1960s and especially in the 1970s–1980s, when French Theory
(Barthes, Bourdieu, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Lyotard, etc.) became popular might explain
why the numbers are higher in this category when compared to the others.21
In the French to English combination (Table 16.5), there are some non-English-speaking
European countries where English (L2) is widely spoken by the population. Canada’s ranking
could be expected given its official language bilingualism policies (English and French) and the
way translation is sustained by numerous institutional instruments to ensure equality between
the two linguistic communities. Curiously, France ranks third, coming immediately after the
USA and the UK, on the list of countries that translate the most into English. By the 1970s, a
French sociolinguist had already begun to decry the fact that English was fast gaining grounds
becoming the dominant language of publication in French publishing houses (Gobard 1976).22

Table 16.5 Origin of French to English translations23

Translating country Literature Humanities & social sciences Sciences Miscellaneous Total

1 USA 3,484 4,562 1,364 1,319 10,729

2 UK 3,400 3,619 1,426 1,069 9,514
3 France 357 2,033 924 3,804 7,118
4 Canada 1,439 1,424 776 292 3,931
5 Germany 42 60 247 196 545
6 Belgium 30 54 16 100 200
7 Australia 56 69 14 23 162
8 India 12 104 7 6 129
9 Netherlands 10 14 11 4 39
10 Sweden 4 8 3 2 17
11 New Zealand 0 6 0 1 7
12 South Africa 0 2 0 0 2
13 Cameroon 1 0 0 0 1
14 Nigeria 0 0 0 0 0
15 Kenya 0 0 0 0 0
Total/Subject 8,835 11,955 4,788 6,816 32,394
%/Subject 27.27 36.90 14.78 21.04 100

237
Annie Brisset and Raúl E. Colón Rodríguez

Table 16.6 UN languages (TL): subjects24

Language Literature Humanities & social sciences Sciences Miscellaneous Total

Arabic 4,574 6,366 2,225 624 13,789

Chinese 16,937 30,168 14,460 3,731 65,296
English 42,638 66,307 29,306 30,649 163,556
French 127,639 59,490 30,696 25,305 243,130
Russian 56,641 22,829 16,755 4,781 101,006
Spanish 106,431 68,384 40,385 15,844 231,044

As shown in the Index, literature is the favorite subject for translations into Russian and
Spanish, and especially into French (Table 16.6). Humanities and social sciences win the
favor of Arab, Chinese and especially English. In the field of literature, the statistics indi-
cate that translations into French triple the number of translations into English. For the six
most widely used languages, French is the top target language for literature books. There is
however a major gap between the first and second categories that raise the most translation
(literature and humanities and social sciences). Seemingly, China has shown less interest in
literature – the total number of literature books translated into Chinese is less than half the
total number of literature books translated into English.
Arab comes in last in all categories with particularly low figures for the sciences in general,
and even lower figures for pure sciences (689 books translated compared to 1,535 for natu-
ral and applied sciences). A UNDP report published in 2003 highlighted the generally low
numbers of books translated in the Arab world.25 On the one hand, these figures were based
on obsolete data. On the other hand, the low figures provided above include figures from
certain countries that have experienced the civil wars and other armed conflicts that have
been disturbing the Middle East for decades now. In addition, as is the case for many other
languages, the list of translations submitted to UNESCO is, without a doubt, below the real-
ity.26 Still, it remains that the gap between Arab and the other languages is paradoxical given
the numerous translation policies that these regions have put in place.
In the Maghreb and the Middle East, these policies are old and diverse. They fall under
two categories depending on the nature of the initiative, whether regional or national, or
whether they stem from foreign countries (France, the UK, the USA). Established in part-
nership with various countries in the Middle East (Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen,
etc.), these bilateral programs aim to disseminate literary and intellectual works from donor
countries, with or without reciprocity. All these countries seek to maintain or expand their
sphere of influence on the region.27 Apart from literature, the translation of works on West-
ern thought on politics, economics and society aligns with this project – to spread Western
values, modernize the Arab world, transform their conception of the world and the image of
the West that they made for themselves. Translation policies driven by a concern for equality
are relatively recent.28
The 22 Member States of the Arab League are linked by a common language, Classical
Arabic (Fusha). It is a written-only language that is not understood by everyone. Promoting
classical Arabic means promoting the production and dissemination of knowledge, which, in
turn, influences the development of societies. In other words, translation is part of an Arabi-
zation policy officially launched in the early 1960s, but which dates as far back as the 1920s.
Various entities were created with a mission to Arabize subjects taught in post-secondary

238
 World translation flows

education, enrich Arabic culture and, on the other hand, to make the Arabic culture known.
In the same light, certain Member States of the Arab League (Algeria, Egypt, Kuwait, Syria,
etc.) established their own translation policy. Along with literature, most of the works trans-
lated within this context belong to the humanities and social sciences and are translated from
English. There is also growing interest in translation in the Gulf States, particularly in Saudi
Arabia and the Emirates. Almost all translations done in these states are functional transla-
tions from English. Dominant subjects of these translations include marketing and business
administration, economics, political science or information technology, while domains like
the humanities and social sciences are neglected, except for history – most often essays on the
Muslim world or essays on issues of local interest.29
To ensure that a greater number of countries were represented, the study was extended to
include other non-European languages (Hindi, Malay, Swahili, Turkish) which, according
to Abram de Swaan’s Global Language System Theory, belong to the restricted group of the
supercentral languages (Table 16.7).30
For Hindi and especially Turkish, literature raises more interest than the humanities and
social sciences. Swahili is an exception – the numbers are reversed in a two-to-one propor-
tion in favor of the humanities and social sciences. Everywhere else, these two categories
raise far more interest than sciences. Of these four languages, the greatest number of books
are translated into Turkish. Almost all translations into Turkish are done in Turkey (94%).
The country imports a few books in modern Greek (59), and almost double that number
of books in ancient Greek (110). The other translations into Turkish mostly come from
Germany (1.2%). As a reminder, Germany imports the greatest number of foreign books
( Table 16.3). It also has a large Turkish population (about 5%). As for translations from Turk-
ish, Germany is followed from far behind by Greece and Bulgaria and from even further
behind by Cyprus.31 Books translated from Turkish reveal that Turkey (candidate country
to the European Union) sees the need to export its works of knowledge and especially its
literature, into foreign languages (Table 16.8).
Hindi, the fourth most spoken language in the world, is the common language for a large
proportion of India’s population (41%). And this, along with English, the official language of
the central government of India, and Urdu, one of the 22 official languages at the regional
level. Even though often considered to be similar, Hindi differs from Urdu in writing and in
its vocabulary derived from Sanskrit, while Urdu bears the imprint of Arabic and Persian. As
shown in Table 16.9, India is the source of almost half of all the books translated from Hindi
(921 out of 1,621). This can be explained by the country’s linguistic diversity. Also, almost all
the foreign books translated into Hindi (3,142 out of 3,751) are translated in India.
Hindi and Urdu are both regional languages in India, but Hindi, along with English, is
the only central official language. It is the lingua franca of most of the population of the Union.
Urdu, spoken in the north of India, is also the official language in neighboring Pakistan.

Table 16.7 Non-European supercentral languages (TL): subjects32

Language Literature Humanities & social science Sciences Miscellaneous Total

Turkish 7,007 4,121 1,009 363 12,500

Hindi 1,933 1,584 191 42 3,75133
Malay 538 550 323 54 1,465
Swahili 99 218 8 4 329

239
Annie Brisset and Raúl E. Colón Rodríguez

Table 16.8 Origin of translations from Turkish (SL)

Main countries No. of translations

Germany 683
Turkey 109
Greece 109
Bulgaria 87
Cyprus 6
Total 2,910

Table 16.9 Hindi and Urdu

Main countries Hindi SL Urdu SL Hindi TL Urdu TL

India 921 412 3,142 341

Pakistan 2 95 0 641
Total globally 1,621 1,198 3,751 1,247

Table 16.10 Malay

Main countries SL TL

Malaysia 151 1,339

Indonesia 7 0
Singapore 6 112
France 12 1
Netherlands 9 1
China 0 3
Ex-USSR 5 5
Total globally 231 1,465

Given the respective statuses and distribution of these two languages, it is not surprising that
India translated about four times more titles into Urdu than Pakistan (412 books compared to
95) and that India translated twice less in the opposite combination (341 compared to 641).
India and Pakistan favor different subjects. India prefers literature (52%) while Pakistan, a
Muslim country, translates religious and theological works the most (44.6%).
Malaysia (Table 16.10) is responsible for the greatest number of translations into Malay
(91%), followed from very far behind by Singapore (7.6%). Indonesia does not report any
translations into Malay meanwhile it has a population of close to 9 million Malaysians.
Outside the Malay geographical zone (Malaysia and Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thai-
land), France (5.2%) translates the most from Malay. However, only 12 titles are reported.
Next comes the Netherlands with nine works translated from Malay. There is no recorded
translation from Malay to Chinese. In the opposite combination, from Chinese to Malay,
only three books are reported (Table 16.11).
Among the books selected for translation into Malay, literature occupies the same position
in Malaysia (36.6%) as in Singapore (36.5%). However, in Malaysia, it is closely followed by
sciences (23%), while in Singapore, it is closely followed by works on religion and theology

240
 World translation flows

Table 16.11 Malay (TL): subjects

Social sciences,
Country Literature Sciences Religion & theology law & education No. of translations

Malaysia 489 307 200 198 1,339

Singapore 41 16 35 17 112

Table 16.12 Swahili and Hausa

Swahili Hausa
Main countries SL TL Main countries SL TL

Tanzania 1 0 Nigeria 1 23
Kenya 0 4 Niger 0 3
Uganda n/a n/a Cameroon 0 0
South Africa 0 0 Chad 0 0
Mozambique 0 0 Sudan n/a n/a
Burundi n/a Côte d’Ivoire 0 0
D. R. of Congo 0 4
Total 1 8 Total 1 26
Germany 13 5 Germany 1 0
France 13 5 Poland 2 0
USA 9 0 USA 7 0
USSR 8 296 USSR 0 30
Japan 4 0 UK 0 1
UK 2 5 Japan 0 0
Sweden 2 3 Sweden 0 0
China 1 0 China 0 0
Total 52 314 Total 10 31
Total globally 67 329 Total globally 11 57

(31.25%). This percentage is way higher than the percentage for sciences (14.28%). The percent-
age for sciences in Singapore is almost identical to the percentage for religion in Malaysia (15%).
The main countries that speak Swahili (East Africa) are not the ones that translate the
greatest number of books into (2.4%) nor from (1.5%) that language. The countries that
publish translations from and into Swahili are located outside Africa (Table 16.12). Germany
and France record the same number of imported books from Swahili (19.4%). In the opposite
combination, the USA reports nine titles while the former USSR published 296 out of the
329 books, or 90% of the books translated into Swahili.
The majority of these books (Table 16.13) fall under the humanities and social sciences
(198 titles, including philosophy and psychology, history and geography). They are mainly
the founding writings of Marxism. They also narrate World War II, define capitalism and
communism, or explain issues pertaining to the non-aligned countries. They describe the
Soviet youth and boast about the various possibilities for studies in the USSR that are open
to foreigners. Literature comes in second place (91 titles). These works are produced by
great Russian authors or authors from different Soviet republics of that era. Children’s liter-
ature occupies a significant position. On the other hand, pure or applied sciences are almost

241
Annie Brisset and Raúl E. Colón Rodríguez

nonexistent (4 out of 296 titles). The translations are essentially one-sided: eight titles trans-
lated from Swahili out of a moreover small total (57 translations). After the fall of the Soviet
regime, translations from Swahili to Russian and from Russian to Swahili disappeared com-
pletely. The USA and the UK combined translated 11 books from Swahili, while Germany
and France translated 26 books from Swahili and 5 and 10 books into Swahili respectively.
Hausa, spoken in West Africa, has more speakers than Swahili. Hausa speakers are mainly
concentrated in Nigeria. Statistics on the number of books translated into Hausa are more
modest, but the trend is more or less the same. Nigeria reports almost half of the titles trans-
lated into Hausa. About half of all the translations into this language stem from the USSR
(30 out of 57). These all fall within the same categories as the translations into Swahili. No
Hausa books have been translated into Russian. During the period under study (1979–2009),
China seems to also be as indifferent to Swahili as it is to Hausa.

Translation flows and societal changes

The data above leads us to look closely at the translation flows surrounding certain historical
events. In Europe for example, 1991 marked the end of the Soviet Union. In Asia, the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China (PRC) was proclaimed in 1949. At the end of 1978, Deng Xiaoping
came to power with a policy of reform and opening. What were the reactions, through
translation, to these events?
When the Soviet regime collapsed in December 1991, the number and the nature of books
selected for translation in Russia changed radically (Table 16.14). Natural and exact sciences
were abandoned (−62.1%) in favor of philosophy and psychology (+278%). In ten years, the
number of translated books went from 423 to 1,602. However, religion and theology show
the most spectacular increase (+429%).

Table 16.13 Russian translations into swahili: subjects (1979–1991)

Social sciences, History Religion,

Literature law, education Philo Psychol. Geography theology Sciences Miscellaneous

USSR 91 173 15 10 0 4 3

Table 16.14 Russian (TL): subjects before and after 1991

Subjects 1982–1991 1992–2001 Increase/Decrease (%)

Religion, theology 256 1,356 429

Philosophy, psychology 423 1,602 278
Social sciences, education, law 1,892 2,046 8.13
Generalities, bibliography 122 131 7.37
History, geography, biography 920 922 0.21
Literature 16,825 17,827 2.74
Natural and exact sciences 2,153 815 −62.1
Applied sciences 2,851 2,679 −6.00
Arts, games, sports 699 459 −34.3
Total number of books translated 26,141 27,298 4.42

242
 World translation flows

From the beginning of the Soviet era, religion was considered superstition and there was
a massive suppression of the clergy and of believers – churches were destroyed, monasteries
confiscated, priests were killed or imprisoned (Pospielovsky 1988). The return of the reli-
gious shows an aspect of identity that the Soviet regime had not succeeded in eradicating.34
‘Scientific atheism’ had failed. To the number of books on religion and theology should be
added the books on oriental spirituality, particularly Hinduism, which are listed under phi-
losophy and psychology. Apart from these books, we find Freud’s works and other works by
authors that had been forbidden by the regime, or that promoted ideas that would have been
considered a threat to the communist doctrine.
In its early days, the young People’s Republic of China (1949) was concerned with the
establishment of its legitimacy in the eyes of the whole world. Within the context of the Cold
War the ‘new China’ chose cultural diplomacy as its tool for the conquest of minds. To this
end, during the first 17 years of its existence, it set up a translation and publishing program
with the aim of translating its own literature into foreign languages. Set on the Soviet model
established in the 1930s, the Foreign Language Press based in Beijing functioned both as a
translation office and publishing house. It also served as a censorship tool, used to first of all
tailor original works such that they presented a smooth image of the regime and portrayed
the revolutionary as the perfect hero. Classics of Chinese literature and of young revolution-
ary literature were translated. Between 1949 and 1966, more than 4,000 books were trans-
lated and published in 22 languages (Ni 2017). During the same period, China imported and
translated the classics of Marxist thought (Zhong 2003).
A few years after Mao’s death, Deng Xiaoping took over and ruled China from 1978
to 1992. He promoted an ‘Opening’ policy. The nation entered a new era of economic
reforms. Trade and diplomatic relations with the outside world intensified. During the ten
years (1979–1989) that followed, more than 2,000 Mandarin books were translated abroad.
Of this total, ten countries translated almost 75% of these books directly from Mandarin
into their own languages (Table 16.15). The other translations into foreign languages were
done in third-party countries such as the USA and France, where a dozen translations from
Mandarin to Vietnamese had been done at the time.
The USA, which officially recognized China in 1979, and the UK translated about a
third of these books. English was therefore the language into which the most translations
were done. The two Germanys translated more than a quarter of the books imported from

Table 16.15 Mandarin SL (1979–1989)

Main countries No. of translations

1 Germany (West) 385

2 USA 376
3 France 209
4 Japan 152
5 UK 149
6 Spain 120
7 USSR 108
8 Germany (GDR) 65
9 Italy 39
10 India 2
Total of first ten countries 1,605

243
Annie Brisset and Raúl E. Colón Rodríguez

China, with the number of books translated varying between the east and the west. The
Federal Republic translated about six times more books than the GDR and even a little
more than the USA. Judging from the number of translations registered during the decade
that ended with the repression of Tiananmen, West Germany, Spain, France, Italy, the UK,
and the USA were the Western countries the most interested in China. These countries
registered almost 80% of the books reported by the top ten translating countries. The
Communist USSR and GDR put together translated just over 10%. The contrast between
the USA (23.4%) and the USSR (6.7%) is striking. In Asia, Japan imported the most Chi-
nese books (9.47%), while South Korea reported none. About 40% of the books selected
fall under literature and about 12% under sciences (natural, exact and applied) as well as
social sciences.
As for China, there was a high demand for scientific works (25.5%), followed by literature
(23%) and social sciences (22.7%), but there was no great difference between the three cat-
egories. The subjects that drew the most interest varied depending on the source language.
As for translations from English, a main source language, in part, China borrowed works on
economics or related disciplines such as accounting or management. At the end of the cul-
tural revolution (1966–1976), China deemed it necessary to join Western theoretical schools
of thought such as Poststructuralism or Postcolonial criticism.35
Almost the same number of scientific books and literature books were translated from
Japanese, and about double that number were translated in the humanities and social sciences.
Meanwhile, China translated almost as many books from Russian in the three categories
(literature, humanities and social sciences, sciences).
Certain foreign countries (mainly Singapore, Malaysia, the USSR) also translated into
Mandarin. English (114 titles) and Russian (128 titles) were the main source languages of
these translations. For these countries that translated directly from and into Mandarin, inter-
est in China was apparently coupled with a desire to draw attention to their own literature
and works of knowledge.
The PRC continued to translate a lot from Mandarin (Table 16.16), but its objectives
seemed to differ from those pursued in its early days. This country’s other official languages,
like Uyghur spoken in the Muslim province of Xinjiang, became the main target languages.
These are languages spoken by groups that are not part of the majority Han Chinese ethnic
group.36 What subjects did the central State choose for the use of linguistic minorities? In
addition to mathematics and science textbooks, popular literature or practical books on busi-
ness and accounting, most of the books translated from Mandarin to the minority languages
of the country are works that fall under law and social sciences. There are almost no trans-
lations that fall under religion and theology. Also, translations from Mandarin to minority

Table 16.16 Mandarin (SL) to minority languages of China (1979–1989)

Main target languages No. of translations

Mongolian-Peripheral 1,003
Korean 591
Uyghur 432
Tibetan-Central 254
Kazakh 124
Zhuang 81
Total 2,485

244
 World translation flows

languages are one-way. During the decade under review, China translated 1,000 books into
peripheral Mongolian, but did not translate any book from that language. Similarly, it ex-
ported more than 400 books translated from Mandarin to Uyghur, but only translated two
from Uyghur.37 Available data reveals that there has been an internal sinicization project
carried out alongside as they open up to foreign knowledge.

Conclusion
As shown by the increasing curve that went from 43% in the mid-1980s to more than 55%
within three decades, English continues to reinforce itself. These figures give more weight
to sociologist Johan Heilbron’s (2010) observation that English holds the largest part of the
global translation market. English is visibly the origin of main literary works and works of
knowledge. Additionally, the percentage of English works published in non-English- speaking
countries shows that more than every other language, English guarantees publication and
ensures the circulation of works on the global scale. English is the only ‘hyper-central’
language within Abram de Swaan’s hierarchy of languages. It is the first reference language
for literature, sciences, technical subjects, diplomacy and commerce. The countries of or-
igin of translations into English and the fact that not only anglophone countries publish
and translate in this language call into question the ‘linguistic imperialism’ attributed to
the Anglo-American world. Clearly, and while it is not its only function, English is the
‘reference’ language, the cultural language or simply put, the lingua franca through which
literary and knowledge exchanges take place at the international level.
English’s hyper-centrality is accentuated by the monopoly of some publishing houses
which essentially publish in this language. Translation research for example, is built on para-
digms, models and concepts that draw from different traditions and conjunctures. However,
there exists a global translation research disseminated in English, which de facto imposes its
supremacy. The different issues researched tend to come together around the same models
and references that mainly originate in the anglophone world. This world is nonetheless
polycentric, and its different strongholds are not equal; the USA and the UK are at the top
of the Index’s quantitative list. Without a doubt, it is necessary to distinguish between the
supremacy of a given language and the supremacy of a country or group of countries that are
said to exercise power over others. The two are conflated. In effect, we are confronted with
a sociological phenomenon, namely the possible development of a doxa within our discipline
or its subfields.
Four major publishers share the translation research global market (encyclopedias, books
and journals). These publishers are all European and, at least in our discipline, they all pub-
lish in English. Thanks to their network of branches around the world and to their presence
on the Internet, they instantly reach universities and knowledge communities spread out on
all continents. At the end, books hardly circulate outside their linguistic sphere and tend to
not get distributed worldwide unless they are published in English, and preferably, by one
of these major publishing houses, capable of organizing the marketing and review of these
publications. A bibliometric sample revealed that their references are more of less limited to
works published in English.38 Although Translation Studies lays claim to internationaliza-
tion, that is, even though it has opened up to non-Western traditions, it remains surrounded
by unnoticed and ignored works, promoted by unheard voices. 39 Ironically, the translation of
theoretical works in the discipline seems to be a weak link in Translation Studies.
World consecration mechanisms through translation are well known in the field of lit-
erature (Casanova 2007). Besides literature, several studies on translation flows have been

245
Annie Brisset and Raúl E. Colón Rodríguez

carried throughout history. Recently, of particular relevance is that of Barré (2010), in which
the author proposes ‘a questioning on cultural diversity through the study of translation flows
from 1979 to 2002’ (2010: 1). Barré applies Network Analysis to measure cultural diversity
and to assess language recognition through translation. The focus is on the changing struc-
ture, that is, the dynamics of world translation flows, with Russian losing its centrality in
favor of English after the fall of the Berlin wall. This and other studies, including investiga-
tions drawing from cultural sociology (Bielsa 2016) contribute to a better understanding of
the socio-historical, geographical, political, economic or scientific conditions of literary and
knowledge translation.
Post-colonialist critique has widened the geographical space but confined the research
questions to the representation of the ‘Other’ and the power differentials between the cul-
tures that translate and the cultures that are translated. The sociological approach extends
this reflection by studying the institutional, symbolic or market regulation of translation.
It examines the effects of translation on the transformation of certain societies or of cer-
tain fields within these societies at given moments in their history: the modernization of
eighteenth-century Russia (Tyulenev 2012), Nietzsche and the shaping of political thought
in the USA (Giroux 2003), literary theories in Turkey and feminist criticism in the USA
(Susam-Saraeva 2006), philosophy in Mexico and the role of the translations by exiled phi-
losophers fleeing the Spanish Civil War (Castro-Ramirez 2018), just to name a few such case
studies. Whether they dwell on interlinguistic exchanges in past eras or on cutting-edge
information and communication technologies, sociological approaches in Translation Studies
are enriched by borrowings from Network Studies or from the different brands of Complex-
ity Theory. A look at translation flows reveals phenomena that open new paths for research.
The direction of translation flows and the subjects that either take forefront or are relegated
to the back are an indication of different agendas. Other than within the post-colonialist
framework, more attention must be paid to indirect or intermediary translations, translations
exported abroad or to regional minorities within the same country. Some of these transla-
tions, during certain periods and in certain countries, have had a social engineering agenda
while others reveal atypical linguistic combinations that might be explained by the diaspora
resulting from the massive population movements.
Translated by Dorine Ndobe Sosso

Further reading
Cronin, M. (2014) Translation and Globalization. London and New York: Routledge.
Examines how the new economic and technological context is affecting translation and translators,
while drawing attention to the need for promoting cultural and linguistic diversity.
Marais, K. (2019) ‘Effects Causing Effects. Considering Constraints in Translation’, in Marais, K. and
Meylaerts, R. (eds.) Complexity Thinking in Translation Studies. Methodological Considerations. London
and New York: Routledge, pp. 53–72.
Drawing from Narrative Theory and Complexity Theory, Marais examines the constraining role of
social and human trajectories on translators and translations.
Gambier, Y. and Doorslaer, L. (eds.) (2016) Border Crossings. Translation Studies and Other Disciplines.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Addresses the bridging function of the translation concept and the exchange or input between transla-
tion studies and various disciplines such as history, information and communication studies, biosemi-
otics or cognitive neurosciences.
Simon, S. (2012). Cities in Translation: Intersections of Language and Memory. London: Routledge.
A socio-historical and cultural perspective on multilingual, multiethnic urban space as translation
space.

246
 World translation flows

Notes
The

247
Annie Brisset and Raúl E. Colón Rodríguez

dp-pd/dv-vd/lang/index-fra.cfm; Statistics on official languages in Canada. https://www.canada.

ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/official-languages-bilingualism/publications/statistics.html.

248
 World translation flows

References
Anchimbe, E. A. (2010) ‘Constructing a Diaspora. Anglophone Cameroonian Identity Online’, in
Taiwo, R. (ed.), Handbook of Research on Discourse Behavior and Digital Communication: Language Struc-
tures and Social Interaction. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, pp. 130–144.
UNDP. (2003) Arab Human Development Report. Available online: http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/
arab-human-development-report-2003 [Accessed 13 June 2020].
Barré, G. (2010) ‘La globalización de la cultura y la cuestión de la diversidad cultural: estudio de los
flujos mundiales de traducciones entre 1979 y 2002’, REDES. Revista hispana para el análisis de redes
sociales, 18(1), pp. 183–217. Available online: http://revista-redes.rediris.es [Accessed 13 June 2020].
Bielsa, E. (2016) Cosmopolitanism and Translation. Investigations in the Experience of the Foreign. London and
New York: Routledge.
Bogenç Demirel, E. and Görgüler, Z. (2019) ‘Traduction dans les réseaux sociaux: nouvelles pratiques
traductives en Turquie’, Des Mots aux Actes, 8(13), pp. 271–288.
Brady, A. M. (2012) ‘We Are All Part of the Same Family: China’s Ethnic Propaganda’, Journal of Cur-
rent Chinese Affairs, 4, pp. 159–181.
Brisset, A. (2017a) ‘Globalization, Translation, and Cultural Diversity’, Translation and Interpreting Stud-
ies, 12(2), pp. 254–277.
Brisset, A. (2017b) ‘Traductologies: des mondes qui s’ignorent’ (First Global Conference on Transla-
tion Studies, Université de Paris-Ouest-Nanterre, April 2017, 10–17), in Lautel-Ribstein, F. (ed.),
État des lieux de la traductologie dans le monde. Paris: Garnier (Forthcoming).
Casanova, P. (2007) The World Republic of Letters, M.B. DeBevoise (tr.), Cambridge, MA.: Harvard
University Press.
Castro-Ramirez, N. (2018) Hacerse de palabras. Traducción y filosofía en México, 1940–1970. Ciudad
de México: Bonilla Artigas.
Cheung, M. P.Y. (2011) ‘The (Un)Importance of Flagging Chineseness. Making Sense of a Recurrent
Theme in Contemporary Chinese Discourse on Translation’, Translation Studies, 4(1), pp. 41–57.
Colón Rodríguez, R. E. (2019) ‘A Complex and Transdisciplinary Approach to Slow Collaborative
Activist Translation’, in Marais, K. and Meylaerts, R. (eds.), Complexity Thinking in Translation
Studies. Methodological Considerations. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 152–179. Available
online: https://www.routledge.com/Complexity-Thinking-in-Translation-Studies-Methodologi-
cal-Considerations/Marais-Meylaerts/p/book/9781138572485. [Accessed 13 June 2020].
Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Dialogue. (2009). Investing in Cultural Diversity and Intercultural
Dialogue: UNESCO World Report. Paris: UNESCO. Available online: https://en.unesco.org/
interculturaldialogue/resources/130 [Accessed 24 August 2020]
Crystal, D. (2012) [1997] English as a Global Language. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University
Press.
De Swaan, A. (2001) Words of the World: The Global Language System. Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Echu, G. (2004) The Language Question in Cameroon. Yaounde, Bloomington. Available online: https://
bop.unibe.ch/linguistik-online/article/download/765/1309?inline=1 [Accessed 13 June 2020].
Ethnologue: Languages of the World. (2017). 21st edition. Available online: https://www.ethnologue.
com/enterprise-faq/how-many-languages-world-are-unwritten-0. [Accessed 13 June 2020].

249
Annie Brisset and Raúl E. Colón Rodríguez

Gaspari, F. and Hutchins, J. (2007) ‘Online and Free! Ten Years of Online Machine Translation: Ori-
gins, Developments, Current Use and Future Prospects’, Proceedings of the MT Summit XI, 10–14
September 2007. Copenhagen, pp. 199–206.
Gobard, H. (1976) L’Aliénation linguistique. Paris: Flammarion.
Giroux, D. (2003) Fascisme et magie en Amérique: lectures politiques contemporaines de Nietzsche, PhD thesis.
Montreal: UQAM (unpublished).
Heilbron, J. (2010) ‘Structure and Dynamics of the World System of Translation’, UNESCO, International
Symposium on Translation and Cultural Mediation, February 2010, 22–23. Available online: https://ddd.
uab.cat/pub/1611/1611_a2015n9/1611_a2015n9a4/Heilbron.pdf. [Accessed 13 June 2020].
Index Translationum. Available online: http://www.unesco.org/xtrans/ [Accessed 13 June 2020].
Jacquemond, R. (2014) ‘Translation Policies in the Arab world’, The Translator, 15(1), pp. 15–35.
Les 80 premières langues du monde. (2017) CEFAN. Available online: www.axl.cefan.ulaval.ca/
Langues/2vital_expansion_tablo1.htm [Accessed 13 June 2020].
LITPROM (Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Literatur aus Afrika, Asien und Lateinamerika). Available
online: http://www.litprom.de.
Lost or Found in Translation. Translation’s Support Policies in the Arab World (2004). A study commissioned
by the Next Page Foundation, Thalassa Consulting/Gregor Meiering.
Mufwene, S. S. (2004) ‘Language Birth and Death’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 33(1), pp. 201–222.
Ni, X. (2017) ‘Translating the Socialist Nation. Exporting Chinese Literature under the New People’s
Republic of China (1949–966)’, Forum, 15(1), pp. 27–49.
Paker, S. and Yilmaz, M. (2004) ‘A Chronological Bibliography of Turkish Literature in English
Translation: 1949–2004’, Translation Review, 68(1), pp. 15–18.
Pospielovsky, D. (1988). A History of Soviet Atheism in Theory and Practice, and the Believer, vol. 2, Soviet
Anti-Religious Campaigns and Persecutions. New York: St Martin’s Press.
Pym, A. (1999). “Scandalous Statistics? A Note on the Percentages of Translations in English,” Source.
The Newsletter of the Literary Division of the American Translators Association, 29, pp. 7–9. Available
online: http://usuaris.tinet.cat/apym/on-line/research_methods/venuti_scandals.pdf
Qvortrup, L. (2003) The Hypercomplex Society. New York: Peter Lang.
Sapiro, G. (2009a) ‘L’Europe, centre du marché mondial de la traduction,’ in Sapiro, G. (ed.), L’Espace
intellectuel en Europe. Paris: La Découverte, pp. 249–300.
Sapiro, G. (2009b) Les Contradictions de la globalisation éditoriale. Paris: Éditions du Nouveau Monde.
Susam-Saraeva, S. (2006) Theories on the Move. Translation Role in the Travel of Literary Theories. Amster-
dam and New York: Rodopi.
Tyulenev, S. (2012) Translation and the Westernization of Eighteenth Century Russia. Berlin: Frank &
Timme.
Uslu, M. (2012) ‘Representation of the Turkish Literature in English: Translations of Short Stories as
a Case’, Journal of Translation Studies, 5(1), pp. 1–38.
Venuti, L. (1995) The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London and New York: Routledge.
Venuti, L. (1998) The Scandals of Translation. Towards an Ethics of Difference. London and New York:
Routledge.
Von Bergen, J. (2011) ‘Translating and Interpreting is a Growing, but Uneven Industry’, Philadelphia
Inquirer, 8 May. Available online: https://www.inquirer.com/philly/business/20110508_Translat-
ing_and_interpreting_is_a_growing__but_uneven__industry.html?arc404=true [Accessed 24
August 2020].
Wintergreen Research, Inc. (2011) Language Translation: Market Shares, Strategies, and Forecasts, World-
wide, 2011–2017. Available online: http://salisonline.org/market-research/language-translation-
software-market-shares-and-forecasts-worlwide-2011-2017.
Wintergreen Research, Inc. (2015) Global Machine Translation Market, 2015–2019. Available online:
https://www.reportlinker.com/p01079085/Global-Machine-Translation-Market.html [Accessed
24 August 2020].
Zhong, W. (2003) ‘An Overview of Translation in China: Practice and Theory’, Translation Journal, 7(2).
Available online: https://translationjournal.net/journal/24china.htm. [Accessed 13 June 2020].

250
 17
Translation and authorship
in a globalized world
Salah Basalamah

Introduction
For as long as translation has been practiced in many parts of the world, the issue of who
the author of the translation or even of the original text is has never been the object of great
concern, except for genealogical purposes ( Pollock et al. 2015). Philologists and attribution-
ists are interested in tracing back the individualities of authors, as enacted in their writings,
and in establishing the authenticity of their authorship with the purview of contributing to
writing the history of texts and their authors. In particular, attribution studies scholars ( Love
2002; Juola 2008) have reported that authorship attribution is an issue that dates back to
Antiquity and that has developed beyond mere internal stylistic evidence to encompass the
biographical and sociohistorical circumstances under which works were produced. However,
the scope of the attribution of authorship as a field has extended to include the modern no-
tion of property introduced in the eighteenth century, when plagiarism increasingly became
an economic issue ( Rose 1993; Love 2002). Although translation authorship attribution had
not been the object of much investigation until the Western Renaissance ( Foz 1998; Delisle
and Woodsworth 2012), translators and their work attracted more interest with the advent
of literary authors rights during the eighteenth century ( Venuti 1998, 2008). At the peak of
colonization at the end of the nineteenth century, translation was even characterized as the
­
‘international question par excellence’ according to Louis Renault (quoted in Basalamah 2009).
In fact, mechanized reproduction of works, appropriative translations and piracy across bor-
ders became so pervasive that they prompted the beginning of the internationalization of
copyright and hence triggered the birth of the ‘Berne Convention for the Protection of Lit-
erary and Artistic Works’ ( WIPO 1986).
The late nineteenth century was to be of great significance for the legal and doxic devel-
opment of the notions of authorship and translation during the next century and beyond, as
it represented the historical conjunction of the colonial era—with the extension of the spatial
influence of the European powers over the rest of the globe. It also produced the construc-
tion of the figure of the artist as a prophet or a new secular god ( Bénichou 1977, 1996). This
conjunction would solidify the notion which has been accepted since then that authors and
authorship are of a higher status than translators and translation, based on the pretext that the

251
Salah Basalamah

former are essentially similar to the way the European colonizers saw themselves in compar-
ison to all other people ( Basalamah 2007). Since that time, translation has been internation-
ally recognized as secondary to authorship and administered by authors’ rights (civil law) and
copyright (common law) (Goldstein 2001).
From the middle of the twentieth century onwards, with the advent of independence
from the colonial powers, translation (and reproduction for that matter) has even become
the centre of a legal battle pitting the newly liberated nation- state members of the Berne
Convention ( BC)—who had become members by default because of their colonizers’ pre-
vious membership— against the publishing lobbies of the industrialized colonial powers
( Ricketson 1987). As a form of compensation for the spoliation of their cultural development
during the colonial era, newly independent countries claimed free rights (i.e. no licencing)
on the translation and reproduction of books for educational purposes ( UNESCO 1995). But
the final issue was fought back in favour of copyright holders in industrialized countries who
made a few limited concessions in the 1971 Paris Convention, in an appendix for developing
countries. That Appendix has never been implemented because of the heavy administrative
load the implementation of the process would entail ( Basalamah 2000; Silva 2012).
In the current era of globalization and as the spatial extension of humanity over the globe
is paradoxically shrinking the planet and in which the sudden progress of the technologies
of information are converging, reshaping cultures and identities (Morley and Robins 1995;
Tomlinson 1999), the notion of authorship— a nd its presumed originality—is the locus of
a global economic exploitation of immaterial goods and cultural imperialism through the
legal instruments of intellectual property (IP). That legal regime administers both cultural/
cognitive contents and technological means of diffusion, including multinational transla-
tion publishing ( Wirtén 2004; Basalamah 2009). However, the fast-paced developments of
information technologies ( IT) have also put into question the notions of authorship and
originality and started to become even more contested than previously—not only under
pressures from developing countries for access to content, but also from within industrialized
countries, with a growing global consciousness of the ability and need of users to participate
in the construction of the noosphere, or the ‘collective intelligence’ ( Vaidhyanathan 2001;
Broussard 2007; Berry 2008; Tovey 2008).
With this historical background in mind, this chapter aims first at delineating a concise
outline of the philosophical, legal and sociopolitical issues pertaining to the relationship
between authorship and translation; second, at summarizing current research in translation
studies with reference to globalization and digitization; and third, at drawing broad outlines
of future research, especially in taking stock of the expanding digital era, including the emer-
gence of artificial intelligence (AI) and the growing contestation of power concentration and
the reclaiming of more ethical public policies.

Understanding the tensions: originality in authorship and translation

The perspective of translation studies is a privileged locus for the observation and study of
the various possible relations between the status of the original and the translation, as well
as the author and the translator. Whether from the point of view of philosophy, legal studies
or social, political and cultural studies, the relationship between the poles of the binary can
be quite indicative, on the one hand, of the advancement of the thought and ideologies that
are fostered by their respective literatures and, on the other hand, of the economic and po-
litical interests that they cater to. The following subsections will start with the most abstract
vantage point ( philosophy) to the most concrete (social, political and cultural dimensions)

252
 Translation and authorship

and will carry on through the legal (copyright law) which is disciplinarily situated at the
intersection of both perspectives.

The philosophical dimension

One of the most influential philosophical reflections translation studies has encountered over
the double binary in question (i.e. original/translation and author/translator) is the one ini-
tiated by Walter Benjamin. In his seminal essay ‘The Task of the Translator’ (1923/1996),
which prefaces his own translation of Baudelaire’s Petits Poëmes en Prose, Benjamin expounds
his messianic conception of translation and develops a series of metaphors that represent the
relationship between original and translation. Besides how the fruit is linked to its skin and
the tangent to the circle, the most powerful of them is the filiation metaphor whereby trans-
lation is portrayed as the ‘afterlife’ or the ‘survival’ of the original.

Just as the manifestations of life are intimately connected with the phenomenon of life
without being of importance to it, a translation issues from the original—not so much
from its life as from its afterlife. For a translation comes later than the original, and since
the important works of world literature never find their chosen translators at the time of
their origin, their translation marks their stage of continued life.
(Benjamin
­ 1996: ­254–255)
​­

Although translation in the eyes of Benjamin seems to transcend its traditional dependence
on the original, it shows nonetheless that it can serve the latter by extending its life and, as a
result, its geocultural borders. So much so that Jacques Derrida further advanced Benjamin’s
reading by demonstrating the ‘ indebtedness’ of the original to translation in so far as the
former ‘survives’ through the latter thus emphasizing the double-bind of the relationship, a
reciprocal dependence (1985). For Derrida, contrary to its past state of completeness and perfec-
tion, the original now ‘calls for a complement’, its translation(s), and it is to the latter that falls
the onus of returning its debts (1985: 188). The hierarchical relationship has been restabilized
into that of interdependence and equality and of each one’s indebtedness towards the other.
This stance should demonstrate, however, that despite Roland Barthes’ postmodernist
claim about the ‘Death of the Author’ (1977), the questioning of the transcendence of the
original and its author does not necessarily amount to the disappearance of the origin and
the subject. The ‘ birth of the reader’ (and the translator by the same token) does not dispense
with the survival of the author’s ‘signature’ ( Derrida 1986) and its legal and ethical functions
as a necessary link that recalls any textual production back to its producer ( Burke 1995).
In a vibrant revision of the ‘anti-authorial’ movement in modern literary criticism, Sean
Burke (1998) revisits the texts and philosophical contexts of the main founders of poststruc-
turalism ( Barthes, Foucault and Derrida) to demonstrate that their a nti-authorialism was
misread by showing their inner contradictions. He does that, for example, by exposing that
the death of the author can only be performed through his/her reinstatement, especially
through the author’s body and his/her historicity. The virtual and textualized author cannot
coexist with the claim of his/her concreteness and subjectivity. Beyond the polemical di-
mension of Burke’s radical criticism of a movement that extended its influence into feminist
and postcolonial studies, it indicates the continuity and relevance of authorship not only for
critical theory, but even more so for the law. The issue, however, becomes whether the pro-
nouncement of the death of the author affects the persistence of the original’s hegemony over
‘derivative works’ such as translation, according to the language of copyright law.

253
Salah Basalamah

The legal dimension

The inclusion of translation rights in multilateral discussions on authors’ rights in the last
quarter of the nineteenth century has marked the growing international concern about the
issue of piracy and works crossing state borders without retribution nor attribution to the
stakeholders, namely the publishers and the authors. Just when Mallarmé (1980) was chant-
ing the erasure of the poet in his poems, international literary figures such as Victor Hugo,
Walt Whitman and Ivan Tourgeniev were advocating for the recognition of their rights at
the annual conferences of the International Literary and Artistic Association (ALAI 1889).
For these influential authors, the right to translation is not about the translator’s prerogatives,
but those of the author to authorize or not authorize the translations of their works as well as
to retain their rights in these translations. At that time, authors consider translators as pirates
and near impersonators of the authors. This kind of representation of translation may have
been the reason for the alternative paths that copyright (common law) and author’s rights
(civil law) have followed.
While Anglo-Saxon copyright is an eminently utilitarian economic right in that it con-
siders any kind of intellectual or artistic production as a monopolized commodity (albeit at
the same time meeting the needs of the public), by contrast, author’s rights in civil law is a
personalist body of law that includes the moral dimension (i.e. the attribution of a work to
its author is inalienable) and was conceived of as a guarantee of the French cultural excep-
tion’s brand (i.e. a political concept meant to treat culture not as a commodity). Although
this difference between the two legal regimes may have seemed distinctive at face value, it
was nonetheless reduced in the 1995 TRIPS agreement of the World Trade Organization
( WTO) with the exclusion of article 6( bis) of the Berne Convention addressing the civilist
notion of ‘moral rights’, which considered the relationship between the author and his/her
work as inalienable.
This exclusion seems to support translation rights by disconnecting the personality of the
author from their work and apparently relativizing this relationship that moral rights are re-
inforcing. It is worth noting, nevertheless, that the right to translate does not autonomize the
translator to the point that they are liberated from the prevalence and control of the author.
Before the translation, a licence needs to be obtained from the author. After the translation,
translators only retain rights in their translation at the exclusion of the ‘underlying work’ that
remains in the dominion of the author ( UNESCO 1976: art. II.3).
With the advent of the new IT and a rampant global digitization of knowledge and cul-
ture, authors and artistic creators started to have new concerns. In some ways similar to the
concerns that were expressed a century earlier when translation was viewed as an equiva-
lent to reproduction ( Pouillet 1879), under the pressure of lobbying property-rights hold-
ers, governments have sided with the 1995 TRIPS Agreement as the internet became the
vehicle for the growing production of translations and subtitles by non-professionals, ama-
teurs and fansubbers outside the old-t rodden paths of copyright laws ( Pérez González and
Susam- Saraeva 2012). While authors’ rights are used by publishers and copyright owners
to campaign in favour of establishing barriers and legal measures to reinforce national and
international laws ( WIPO 1996; DMCA 1998; ISD 2001), a whole movement of resistance
against copyright laws has appeared to denounce the monopoly and commodification of
culture and knowledge by media conglomerates and multinational publishers. Whether with
the support of an activist agenda against inequalities, an unbounded world-wide web hori-
zon of human interaction or an ecological culture of creation and innovation in the public
domain, all these streams of thought are motivated by the promises of mutual cooperation

254
 Translation and authorship

for knowledge and culture creation thanks to the interconnected virtual world ( DiBona
et al. 1999; Levy 1997; Vaidhyanathan 2001; Stallman 2002; Lessig 2004). Like any legally
classified ‘derivative work’ in the digital age of a borderless world, translation represents a
potential space of resistance allowing to negotiate the issue of its right to exist freed from the
shackles of the original and aspiring to the same freedom of movement between nations and
cultures as those advocated for material goods.

The sociopolitical dimension

From a public policy-making perspective, it may be helpful to understand that the major ob-
stacle pitting copyright laws of authorship against the basic function of translation lies essen-
tially in the fact that both have opposite vocations (Sadek 2018). On the one hand, although
the legal protection of authors’ rights to their works is meant to encourage creation and in-
novation, it is also conceived of as the recognition and attribution of a cultural artefact to a
proprietor whose power over their property is not limited to the actual work but extends to
­ ​­
all its non-critical1
forms of derivatives (such as translation and adaptation). In order to ensure
exclusivity of ownership to the author (and/or publisher), copyright law puts limitations over
the uses that may be extended from the original. On the other hand, translation works as an
agent of diffusion and distribution that reaches beyond the cultural and linguistic borders of
the original. Translation is by definition an outreach activity that can bridge remote cultures,
help rebuild nations damaged or alienated by colonialism and introduce new aesthetic forms
in arts and literatures, whereas copyright law raises legal and financial barriers between more
industrialized and powerful knowledge economies and less developed countries that are in
need of translated and/or adapted educational materials. The barriers facing developing and
least developed countries can be explained by the fact that international copyright law requires
them to apply for translation licences; even if the latter are ‘compulsory’ for countries quali-
fying for the concessions of the Berne Convention Appendix, they still have to pay for them
and accept other temporal and administrative limitations ( Ricketson 1987; Basalamah 2000).
This overarching divergence of purposes between translation and copyright indicates at
the same time that the subservience of the former to the latter is socio-politically oriented
towards the economic interests of the powerful media conglomerates and multinational pub-
lishing companies (Smith and Ramdarshan Bold 2018). But resistance to this state of affairs is
not inexistent. On the contrary, it can be noted that translation as an interlinguistic activity
is used by the activist translator network Babels2 with an egalitarian political agenda in the
European and World Social Forums as a statement in the resistance against language in-
equality resulting from colonization ( Boéri 2008). Translation can also be used as a heuristic
concept to address and articulate cultural, legal and political differences among grassroots
movements around the world in order to face the same capitalist adversary (Santos 2014).
This is a further indication that the politics of translation reveals its vocational bend towards
a sociopolitical project committed to embracing the democratization of culture, knowledge
and education.
In this sense, translation positions itself, on a local and global scale, as a necessary comple-
ment to authorship by representing in some capacity the consciousness of the public interest
against the exclusive one of the owners ( Basalamah 2009). As a matter of fact, this way of
conceptualizing translation conditions it to symbolize a form of writing that, although ap-
pearing as a competing one to authorship, only highlights the paradoxically primary role of
what has for a long time been held secondary.

255
Salah Basalamah

Translation and authorship in current translation studies

If one browses database collections of translation studies research, it is remarkable to find that
the treatment—let alone a questioning— of the status of authorship and the original does not
seem to take a centre stage. A search sample on the 80,000 plus references in the Bibliography
of interpreting and translation ( BITRA 2020) demonstrates the paucity of translation studies
research on the topic, and an even greater paucity of theoretical discussions pertaining to the
question of the translator and the translation’s position v is-à-v is the author and the original.
The few references in translation studies dealing with the latter subject have, for the most
part, drawn their inspiration and empirical studies from either comparative literature, post-
colonial studies or philosophy. Under which translation studies key theme(s) the question of
authorship has been so far researched? And how does it relate to globalization?

The issue of status

A key issue widely tackled in translation studies and other related fields (such as compar-
ative literature, postcolonial studies and philosophy) is the one pertaining to the status of
the translator, and by extension, the translation. This issue is negotiated whether by raising
the problems encountered by professionals (Gouadec 2007; Van Dam and Zethsen 2008,
2010; Ruokonen 2013; Cabanellas 2014), by discussing the imbalance of the power relations
between translating and translated languages ( Venuti 1998, 2008, 2019; Casanova 2004) or
by conceptually debating or fictionalizing the position of translators in light of the question-
ing of authorship and originality ( Ungaretti 1946; Paz 1992; Borges 1999; Waisman 2005;
Venuti 2008).
There are mainly three potential sources for the discourse on the representation of trans-
lation and translators. The first comes from an external perception according to which the
social discourse obviously ignores what the activity of translation entails until one experi-
ences it ( Robinson 2003). Not surprisingly, this second perception stems from translators
themselves in relation to their own self-effacement as the best service provided to the orig-
inal text (Sela-Sheffy and Shlesinger 2011). This self-image of the ‘ invisible translator’ for
the sake of a more transparent translation ( Venuti 2008) feeds into their identity formation
and status in society. The third potential source of the discourse on translator/translation
status arises from a group of social agents who can be historically identified as authors (who
launched the movement towards making laws to protect their works), publishers and law-
makers ( Basalamah 2009). Over the last three centuries, all these related actors have greatly
contributed to the development of today’s legal discourse about authorship, within which
translation ended up being recognized as a ‘derivative work’.
Facing this socially grounded discourse on translation and authorship, literature, literary
theory, as well as cultural, postcolonial and translation studies have produced a number of
works that attempted to resist the apparent fatality of the translator/translation’s erasure.
A first example can be found in Octavio Paz (1992), who defined translation in the widest
sense, including the process of a child learning to speak ( Paz 1992: 152)— comparable in this
to Steiner’s representation of the cognitive process of encoding- decoding where translation,
‘properly understood, is a special case of the arc of communication’ (Steiner 1975: 47). Fol-
lowing this vein of enlarging the meaning of translation, Paz recounts a broad picture of
human development since Babel and portrays humanity’s textual production as ‘a growing
heap of texts, each slightly different from the one that came before it: translations of transla-
tions of translations. Each text is unique, yet, at the same time, it is the translation of another

256
 Translation and authorship

text’ ( Paz 1992: 154). Here translation appears as a producer of difference while ensuring at
the same time a community of origin. Such a radical vision of translation implies a no-less
radical notion of the original:

No text is entirely original because language itself, in its essence, is already a translation:
first, of the non-verbal world and then, because every sign and phrase is a translation of
another sign and phrase. But this rationale may be inverted without losing validity: all
texts are original because each translation is distinct.
(Paz 1992: 154)

If all texts are translations of each other or all are originals due to being distinct, then it
follows according to this conception that authorship and translatorship would be equalized,
in opposition to the common view that subsumes the status of the latter to the authority of
the former.
One of the most prominent figures of the dethronement of authorship to the benefit of
translation remains Jorge Luis Borges. Since the early 2000s, several translation studies schol-
ars have picked up on Borges’ highly unique take on literary translation ( Kristal 2002; Fraser
2004; Waisman 2005; Servini 2007). Not only does Borges believe that a ‘good translator…
might choose to treat the original as a good writer treats the draft of a work in progress’
(Servini 2007: 106), he actually implemented his views as exemplified by his relationship
and collaboration with his translator Norman Thomas Di Giovanni, whose translations led
Borges to make many changes to his poems and short stories (Fraser 2004: 56–59). Moreover,
some of his works of fiction have symbolized this postmodern stance towards authorship and
translation. The case of ‘Pierre Ménard, Author of the Quixote’ ( Borges 1999: 88–95), one
of the most quoted in translation studies, who allegedly rewrote better than Cervantes parts
of his Don Quixote, albeit literally the exact same text, shows that the historical position of
Ménard in the twentieth century in comparison to that of the original author in the seven-
teenth century made it possible to take advantage of all the cultural accumulations separating
Cervantes’ version from Ménard’s:

[T]he real lesson of Pierre Menard is radically a nti-historical: no author, no text can
ever lay claim to originality. The very notion that texts are anomalous events dependent
on time, place, circumstance, the ingenious subject, is a massive delusion. Texts, all
texts, are nothing more than the exercise of a t rans-historical, self- sustaining and self-
repeating human intelligence.
(Fraser 2004: 64)

As a result, translation, like the rewriting performed by Ménard, becomes by definition an

inscription of difference that could amount to full-fledged originality and, through its com-
pounded cognitive, geographical and historical displacements, results in a substantial gain
despite its apparent sameness to the original. Again, the example of Borges demonstrates that
the status of translator/translation could be conceived of away from the beaten paths of com-
mon knowledge and—paradoxically—brings authorship to the same level as translationship.
Finally, the notion of the status of translator/translation in contrast with authorship can
also be understood from a postcolonial perspective. Among the multiple works by Borges
that elaborate his literary theorization of translation, reading and writing, A Universal History
of Inequity (1935/1999) is worth mentioning as a vivid example of the reclaim by the Empire
to write back (Ashcroft et al. 2002). In these short stories, Borges uses US pre-texts by Mark

257
Salah Basalamah

Twain to recontextualize them into the Argentinian culture. This cultural appropriation of
Anglo- Saxon sources and their displacement to a Latin-American context is an attempt to
reverse the power relations not only between the centre and the periphery but also between
the contested original pre-texts and their rewritings or deliberate mistranslations. In his
comment on the short stories, Waisman observes that Borges’ ‘transformations that create
the displacement toward the margins are a recoding akin to translation’ (2005: 91).Translat-
ing British and US fictions into indigenized Latin-A merican ones is exactly the irreverence
Borges intends towards the universalized models he is distorting. So much so that even the
characters are transformed:

…the other villains of Historia universal de la infamia are not the only thieving im-
posters who invert traditional roles and expectations in these texts. It is Borges himself,
through the masks of his narrators, who steals and distorts, who misreads and mistrans-
lates, to invert previously accepted North- South and center-periphery mappings.
(Waisman
­ 2005: ­91–92)
​­

This example illustrates that the peripheral position of translation can play a symbolic role
in the resistance against the double hegemony of the North/centre and against author-
ship as more commonly recognized. In an increasingly globalized world, the rewriting/
mistranslation of some symbols of hegemonic cultures acts as an attempt to undermine power
imbalances and at the same time to develop peripheral literature.

The issue of ethics

Lawrence Venuti’s The Scandals of Translation (1998) has addressed a similar concern as Borges,
but instead of speaking from the more creative perspective of the author—because it is eth-
ically more accepted when authors manipulate their own works or use the masks of their
respective fictional narrators—Venuti performed his postcolonial undertaking from the
standpoint of the translator. The difference, however, is that the practical experiments and
the advocacy fostered by Venuti in favour of ‘an ethics of difference’ (1998: 82) for the pur-
pose of questioning Anglo-A merican global cultural hegemony runs against the unequal
trends of the dominant social discourse about translation. This resisting bent by Venuti is
however balanced with a discourse that, while claiming more visibility for the translator,
does not question radically enough the position of the author.
Nevertheless, Venuti’s Scandals did just as much to stir the debate about the current asym-
metries between translation and authorship, explain the intricacies of language and publish-
ing dominations at the global level and suggest a translation- ethics-based political agenda
for the resistance against cultural hegemonies. For example, in his chapter ‘Formation of
cultural identities’, Venuti shows how the Japanese literature translated into English in the
1950–1960s was very selective, ethnocentric and homogenizing with the intent to shape a
literary canon in the shadow of the Second World War. The result was that the representa-
tion of Japan and its culture was the reflection of an ideological ‘ domestic cultural support
for American diplomatic relations with Japan’ ( Venuti 1998: 73). The next generation of
translators of Americanized Japanese authors, all born after the war, produced a very differ-
ent representation of Japan and led to the formation of a radical departure from the previous
canon whereby Japan’s afterwar prosperity could be explained by the influence of Ameri-
can culture. This shows the substantial power of translation in cultural representation and
in reflecting the state of a translating culture/nation in the unfolding of its own historical

258
 Translation and authorship

evolution. But it also demonstrates how ethnocentric cultural identity formation can be the
product of the reshaping of original works.
However, Venuti’s point is— especially from a dominant vantage point—that translation
has the power to do the reverse of its ethnocentric orientation by adopting an ‘ethics of dif-
ference that can change the domestic culture’ ( Venuti 1998: 82) and represent the diversity
of Japanese culture, not only out of concern for fidelity, but more so as to account for the
heterogeneity of the receiving constituency. This ethical consciousness is further developed
in the last chapter: ‘Globalization’. There, not only does Venuti display the unbalance of
translation fluxes between countries, languages and regions of the world; he also points to an
‘ethics of location’ ( Venuti 1998: 186 sq.) that sheds a new light on domesticating practices of
translation, which appear less questionable for the accrual of cultural, educational and eco-
nomic capital. He considers that subordinate or ‘minority situations redefine what constitutes
the “domestic” and the “ foreign”’ ( Venuti 1998: 187). In this kind of locales, the ethics of
difference (foreignizing) in translation transforms into an ethics of location (domesticating)
in the sense that the translated original is not anymore meant to contribute to the reshaping
of the host culture but rather to foster the development and seeding of a hybridized new
literary or cultural tradition.
This differential ethics ( both of difference and location) can be grounded in the con-
sciousness of the existing power differentials that divide the mapping of the global economic,
linguistic and cultural subjugations. In the ethics of difference, translation takes up the func-
tion of decentring the hegemonic languages and cultures from within, whereas in the ethics
of location it plays the role of a ‘critical resourcefulness attuned to the linguistic and cultural
differences that comprise the local scene’ of the postcolony (1998: 189).

Future perspectives
If, for the founders of poststructuralism, the prophetic role of romantic authors ( Bénichou
1996) has evolved towards ‘the redistribution of authorial subjectivity within a textual mise
en scène which it does not command entirely’ ( Burke 1998: 184), their role was even more
transformed by the hypertext and the explosion of digital culture in the era of the internet
(Skains
­ 2019).
At this juncture of time with the far-reaching affordances of the technologies of communi-
cation, the nineteenth to twentieth centuries’ model of publishing, where the romantic solitary
figure of authorship faces the crowd of readership (Laquintano 2016), has yielded to a new one
that enables almost every individual to become an author and level the old power structure in fa-
vour of a more democratic and horizontal configuration— so much so that twenty-first-century
society, supported by online digital and social media, transitioned from ‘a reading-literate cul-
ture…into a writing-dominant
­ ​­ culture’ (Skains
­ 2019: 2). In a user-generated-content
­ ­​­­ ​­ context,
the representation of the author’s mode of communication has radically changed by discarding
traditional intermediaries in favour of more direct methods of appealing to audiences, and even
allowing for interactions and content exchanges. Skains called this new

breed of author the demotic author: one who is ‘of the people,’ participating in a com-
munity of writers and readers, often in genres considered ‘popular,’ common or even
denounced as derivative or of a lesser worth…The demotic author eschews the top-
down flow…in favor of publishing platforms that permit and encourage feedback and
conversation…They proliferate and thrive in a w riting-literate culture.
(Skains
­ 2019: ­2–3)
​­

259
Salah Basalamah

Paralleling Hardt and Negri’s political notion of ‘multitude’ (2004), the demotic author sym-
bolizes the reclaiming of cultural production power by the people and furthers the blurring
of the borders between authorship and ‘derivative works’ such as translation.
In such a context, instead of the peripheral form in which it has commonly been depicted,
translation becomes the norm and reference where ‘mass authorship’ (Laquintano 2016: 6) ‘is
afforded by technologies that evolve the book from a ­read-only
​­ medium to a ­read-write
​­ medium,
converting a static object into a conceptual foundation for a community to converse, share, and
respond creatively to its ideas, characters, and environs’ (Skains 2019: 3). In fact, this new form
of authorship seems to mirror the same basic activities found in translation: reading and writing.
This commonality between translation and technologies represents no less than the open-
ing framework of Cronin’s Translation in the Digital Age (2013), where he states that the ‘radical
changes that have been wrought in all areas of life as a result of the advent of information
technology are to be placed under the sign of convertibility or translation’ (Cronin 2013: 3).
This means that the pervasiveness of the new technologies is cutting across not only all do-
mains of life but also all the material and symbolic borders encompassing the entire world, as
well as all forms of conversion and translation:

It is precisely the metamorphic or transformative effects of the convertible which are at

the heart of the digital revolution that makes translation the most appropriate standpoint
from which to view critically what happens to languages, societies, and cultures under a
regime of advanced convertibility, and to understand what happens when that convert-
ibility breaks down or reaches its limits.
(Cronin 2013: 3)

Using the historical perspective of the cultural evolution of Western societies to explain the
more recent advances in the production and distribution of material culture, Cronin further
claims that ‘trade, technology and translation are inseparable in their development, and that
any balanced history of these cultures must take into account the close interaction between
all three’ (ibid.). This convergence paradigm, which Cronin characterizes as no less than
being epitomized by the all- encompassing title of ‘The translation age’ (2013: 1), underscores
the leading role translation is expected to play as a multidimensional practice and concept
beyond the verbal and even the semiotic ( Basalamah 2018).
Although dissidence and resistance against existing copyright laws in the present digital
environment have moved towards more creative ways of encouraging content production
and attribution (e.g. Creative Commons), it is worth noting that the very epistemological
infrastructure that organizes our digital all-convertible world is still incompatible with that
of the legal economic- driven frame of copyright. However, some progress may be achieved
following the example of Ost and van de Kerchove (2002), who situate the current legal
framework in a zone of transitional crisis that makes possible the dialectical coexistence of
structures of hierarchy, monism and transcendence (which rely on a pyramid model), with
structures that are entangled, immanent, fragmented and hybrid (stemming from a network
model). This change in paradigm is dictated not only by the realization of the existence of a
multitude of normative sources besides the State, or by the presence of alternative, entangled
and complex structures of order or conflict resolution that have become social realities, but
also by the transformation of knowledge from a positivist and mechanistic rationality to a
‘communicational and intersubjective rationality’ (Ost and van de Kerchove 2002: 18).
In the same vein, the contrast between the author (as producer of transcendent meaning
and a quasi-absolute focal point in copyright law) and the translator (the symbol of a new

260
 Translation and authorship

conception of creative logic that is secondary, immanent and recursive, all at once) represents
the confrontation taking place, at the same time, on the epistemological level. That same
contrast is even more acute in the context of the cultural practices of user-generated content.
In a world ruled by the internet, contemporary thinking is paying increasing attention to
themes such as decentralization, networks, immanence, recursion, secondarity (or deriva-
tion), recycling and plurality ( Basalamah and Sadek 2014). Thus, at the latest t wenty-first-
century phase of globalization ( Pieterse 2012), a wider understanding of translation would
enable an economy of connections, displacements and transformations that would match the
challenges of the all- digital age that is unfolding in the present moment.

Conclusion
In this framework of ‘micro-modernity’ (Cronin 2012), highly digital and hyper-heterogeneous
globalization, the discourse on a plurality of coexisting epistemologies concurs not only with the
struggles befalling between disciplinary cultures but also with those pitting the North against
the South. Throughout his works, Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2018) provides a critical view
of the effects of globalization on the recognition of ‘the diverse contexts and sites of knowing
and the diversity of the knowledges they give rise to’ (Santos 2018: 53). According to Santos,
the Western ‘paradigm of authorial individualism privileged by the epistemologies of the North’
(ibid.) is not compatible with those of the South, where he identified at least two categories of al-
ternative authorship: the authorship of ‘collective knowledges’, and that of ‘superauthors’ (Santos
2018: 54). The first category refers to the community’s overall bulk of accumulated knowledge
conveyed through the local oral culture of transmission; the second, oral as well, is conveyed
through ‘those whose knowledge carry special authority in a given community’ (ibid.: 55).
Interestingly, Santos considers that these forms of authorship— especially the latter—
a mount to an actual translational process. Inspired by the African philosopher Oruka who
distinguished between the figures of the ‘ folk sage’ and the ‘philosopher sage’ (1990), Santos
assimilates these sages to be ‘creative translators of their own culture’ (Santos 2018: 55). This
apparently metaphoric use of the translation concept is not a haphazard choice, as Santos has
used it throughout several of his previous works, especially in his magnum opus The Episte-
mologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide (2014), in which he dedicated a full chapter to
the notion of ‘cultural translation’ as a conceptual tool to articulate different knowledges and
cultural practices among grassroots activist movements such as those gathering at the World
Social Forum ( WSF).
Whether in the classic form of publishing, or in audio-v isual or online forms, at a micro-
or macro-level or even conceived from an epistemological perspective, this account of trans-
lation and authorship in the context of globalization shows not only that authorship is a
notion that has encountered consequential advances in the last few decades but also that
translation has been no less transformed. In fact, it shows that the ‘enlargement of translation’
( Tymoczko 2007) is as much spatial, through its increasing weight over the global dynamics
of the intersections of culture, knowledge and education, as it is conceptual through its pri-
mary role in the shaping of epistemic pluralism.

Further reading
Fochi, A. (2012)
­ ‘Deconstructing
­ Authorship-in-Translation:
­ ­​­­ ​­ “With-ness”
­­ ​­ and “Polilogue”
­ in Giuseppe
Ungaretti’s Writings on Translation’, inTRAlinea, 14. Available online: http://www.intralinea.org/
archive/article/deconstructing_authorship_in_translation [Accessed 15 May 2020].

261
Salah Basalamah

This article provides an example where the poet-t ranslator Ungaretti gives visibility to his translation
by acknowledging multiple appropriations of a single author—in this case Shakespeare.
Jansen, H. (2019) ‘I’m a Translator and I’m Proud: How Literary Translators View Authors and Author-
ship’, Perspectives, 27(5),
­ ​­
pp. 675–688, ­
doi: 10.1080/0907676X.2018.1530268.
Jansen’s article provides a case study performed among Scandinavian professional translators to shed a
different light on the scholarly calls for translational emancipation and demonstrates that respondents
to the study do not perceive the translated text as theirs.
Woods, M. (ed.) (2016) Authorizing Translation. London: Routledge.
This edited volume gathers papers by translation and comparative literary studies scholars who reflect
about the translator’s authority on their literary translations from a hermeneutic standpoint. From the
perspective of their various case studies and experiences as translators, they reflect on the relation-
ship between literary criticism and t ranslation-a s- criticism whereby the translator is provided with an
­
‘exegetical authority’.

Notes

References
ALAI. (1889) Association littéraire et artistique internationale: Son histoire, ses travaux 1878–1889. Paris:
Bibliothèque Chacornac.
Ashcroft, B., Griffith, G. and Tiffin, H. (2002) The Empire Writes Back. Theory and Practice in Post-
Colonial Literatures, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
Barthes, R. (1977) ‘The Death of the Author’, in Image-Music-Text, trans. and ed. S. Heath. London:
Fontana, pp. 142–148.
Basalamah, S. (2000) ‘Compulsory Licensing for Translation: An Instrument for Development’, IDEA
The Journal of Law and Technology, 40(4), pp. 503–547.
Basalamah, S. (2007) ‘Translation Rights and the Philosophy of Translation: Remembering the Debts
of the Original’, in St Pierre, P. and Profulla C. K. (eds.), In Translation – Reflections, Refractions,
Transformation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 117–132.
Basalamah, S. (2009) Le droit de traduire: une politique culturelle pour la mondialisation. Ottawa-Arras: The
University of Ottawa Press & Artois Presses Université.
Basalamah, S. (2018) ‘Toward a Philosophy of Translation’, in Rawling, P. and Wilson, P. (eds.), The
Routledge Handbook of Translation and Philosophy. London: Routledge, pp. 478–491.
Basalamah, S. and Sadek, G. (2014) ‘Copyright and Translation: Crossing Epistemologies’, The Trans-
lator, 20(3), pp. 396–410, doi: 10.1080/13556509.2014.931020
Bénichou, P. (1977) Le temps des prophètes. Doctrines de l’âge romantique. Paris: Gallimard.
Bénichou, P. (1996) Le sacre de l’écrivain (1750–1830). Essai sur l’avènement d’un pouvoir spirituel laïc dans
la France moderne, 4th ed. Paris: José Corti.Benjamin, W. (1923/1996) ‘The Task of the Translator’,
in Bullock, M. and Jennings, M. W. (eds.), Selected Writings, Volume 1, trans. H. Zohn. New York:
Schocken, pp. 253–263.
Berry, D. (2008) Copy, Rip, Burn. The Politics of Copyleft and Open Source. London: Pluto Press.
BITRA. (2020) Bibliography of Interpreting and Translation. Available online: https://aplicacionesua.cpd.
ua.es/tra_int/usu/ buscar.asp [Accessed 15 May 2020].
Boéri, J. (2008) ‘A Narrative Account of the Babels vs. Naumann Controversy’, The Translator, 14(1),
pp. 21–50.
Borges, J. L. (1999) Collected Fictions, trans. A. Hurley. London: Penguin Press.
Broussard, S. L. (2007) ‘The Copyleft Movement: Creative Commons Licensing’, Communication Research
Trends, 26(3). Available online: http://cscc.scu.edu/trends/v26/v26_n3.pdf [Accessed 15 May 2020].
Burke, S. (1995) Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press.

262
 Translation and authorship

Burke, S. (1998) The Death and Return of the Author: Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and
Derrida. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Cabanellas, G. (2014) The Legal Environment of Translation. London: Routledge.
Casanova, P. (2004) The World Republic of Letters, trans. M. B. DeBevoise. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Cronin, M. (2012) The Expanding World. Towards a Politics of Microspection. Alesford, UK: Zero Books.
Cronin, M. (2013) Translation in the Digital Age. London: Routledge.
Delisle, J. and Woodsworth, J. (eds). (2012) Translation through History. Revised ed. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Derrida, J. (1985) ‘Des tours de Babel’, in Difference and Translation, ed. and trans. J. F. Graham. Ithaca:
State University of New York Press, pp. 219–230.
Derrida, J. (1986) The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation: Texts and Discussions with
Jacques Derrida, trans. P. Kamuf and A. Ronell. New York: Schocken Books.
DiBona, C., Ockman, S. and Stone, M. (eds.). (1999) Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolu-
tion. O’Reilly Online Catalog. Available online: https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/
­ ­ ­ ­
book/ [Accessed 15 May 2020].
DMCA. (1998)­ The Digital Millennium Copyright Act ( US Copyright Office). Available online: https://
www.copyright.gov/ legislation/dmca.pdf [Accessed 15 May 2020].
Foz, C. (1998) Le Traducteur, l’Église et le Roi. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.
Fraser, R. (2004) ‘Past Lives of Knives: On Borges, Translation and Sticking Old Texts’, TTR: traduc-
tion, terminologie, traduction, 17(1), ­ pp. 55–80.
­ ­ ​­
Goldstein, P. (2001). International Copyright: Principles, Law, Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gouadec, D. (2007) Translation as a Profession. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.
Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2004) Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. London: Penguin
Press.
Hemmungs Wirtén, E. (2004) No Trespassing: Authorship, Intellectual Property Rights, and the Boundaries
of Globalization. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.
­
ISD. (2001) Information Society Directive on the Harmonisation of Certain Aspects of Copyright and Related
Rights in the Information Society. ( EU Parliament and the Council of the EU.) Available online:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32001L0029:EN:HTML
­­ ​­ ­ ­
[Accessed 15 May 2020].
Juola, P. (2008) Authorship Attribution. Hanover, MA: Now Publishers.
Kristal, E. (2002) Invisible Work: Borges and Translation. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.
Laquintano, T. (2016) Mass Authorship and the Rise of Self-Publishing. Iowa City: University of Iowa
Press.
Lessig, L. (2004) Free Culture. How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Con-
trol Creativity. London: The Penguin Press.
Lévy, P. (1997) Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace. Transl. by R. Bononno.
Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books.
Love, H. (2002) Attributing Authorship. An Introduction. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Mallarmé, S. (1980) ‘Crisis in Verse’, in Symbolism. An Anthology, trans. and ed. T. G. West. London:
Methuen, pp. 1–12.
­ ­ ​­
Morley, D. and Robins, K. (1995) Spaces of Identity Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural
Boundaries. London: Routledge.
Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2012) ‘Periodizing Globalization/Histories of Globalization’, New Global Studies,
­ pp. 1–25.
6(2), ­ ­ ​­ doi: 10.1515/1940–0004.1174
­­ ​­
Oruka, O. (ed.) (1990) Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy.
Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Ost, F. and van de Kerchove, M. (2002) De la pyramide au réseau? Pour une théorie dialectique du droit.
Brussels: Publications des Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis.
Paz, O. (1992) ‘Translation: Literature and Letters’, in Biguenet, J. and Schulte, R. (eds.), Theories of
Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida, trans. I. del Corral. Chicago, IL: Chicago
University Press , pp. 152–162.
Pérez González, L. and Susam- Saraeva, Ş. (2012) ­ ‘Non-Professionals
­­ ​­ Translating and Interpreting’,
The Translator, 18(2): ­ ­149–165.
​­
Pollock, S., Elman, B. A. and Chang, K. K. (eds.) (2015) World Philology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.

263
Salah Basalamah

Pouillet, E. (1879) Traité théorique et pratique de la propriété littéraire et artistique et du droit de représentation.
Paris: Imprimerie et librairie générale de jurisprudence.
Ricketson, S. (1987) The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works: 1886–1986.
London: Queen Mary College/ University of London Press.
Robinson, D. (2003) Becoming a Translator. An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Translation. London:
Routledge.
Rose, M. (1993) Authors and Owners. The Invention of Copyright. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Ruokonen, M. (2013) ‘Studying Translator Status: Three Points of View’, in Eronen, M. and Rodi-
Risberg,
­ M. (eds.),
­ Haasteena näkökulma, Perspektivet som utmaning, Point of view as challenge, Per-
spektivität als Herausforderung. VAKKI-symposiumi
­ ​­ XXXIII ­7–8.2.2013.
​­ Vaasa, Finland: VAKKI
­ ­
Publications, pp. 327–338. ​­
Sadek, G. (2018) Translation: Rights and Agency - A Public Policy Perspective for Knowledge, Technology and
Globalization. PhD Thesis, University of Ottawa. Available online: https://ruor.uottawa.ca/handle/
10393/37362?mode=full [Accessed 15 May 2020].
Santos, B. De Sousa. (2014) Epistemologies of the South. Justice against Epistemicide. London: Routledge.
Santos, B. De Sousa. (2018) The End of the Cognitive Empire. The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the
South. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Sela- Sheffy, R. and Shlesinger, M. (eds.) (2011) Identity and Status in the Translational Professions. Amster-
dam: John Benjamins.
Servini,­ T. (­ 2007)
­ ​­ ‘Writing and Translation. Perspectives from Latin America’, Translation Today,
4(1&2), pp. 101–112.
Silva, A. C. (2012) ‘Beyond the Unrealistic Solution for Development Provided by the Appendix of
the Berne Convention on Copyright’, Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property Research
Paper Series, No. 2012– 08, American University Washington College of Law, Washington, DC.
Available online: https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/research/30/ [Accessed 15 May 2020].
Skains, R. L. (2019) Digital Authorship. Publishing in the Attention Economy. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge
University Press.
Smith, K. J. and Ramdarshan Bold, M. (2018) The Publishing Business. A Guide to Starting Out and Get-
ting on. London: Bloomsbury.
Stallman, ­ R. M.​­ (2002) Free Software, Free Society. Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman. Boston, MA:
GNU Press-Free Software Foundation.
Steiner, G. (1975) After Babel. Aspects of Language and Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tomlinson, J. (1999) Globalization and Culture. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
Tovey, M. (ed.) (2008) Collective Intelligence. Creating a Prosperous World at Peace. Oakton, VA: Earth
Intelligence Network.
Tymoczko, M. ­ (2007) Enlarging Translation. Empowering Translators. London: Routledge.
UNESCO. (1995) The Cultural Dimension of Development: Towards a Practical Approach. Paris: UNESCO.
Ungaretti, G. (1946) Vita d’un uomo. 40 sonetti di Shakespeare. Milano: Mondadori.
Vaidhyanathan, S. (2001) Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens
Creativity. New York: New York University Press.
Van Dam, H. and Zethsen, ­ ­ K. ­ K.
​­ (2008) ‘Translator Status. A Study of Danish Company Translators’,
The Translator, 14(1), pp. 71–96.
Van Dam, H. and Zethsen, K. K. (2010) ‘Translator ­ ­ Status
­ ​­ Helpers and Opponents
­ in the Ongoing
Battle of an Emerging Profession’, Target, 22(2), pp. 194–211.
Venuti, L. (1998) The Scandals of Translation. For an Ethics of Difference. London: Routledge.
Venuti, L. (2008) The Translator’s Invisibility. A History of Translation, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
Venuti, L. (2019) Contra Instrumentalism. A Translation Polemic. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Waisman, S. (2005) Borges and Translation. The Irreverence of the Periphery. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell
University Press.
WIPO. (1986) ­ ‘Berne Convention ­ ­ for ­ the­ Protection of Literary and Artistic Works’. Available online:
­
https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/
WIPO. (1996) ­ ­ WIPO­ Copyright Treaty. Geneva: WIPO. Available online: https://www.wipo.int/
treaties/en/ip/wct/

264
 18
Literature and translation
Global confluences and
meaningful asymmetries1

M. Teresa Caneda-Cabrera
­ ​­

Introduction: world literature and translation

In his The Routledge Concise History of World Literature, Theo D’haen argues that the awareness
of a new ‘global’ world which emerged in the United States after 9/11 gave rise to the need to
‘ better understand the world beyond the nation’s borders and that nation’s interconnectedness
to the world’ ( D’haen 2012: 25) and he concludes that in this new context of shock, in which
the country realized that other cultures could not be ignored, much greater attention was
paid to translation. The suggestion that both the emergence of a renewed interest in gaining
access to the world’s cultures and the development of new approach to American literature
and culture, beyond its immediate local context, increased the sensitivity towards translation
intriguingly hints at ways in which the concept of ‘world literature’ itself must be carefully
reconsidered through the lens of translation studies. Situated between different linguistic and
cultural contexts, the phenomena associated with ‘world literature’ are part of complex pro-
cesses in which boundaries are transgressed and contingencies propitiate unsuspected con-
nections. Paradoxically, though, despite the celebrated internationalism which welcomed the
emergence of ‘world literature’, the truth is that the very structure of academic disciplines,
the compartmentalization of university departments of national literatures and their unequal
power relations have not fostered the study of the literature/s of the world and/in translation
outside of local specializations. As J. Hillis Miller writes in his ‘Globalization and Literature’:

The narrowness and parochialism of segregated national literature study is just what
the redevelopment of World Literature was trying to escape […] The new discipline
of World Literature, I conclude, problematizes itself, or ought to problematize itself,
through rigorous investigation of the presuppositions that made the development of
World Literature as an academic discipline possible and desirable in the first place.
( Hillis Miller 2011: 255)

This is why, as Hillis Miller argues, in the course of developing ‘the new World Literature’,
important challenges like ‘the challenge of translation’ (Hillis Miller 2011: 254) must be
faced. Whereas discussions of world literature have traditionally elaborated a genealogy of

265
M. Teresa ­Caneda-­Cabrera

the concept which leads back to Goethe’s Weltliteratur, in general, interpretations ‘ have mostly
tended to vacillate between the aesthetic and the archival, between an exclusive canon of
what is deemed aesthetically more valuable in, and as comprehensive a coverage as possible
of, “all” literature’ ( D’haen 2012: 9) and have, thus, neglected Goethe’s own assumptions
concerning the circulation of ideas, themes and forms across the territories and peoples of
Europe and beyond ( D’haen et al. 2013: 9–15).
And yet, as John Pizer explains in his contribution to The Routledge Companion to World
Literature, Goethe’s Weltliteratur paradigm anticipates many of the concerns in contemporary
debates about transnational and translational issues in world literature:

The centrality of translation, international marketing networks, border-crossing in-

terchange among authors and critics both influencing discrete national literatures and
helping to give rise to a body of works transnational in purport, style, and even lan-
guage: all of these constituent factors in today’s discussions are anticipated by Goethe’s
pronouncements.
(Pizer 2012: 10)

Certainly, contemporary debates over the meaning of world literature in the context of
globalization have focused on questions of difference, mobility and multilingualism which
clearly underlie the concept of translation. Thus, in his ‘World Literature and Globalization’,
also in The Routledge Companion to World Literature, Eric Hayot contends that ‘though we
may not want to think of world literature and globalization in any simple way, we may not
be able to conceive of world literature without globalization’ ( Hayot 2012: 224). For Hayot,
world literature and globalization go hand in hand since they are both part of a larger cultural
awareness of phenomena associated with circulation and exchange which are intrinsically
contemporary and, we could argue, deeply ‘translational’:

The attention they draw to these forms of circulation and exchange allows us to break
out of our national, monolingual, or even purely inter-national models for the study of
everyday life and of the history of literature—producing a new emphasis on local-g lobal
interactions, contact zones, regional formations, and multilingual literatures, among
other things.
( Hayot 2012: 224)

Pascale Casanova, David Damrosch and Franco Moretti, for a long time the most recurrent
points of reference in discussions of world literature, together with other scholars such as
Emily Apter (2013), Christopher Prendergast and Gayatri Spivak (2003), have played a cen-
tral role in the consolidation and reconfiguration of the discipline as an institutional field
in an age of globalization. Among them, Casanova and Damrosch stand out for their vital
engagement with translation. In What Is World Literature? Damrosch identifies his object of
study as follows, ‘world literature is not an infinite, ungraspable canon of works but rather
a mode of circulation and of reading’ ( Damrosch 2003: 5) and appropriately argues that
‘A work enters into world literature by a double process: first, by being read as literature;
second, by circulating out in a broader world beyond its linguistic and cultural point of
origin’ ( Damrosch 2003: 6). For Damrosch, who observes that ‘a work only has an effective
life as world literature whenever, and wherever, it is actively present within a literary system
beyond that of its original culture’ ( Damrosch 2003: 4, emphasis in the original), world lit-
erature is always constructed in a specific cultural space and, thus, is necessarily dependent

266
 Literature and translation

on a perspective from somewhere: ‘global patterns of the circulation of world literature take
shape in their local manifestations’ ( Damrosch 2003: 27). Damrosch, who underlines the
risks of a monolithic understanding of world literature, stresses the relevance of translation
through a discussion of the transhistorical and transcultural manoeuvres at work in the cir-
culation of works as they move from national to global contexts across different borders,
‘not only geographical and temporal but social as well, including the boundaries of gender’
( Damrosch 2003: 170). Through an exploration of case studies ranging from the Sumeri-
ans to the Aztecs, from medieval mysticism to postmodern metafiction and from canonical
modernists like Kaf ka to the Guatemalan activist Rigoberta Menchú, Damrosch discusses
the ways in which translations become afterlives of a published text, with successive versions,
retranslations, providing the possibility for fresh approaches to the original. Unsurprisingly,
in the context of his sensitivity to translation and his awareness of cultural mobility the critic
concludes that ‘the study of world literature should embrace translation far more actively than
it has usually done to date’ ( Damrosch 2003: 289).
If what characterizes world literature for Casanova is ‘the opposition between the great
national spaces, which are also the oldest - and, accordingly, the best endowed - and those
literary spaces that have more recently appeared and that are poor by comparison’ (Casanova
2004: 83), translation, the critic reminds us, ‘rather than a mere exchange of one language
for another or a purely horizontal transfer that provides a useful measure of the volume of
publishing transactions in the world’ (Casanova 2004: 133) clearly functions as a form of
‘consecration in the literary world’ (Casanova 2004: 133). Her book The World Republic of Let-
ters, consecrated internationally precisely through a Harvard University Press translation and
critically acclaimed as an influential study when it was first published, has more recently been
questioned and read as an ‘unsatisfactory account of world literature in general’ ( Damrosch
2003: 27) where the terms ‘nation’ and ‘ literature’ function ‘as a kind of a priori’ ( Prendergast
2004: 14) and in which ‘a single, unchanging metropolitan centre [Paris] dominates a global-
ized field’( Dimock 2017: 37). The truth is that Casanova provides an inescapably Eurocentric
‘world republic of letters’ based on relations of rivalry and competition which also presumes
that literature is merely an institutional artefact and nations battle to control the rhythms of
literary time. Despite her appropriate reflections on the relevance of translation for world
literature—‘the translator, having become the indispensable intermediary for crossing the bor-
ders of the literary world, is an essential figure in the history of writing. The great translators
of the central literary countries are the true architects of the universal’ (Casanova 2004: 142)—
as will be discussed in the next sections, Casanova’s paradigm edits out the many complexities
attached to the circulation of literary texts in transnational contexts. In particular, her centre-
periphery model misses inter-peripheral connections and inter-d iscursive readings and, thus,
cannot explain the ways in which specific literary texts travel through different time and space
and are adapted differently across different cultures and geopolitical scenarios.
Lawrence Venuti, one of the most lucid commentators on the intersections between trans-
lation and perspectives on world literature, has appropriately referred to the way in which
translation patterns may become complicated as intermediary practices defy straightforward
notions of translation as mere importation or transference of texts from one language and
culture to another. In ‘Globalization’, the concluding chapter of his book The Scandals of
Translation, Venuti refers to translation as ‘uniquely revealing of the asymmetries that have
structured international affairs for centuries’ ( Venuti 1998b: 158) as he explains that transla-
tion can produce a range of diverse and contradictory effects. If in the so called developing
countries ‘translation fashions images of their hegemonic others and themselves that can var-
iously solicit submission, collaboration or resistance’ ( Venuti 1998b: 159), in the case of the

267
M. Teresa ­Caneda-­Cabrera

dominant countries in the global economy, translation can either activate narcissism or self-
criticism, ‘confirming or interrogating dominant domestic values, reinforcing or revising the
ethnic stereotypes, literary canons, trade patterns, and foreign policies’ ( Venuti 1998b: 159).
In his own recent contribution to The Routledge Companion to World Literature, Venuti
questions the assumption of world literature as a special kind of textuality that combines
foreign and local materials in the way in which Moretti, who claims that the study of world
literature is ‘a study of the struggle for symbolic hegemony across the world’, argues that
‘after 1750 the novel arises just about everywhere as a compromise between West European
patterns and local reality’ (Moretti 2004: 158). As Venuti contends, Moretti’s approach mar-
ginalizes translation; if literary texts are themselves heterogeneous cultural artefacts, transla-
tion increases this heterogeneity and, thus, the variations in translation may be determined
not simply by the imprint of ‘ local’ languages and cultures but rather ‘ by a reading of the
source text that incorporates knowledge of the source culture as well’ ( Venuti 2012: 182).
In what follows, I want first to place translation at the centre of the approaches to the study
of the modes of circulation and reading of (world) literature. Drawing on Venuti’s concern
with translation as an intermediary practice, I argue that, since literary translators become
agents who often activate complex discourses of historical and political affiliation, they nec-
essarily produce different versions and interpretations through which ‘universal’ literary texts
and authors exist in a fluid space of global connectedness where confluences arise and yet,
simultaneously, meaningful asymmetries are revealed. It is, thus, how views which remain
ignored in one particular historical or geographical context may encounter a more hospitable
reception as they journey across time and space through literary translation. Likewise, ideas
imagined to be representative of one particular community may in fact be identified as shared
when transposed and reshaped in translation across the fluid space of world literature, rede-
fined through the semantics and politics of diverse interpretive communities. By focusing
on the translation and circulation of James Joyce, one of the most famous writers of world
literature, I will explore this fluid space of fruitful negotiation in relation to two specific and
very different contexts of reception. As will be discussed, clearly, the same writer, Joyce, ex-
periences multiple and diverse afterlives as he and his works engage in diverse transhistorical
and transcultural dialogues in the process of moving across the different geographical and
linguistic borders of the ( literary) world.

Beyond the centre/periphery dichotomy

In the Preface to The World Republic of Letters Casanova emphasizes the relevance of transla-
tion as ‘one of the principal means by which texts circulate in the literary world’ (Casanova
2004: xiii) and she later reminds us that it was the writer and translator Valery Larbaud
(whose 1921 lecture on Ulysses prompted Joyce’s interest in a French translation) the first
to have called ‘ for a global approach to literary criticism’ (Casanova 2004: 5). Larbaud was
indeed crucial in propagating the international fame of Ulysses, as one of the most influential
supporters in a heterogeneous group of early admirers which included the American book-
seller Sylvia Beach responsible for the publication of Ulysses on 2 February 1922. Thanks also
to Larbaud’s enthusiastic involvement, the complete French translation saw the light seven
years later, in February 1929, as a ‘traduction integrale par Auguste Morel, assisté de Stuart
Gilbert, enteriement revue par Valery Larbaud avec la collaboration de l’auteur’ ( Patrick
O’Neill 2005: 41) (‘unabridged translation by Auguste Morel, with the assistance of Stuart
Gilbert, completely reviewed by Valery Larbaud with the collaboration of the author’). Cer-
tainly, this cooperative translation, with Joyce’s own participation strategically publicized,

268
 Literature and translation

became essential as an authoritative reference beyond the French borders and the boundaries
of the French literary system. Yet, in her insistence to turn Paris into the centre of the in-
ternational literary order, Casanova goes as far as to suggest that, if it had not been for the
French translation, Joyce would have never become a ‘universal’ writer:

James Joyce, rejected and even banned in Dublin, was welcomed and consecrated by
Paris, which made him an artist who revolutionized universal literature rather than
merely an Irish national writer […] Thus, Larbaud, whose translation established Joyce
as one of the greatest writers of the century, managed to rescue him from an invisible
provincialism and to universalize him.
(Casanova 2004: 128)

As discussed in the introduction, despite her appropriate reflections on the relevance of trans-
lation for conceptualizations of world literature, Casanova’s paradigm disregards the com-
plexities attached to the circulation of literary texts in transnational contexts. In particular,
her ­centre-periphery
​­ model misses ­inter-peripheral
​­ connections and inter-discursive
­ ​­ read-
ings and, thus, cannot explain the ways in which specific literary texts travel through time
and space and are adapted differently across different cultures. Likewise, her dogmatism
about a ‘world republic of letters’ based on relations of rivalry and competition which simply
presumes that ‘translation into French, owing to Paris’ unique power of consecration, occu-
pies a special place in the literary world’ (Casanova 2004: 146) can hardly be maintained in
relation to Joyce.
In the early 1920s, far removed from cosmopolitan Paris and the other renowned cultural
capitals of European modernism, a group of intellectuals and writers known as the ‘Nós ­ Gen-
eration’ based in the rural region of Galicia, in peripheral northwestern Spain, turned to their
Irish contemporaries as emblematic role models. Significantly, the political aspirations and
cultural practices of the Irish Literary Revival were enthusiastically followed and frequently
invoked by the men of Nós whose interest in what was at stake in Ireland symptomatically
spoke of their desire to legitimize their own cultural and political agenda.
It is thus how in the autumn of 1926, the translation of an untitled selection of frag-
ments from Joyce’s Ulysses saw the light in the journal of the Nós Generation under the title
­
of ‘Ulysses, Anacos da soadísima novela de James Joyce, postos en galego do texto Inglés’
­
(Ulysses: Pieces of the Very Famous Novel by James Joyce, Put Down into Galician from
the English Text).2 The translator, the prolific writer Ramón Otero Pedrayo, one of the
outstanding intellectual figures of his time, provides no explanation regarding his choice of
unidentified excerpts, sections extracted from the ‘Ithaca’ and ‘Cyclops’ episodes which have
been acclaimed by critics as crucial testing grounds for theories of the modern novel. Since
the Nós Generation was instrumental in the consolidation of a collective notion of cultural
nationalism which aimed at elevating the peripheral Galician language to the status of an ap-
propriate international literary language for the development of the modern novel, one must
conclude that Otero’s choice of fragments was anything but random. Rather, the selection
evinces the translator’s deep awareness of the implications of Joyce’s Ulysses in the interna-
tional scene of contemporary European literature and the urge to actively engage with one
of the most emblematic texts of modern world literature. Otero selects a stylistically complex
section of ‘Ithaca’ and one of the most clearly parodic pieces of ‘Cyclops’ significantly fore-
grounding two questions: Joyce’s modernist experimentation with narrative techniques and
his self-critical analysis of available nationalist ( literary) discourses. Moreover, the translator’s
strategies rely on a calculated use of semantic choices through which Joyce is represented

269
M. Teresa ­Caneda-­Cabrera

essentially as an Irish writer whose mode of expression can be easily recreated in the Galician
language with transparency.
The translator reshapes meanings conveniently, first by lowering the register so that in
opposition to the scientific and formal tone of the original fragments a much more familiar
tone is used and, as a consequence, the translation remains closer to the vernacular everyday
speech. Second, in his effort to familiarize and ‘domesticate’ Ulysses, the translator con-
sciously avoids lexical choices which would have been closer to the original yet would have
shown an inconvenient similarity to the hegemonic Spanish language, opting instead for
more divergent yet more ‘authentically’ Galician linguistic variants (Millán-Varela 1997).
Since Galician and Spanish are both Romance languages, it would have been natural that,
in many occasions, the literal translation of Latin forms from the source text would have
exhibited the closeness between the two linguistic systems. Otero, however, deliberately
avoids literal translations and chooses instead vernacular Galician expressions which pre-
vent readers from identifying the common links between Joyce’s uses of English and similar
Spanish forms.
The Nós intellectuals, who had referred to Joyce as a sort of ‘universal Celt’, rewrote
Ulysses in a language that they chose to present essentially at odds with the hegemonic Span-
ish culture. Clearly, the translation fashions an image of Joyce which solicits collaboration
as it conveniently reinforces domestic values through a strategy of linguistic naturalization
which insists on cultural self-affirmation. The men of Nós aimed at turning Galician litera-
ture into an active participant in the modern international scene through a sort of embrace
which they envisioned, not in terms of the cultural dependence of ‘peripheral’ writers of a
minor literature on an international writer consecrated in Paris, as Casanova would have it,
but rather as a dialogue in search of complicity among equals. Their programmatic poetics
stressed the need for a novel written in Galician, and at the same time universal, ‘as famous
as to overcome borders’ (Caneda Cabrera 2009: 122). In this respect, the members of the Nós
Generation, conscious of the transcendental implications of Joyce’s ‘universal’ novel, wished
to be among the first to publish a translation. The fact that Ulysses would not be translated
completely into any language until 1927, when the German version appears, the only previ-
ous attempt being the already mentioned publication of excerpts (from ‘Telemachus’, ‘Ithaca’
and ‘Penelope’) translated into French in 1924, has often been emphasized by Galician lit-
erary historians and critics who have traditionally remarked, not without pride, that this
became the first translation initiative of Joyce’s novel in the Iberian Peninsula.
Frequently invoked as an act of literary heroism, this pioneering translation stands to this
day as an extraordinary landmark for the Galician literary system. Moreover, this fragmen-
tary translation of Ulysses lends itself to be interpreted as an interesting example of the many
complexities of translation functioning as an intermediary practice when attached to the
global circulation of literary texts in minority language contexts. Thus, in the short preface
to the complete Galician translation of Ulysses, published only in 2013, significantly entitled,
‘James Joyce in the Galician Language’, the general editor explains the project’s indebted-
ness to the early translation and proclaims that this complete version of Ulysses is but a final
demonstration of ‘our being contemporary’ (Freixanes 2013: 14). Ironically, though, the ed-
itor avoids to acknowledge that since 1926 there has been a vast constellation of translations
of Joyce’s Ulysses in many other languages which, ultimately, this new one joins. Whereas the
Nós Generation had shown their concern with the modernization and internationalization of
Galician letters by translating fragments of a major text from a major contemporary figure of
world literature into their native minority language, in the case of the 2013 complete version
(at a time when Joyce is no longer ‘our contemporary’) the choice to ignore the role of this

270
 Literature and translation

translation within the global network of world literature symptomatically speaks of a sort of
nostalgic antiquarianism and a rather uncritical cultural narcissism on part of the publishing
house responsible for the translation. Clearly, this recent initiative is more concerned with
commercial success by targeting its readership for this ( belated) insertion of Joyce in the
Galician literary market among cultural nationalists than with providing all potential readers
with a critical understanding of the relevance of Joyce within world literature. At stake here
is the fact that the production, circulation and reception of translations of literature do not
simply involve crossing national boundaries and languages in a literary space that can easily
be accounted for in terms of antagonism and rivalry between centre and periphery. More
importantly, what this publishing initiative demonstrates is that translations must often nego-
tiate hierarchies originated in deep-seated cultural traditions, political pressures, publishing
policies and market strategies within the culture of reception.
As has been remarked, ‘translation into minority languages can be seen as the quintessen-
tial and emblematic expression of the local in the era of globalization’ (Cronin 2003: 164);
however, as I have been suggesting, these dichotomies may not be so clearly established.
Translation, which is mainly about exchanges and connections, always involves ‘outside
points of reference’ and necessarily stands as the ultimate reminder that ‘exclusionary defi-
nitions’ of community are no longer possible (Cronin 2003: 168). Paradoxically, though, in
their journey across the borders of peripheral cultural sites and minority languages, transla-
tions of ‘universal’ literature simultaneously embrace and resist global connectedness. As dis-
cussed, when produced to comply with strategies of self-protective ethnocentrism and local
specificity, translations are expected to emphasize distinctiveness and they often seek to sup-
press notions of relatedness to the global, ultimately turning into partial (mis)representations
of the ( literary) world.

The geopolitics of literary translation

In the introduction to his Transatlantic Solidarities: Irish Nationalism and Caribbean Poetics,
Michael G. Malouf argues that rewritings of Irish writers such as Joyce as developed by the
Caribbean poet Derek Walcott contrast with Casanova’s assumptions for the ‘Irish Paradigm’
because her emphasis on ‘ literary consecration’ within such sites as Paris misses the inter-
peripheral connections and inter- d iscursive readings suggested in Walcott’s (ambivalent) po-
etic revision of Joyce. Thus, Malouf contends: ‘Her center-periphery model cannot explain
the way in which forms of Irishness travel and are adapted across cultures within sites that do
not offer ‘consecration’ or promise of the autonomy of literature from politics’ (Malouf 2009:
15). Although he does not refer specifically to translation, his reflections on how Joyce and
other Irish writers are read in the Caribbean do invoke the reshaping of cultural production
through movement, migration and travel and aim at discussing the role of Irish literature in
a wider global frame, understood ‘ in terms of the larger world’ and through the lens of ‘the
hybridization of contemporary Irish cultural forms […] being reinvented within a global
culture’ (Malouf 2009: 16). In particular, his notion of ‘transatlantic solidarity’ created by
‘cross- cultural strategies of reading and appropriation’ (Malouf 2009: 4) that are ‘contingent,
performative and transitory’ (Malouf 2009: 6) invokes forms of circulation and exchange in
the context of local-global interactions which, as I have discussed, ultimately account for the
phenomena associated with the translation of literature.
The invocation of solidarity between formerly oppressed Atlantic nations was indeed
one of the major reasons that accounted for the publication of the translation of Joyce’s early
novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in Havana in 1964 by the Editora Nacional de Cuba,

271
M. Teresa ­Caneda-­Cabrera

the ‘State Press’ which, apart from promoting Cuban books, was also committed to popu-
larizing universal literature in translation. Significantly, although a canonical translation in
the Spanish language by the acclaimed writer Dámaso Alonso already existed, the Cuban
writer Edmundo Desnoes chose to translate Joyce’s A Portrait into Spanish again. Alonso’s
translation, which had circulated widely in the Hispanic world, had become a canonical text
since its publication in Madrid in 1926 as El retrato del artista adolescente. Admittedly, the new
version printed in Havana was presented as a ‘revised translation’, a gesture which, only five
years after the triumph of the revolution of 1959, symbolically expressed the Cubans’ right to
contest impositions through the rewriting of their own versions of the canon of world liter-
ature, thus reaffirming Cuba’s political and cultural independence. It is, thus, how Desnoes
not only reinterpreted the Spanish canonical text through the insertion of a new prologue,
which, thus, functioned as a revolutionary manifesto for readers on the island, but also mod-
ified Alonso’s choice of words in order to intentionally diverge from the version published
in the former imperial metropolis. Unsurprisingly, the Cuban translation opted for a more
ideologically charged vocabulary which encouraged readers to discover analogies between
two revolutionary scenarios, the Cuba of the 1960s and the Ireland of 1916, the emphasis
being on the existence of shared forms of resistance before a common history of oppression.
Perhaps one of the most striking examples can be found in the translation of the passage
from chapter V when, just before his talk with Cranly on his Easter duty, the protagonist,
Stephen Dedalus, stands waiting for his friend and ‘stares angrily’ at a hotel ‘ in which he
imagined the sleek lives of the patricians of Ireland housed in calm’ ( Joyce 1916: 238). Ste-
phen wonders how he might be able to liberate the conscience of the Irish race: ‘How could
he hit their conscience or how cast his shadow over the imaginations of their daughters,
before the squires begat upon them, that they may breed a race less ignoble than their own?’
( Joyce 1916: 238).
The noun ‘squires’, which Alonso, the first Spanish translator, renders as ‘galanes’ ( Joyce
1926: 270), thus, literally referring in the plural form to ‘a man who escorts a woman’,
is translated in the Cuban version as ‘ hacendados’ ( Joyce 1964: 253), i.e. the owners of
‘ haciendas’, vast landed states. As I have discussed elsewhere (Caneda Cabrera 2015), this
shift is extremely relevant since ‘ hacienda’ and ‘ hacendado’ are very popular terms in the
Spanish-American cultural imaginary, particularly in relation to the social revolutions and
the agrarian movements. In Cuba the term ‘ hacendados’ specifically refers to the sugar plant-
ers, export- oriented landowners whose pursuit of profit through free trade reinforced the
dominance of foreign (colonial) power. Significantly, with this new lexical choice, the trans-
lation automatically brings to mind a form of landed oligarchy and a system of agrarian
(capitalist) exploitation which the Cuban revolutionaries sought to abolish.
Likewise, what emerges from a close look at the 14-page Prologue to the Cuban trans-
lation of Joyce’s early novel, significantly titled ‘Al lector’ (‘To the reader’) is an effort to
pair Cuban and Ireland’s anti- colonial struggles and, likewise, to connect the two nation’s
histories of fight for freedom and emancipation with the revolutionary present of the 1960s.
Primary among Desnoes’s objectives in the Prologue is to revisit Joyce’s Portrait through a
solidarian contextualization of the transatlantic encounter between Cuba and Ireland which
the translation is called to enact. This contextualization takes place through a careful com-
bination of paratexts, mainly the Prologue and also the blurbs of the back cover, whose main
function is to turn Joyce into a role model for aspiring revolutionary writers.
Throughout the Prologue, Desnoes’s ‘revolutionary’ portrait of Joyce is repeatedly em-
phasized with the establishment of similarities between Joyce’s having to forge the uncreated
conscience for colonial Ireland and ‘the situation’ of the Spanish-American writer. Desnoes

272
 Literature and translation

insists that Joyce’s Ireland ‘does remind us, to a certain extent, of our situation during the
Republic’ ( Joyce 1964: xv) and quotes from his own translation of the passage in which Ste-
phen Dedalus bitterly reflects on the power of the Irish ‘squires’ which he transforms into
(Cuban) ‘ hacendados’. In this respect, through his use of meaningful words with a specifi-
cally political significance in the context of Cuba’s own history Desnoes makes Irish history
relevant for a larger and more global context. By foregrounding the relevance of agrarian
movements in relation to the revolutionary processes in Latin American and particularly to
the Cuban revolution, the translation becomes a form of ‘transatlantic solidarity’ in the con-
text of the local-global interactions of colonial cultures, ultimately relying on strategies of
reading and appropriation which are contingent and performative and are made to function
as a global critique of imperialism.
The ‘National Union of Writers and Artists’, in which Desnoes participated actively, had
enthusiastically endorsed a declaration which chose to place Cuba at the heart of the alliance
of formerly colonized countries as the leading force against imperialism. ‘Joyce’s experience
has many points of contact with the social circumstances of Spanish-American writers. In his
time, Ireland was an underdeveloped English colony. Even the language was imposed by the
conqueror’ ( Joyce 1964: xiv) writes Desnoes, thus establishing a parallelism between the two
countries’ common colonial past which is further emphasized in his decisions as a translator.
Interestingly, in the case of the translation of the so often quoted passage in chapter V re-
produced below (when Stephen argues with the English Dean of studies over the right word
for the utensil ‘through which you pour the oil into your lamp’),

Desnoes encourages Cuban readers to approach the translation in the context of their own
situation as colonial subjects. He significantly bypasses the Spanish translator’s previous deci-
sion to provide synonyms for each term, ‘ funnel’ and ‘tundish’, and preserves the Hiberno-
English ‘tundish’ untranslated as if alerting his readers towards linguistic tensions which
speak of unequal colonial encounters and forms of imperial domination. Ultimately, Des-
noes’s translation functions as a form of instrumentalization which Venuti has appropriately
described in the following terms:

In creating stereotypes, translation may attach esteem or stigma to specific ethnic, racial,
and national groupings […] In the long run, translation figures in geopolitical relations
by establishing the cultural grounds of diplomacy, reinforcing alliances, antagonisms
and hegemonies between nations.
(Venuti
­ 1998a: ­67–68)
​­

On 16 February 2017, when the Spanish translation of the 2004 novel Star of the Sea by Irish
author Joseph O’Connor was formally launched by President Michael D. Higgins (2017)
during his three- day state visit to Cuba, newspapers both in Ireland and Cuba provided an
enthusiastic coverage of the book launch. Echoing the President’s own words, headlines
referred to this literary event as a historic moment since, as they highlighted, O’Connor be-
came the first Irish writer published in post-revolutionary Cuba, with the exception of Joyce.
Thus, before a crowded auditorium flanked by a hulking portrait of the late Fidel Castro
and in the presence of the Cuban Minister for Culture, representatives of the Venezuelan

273
M. Teresa ­Caneda-­Cabrera

government and the writer himself, described in his speech ‘as one of the great Irish diplo-
mats of Literature’, the President of Ireland referred to this ‘great occasion for Irish Cuban lit-
erary exchange for writers and translators’ as a way of ‘deepening cultural links between our
two countries’ (Higgins 2017). Although he mentioned that the novel had been published
in 2004 and had been greeted by a ‘wide and international readership’, no references were
made to the question that El Crimen del Estrella del Mar had first been published in Spain in
2005 (O’Connor 2005) and that, in fact, the Cuban edition was actually a reprint of that early
Spanish translation. Since the Irish writer was conspicuously declared an inheritor of Joyce’s
universal Irishness and, thus, turned into a representative of the discourse of ‘transatlantic
solidarity’, the 2016 Cuban edition of the 2005 Spanish translation (O’Connor 2016) was
privileged to enter the world republic of (Cuban) letters where it was welcomed with hon-
ours. As discussed, translations often function as afterlives of a published text, with successive
versions providing the possibility for fresh and unsuspected approaches to the original. It is
thus how the circulation of ‘world literature’ is complicated through intermediary practices
which defy straightforward notions of translation as a mere importation or transference of
literary works from one language and culture to another. Clearly appropriated by strategies
of reading that are contingent, performative and transitory, the Cuban edition of Star of the
Sea illustrates how the translation of literature may be informed and even determined by
phenomena associated with the geopolitics of circulation and exchange in the context of
­local-global
​­ interactions.

Conclusion
In 2006 I reviewed the study The Reception of James Joyce in Europe ( Lernout and Van Mierlo
2004), a collection of 29 essays devoted to exploring the reception of Joyce in different
territories of Europe, for the James Joyce Quarterly. As I intimated with the title of my essay,
‘The Sameness of Difference: Joyce’s Kaleidoscopic Odyssey(s) throughout Europe’, since
the national cultures of Europe are far from uniform, the encounter of European modernist
artists and intellectuals with Joyce was shaped by the forms and idioms of the diverse geog-
raphy of European modernism(s). I argued that each of the individual essays highlighted the
transnational character of Joyce’s modernism as it travelled across the different European na-
tions, transformed by encounters with the cultural and literary practices of other modernisms
located within specific spaces and times. Among other things, The Reception of James Joyce in
Europe revealed that the recognition of the heterogeneous sites that have produced their own
modernism is essential for a more comprehensive approach to the culture of modernity, thus
objecting to the inappropriateness of the inherited framework pervasive in modernist studies
in the larger context of explorations of world literature. The problem is that for most scholars
of modernism, who are themselves monolinguals, the web of transcultural and translational
connections and their effects more often than not remain out of sight. In this respect, I
claimed that through the incorporation of perspectives from reception studies, comparative
literature and, specifically, translation studies, The Reception of James Joyce in Europe made a
major contribution to literary studies mainly because it undermined critical tendencies that
have turned Joyce and modernism into the patrimony of an exclusive ‘Anglo-American club’.
The centrality of transnational circulation and translation for the study of modernist liter-
ature in the context of cultural globalization has been discussed by scholars who have argued
for ‘a broad and continuing historical investigation of global currents of thought, tracing the
complexities and thus the choices that animate the multidirectional experience of living in
an interdependent, interactive world’ (Cuddy-Keane 2003: 541). Yet, the concern with ‘the

274
 Literature and translation

complexities and contradictions of cultural crossings’ and ‘the paradoxical entanglements of

hostilities and indebtedness that define our relations in the globe’ (Cuddy-Keane 2003: 553)
are not only specific to specialists in literary modernism. As discussed in the introduction,
numerous scholars of world literature have focused on questions of difference, mobility and
multilingualism which clearly underlie the concept of translation and have warned that the
study of literature should embrace translation more actively since it is precisely through inter-
pretive acts of mediation, profoundly bound up in aspects of culture and acts of rewriting, that
a work of literature will enter ‘the global informational flow’ (Henitiuk 2012: 31). Likewise,
authors who have examined the complex intersection between translation and globalization
have denounced that ‘While mobility, by necessity, generates the need for translation be-
tween different cultural and linguistic contexts, theories focused on the global circulation of
flows deny or minimise its very existence’ to the extent that ‘translation has been made invis-
ible in literary critical commentary’ ( Bielsa 2005: 135). Precisely in relation to contemporary
debates over the relevance of translation in discussions on the circulation, dissemination and
consumption of literature in the global marketplace, Venuti has appropriately remarked that:

To understand the impact of translation in the creation of world literature, we need to

examine the canons developed by translation patterns within the receiving situation as
well as the interpretations that translations inscribe in the source texts. To be productive,
to yield the most incisive findings, this sort of examination must combine distant and
close reading of translations to explore the relations between canons and interpretations.
(Venuti 2012: 191)

For most readers, the actual texts of world literature are de facto translated texts which have
been inserted ‘ into global networks that are inflected by national literary traditions’ and yet
‘reveal the national as constructed by international affiliations’ ( Venuti 2012: 191). As we
have seen, since world literature is always constructed in a specific cultural space and, thus,
is necessarily dependent on a perspective from somewhere, the examination of translation
choices and strategies and the exploration of the idiosyncrasy of forms of circulation and
contexts of reception ultimately reveal that, paradoxically, universal literary texts exist in a
fluid space of global connectedness constituted precisely by the singularity of contingencies,
asymmetries and contradictions.

Further reading
Greenblatt, S. et al. (2010) Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto. New York: Cambridge University Press.
A collection of six insightful chapters which focus on specific cases of cultural mobility and cultural
transmission across different disciplines and illustrate the set of principles introduced in the ‘manifesto’
authored by Greenblatt arguing for cultural analyses that must bear in mind the relevance of varied yet
pervasive forms of mobility such as translation.
Venuti, L. (2013) Translation Changes Everything. New York: Routledge.
A compilation of 14 interrelated essays arranged chronologically dealing with sociological, philosophical,
cultural and political aspects of translation as an interpretive act which include case studies of various
genres and text-t ypes, reflect on cutting edge theoretical issues and argue for a ‘translation culture’.
Walkowitz, R. L. (2015) Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature. New
York: Columbia University Press.
A powerfully written study which, combining close reading and theoretical insight, subverts reductive
notions of translation and dismantles pessimistic views of world literature in the context of globalized
forms of consumption by focusing on an account of contemporary works of fiction in which translation
functions thematically, structurally and conceptually.

275
M. Teresa ­Caneda-­Cabrera

Notes

References
Apter, E. (2013) Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability. London and New York:
Verso.
Bielsa, E. (2005) ‘Globalisation and Translation: A Theoretical Approach’, Language and Intercultural
Communication: An Intercultural Approach, 5(2), ­ pp. 131–143.
­ ­ ​­
Caneda Cabrera, M. T. (2006) ‘The Sameness of Difference: Joyce’s Kaleidoscopic Odyssey(s) Throug h-
out Europe’, James Joyce Quarterly, 44(1), ­ pp. 139–150.
­ ­ ​­
Caneda Cabrera, M. T. (2009) ‘“The Loveliness Which Has Not Yet Come Into the World”: Transla-
tion as a Revisitation of Irish Modernism’, in McGarrity, M. and Culleton, C. (eds.), Irish Modernism
and the Global Primitive. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 115–132.
Caneda Cabrera, M. T. (2015) ‘Trans/Atlantic Mobilities: Translating Narratives of Irish Resistance’,
in Crosson, S. and Huber, W. (eds.), Towards 2016: 1916 in Irish Literature, Culture & Society (Irish ­
Studies in Europe: vol. 6). Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, pp. 83–96.
Casanova, P. (2004) The World Republic of Letters, trans. M. B. DeBevoise. Cambridge, MA and London,
England: Harvard University Press.
Cronin, M. (2003) Translation and Globalization. London and New York: Routledge.
​­
­Cuddy-Keane, ­
M. (2003) ­
‘Modernism, ­
Geopolitics, Globalization’, Modernism/Modernity, 10(3),
­
pp. 539–558.
­ ­ ​­
Damrosch, D. (2003) What Is World Literature? Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
D’haen, T. (2012) The Routledge Concise History of World Literature. London and New York: Routledge.
D’haen, T., Domínguez, C. and Thomsen, M. (2013) World Literature: A Reader. London and New
York: Routledge.
Dimock, W. C. (2017) ‘American Literature, World Literature’, in Goyal, Y. (ed.), The Cambridge Com-
panion to Transnational American Literature. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, pp. 37–52.
Freixanes, V. F. (2013) ‘James Joyce en lingua galega’, in Almazán, E. et al. (trans.), Ulises. Vigo: Galaxia.
Hayot, E. (2012) ‘World Literature and Globalization’, in D’haen, T., Damrosch D. and Kadir D. (eds.),
The Routledge Companion to World Literature. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 223–231.
Henitiuk, V. (2012) The Single, Shared Text? Translation and World Literature. World Literature Today,
86(1),
­ pp. 30–34.
­ ­ ​­
Higgins, P. D. (2017) Address at the Launch of Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor. Morro Cabaña, Havana, Cuba.
­ ­ ­­
Web 17, October 2018. Available online: https://www.president.ie/en/media-library/speeches/ ​­ ­ ­­
­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­
address-at-the-launch-of-star-of-the-sea-by-joseph-oconnor ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
Hillis Miller, J. (2011) ‘Globalization and World Literature’, Neohelicon, 38, pp. 251–265. ­ ­ ​­
Joyce, J. [1916] (1968) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: Viking Press.
Joyce, J. [1926] (1978) Retrato del Artista Adolescente, trans. Dámaso Alonso. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
Joyce, J. (1964) Retrato del Artista Adolescente, trans. Edmundo Desnoes. La Habana: Editorial Nacional
de Cuba.
Lernout, G. and Van Mierlo, W. (2004) The Reception of James Joyce in Europe. Vols. I and II. London
and New York: Continuum.
Malouf, M. G. (2009) Transatlantic Solidarities: Irish Nationalism and Caribbean Poetics. Charlottesville and
London: University of Virginia Press.
­

Moretti, F. (2004) ‘Conjectures on World Literature’, in Prendergast, C. (ed.), Debating World Literature.
London and New York: Verso, pp. 148–162.
O’Connor, J. (2004) Star of the Sea. London: Vintage.
O’ Connor, J. (2005) El crimen del Estrella del Mar. Barcelona: Seix Barral.
O’ Connor, J. (2016) El crimen del Estrella del Mar. La Habana: Editorial Arte y Literatura.
O’Neill, P. (2005) Polyglot Joyce: Fictions of Translation. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.
Otero Pedrayo, R. (1926) ‘Ulysses. (Anacos da soadísima novela de James Joyce postos en galego do
texto inglés)’, Nós, 32, pp. 3–11.
­ ­ ​­

276
 Literature and translation

Pizer, J. (2012) ‘Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Origins and Relevance of Weltliteratur’, in D’haen, T.,
Damrosch, D. and Kadir, D. (eds.), The Routledge Companion to World Literature. London and New
­ ­ ​­
York: Routledge, pp. 3–11.
Prendergast, C. (2004) ‘The World Republic of Letters’, in Prendergast, C. (ed.), Debating World Liter-
ature. London and New York: Verso, pp. 1–25.
Spivak, G. C. (2003) Death of a Discipline. New York: Columbia University Press.
Venuti, L. (ed.) (1998a) ‘The Formation of Cultural Identities’, in The Scandals of Translation. London
and New York: Routledge, pp. 67–87.
­ ­ ​­
Venuti, L. (ed.) (1998b) ‘Globalization’, in The Scandals of Translation. London and New York: Rout-
­ ­ ​­
ledge, pp. 158–189.
Venuti, L. (2012) ‘World Literature and Translation’, in D’haen, T., Damrosch, D. and Kadir, D. (eds.),
The Routledge Companion to World Literature. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 180–193.

277
 19
‘The
­ ­one-inch
​­ barrier’
The translation hurdle of world cinema

Nataša Ďurovičová

Introduction: the matter of disciplines

On the face of it, the proposition that translation is an unnegotiable feature of world cinema
seems an unproblematic, almost banal, claim, intuitively corroborated by each new globe-
spanning simultaneous release of a (Hollywood) blockbuster received as enthusiastically in
Chennai as in Kyiv. As scholars arguing for translation’s infrastructure-like function in a glo-
balized world (Cronin 2003; Bielsa 2005) have pointed out, its ‘invisible’ presence is the prereq-
uisite for both its ubiquity and its pervasiveness, in cinema as much as it is in other pathways of
the globalized world. Yet, as the South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho said (in Korean) when
receiving his 2020 Oscar for Parasite—a​­ ­first-ever
​­ ‘foreign’
­ film so recognized—the
­ ​­ ‘one-inch
­­ ​­
barrier’ of a subtitle at the bottom of the frame has under some circumstances been an unsur-
mountable obstacle to a film’s global circulation. Studying world cinema under the sign of
translation will thus entail charting the mechanisms needed to move films across linguistic fault
lines, as well as the pathways determining those flows.
We can consider this disciplinary split in a Venn diagram: translation studies scholarship
has long engaged with cinema, but tended to do so through the prism of linguistically or
semiotically grounded textual analyses, giving by default priority to single texts or their ag-
gregates. Film scholarship on the other hand, in its media- specific or industry-facing orien-
tations, has until fairly recently been indifferent to this problematic. In their overlap, where
the confrontation of two languages in the form of a translation supplement must adapt to the
mediatic ground rules of the global institution of cinema, lies the focus of this essay.
The relevance of film for translation studies dates at least to Roman Jacobson’s 1958
foundational inclusion of non-verbal material into his triad of interlingual/intralingual/
intersemiotic translation ( Jakobson 1958) opening the theoretical path. By the late 1980s,
scholars began to attend to what was initially called multimedia translation studies and evolved
into audiovisual translation studies (e.g. Gambier 1992; Pérez- Gonzáles 2011; Chaume 2018).
The literature is now solid and multifaceted, with topics ranging from corpus-based com-
parative, linguistically oriented case studies of dubbed or subtitled versions through skopos-
oriented topics such as literature-film adaptation and cognitive research on eye-movement
in reading subtitles to sociological approaches, such as the impact of machine translation on

278
 The translation hurdle of world cinema

the labour of subtitlers, or audiovisual policy issues (O’Sullivan 2016). A recent, excellent
survey of the history and approaches to audiovisual translation can be found in Cornu and
O’Sullivan (2018).
­
In film studies’ theory- dominant, model-building boom years of 1960s through 1990s,
meanwhile, the research super-paradigm was comprised of two basic data sets, (a) national
cinema (i.e. with zero degree of translation) and ( b) ‘Classical Hollywood Cinema’ as a
‘universal’ prototype, equally understood and accepted everywhere. Together these two for-
mations were then taken as the discipline’s core historiographic model, against which all
‘other’ types of cinematic production and reception were defined— often as a generic other of
‘world cinema’ ( hence for instance a category like the political internationalist ‘Third World
cinema’, neither classical nor national). In both these units, the national and the ‘classical’, the
activity of reading subtitles or watching a dubbed film was taken as a ‘ functional equivalent’
of the original version, a distinction without difference. Studies of cinema’s global circulation
and distribution thus took, and often still take, the essential complement of translation for
granted, as one technical, un-problematic post-production modification among many others,
similar to, say, the difference between showing a film in a 35 mm and 16 mm print— as a
material factor of distribution and exhibition, certainly, but one unremarkable in the regime
of assumed equivalency.
In the last two decades, several film-studies- centric volumes have meanwhile begun to
consider the medial modification of cinema on larger scales, if with different centres of grav-
ity. Most prominently, from the late 1980s on, Sound Studies drew attention to the separate
component of sound accompanying moving pictures from their very beginning in the so-
called ‘silent era’, and its role in shaping both the cinematic experience and the cinematic ap-
paratus, linking it, beyond photography, to tele- and radiophony and the recording industry
and further out, to ways in which a viewer’s physical and cognitive experience is shaped by
sound waves, proposing for instance a model of sound cinema as a form of ventriloquism—
d irectly relevant for understanding the experience of watching a dubbed film (Altman 1992;
Chion 1999). Another transmedial approach placed cinema on a continuum with other screen
formations: the collection Subtitles: On the Foreignness of Film ( Balfour and Egoyan 2004) took
as its through-line the cinematic image frame incorporating written text, so linking cinema
backward to modernist painting and forward to the electronic televisual mix of a stream of
images. Here, the stock market ticker line at the bottom of the frame accompanying unre-
lated news was proposed as a training ground for a new generation of previously reluctant
subtitle readers, especially in the United States (Cazdyn 2004).
Beyond these media-theoretical reframings of the cinematic apparatus, a key text, Cinema
Babel, took up the question of film translation head- on. Drawing on a pairing borrowed from
translation studies, Marcus Nornes surveyed the history of film translation through the ethical
prism of the binary ‘abusive’ vs ‘corrupt’ practices—the latter a term designating attempts to
achieve translation supplement’s (relative) invisibility by concealing presence in conventions,
while the former term, ‘abusive’ ( borrowed from translation theory), instead highlighted
efforts to bring attention to that process. On the fi lm- studies- centric list belongs for instance
also the bilingual volume Dubbing: Übersetzung im Kino/La traduction audiovisuelle ( Boillat and
Weber Henking 2014), the definitive technological history of pre-1950 subtitling and dub-
bing by Jean-François Cornu (2014), and the collection The Multilingual Screen: New Reflec-
tions on Cinema and Linguistic Difference (2016), edited by Tijana Mamula and Lisa Patti, which
covers a broad spectrum of language issues in cinema that challenge the rule of monolingual-
ism and show cinema as a medium uniquely caught between a ‘ babelian’ polylinguality and
the need to ‘understand’, hence, translate. Robert Stam’s ambitiously scoped World Literature,

279
Nataša Ďurovičová

Transnational Cinema, and Global Media: Towards a Transatlantic Commons (2019) tracks transla-
tion as one of the operative border-crossing processes among regions, languages, arts, media
and disciplines. Most comprehensively, Tessa Dwyer’s Speaking in Subtitles: Revaluing Screen
Translation (2017) positions itself at the intersection of screen and translation studies, surveys
a wide range of literature in great detail to argue for ‘revaluing screen translation’ ( Dwyer
2017: 3) and coins the term ‘errancy’ to advocate for openness to a wide variety of translation
strategies as the most productive stance in the t wenty-first- century global media landscape.
Finally, the archivally grounded and oriented Translation in Cinema 1900–1950,­ ​­ edited by
Carol O’Sullivan and Jean François Cornu (2019), compiles thoroughly researched specialist
essays on key topics in film translation history, technology and production practices, with a
unique focus on archival research challenges and preservation.
What largely remains missing, however, is the acknowledgement of translation as a con-
stitutive, standard, generic, component of global histories and theories of cinema, i.e. as a
basic feature of its circulation, its politics, as well as its experience: after all, watching a film
with some supplement of translation has quantitatively been the baseline viewing situation
for most film audiences in the world—with some important geopolitical exceptions, where
domestic cinema was powerful or popular enough to keep imports at bay ( People’s Republic
of China during certain periods, India, Japan, United States). And even these historically
exceptional translation-averse zones are currently eroding as digitalization makes audiovisual
material accessible near- simultaneously to near-everyone with a smartphone and a credit
line, on a near-global scale. Atom Egoyan’s quip that ‘every film is foreign somewhere’ goes
today for everywhere.
Insofar as both translation and cinema inherently operate on a worldwide scale, they are in
constant, parallel, relationship both when a film is and when it isn’t translated, remaining in a
‘zero-degree’,
­­ ​­ merely potential, state of translation ( Ďurovičová 2009). Approaching film trans-
lation in the context of world cinema, then, entails studying— equipped with the language-
centric toolkit developed by translation studies—larger-scale formations, such as for instance
film translation as it relates to regional alliances across political borders such as US-Mexico
( Jarvinen 2012) or the cinematic soft diplomacy the People’s Republic of China conducts
along its expansive Belt-and-Road project (Gambier 2018), to cultural or stylistic paradigms,
for instance impulses to transcreation (Adamu 2018), national audiovisual policies (O’Sullivan
2016; Mingant 2019) or more generally movies as pivotal conduits for various lingua francas.
After all, the question of whether— and if so, how— a film will circulate beyond the bor-
ders of its country of provenance is nearly never not asked. The matter of a film’s national
origin and its linguistic as well as cultural ‘understandability’ was of prime importance from
cinema’s earliest years (Abel 2013); in the 1930s, as synchronized sound was reconfiguring
international film flows, Universal’s horrors and UFA’s high-production value films were, for
instance, planned precisely to anticipate and meet the challenge of the translation supplement
(Garncarz 2006). The global reach of the Disney powerhouse output rests historically on
the studio’s earliest, meticulous merger of animation and post- synchronization of all sound,
speech included, delivered today in a remarkable array of 30+ languages. Inversely, dialogue-
heavy, i.e. t ranslation-resistant comedies have historically been the core of national, i.e. non-
export domestic production (Moretti 2001). In sum, the m ark-up of language has tracked the
circulating moving image from the earliest years, determining the reach of any given film.
This general approach to film translation signals also how the concept of ‘world cinema’
will be approached here. In the past two decades of ‘the contemporary period’ ( Deshpande
and Mazaj 2018: 4), as the long-standing divide between state monopolies and market de-
mocracies was weakened by social and technological upheavals, nation- state units were

280
 The translation hurdle of world cinema

increasingly confronted with transnational forces of globalization. In contrast to the adjec-

tive ‘ international’, i.e. an aggregate of sovereign national units, the prefix ‘world-’ ups the
geopolitical scale at which an object is studied or tracked. If ‘ international cinema’ is a list,
‘world cinema’ entails an underlying whole, an abstract, relational, concept of a totality. In this
framework films are studied primarily not as stable formal texts but as aesthetic, economic,
cultural objects dependent on circulation, and whose value is therefore dynamic, variable
in space and time, altered in each new configuration (Stam 2019: 20–23), To borrow from
literary theorist David Damrosch: ‘I take world literature to encompass all literary works
that circulate beyond their culture of origin, either in translation or in their original lan-
guage’ ( Damrosch 2002: 4). The advantage here of Damrosch’s definition (developed in a
vigorous debate about the concept of ‘world literature’ in comparative literature and adjacent
disciplines) is twofold: it avoids the common exoticizing binary in which, along the lines
of ‘world music’, ‘world cinema’ would refer to all that isn’t the dominant, Hollywood-
style, cinema (Gelardi 2016). Moreover, the Damrosch literary model helpfully highlights the
structural role translation plays in ‘worlding’ a media object as a mechanism of circulation.
As proposed here, a historical pattern in translation’s constant, inevitable presence in
‘worlding’ cinema can be tracked from (1) the initial ­expansion-driving
​­ rhetorical trope of
motion pictures as a ‘universal language’, through (2) a cultural contraction and movies’ world-
wide ‘nationalization’ brought about by the general adaption of synchronized speech from ca.
1930 on, to then, (3) some four decades later, starting in late 1970s, cinema’s ­de-collectivization
​­
combined with a ­re-globalization
​­ brought about by the new proto/digital technologies of video,
DVD and VOD (video on demand).

The translation factor in worlding cinema: a historical sketch

The ‘silent’ period: cinema as universal language

The foundational question yoking the topic of translation and world cinema is then: if the me-
dium’s initial boom and first growth rested on its responding to the modern desire for univer-
sal and global access or—to draw on a foundational West-centric concept (Allen 2019)— on
‘overcoming Babel’, how did this impulse align with the machinery of translation attempting
that same effect?
From a media-h istorical perspective, motion pictures can be argued to belong to nineteenth-
century proliferation of symbolic languages—be they mathematical (Frege), technical
(Morse) or semantic ( Esperanto, Volapük). Photography itself was already associated with
‘universal language’, and sometimes seen as the perfection of older forms of pictographic
writing (Sekula 1981); contemporary commentators commonly interpreted movies’ popular-
ity via the metaphor of the photographic image as a ‘universal language’ (Metz 1964; Hansen
2009: 77) as well as a response to the ‘utopian-universalist’ dream of instant communication
(Friedman 2019: 8). Cinema was the newest stage of the universal history of writing-as-visual
communication, comprehensible everywhere and by everyone, cognitively unfiltered, with
images organized into a grammar of hieroglyphs as the first iteration of mankind’s hope for
universal understanding—that was for instance the conceit at the heart of D. W. Griffith’s
1916 ­mega-production
​­ Intolerance which sought to align ‘all’ world history and civilization,
from ancient Babylon through French Reformation, to contemporary America as a quest for
­all-human
​­ ‘understanding’
­ (Hansen
­ 2009).
Meanwhile, Griffith’s narrative of total communication was being produced even as the
First World War was decimating the successful commercial circulation of European films

281
Nataša Ďurovičová

in the US market. Far from eliminating the need for translation, this ‘universalist-utopian’
epic, and the internationally burgeoning narrative form it advanced, nonetheless depended
on a supplementary apparatus of localization, of which translation was an important if not
exclusive feature. Hence the presence of explanator-lecturers in East and South Asian context
( Lacasse 2006; Nornes 2007), the adaptation of the titles of the films and the editing of the
narrative for censorship or cultural purposes (Hansen 2009); more generally, Claire Dupré La
Tour (2019) has documented in detail the system of titling exchanges required for the world-
wide circulation of early moving pictures. Such labour processes of translation demonstrate
that what at the beginning of the century was celebrated as a ‘universal’ communication tool
rested equally on the opposite conditions, non-identity and seriality, two fundamental prem-
ises of modernist aesthetics: in order to provide ‘the same’ experience for a film’s audiences in
many different locations, prints had to differ from each other linguistically yet be accepted as
all being ‘the same film’ ( Ďurovičová 2004).

Synchronized speech and cinema’s ‘nationalization’

The premises of non-identity and seriality became very apparent with the commercial in-
troduction, in 1927 in the United States, of synchronized sound, both with regard to the
industrial/material and the aesthetic parameters of what effectively was a new medium, ‘the
talkies’ replacing ‘the movies’ (Gomery 2005). If cinema had in the first three decades bene-
fited from its unique material as well as cultural mobility, sound synchronized to the image
can be said to have weighed down the moving image in so many ways. For while sound
synchronization gave the moving image a new materiality, appearing to secure its prove-
nance in a specific physical space, that same effect thereby also impugned its universality.
As long as the sound was ‘emitted by’, meaning, visually synchronized with the image of an
object, this was simply exhilarating, as for instance in the celebrated airplane engine noise
of Wings ( W. Wellman 1927) or the sound of tapping accompanying the image of a row of
cabaret dancers’ legs on a stage. When, however, the sound of human voice was shaped into
speech, as in Al Jolson’s famous exclamation ‘You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!’ in The Jazz Singer
(1927), the geopolitical grid of linguistic difference— a Babel of sorts, per that ubiquitous
contemporary press cliché—was dropped over the relatively fluid, mobile, spatiality of the
‘mute’ moving image. In this sense, the establishing of synchronous speech functioned in the
transitional period as one key regulator (alongside the companion issue of sound equipment
patents) and a key determinant of the pathways cinema had to take in order to again flow
‘ freely’ on the global markets.
Despite occasional efforts to resist it, ‘silent’ American films had during the post-First
World War decade come to effectively dominate the key competitors’ markets in Europe,
Latin America and South Asia ( Butsch 2019: 44– 46, 62). The introduction of synchronized
sound gave many national film industries, which in that preceding decade had sought but
failed to contest Hollywood’s dominance, a new opportunity to reassert themselves. The
national language (sometimes, as in the case of Italy, also used to suppress and replace local
and regional dialects) (Sisto 2001) became thus a kind of political sound barrier against the
threat of American linguistic and cultural barrage.
In the 1930s, roughly the decade between the introduction of sound and the beginning
of the Second World War, the supplement of synchronized speech thus had two related
effects: film trade’s growth domestically and its contraction internationally, in an effect of ‘de-
globalization’ ( Bakke 2008; Andrew 2009). The causes were several: legal ( patents, taxes,
quotas), economic (markets, currency) and cultural/linguistic, all of which were related to

282
 The translation hurdle of world cinema

the new challenge of moving films across borders, themselves reinforced by national responses
to the Great Depression. As the transitional phase ( late 1928 to mid-1933) was getting un-
derway, film production worldwide was characterized by a variety of experiments—formal,
institutional, industrial and economic— during which acoustic and performance rules reg-
ulating the possible uses of dialogue were tested in the various countries’ media ecosystems:
did the viewer always have to be shown the supposed source of the sound? Did speech have
to be fully lip- synchronized? Did voice have to match the body in specific culturally ap-
propriate ways? ( Bhattacharya 2019). In broad terms, these rules eventually congealed into
a collective ‘ habitus’ (rather than ‘audience preference’, as is sometimes lazily claimed) and,
unless there was a radical political intervention such as a war ( Taylor-Jones 2016), remained
generally stable for the next four decades, until the 1970s, articulating a national audience’s
relationship to the rest of the film world. Thus for the German or Indian viewer a film always
speaks in their own language regardless of whether the character on screen is a cowboy or a
samurai, while in France a viewer can generally opt for a (subtitle-) reading experience over a
dubbed one depending on her self-understanding as a cinephile (who puts a premium on the
original soundtrack). The transitional period was when the paradigm of ‘ dubbing countries’
and ‘subtitling countries’ was established. The upending of these rules would only begin in
the mid-1970s, as the arrival of VHS technology signalled the approaching conversion of cin-
ema from an analogue to a digital medium and with it the dislodging of spectators from their
public, collective, stable viewing spaces of movie theatres to more private and more portable
screens— a development coming to full fruition at the present day.
If around 1930 talkies were thus to regain general circulation, become readily exportable,
they would have to be translated. But which component exactly had to be translated? This
topic was subject to vigorous debates, both in specialized technical and trade journals, and
in popular press—indeed, street riots were reported in some European cities in response to
the sound of a particular foreign language in a local movie theatre ( Ďurovičová 1992). Was
this strictly a matter of linguistic comprehension? Or was there something to, in, a person
speaking a (foreign) language that could not be reduced to semantic content and thus re-
solved by voice replacement alone? Objecting to dubbing on such grounds, certain critics
thus decried an imported film dubbed into the local language as ‘theft’ of cultural identity
( Ďurovičová 2003). Conversely, would adding a band of writing inside or even adjacent
to the image frame inalterably alter the immersive screen experience of a ‘ fourth wall’? In
confronting the problem of what exactly understanding the dialogue entailed, what elements
carried sense-making weight, i.e. were properly signifiers, film industries were undertaking a
kind of collective ontological palpation, trying to ascertain what exactly was locally unnego-
tiable in the cinematic experience so that altering it in service of understanding the dialogue
wouldn’t destroy it. And it was in confronting the challenge of translation that this ontologi-
cal ‘essence’ of cinema revealed itself as not self-identical, but rather ‘near- equivalent’, so that
‘what cinema is’ (Andrew 2010) came to be constructed differently in different regimes of
translation, i.e. in different regions of the world.
Technologically, the replacing of a voice recording with another voice recording even
while retaining synchronicity appeared like an obvious solution: this was a strategy of the
German major UFA in its earliest sound experiments in early 1929, when the German silent
movie star Harry Liedtke’s face was ‘ improved’ by the German singing star Richard Tauber’s
voice ( Kreimeier 1996) for what was hoped to be an ideal ‘total sound film’ experience. Mod-
ifying this combination further, by making the replacement voice be in another language, i.e.
dubbing, was thus both technologically possible and congruent with ‘cinema’, provided the
medium was thought of as not a simple recording of reality but a machine for simulacra, what

283
Nataša Ďurovičová

we today might call ‘special effects cinema’. In that case, translation would not stand in the way
of a return to a globally circulating medium, as was clear from the early worldwide popularity
of Disney’s animated characters. If, however, cinema’s specificity was proclaimed to reside in
its observational, ‘realist’ capacity, then the voice and the body, recorded though they may be
by two different apparatuses, should retain some fundamental, contractual relationship of fidel-
ity (to use a term shared by film studies and translation studies), a convention of realism. When
thus a little girl opens her mouth and speaks Latin in a deep male voice, as famously happens
in The Exorcist ( W. Friedkin 1973), we must on this understanding of cinema conclude that we
are in the presence of Satan himself; or, as the French director Jean Renoir is supposed to have
said, had dubbing been invented in the Middle Ages, its practitioners would have been burned
as witches. If, however, the contract of realism is looser, whether on the model of other arts,
such as magic, or puppet shows, or video games or accepted as a machine for novel (art) experi-
ences, then voice replacement—which may or may not include language replacement— could
be compatible with what cinema is.
These divergent views about sound cinema’s principal appeal were in one way or another
present in all the mediascapes in which it was embedded. Studying this situation from the
vantage point of translation must therefore also include formats devised to reject, or more
accurately to avoid ­translation—meaning,
​­ domestic films.
To summarize the strategies of how the new forms of translation supplement were han-
dled in the global cinematic system so that talkies could circulate worldwide, two broad
trends emerge: either the mark of linguistic difference could remain apparent, or the trace of
translation had to remain invisible.
The first approach, accepting film in translation, meant exhibiting films with subtitles
or dubbed, or in some combination in countries when a national exhibition policy allowed
both ‘original versions’ (i.e. subtitled prints, where the original soundtrack was heard) and
dubbed versions (e.g. in France and in Czechoslovakia), or mixed techniques of translation
supplement, e.g. the voice-over spoken by a live or a recorded narrator alongside with or over
the original language soundtrack ( Japan, Poland), or mixing dialogue and song scenes, as the
early Indian sound cinema did ( Bhattacharya 2019: 60– 61).
In any country that had any significant number of movie theatres but no powerful do-
mestic film industry, one of these three strategies of exhibiting imports— dubbed, subtitled
or screened with some mixed translation supplement—was unavoidable in order to secure a
regular screening schedule. Which specific strategy would be adapted was dependent not on
some spontaneous national ‘preference’. Rather, as Carol O’Sullivan usefully laid out, these
decisions were to a high degree political, determined by an interplay of national language
policies, the interests of local exhibitors and national distributors and the lobbying clout
of the national film industry (O’Sullivan 2016). And, having been established by 1932–
1933, these policies then remained largely in place, gradually mutating into the vaunted
national ‘ habitus’, in the process also shaping local or regional media ecosystem(s). Thus
the high cost of dubbing tended to prime transborder film circulation, with the strength of
one national identity diluting the other one (e.g. Farsi in Afghanistan ( Rekabtalaei 2019:
158–163), or, today, the Slovaks’ continued relationship with the Czechs ( Dabing Forum
n.d.), or the dubbing of Mandarin-language dialogues into minority languages, which then
expand beyond the borders of the People’s Republic of China (Gambier 2018)). Inversely,
it is to the absence of dubbing and the presence of subtitles that so much of the world owes
its pervasive absorption of American English, with considerable consequences ( Williams
2009). These are the conditions on the ground that histories of transnational or ‘world’
cinemas, as well as of individual national cinemas should study and describe.

284
 The translation hurdle of world cinema

In some countries, however, no visible translation supplement in any form was accepted,
for reasons that remain to a degree open to discussion and research. These are the cases when,
in an early instance of what contemporary translation industry calls localization, all traces
of a film’s foreign provenance from abroad or more generally, of motion pictures’ inherently
global, circulating, nature were stripped, to attempt to make a film appear entirely domestic.
One formula for this stripping took the format of the so- called foreign language ver-
sions ( FLVs). In this model, first devised in late 1928, a film was produced in more than one
language version, either simultaneously (for instance by the German film giant UFA) or se-
quentially (first a Hollywood original, followed by ‘secondary’ versions in other languages).
What translating there was thus occurred ahead of the production itself, on the level of the
screenplay, with the ‘ foreign’ language version then shot following extremely closely the
original mise en scène as well as editing. Shown unsubtitled and un- dubbed, the ‘versioned’
film was thus intended to be taken for a domestic original—which often happened, especially
if the performers in the version were national stars ( Rossholm 2006).
The other strategy of making the translation supplement invisible— and one central to
understanding the concept of world cinema—was the production of remakes. A given in
cinema’s medial ‘copying machine’, remakes are the most radical solution to the challenge
of translation. With some important exceptions, the pre-filmic material has been stripped
of the markers of its provenance and re-worked to rid it of the elements of the ‘ foreign’ film
text deemed to be unsuitable for a given market. The reason for a remake can be strictly
economic— a producer owns rights to material they deem reusable after a period of ‘cooling
off’, or cultural— a producer acquires foreign material they consider reusable provided it can
be culturally adapted for local acceptance, language included ( Rosewarne 2020). It is in the
latter sense that remakes became an ideal strategy for Hollywood studios in the interwar years
to refresh their source materials, pre-empt potential competition from imports and become
more cosmopolitan, without incurring a domestic ‘translation penalty’ ( Vasey 1997; Moine
2007; Stegic 2014). Even while there still was a substantive fi rst-generation ethnic population
in the United States comfortable with languages other than English, Hollywood’s policy of
remakes preserved the American movie theatre as an English- only, translation-free zone,
devoid of all trace of a foreign language, whether in the form of dubbing or subtitles—fenced
in, to use Bong Joon-Ho’s phrase, by the same one-inch barrier that still surrounds the basic
movie theatre in a US shopping mall in 2020 (Mowitt 2005).
Some recent scholarship has, interestingly, drawn extensive parallels between the fun-
damental monolingualism, relative domestic isolationism, its strategy of using remakes to
displace imports, strong dependency on exports and even ‘cultural imperialism’ of Holly-
wood and its main serious competitor, Bollywood, which vastly outperforms Hollywood in
the number of films produced ( Hirji 2005; Lorenzen 2009; Shah 2012; UNESCO 2016). A
parallel might further be the considerable influence of Hindi-language films circulating far
outside of the Hindi-Urdu linguistic zone; here, however, in contrast to the ubiquitous pivot
status of English, Hindi’s radical linguistic otherness brought with it the need for a wide
range of transcreation strategies, as discussed further below ( Deshpande and Mazaj 2018:
135–157).
­ ​­
If the First World War had given American producers a global export advantage in the
form of industrial consolidation and safe shipping lanes, the effect of the Second World War
was the reverse: some Hollywood studios opened for the first time since the early 1930s
dubbing studios on US soil to prepare for exporting US films, on behalf of Office of War
Information, in the immediate wake of advancing US troops, deemed essential for captur-
ing hearts and minds in Europe’s post-war rubble ( Encyclopedia 2020). And on the side of

285
Nataša Ďurovičová

exhibition, the solidly monolingual environment of American movie landscape was cracked
open by the New York success of Italian neorealist films in the immediate post-war years,
often depicting precisely the Allies reconquering of Europe via Italy (Matsnews.blogspot.
com 2015). This breach of the translation wall then set in motion a vigorous debate (still on-
going today) about the merits of subtitling vs dubbing for the American audiences, for which
‘ foreign’ had since the 1920s been made, in the US film trade discourse, equal to ‘art’—in
the ideology of the entertainment industry the very antonym of ‘ fun’. When in the 1950s
the break-up of exhibition monopolies and competition from TV began driving the US film
industry into its next large- scale globalizing effort, via the so- called runaway productions
( Betz 2009; Steinhard 2019), Hollywood’s monolingual environment started to crack open
as producers left California to shoot on cheaper locations overseas, most often in the Medi-
terranean, and indeed Italy in particular.
Commingling American production machinery with select ‘ foreign’ talent, runaway pro-
ductions yielded films unusually cosmopolitan in setting and cast, if fully Hollywood in terms
of style and mode of production, opening thus doors for a new generation of non-Anglophone
actors and directors into the Hollywood system. Here necessity yielded several translation ap-
paratuses: first, the layer of multilingual labour needed for interpreting during a film’s produc-
tion and post-production; second, the post-synchronization apparatus that made it possible
to merge actors speaking ‘native’ English with actors speaking heavily accented English who
had to be post-synchronized into standard English; and third, actors who spoke no English
at all and were dubbed in the traditional manner ( Nornes 2007: 29– 65; Steinhard 2019). The
heavy reliance on post-synchronized dialogue was one of the key features of the sub-genre of
spaghetti Westerns cast by a roster of iconic international actors, whose signature music and
sound effects offset the ‘ imperfect’ post-synchronization of the dialogue track— a production
and distribution strategy Hong Kong martial arts films, beginning to circulate globally at
roughly the same time, developed to its fullest as ‘dubbese-fu’ (Magnan-Park 2018). As if in
response, Woody Allen’s notorious 1966 What’s Up, Tiger Lily? was composed of a Japanese
gangster B-film image track dubbed by American English dialogue barely related to the plot
and synchronized ‘dubbese-f u’ style, drawing the unacknowledged translation supplement
into the American cinematic mainstream via a passageway of comedy/parody.

Towards new regimes of translation: cinema re-globalized

As television, the medium of national domesticities, altered in the 1960s and 1970s cinema’s
place in media ecology in an era of increased internationalization (Andrew 2009), dovetail-
ing with resurgent globalization in 1990s, the impact of cinematic translation grew. That
development might hypothetically be charted in two overlapping conceptual streams: on
the one hand, translation yielded a new cross-medial supplement in that it could enrich a film
through an additional expressive media layer— of a ( layered) voice track or (supplementary)
writing; let’s call this turn ‘art’ or ‘provocation’. On the other hand, once the VHS tape in
early 1980s broke the celluloid/light contract with a linguistically homogenous collective of
viewers in a movie theatre, a pathway was opened towards cinema as an ever-more distrib-
uted, that is, ever more globalized, and therefore by necessity ever more localized form(at);
­
here language translation, broadly defined, is first among equals, alongside other forms of
cultural and technological adaptation, in a regime of mass variability—‘same-but-different’
­ ​­ ­­ ­​­­ ​­
(Cronin 2013: 88– 89).
The earlier ‘art’ stream encompasses the full range of translation phenomena brilliantly
outlined and analysed by Tessa Dwyer (2017) under the umbrella term ‘screen errancy’. This

286
 The translation hurdle of world cinema

neologism designates and even celebrates a stance, both in the making of screen translations
( by professionals as well as by fans/amateurs) and in the reception and encouragement of films
in translation, i.e. as an open stance shared by filmmakers, fansubbers, exhibitors, on crowd-
sourced platforms. Expanding and modifying Markus Nornes’ classic polemic ‘toward an
abusive subtitling’ ( Nornes 1999), Dwyer’s ‘errancy’ updates screen translation closer to the
spirit of adaptation, circulation, play and openness, discarding the elusive and misused crite-
rion of ‘fidelity’, i.e. equivalency only ( Dwyer 2017: 7). A prime example of this revisionist
use of the translation supplement would be the full body of work of Jean-Luc Godard, but
notably his 2010 Film socialisme, released with what the filmmaker called ‘Navajo subtitles’,
and whose fragmented non-English fundamentally ‘abused’ the very idea of ‘ interpreting’.
While the bulk of Dwyer’s examples comes from the late 1960s to the present 2010s, the
age of movies re-globalized, her term ‘screen errancy’ also has a revisionist potential, re-
valuing the great variety of ways in which translation has allowed cinema to circulate from
its beginning. On this view, graphic subtitles redesigned for different markets, titles projected
on side screens, or the many varieties of lecturers, bonimenteurs, katsuben accompanying silent
films were not simply ‘early’ forms waiting for the talkies’ perfected l ip- sync or perfectly
compressed subtitles but are by the term ‘errancy’ granted a generalized value placed on aes-
thetics and ethics of difference, adaptability and transcreation. Precisely as a contrast to the
invisibility effect that localization aims for, Dwyer’s ‘screen errancy’ tracks and highlights
translation’s transformative potential.
This proliferation towards creativity instead of towards fidelity has been especially pro-
ductive when the need for translation accompanied the process of dubbing in the sense of
‘duping’ (to use a standard 1920s term), i.e. physical copying of support material, initially
of the VHS magnetic tape and somewhat later digital files, e.g. CDRoms, DVDs and USB
keys. This trend has been documented for instance in West (Adamu 2018: 159–160) and
East Africa ( Krings 2010), where the necessary translation supplement ( between Hindi and
Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba in Nigeria and Hindi and Kiswahili in eastern Africa, sometimes
with English subtitling as a pivot language) was compounded by other region- specific bar-
riers to circulation such as a significant gap between written and spoken modes of a given
regional language, unrecoverable cost of dubbing or pervasive piracy/lack of IP enforcement.
In these regional markets, the long- standing preference for Bollywood films then led beyond
(unauthorized) physical duplication to ‘appropriation’ in the form of a wide range of local
innovations of formal translation processes, e.g. various forms of acoustic and visual dubbing,
narrative hybridization, sound overlays, or language mixing ( Luedi 2018).
However, while technology made it possible for screen translation to proliferate in such
open linguistic or rather, semiotic forms, it also laid the infrastructure for the opposite
trend—that is, an ever greater coordination/consolidation of screen translation, on an in-
dustrial scale ( Díaz Cintas and Massidda 2019). To use translation studies terminology, if
‘errancy’ is a ­one-to-one
­​­­ ​­ screen translation process, closer to the cognitive and social labour of
literary translation, the model for industrial translation, i.e. localization (understood broadly
as adaptation of digital object for local uses and consumption of screen objects, delivered
by language service providers ( LSPs), commonly supported by CAT tools, from translation
memories to, increasingly, artificial intelligence) is ­one-to-many
­​­­ ​­ ( Pym 2006). In the industrial
regimen, by contrast to the ‘errant’ translation aesthetic, the key criteria that apply for all
digital products are equivalence, seriality, and efficiency/speed or ‘the triangle of good, fast
and cheap’ (Carey n.d.). Subtitling may thus be done without seeing the film itself, often
from a ‘master’/‘genesis’ file, which is most likely to be in English ( Díaz Cintas and Remael
2014: 36–37).

287
Nataša Ďurovičová

Similarly, dubbing studios—which may be local or multinational— are no longer local

but are centred regionally or globally ( Bhatt 2020; Netflix Post Partner Program 2020). In
this production mode, language ( long used as a local asset to protect the target-language’s
film industry) has been detached from its geographical/cultural/geopolitical base, the talkies’
initial asset of ‘ linguistic realism’ becoming like any other transferable skill, deployed to
service content producers on global streaming platforms ( Roettgers 2018). While human
judgement still plays a considerable role (Stojanov 2011), the practice of voice replacement in
the widest sense is ontologically related to the increasing loss of cinema’s ‘realist’ dimension
as it erodes in the digital environment (indeed, localization is especially studied in conjunc-
tion with video games). Again, the trend here echoes the transition phase of late 1920s- early
1930s, when post- synchronizing speech, especially for purposes of translation, was in the
film-industrial production chain understood as related not only to sound recording but also
to the development of special effects (Cornu 2014).

Conclusion
Technological utopianism has long evangelized a future of ubiquitously present machine
translation, repeating on a higher level what the ‘universal language’ of cinema was imagined
to be a century ago ( Lehman-Wiltzig 2000). There is no question that either crowdsourced
or ­automation-assisted,
​­ ­well-supported
​­ translation functions on cloud-based
­ ​­ distribution
platforms, viewed on a proliferation of devices, regardless of the source and the target lan-
guage have today made the world’s cinema rather more accessible in most parts of the world
( Deshpande and Mazaj 2018: 37– 69; Stam 2019: 75– 83). Concurrently, a debate has been
ongoing in film studies for nearly two decades about whether the very idea of ‘cinema’ should
be held on to in a ‘post- cinematic’, fully distributed phase (Åkervall 2018). An argument
can be made that the textual manipulation introduced by the translation supplement, which
inevitably entailed a commingling of graphic and sound layering, was one of the vanguard
processes that prepared the way to cinema’s dis/integration into the flow of screen material
consumed today worldwide. In that sense, then, translation is paradoxically one of the fac-
tors that will have thereby rendered the concept of ‘world cinema’ as an aesthetic category
outdated, in the very long term at least: on your phone any film equals any other clip from
any source, in effect all falling into the category of image enhanced with sound or text in
any language. Meanwhile, however, in the current political economy of world cinema, rela-
tions of power will not disappear but will be redistributed and redefined as access to energy,
bandwidth and attention.
The most obvious and necessary area of further research in the overlap of translation and
world cinema is archival. As the contributions in O’Sullivan and Cornu’s (2019) volume
sketch out, locating, identifying and analysing the actual source m aterial—i.e. subtitled and
dubbed film prints—poses a range of unique difficulties, analogue to the process of historical
editing in literary studies, bearing on authorship, revisions, production and distribution.
From a geopolitical perspective, meanwhile, mapping the circulation and exhibition of
translated versions, authorized as well as informal, would produce a world atlas of films re-
fining or perhaps even subverting box office statistics as well as accounts of stylistic influence.

Further reading
Cornu, J.-F.
​­ (2014)
­ Le Doublage et le sous-titrage: histoire et esthétique. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de
Rennes.

288
 The translation hurdle of world cinema

The most exhaustive account so far of technologies, techniques, practices and politics of translation
from transition to sound through early 1950s, centred on France, with some attention to American
and German practices.
Deshpande, S. and Mazaj, M. (2018) World Cinema: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge.
A comprehensive approach to world cinemas, methodologically informed by translation’s refractive effect.
Dwyer, T. (2017) Speaking in Subtitles: Revaluing Screen Translation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press.
A theorization of the intervention any translation makes into screen material, developed to show the
wide range of possible approaches to the process of translation, from subtitling and dubbing through
crowdsourcing and its effects, e.g. piracy.
Nornes, M. A. (2007) Cinema Babel: Translating Global Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
The first English-language survey of the history of film translation, pivoting from a theoretical critique
of conventional screen translation as ‘corrupt’, and with special attention to less- studied non- screen
practices such as the labour and effects of translation during co-productions and at film festivals.
O’Sullivan, C. and Cornu, J.-F. (2019) The Translation of Films 1900–1950. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
A pioneering collection of essays analysing issues in historical research, archival practices and film
restoration.

References
Abel, R. (2013) The Red Rooster Scare: Making Cinema American, 1900–1910. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Adamu, A. U. (2018) ‘Transcultural Language Intimacies: The Linguistic Domestication of Indian
Films in the Hausa language’, in Harrow, K. and Garritano, C. (eds.), A Companion to African Cin-
ema. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, pp. 155–175.
Åkervall, L. (2018) ‘Reviews’, Screen, 59(1), ­ pp.  ­ ­132–137. ​­ Available online: https://doi.org/10.1093/
­ ­ ­
screen/hjy008 [Accessed 9 June 2020].
Allen, J. (2019) ‘The Babel Fallacy: When Translation Does Not Matter’, Cultural Critique, 102,
­ ­ ​­
pp. 117–150.
Altman, R. (ed.) (1992) Sound Theory, Sound Practice. London: Routledge.
Andrew, D. (2009) ‘Time Zones and Jetlag: The Flows and Phases of World Cinema’, in Ďurovičová,
N. and Newman, K. (eds.), World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives. London: Routledge, pp. 59–89. ­ ­ ​­
Andrew, D. (2010) What Cinema Is: Bazin’s Quest and Its Charge. Hoboken, NJ: ­Wiley-Blackwell. ​­
Bakke, G. (2008) The Economic History of the International Film Industry. Available online: http://eh.net/
encyclopedia/the-economic-history-of-the-international-film-industry/
­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 6 May 2020].
Balfour, I. and Egoyan, A. (eds.) (2004) Subtitles: On the Foreignness of Film. Boston, MA: MIT Press.
Betz, M. (2009) Beyond the Subtitle: Remapping European Art Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Min-
nesota Press.
Bhatt, S. (2020) How Content Streaming Platforms Like Netflix Have Created an Economy around Subtitles in
India. The Economic Times. Available online: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/media/ ­ ­ ­ ­
entertainment/how-content-streaming-platforms-like-netflix-have-created-an-economy-around-
­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​
­­subtitles-in-india/articleshow/67504613.cms
­​­­ ​­ ­ ­ [Accessed 9 June 2020].
Bhattacharya, I. (2019) The Digital Turn in Indian Film Sound: Ontologies and Aesthetics. PhD thesis, Uni-
versity of Westminster, UK.
Bielsa, E. (2005) ‘Globalisation and Translation: A Theoretical Approach’, Language and Intercultural
Communication, 5(2), ­ pp. 131–144. ­ ­ ​­
Boillat, A. and Weber Henking, I. (eds.) (2014) Dubbing: die Übersetzung im Kino/La traduction audiovi-
suelle. Marburg: Schüren.
Butsch, R. (2019) Screen Culture: A Global History. Cambridge, UK: Wiley.
Carey, C. (n.d.) ‘Localization in the Evolving Entertainment Industry’. Interviewed by R. Beninatto
and M. Stevens. Podcast ‘Globally speaking’. Available online: https://www.nimdzi.com/podcast-
­­localization-in-the-evolving-entertainment-industry/
­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 26 April 2020].
Cazdyn, E. (2004) ‘A New Line in the Geometry’, in Balfour, I. and Egoyan, A. (eds.), Subtitles: On the
Foreigness of Film. Boston, MA: MIT Press, pp. 403– 419.

289
Nataša Ďurovičová

Chaume, F. (2018) ‘Is Audiovisual Translation Putting the Concept of Translation up against the
Ropes?’, Journal of Specialised Translation, 30, pp. 84–104. ­ ­ ​­
Chion, M., (1999) The Voice in Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press.
Cornu, J.-F. ​­ (2014)
­ Le Doublage et le sous-titrage: histoire et esthètique. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de
Rennes.
Cornu, J.-F a nd O’Sullivan, C. (2018), ‘History of Audiovisual Translation’, in Pérez- González, L.
(ed.),
­ The Routledge Handbook of Audiovisual Translation. London: Routledge, pp. 15–30. ­ ­ ​­
Cronin, M. (2003) Translation and Globalization. London: Routledge.
Cronin, M. (2013) Translation in the Digital Age. London: Routledge.
Dabingforum.cz. (2020.) Available at: https://www.dabingforum.cz/ucp.php?mode=register [Accessed
6 June 2020].
Damrosch, D. (2002) What Is World Literature? London and New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Dupré La Tour, C. (2019) ‘Early Titling on Films and Pathé’s Inventive and Multilingual Strategies in
1903’, in O’Sullivan, C. and Cornu, J. F. (eds.), The Translation of Films 1900–1950. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, pp. 41–64. ­ ­ ​­
Deshpande, S. and Mazaj, M. (2018) World Cinema: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge.
Díaz Cintas, J. and Massidda, S. (2019) ‘Technological Advances in Audiovisual Translation’, in
O’Hagan, M. (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Technology. London: Taylor and Francis,
pp. 255–270.
­ ­ ​­
Díaz Cintas, J. and Remael, A. (2014). Audiovisual Translation, Subtitling. London, UK: Taylor & Francis.
Ďurovičová, N. (1992) ‘Translating America: The Hollywood Multilinguals’, in Altman, R. (ed.),
Sound Theory, Sound Practice. London: Routledge, pp. 138–153. ­ ­ ​­
Ďurovičová, N. (2003) ‘Local Ghosts: Dubbing Bodies in Early Sound Cinema’, in Quaresima, L. and
Vichi, L. (eds.), Il film et suoi multipli. Udine: Faculta degli studii, pp. 83–98.
Ďurovičová, N. (2004) ‘Introduction’, Cinema & Cie, 102(4), ­ pp. 7–16. ­ ­ ​­
Ďurovičová, N. (2009) ‘Vector, Flow, Zone: Toward a History of Cinematic Translatio’, in Ďurovičová,
N. and Newman, K. (eds.), World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives. London: Routledge, pp. 90–120. ­ ­ ​­
Dwyer, T. (2017) Speaking in Subtitles: Revaluing Screen Translation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press.
Encyclopedia.com. (2020) ­ The Motion Picture Industry During World War II. Available online: https://
www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/motion-picture-industry-during-world-war-ii
­ ­­ ​­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
[Accessed 28 April 2020].
Friedman, R. (2019) The Movies as a World Force: American Silent Cinema and the Utopian Imagination.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Gambier, Y. (1992) ‘Adaptation: une ambiguïté à interroger’, Meta: Journal des traducteurs. 37(3), ­ pp. 421–425.
­ ­ ​­
doi: 10.7202/002802ar. [Accessed 6 May 2020].
Gambier, Y. (2018) ‘Audiovisual Translation in China: A Dialogue between Yves Gambier and Haina
Jin’, Journal of Audiovisual Translation, 1(1), ­ pp. 26–39.
­ ­ ​­
Garncarz, J. (2006) ‘Untertitel, Sprachversion, Synchronisation. Die Suche nach dem optimalen Über-
setzungsverfahren’, in Distelmeyer, J. (ed.), Babylon in FilmEuropa:Mehrsprachen-Versionen der 1930er
Jahre. München: edition text & kritik, pp. 9–18.
Gelardi, A. (2016) ‘Selling World Cinema by the Pound’, Cinergie, 10, pp.  ­ 171–179.
­ ​­ doi:10.6092/­
issn.2280–9481/6847
­ ​­ ­ [Accessed 6 May 2020].
Gomery, D. (2005) The Coming of Sound. New York: Routledge.
Gottlieb, H. (1994) ‘Subtitling: Diagonal Translation’, Perspectives, 2(1), ­ pp. ­ ­101–121. ​­ doi: 10.1080/­
0907676x.1994.9961227 [Accessed 6 May 2020].
Hansen, M. (2009) Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Hirji, F. (2005) ‘When Local Meets Lucre: Commerce, Culture and Imperialism in Bollywood Cinema’,
Global Media Journal. Available online: http://www.globalmediajournal.com/open-access/when-
­ ­­ ​­ ­­
­​­­local-meets-lucre-commerce-culture-and-imperialism-in-bollywood-cinema.php?aid=35173
­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
[Accessed 6 May 2020].
Jakobson, R. (1958) “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation’, in Brower, R. A. (ed.), On Translation
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Jarvinen, L. (2012) The Rise of Spanish-L anguage Filmmaking: Out from Hollywood's Shadow, 1929–1939.
London and New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
Kreimeier, K. (1996) Die Ufa Story: Geschichte eines Filmkonzerns. München: Hanser.

290
 The translation hurdle of world cinema

Krings, M. (2010) ‘Nollywood Goes East: Localizing Nigerian Films in Tanzania’, in Saul, M. and
Austen, R. A. (eds.), Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-First Century: Art Films and the Nollywood
Video Revolution. Athens: Ohio University Press, pp. 74–91.
Lacasse, G. (2006) ‘The Lecturer and the Attraction’, in Strauven, W. (ed.), The Cinema of Attractions
Reloaded. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 182–191.
­ ­
­ ­ ​­
Lorenzen, M. (2009), ‘Go West: The Growth of Bollywood’, Creative Industries Working Paper #8.
Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School.
Luedi, J. (2018), ‘Move over India: How Bollywood Conquered Nigeria’ [Online] Asia by Africa. Avail-
­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ ­­
able online: https://www.asiabyafrica.com/point-a-to-a/bollywood-in-nigeria?rq=Bollywood ­​­­ ​­
[Accessed 19 March 2020].
­
­ ­ ­ ​­ ­
Mamula, T. and Patti, L. (eds.) (2016) The Multilingual Screen: New Reflections on Cinema and Linguistic
Difference. London, New York: Bloomsbury.
Matsnews.blogspot.com (2015) ­ ‘Translating
­ Rome, Open City’. Available online: http://matsnews.blog-
spot.com/2015/11/translating-rome-open-city.html
­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 1 April 2020].
Metz, C. (1964) ‘Le cinéma: langue ou langage?’, Communications, 4(1), ­ pp.  ­ 52–90.
­ ​­ doi:10.3406/­
comm.1964.1028.
Mingant, N. (2019) ‘When the Thief of Baghdad Tried to Steal the Show: The Short-lived Dubbing of
Hollywood Films into Arabic in the 1940s’, in Ranzato, S. and Zanotti, S. (eds.), Reassessing Dub-
bing: Historical Approaches and Current Trends. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, pp. 42–61. ­ ­ ​­
Moine, R. (2007). Remakes: Les films français à Hollywood. Paris: CNRS Éditions, pp. 37– 65. Available
online: https://doi.org/10.4000/ books.editionscnrs.695 [Accessed 30 April 2020].
Moretti, F. (2001) ‘Planet Hollywood’, New Left Review, 9, pp. 90–101. ­ ­ ​­
Mowitt, J. (2005) Re-takes: Postcoloniality and Foreign Film Languages. Minneapolis: University of Min-
nesota Press.
Nornes, M. A. (1999) ‘Toward an Abusive Subtitling: Illuminating Cinema’s Apparatus of Translation’,
Film Quarterly, 52(3),­ pp.17–34.
­ ​­
Nornes, M. A. (2007) Cinema Babel: Translating Global Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
Netflix Post Partner Program. (2020) Np3.netflixstudios.com. Available online: https://np3.netflixstu-
dios.com/service/dubbing [Accessed 30 April 2020].
O’Sullivan, C. (2016) ‘Imagined Spectators: The Importance of Policy for Audiovisual Transla-
tion Research’, Target. International Journal of Translation Studies, 28(2), ­ pp.  ­ ­261–275. ​­ doi:10.1075/
­target.28.2.07osu
O’Sullivan, C. and Cornu, J.-F. (2019) The Translation of Films 1900–1950. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
­
­ ­ ​­
Pym, A. (2006) ‘Globalization and the Politics of Translation Studies’, Meta, 51(4), ­ pp. 
­ 744–757.
­ ​­
doi:10.7202/014339ar.
­
Rekabtalaei, G. (2019) Iranian Cosmopolitanism. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Roettgers, J. (2018) ‘Netflix’s Secrets to Success: Six Cell Towers, Dubbing and More’, Variety. Available
online: ­ ­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­
https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/netflix-success-secrets-1202721847/#utm_me- ­​­­ ​­
dium=social&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=social_bar&utm_content=bottom&utm_
id=1202721847 [Accessed 26 April 2020].
Rosewarne, L. (2020) Why We Remake: The Politics, Economics and Emotions of Film and TV Remakes.
London, UK: Routledge.
Rossholm, A. S. (2006) Reproducing Languages, Translating Bodies: Approaches to Speech, Translation and
Cultural Identity in early European Sound Film. PhD thesis, Stockholms Universitet.
Sekula, A. (1981) ‘The Traffic in Photographs’, Art Journal, 41(1), ­ pp. 15–25.
­ ­ ​­ doi:10.2307/776511. ­
Shah, A. (2012) ‘Is Bollywood Unlawfully Copying Hollywood? Why? What Has Been Done about It?
And How Can It be Stopped?’, Emory International Law Review, 26(1), ­ pp. 449–487.
­ ­ ​­ Available online:
­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­
https://law.emory.edu/eilr/_documents/volumes/26/1/comments/shah.pdf. ­
Sisto, A. (2001) The Sonic Object of Italian Cinema: From the Ideology of Dubbing to the Audio-Visual Images
of a Cinema of Poetry. PhD Thesis, Brown University.

291
Nataša Ďurovičová

Stam, R. (2019) World Literature, Transnational Cinema, and Global Media: Towards a Transartistic Commons.
London: Routledge.
Stegic, M. (2014) Das Gleiche, aber nicht Dasselbe. ­Philologisch-Kulturwissenschaftliche
​­ Fakultät.
University of Vienna [Unpublished dissertation].
Steinhard, P. (2019) Runaway Hollywood: Internationalizing Postwar Production and Location Shooting. Los
Angeles: University of California Press.
Stojanov, T. (2011) ‘Foreign Language Dubbing Practices’, e-brief. New York: Audio Engineering Society.
Available online: http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=16586
­ ­­ ​­ ­ [Accessed 26 April 2020].
­

UNESCO. (2016)
­ Record Number of Films Produced. Uis.unesco.org. Available online: http://uis.unesco.
­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­
org/en/news/record-number-films-produced ​­ [Accessed 26 April 2020].
Vasey, R. (1997) The World According to Hollywood, 1918–1939. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Williams, R. (2009) ‘Global English Ideography and the Dissolve Translation in Hollywood Film’,
Cultural Critique, 72(1),
­ pp. 89–136.
­ ­ ​­ ­
doi:10.1353/cul.0.0041.

292
 20
Translation and the globalization/
localization of news
Claire Scammell

Introduction
In the m id-n ineteenth century, the invention of the telegraph vastly accelerated the pace
at which news could be transmitted internationally. A century later, the arrival of satellite
communication exponentially increased the amount of news crossing national (and linguis-
tic) borders. Given the long history of international news transmission, and that translation
studies was first established as a scholarly discipline in the late 1970s, it is remarkable that
news translation only emerged as a subarea of translation research in the m id-2000s. Early
contributions have described the fundamental involvement of translation in a variety of jour-
nalistic practices, and in doing so have paved the way for research into a multitude of media
contexts and phenomena. The continually evolving nature of the news media system (in par-
ticular the multiplication of platforms through which audiences receive visual/radio/written
reporting on news events around the globe) and the continued non-attention to translation
among practitioners, audiences and scholars outside of translation studies mean that there is
an ongoing need for research that highlights and describes the involvement of translation in
the production of news content.
This chapter looks at how, in an era when audiences are immediately informed about (and
impacted by) events in distant places, the translation practices of global news organizations
shape what we know and understand about these events and places, in significant yet invisible
ways. The first part describes the complex and crucial part played by translation as the inter-
lingual element of the ‘news domestication’ process and highlights the dominant role of the
global agencies as the main providers of news content. The second part reviews arguments
for and against adopting the term localization, in place of translation, to describe its involve-
ment in the news. The third part then examines the potential of translation in the news as a
key tool of intercultural communication that can either hinder or facilitate the connections
audiences make with culturally and geographically distant peoples and places.

Translation in the global news system

The news translation literature, by virtue of the many different contexts examined (see Valdeón
2015 for an overview), underscores that whenever news is communicated across linguistic

293
Claire Scammell

borders, an element of interlingual translation is necessarily involved. It also shows that jour-
nalistic translation practices – and thus what this element of translation looks like – can vary
considerably across media and news organizations. Let us compare, for instance, the case of a
news magazine that expressly publishes translations of news reports originating in a particular
national press or language (for example, see Bani 2006; Franjié 2009) with the case of radio
news bulletins in a multilingual country (van Rooyen 2018). In the example of the news
magazines, translation occupies a primary and explicit role in the news production process.
From the perspective of the researcher, there is a clear source language/text and a clear target
language/text to study. In the example of the radio news bulletins, texts do exist in the form of
the sources used by the journalists and the news bulletins read out on air, but the involvement
of translation is far less clear-cut and may be relatively minor (if, for example, the bulletin
comprises information sourced primarily but not exclusively in the broadcast language).
A key finding of the emerging body of news translation research has been that the trans-
lation involved in news production is largely invisible. Bielsa (2007) describes it as ‘doubly
invisible’, referring to the fact that translation is invisible both as a process and as a product.
Examining the translation practices of Agence France-Presse (AFP), Reuters and Inter Press
Service, she finds translation to be invisible as a process on the basis that (a) journalists do
not consider their newswriting task to involve translation, and ( b) the agencies’ style guides
do not treat translation as a distinct activity/process. In addition to being invisible in the
newswriting process in this way, translation is found to be invisible in the ‘product’ as a result
of the use of domesticating translation strategies ( Venuti 2008) which conceal the journalist-
translator’s intervention in the text.
Bielsa’s findings are echoed by researchers who have studied translation practices in other
news media contexts and language pairs. Examining the case of a television news station in
Taiwan, Tsai (2012) finds that even the translators employed to perform the interlingual ele-
ment of the news production process do not regard their task as translation: ‘all five senior TV
news translators interviewed in this study agree that TV news translation is something other
than translation as we understood the term’ (2012: 1076). Through ethnographic observation
and interviews conducted at news agencies in Switzerland, Davier (2014: 9) finds a tendency
for journalists to use the term ‘editing’ to refer to the interlingual element of their newswrit-
ing task, seeming to wish to ‘distance’ themselves from the activity of translation. Similarly,
Wilke and Rosenberger (1994) report that ‘writers’ in Associated Press’ (AP) Frankfurt bu-
reau, whose task is to translate content sourced from English-language news reports into
German for AP’s German service, ‘deny that they are merely translators’ (1994: 422).
Ethnographic methods, such as those used in the abovementioned studies, which allow
the detailed examination of the translation process, require the collaboration of ( busy) jour-
nalists and are therefore uncommon in the literature. There is instead a significant body of
research that uses textual analysis to examine news translation as a product. As a result, there
are a greater number of accounts of the invisibility of translation in news products than in
newswriting processes. Textual analyses involving a variety of news contexts and language
pairs collectively identify a norm for domesticating news translation practices ( Holland
2013). This includes in the pair German-English in the German news magazine Der Spiegel
(Schäffner 2005), Italian-English in the Italian news magazine Internazionale ( Bani 2006),
Arabic-French in the French news magazine Courrier International (Franjié 2009) and French-
English in reporting by Reuters (Scammell 2018). The domestication norm has been de-
scribed as necessary to the newswriting goal of clear and concise communication ( Bielsa
and Bassnett 2009), with Bassnett (2005: 127) going as far as stating that ‘ foreignisation is
detrimental to understanding’.

294
 Globalization/localization of news

As well as obscuring the fact that translation has occurred, the domesticating translation
strategies described by researchers are part of a wider norm in operation in the globalized
media system – the intra-lingual news ‘domestication’ process, as it is known in journalism
studies, which involves tailoring foreign news information to meet the needs and expecta-
tions of domestic audiences. The term was first used in a paper by Gurevitch et al. (1991)
who describe how domestication works to create culturally relevant content in the case of
television news:

This is accomplished, first, by casting far-away events in frameworks that render these
events comprehensible, appealing and ‘relevant’ to domestic audiences; and second, by
constructing the meanings of these events in ways that are compatible with the culture
and the ‘dominant ideology’ of the societies they serve.
(1991:
­ 206)

In a paper examining international news flows, Clausen describes domestication as the

‘processes of making information comprehensible to audiences in a given culture’ (2004: 29),
and later as ‘a process of framing: recognising, defining, selecting and organising news in a
way judged to be appropriate for the intended audiences’ (2009: 132).
Domestication is recognized in the journalism studies literature as a standard feature of
globalized news (Cheesman and Nohl 2011). It is, however, at odds with accounts of news
‘ homogenization’ (MacGregor 2013). National media organizations publish news content
aimed at national audiences but in doing so they rely heavily on content produced by a hand-
ful of global news agencies, namely AP, AFP and Reuters, who play an invisible role as ‘news
wholesalers’ ( Boyd-Barrett 1997) providing news information to subscribers via newswires
in multiple languages. The agencies produce ready-to-publish content that subscribers can
reproduce in part or in full and in verbatim or edited form. In addition to text services, this
includes photo and video content: ‘turn to any television news bulletin, and you are likely
to see film footage that originated from, or was procured by, one of the three international
news agencies’ (MacGregor 2013: 35). The dominance of the global news agencies, who are
recognized as ‘agents’ of globalization ( Boyd-Barrett and Rantanen 1998), has thereby led to
the homogenization of news content ( Bielsa 2005; MacGregor 2013).
In the context of budgetary restrictions, ‘ investing in international reportage can be per-
ceived as a risky and costly strategy for news organisations’ (Gerodimos 2013: 484– 485). The
result is a decline in original reporting, an increased reliance on news content provided by
a few news providers and an ‘ever more homogenised news agenda’ ( Jukes 2013: 2). While
globalization has increased the speed at which and the number of platforms through which
audiences are accessing textual and visual reporting online (including via prolific portal news
websites such as Yahoo! News and Google News), it has not led to a diversity of content. In
analysis of online news, Paterson (2007: 63) finds that the only national news organization to
fall into the category of producing ‘extensive international reporting’ is the BBC. MacGre-
gor (2013: 44) observes a tendency for agency content to be published online in ‘unchanged’
rather than domesticated form, arguing that ‘when you scratch beneath the surface there is
little more than clever presentation that conceals an absence of any original reporting’ (see
Scammell 2018 for evidence in support of this finding).
While the dominance of a handful of global news agencies seems to make the homogeni-
zation of global news in some form inevitable, the agencies also tailor content to their target
audiences. However, rather than producing news stories for national audiences, the task of the
agency journalist is to communicate news events in a way that is relevant and intelligible for

295
Claire Scammell

all markets where the reporting language is spoken. Bielsa and Bassnett (2009) analyse agency
news reporting in order to identify the intra-lingual editing practices that occur alongside
interlingual translation when global news is tailored to different audiences. They categorize
five types of ‘textual intervention’ changes. The interventions identified are those that a
news story undergoes when it is reported for a new audience, whether that audience speaks a
different language or not, for example, the removal of unnecessary information. Scholars ex-
amining how translation is involved in the repackaging of global news for national audiences
have identified similar sets of modifications ( Kang 2007; Hernández Guerrero 2010; Schäff-
ner 2012). These accounts describe a process of ‘recontextualization’ in which (interlingual)
translation is obscured by the intra-lingual editing practices that occur alongside it.
While there are cases of full texts being translated and published in another language –
predominantly national news magazines (see, for instance, Schäffner 2005; Bani 2006; Fran-
jié 2009) – research on translation in global media production typically involves pinpointing
the interlingual aspects of a predominantly intra-l ingual process. Crucially, the intended
result of this process, rather than a ‘translation’ in the traditional sense, is a new text ( Wilke
and Rosenberger 1994; Orengo 2005; Bielsa 2007; Tsai 2012). This has led scholars writing
on news translation to question if a different name is needed for their object of investigation,
which is distinct in character from forms of translation that involve the translation of a sin-
gular source text and where loyalty to that source text (i.e. faithfully reproducing its content) is
paramount. The closest the field has come to adopting a new label for news translation is Stet-
ting’s ‘transediting’ (1989). While some scholars have found the term helpful (van Doorslaer
2009; Hernández Guerrero 2010; Lu and Chen 2011), others have raised objections ( Bielsa
and Bassnett 2009; Schäffner 2012).
There is, on one hand, motivation to keep the word translation as part of efforts to high-
light the involvement of translation in the news. On the other hand, there is motivation to
abandon the term in order to find one that speaks to scholars outside of translation studies,
who overlook the role of translation ( Bielsa 2016; Conway 2017; Schäffner 2017), and jour-
nalists themselves, who, as discussed earlier, tend not to recognize the interlingual element of
their newswriting as translation. Valdeón’s (2018) analysis of articles published in the field of
journalism studies finds that ‘ journalism researchers seem to view ‘translation’ as the literal
inter-linguistic rendition of a foreign text, a process that tends to be rare in news production
involving translation’ (2018: 258). Arguments have been made for widening the definition of
translation in order to fit news translation and other cases that challenge the traditional con-
ception of translation but that are forms of interlingual translation nonetheless ( Valdeón 2016).
The next part of the chapter asks whether insisting upon the label ‘translation’ may be
unproductive for news translation research, given that the forms of translation that occur in
the global news system do not fit with the prevalent understanding of ‘translation’ among
non- experts (including both news practitioners and consumers) and considers the potential
usefulness of localization as an alternative. The case for adopting localization was first made by
Orengo (2005) when news translation had only just emerged as an area of investigation; it
is revisited below in the context of more recent debates and in light of parallels with a bur-
geoning localization industry where translation is one element of a process of adapting global
products for national markets.

Approaching news translation as ‘localization’: arguments for and against

The translation studies literature offers several definitions of localization. In a monograph
dedicated to the subject, Pym (2004: 1) states: ‘ localization is the adaptation and translation

296
 Globalization/localization of news

of a text ( like a software programme) to suit a particular reception situation’ and dates the
emergence of localization as a language industry to the 1990s (2004: xv). Its emergence can
be seen as a response to the birth of the software localization industry a decade earlier (Cronin
2010: 135) and the demand this created for specialized language services to facilitate the
global marketing of software products. Gambier’s definition below, coming 12 years after
Pym’s, reflects developments in the conceptualization of localization both professionally and
academically. Not least because it avoids the word text:

Localization refers not only to the professional procedure of adapting content linguisti-
cally, culturally, and technically; it also is used more loosely to refer to the entire indus-
try that has emerged around localization.
(2016:
­ 891)

Gambier’s (suitably) broad definition identifies three forms of transformation  – l inguistic,

cultural and technical – that global products undergo in order to be sold in different mar-
kets. As part of his arguments in favour of the application of localization to the case of news
translation, Orengo (2005: 175) underlines the need to view news as a ‘global product’ that
‘needs to be translated especially in order to be sold’. In news production, as in software
localization, the goal is definitively a new product rather than a translation of a source text.
Another parallel between the news media and localization industries is that they each respond
to a demand, brought about by globalization, for the rapid and concurrent release of different
language versions tailored to different markets ( Bielsa 2005). Gambier (2016: 891) describes
how, in the localization industry – a ‘ highly competitive market’ – ‘software and hardware
products with short shelf lives must be regularly and quickly updated and launched at the
same time’. Similarly, in their efforts to be the first to break global news stories, the agencies
publish different language versions of a story onto their newswires, produced by different
journalists working simultaneously, as quickly as possible (newly sourced quotations and/or
corrections are added in ‘update’ reports later).
In both cases, the speed at which audiences across the globe have access to information in
their own language creates the illusion that information can pass readily from one linguistic
and cultural context to another, thus obscuring the crucial part played by translation in facil-
itating this process ( Bielsa 2005). However, while translation is not recognized as a distinct
part of global news production, in the localization industry, the outsourcing of translation to
specialist language localization agencies (or more generalist translation agencies) means that
translation enjoys greater visibility. On the website of the Globalization and Localization
Association (GALA 2019), localization is defined as:

the process of adapting a product or content to a specific locale or market. Translation is

only one of several elements of the localization process […] The aim of localization is to
give a product the look and feel of having been created specifically for a target market,
no matter their language, culture, or location.

Among the examples given of the other elements of the process are ‘adapting graphics to tar-
get markets’ and ‘modifying content to suit the tastes and consumption habits of other mar-
kets’. Even though translation occurs alongside other non-l inguistic adaptations, as it does
in news production processes, these do not detract attention from the translation part. This
is no doubt helped by the fact that the translation part is typically performed by language
professionals advertising their services as translators or localization specialists. While this is

297
Claire Scammell

not the case in a news translation context (as the translating is typically done by journalists),
perhaps by insisting on parallels with the localization industry, and approaching the news
production process as the localization of global news products, researchers can benefit from
the clear identification of translation as part of the process.
Existing uses of ‘ localization’ in the news translation literature tend to use the term as a
synonym for what journalism scholars term news ‘domestication’ (see part 1) and, as such,
do not have the effect of demarcating the part played by translation. Samuel-Azran et al. use
localization to refer to the additional role journalists perform as cultural mediators when
translating international news:

For the journalist, in order to truly translate a story, the ‘message’ must be translated,
more so than the actual text. As such, the text will have to be ‘ localized’ in order to
make it relevant to the receiving culture.
(2014:
­ 274)

In this usage, localization involves translation, but also extends beyond translation to cultural
adaptation. A similar meaning is attributed by Gambier (2016: 901), whose example of the
localization of global news is US diplomatic cables disclosed by WikiLeaks being ‘distributed
and explained to Spanish readers’. In this example, translation is necessarily involved in mak-
ing the text accessible to Spanish readers, but the localization process additionally involves
‘explaining’ the content. In a paper that looks at the globalization of local news (in the case
of the ­English-language
​­ publication Vietnam News), van Leeuwen (2006) also appears to use
‘ localization’ to describe what happens in the other direction, that is, what journalism studies
describes as the ‘domestication’ of global news for local audiences.
The above uses are consistent with Pym’s conception of the ‘ localization’ of foreign news:

The foreign news we read in the local press can legitimately be seen as a localization
of foreign-language texts, at some point transformed by the international agencies, and
transformed in ways that go beyond endemic notions of translation.
­
(2004: 4)

Davier (2017: 14), meanwhile, points to two important differences between software and news
localization. The first of these distinctions relates to the multi-source nature of news report-
ing. Unlike in software localization, in a news context, there is not typically a single source
text to translate. As Davier describes elsewhere (2014: 6), news agency reports are ‘patchworks
of many different sources, many of which were originally in a different language’. The sec-
ond distinction relates to the fact that the news agencies produce texts aimed at all speakers of
a particular language around the globe, while in the localization industry, a separate version
is produced for each m arket – for example, separate English versions for the United States,
the United Kingdom, Australia and any other country, India for example, where a large share
of the market may require an English version.
Related to the latter of Davier’s two distinctions, Károly (2018: 391) points to the ‘ highly
heterogeneous’ nature of the global audiences addressed by the media. The news agencies
respond to this heterogeneity by avoiding the use of language that does not travel well. For
instance, the Reuters Handbook of Journalism advises journalists to ‘[a]void quotes in collo-
quial or parochial language not easily translated or understood in other countries’ (2014:
390). Certainly, as some scholars have observed (van Leeuwen 2006; Cheesman and Nohl
2011; Gambier 2016), local news stories must be globalized for a broad, global audience

298
 Globalization/localization of news

(typically by the global news agencies) and may later be localized ( by subscribing news orga-
nizations) for target readers in a particular country. However, this practice has parallels with
‘ internationalization’ in the localization industry, whereby local versions are preceded by
an ‘ internationalized’ master (see Jiménez- Crespo, this volume). Moreover, Davier’s second
distinction does not apply to the multitude of national news organizations around the globe,
who produce reporting for readers in a specific country.
­One – ​­perhaps the ­strongest – ​­argument against adopting localization to describe trans-
lation in the news is that it can undermine efforts to expand the definition of translation.
Since the ‘cultural turn’ in translation studies (see Snell-Hornby 2006 for a discussion), the
focus of attention has moved away from literary translation and relationships of equivalence
between source and target texts/segments to describing forms of translation in a wide vari-
ety of contexts. Social and cultural considerations have taken centre stage (Gambier 2016).
As Gambier observes, the translation practices of journalists do not challenge the term as
it is used today: ‘The transformations identified in news translation (e.g., restructuring the
source text with a new focus, deleting and/or adding items, borrowing) are characteristic of
translation more generally’ (2016: 901). In light of developments in the definition and use
of the term translation, some scholars have argued that using other labels for news translation
can be detrimental to understandings of translation itself (Schäffner 2012). Gambier (2016:
888) argues that the use of localization (and other labels) ‘can complicate the purview of the
discipline’. Others, meanwhile, continue to argue that translation does not fit the case of news
translation ( Tsai 2012).
Yet, the fact that news translation research – despite having demonstrated the crucial part
played by translation in global media flows – has so far failed to gain an audience beyond
translation studies provides convincing grounds for relabelling the object of investigation
in a way that fits with practitioners’ understandings of the interlingual element of the news
production process. The final part of this chapter looks at the importance and potential of
translation in the news as a tool of intercultural communication, and thus points to the need
to increase awareness among media organizations of the responsibility their journalists hold
as news translators.

The making of global connections through (translated) news

Processes and agents of globalization, among those the media, have led to a cosmopolitan
reality ( Beck 2006), in which audiences regularly come into contact with geographically
distant cultures, whether or not they seek out this contact. Events in remote places impact
audience members’ daily lives, meaning that along with access to global products and the
opportunity to ‘armchair travel’ through film, television and internet channels comes the
responsibility to engage with foreign cultural contexts. Global news offers an opportunity
to do so, by providing a ‘window to the world’ ( Tuchman 1978: 1). Journalists assume the
role of cultural mediator ( Beliveau et al. 2011; Bielsa 2016), responsible for making foreign
realities intelligible to their target audiences, and thus determining what audiences see and
understand of that world.
Since translation necessarily involves interpretation (Gentzler and Tymoczko 2002: xvi;
Conway 2017), those parts of the news story that originate in a foreign language are doubly
mediated ( Hernando 1999; Hernández Guerrero 2010; Károly 2010). Translated versions of
quotations authored by agency journalists are picked up and reproduced by subscribers (who
rely on the agencies for quotation in particular) and become embedded in global news flows
as fact. In addition, since new concepts enter languages and cultures via translation (Schäffner

299
Claire Scammell

2000: 4), the global agencies, as the first to report on breaking news, are regularly responsible
for defining and labelling new realities. The AP Stylebook known as the ‘ journalists’ bible’
(Cotter 2010: 192) is one formal medium through which terms used to describe foreign
cultural realities enter the global media system. It is possible to observe this process on the
@APStylebook Twitter handle. For example, a two-part Tweet on 1 September 2017 sum-
marizes the significance of the Islamic festival Eid al-Adha
­ ​­ and gives an English translation of
the name as its ‘meaning’:

Muslims around the world are celebrating the Eid al-Adha holiday on Friday. (1/2)
Meaning “Feast of Sacrifice,” it marks the willingness of the Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham
to Christians and Jews) to sacrifice his son. (2/2)

The Spanish version of the AP Stylebook also has a dedicated Twitter handle (@AP_Man-
ualEstilo), which regularly calls for terms originating in English – such as Black Friday, bitcoin
and nugget (in the translation for ‘chicken nugget’) – to be kept in the original language. The
English words do not require a translation since they enter the t arget-language system as the
labels for existing (and therefore familiar) globalized cultural concepts. When journalists
need to describe new, non-globalized realities originating in a foreign language, however,
translation is more likely to be involved, particularly when the source and target languages
and cultures are more distant from one another than the example of Spanish and English.
Given the dominance of AFP, AP and Reuters, the responsibility of deciding how emerging
global realities are defined and labelled is held above all by these agencies. National news or-
ganizations also play their part, either by attaching their own label, or by localizing the label
attached by the agencies, but the wide reach of the news agencies means that their transla-
tions of foreign cultural concepts become embedded in the global media system and thus play
an important part in determining how readers come to know and understand these realities.
In their role as cultural mediators – which involves deciding both what information is
relevant to the target audience, and how to make that information intelligible in the target
language – journalists also hold the responsibility of shaping readers’ encounters with for-
eign cultures. Beliveau et al. (2011: 155) describe foreign correspondents as ‘empowering’
audiences by transmitting information across the ‘cultural border’. Within sociology, in the
context of debates on globalization and cosmopolitanism, the need for national citizens to
possess the cultural ‘competence’ (Hannerz 1990) to engage with geographically and cultur-
ally distant others is seen as necessitated by the fact that we are already living in a cosmopol-
itan world ( Beck 2006). Robertson (2010) underlines that the media have the potential to
equip audiences with a cosmopolitan competence, but that this potential is not necessarily
being fulfilled. Robertson’s account does not, however, address the part played by translation
in either limiting or maximizing the extent to which audiences are empowered by their en-
counters with foreign cultures.
Bielsa (2016) argues that translation in the news has the potential to facilitate global in-
terconnectedness, but only through the use of foreignizing rather than domesticating trans-
lation strategies. Samuel-Azran et al. (2014) use a questionnaire to examine the impact of
branding on US viewers’ perceptions of the credibility and professionalism of reporting by
Al-Jazeera English. The study finds that when the network’s logo is removed from news
items, its connection to the Arab world is still revealed by the pronunciation of Arab names,
leading viewers to assign lower credibility and professionalism scores. The finding prompts
the authors to ask: ‘where is the line in making news relatable to one culture while preserving
the ideals and voice of the original?’ (2014: 282). They underline that overly domesticating

300
 Globalization/localization of news

translation practices would undermine the network’s aim of offering a non-Anglo-American

news source, and the conflicting need to avoid foreignizing effects in order to be trusted by
its target audience. In a critical examination of the role played by translators and translation
studies scholars in a globalizing world, Tymoczko underlines that translation ‘obviously con-
tributes to the ability of diverse people to understand each other, but it can also construct
stereotypes, confirm and harden cultural oppositions, and inflame violence’ (2009: 187).
At the same time as allowing audiences to come into contact with foreign cultures, the
translation practised by journalists moderates that contact as part of the news domestication
process, restricting the extent to which the experience of reading the news can equip readers
with cosmopolitan competence. Herein lies a paradox of news translation today. Transla-
tion has enormous potential as a tool of intercultural communication in the news, but this
potential is fundamentally limited by its primary aim – to communicate news information
clearly and concisely across linguistic borders. While it may not be possible to resolve this
paradox, researchers can hope to raise awareness of the yet unfulfilled potential of translation
in terms of facilitating global connections. This can be an important step towards inviting
media actors to re-examine their translation practices and to placing translation at the centre
of interdisciplinary debates.

Conclusion
This chapter has examined the part played by translation in the global news system. In the
first part, it has highlighted complexities relating to translation in the news as an object of
investigation – the multi- source characteristics of news texts, the lack of a source and target
text, and the interrelated yet distinct uses of domestication in journalism and in translation
studies. It has also, in this first part, underlined the dominant role of AP, AFP and Reuters
as providers of (translated) news content that is widely reproduced by subscribers across the
globe. The chapter’s second part has examined parallels between news production and the
localization industry. From a perspective which views news texts as global products, it has
asked if approaching news translation as localization may help translation studies researchers
to engage practitioners and scholars outside of the discipline. The third and final part of the
chapter has briefly discussed sociological debates related to the role of the media in pro-
moting global awareness and pointed to the role played by translation in shaping audiences’
encounters with foreign realities.
A common thread through these discussions is the challenge news translation researchers
face in attracting the attention of scholars outside of the discipline. Given that translation is
bound up in other intra-lingual newswriting practices, there is both significant scope for, and
value in, interdisciplinary debate. The chapter has suggested that adopting localization may
help to engage a non-expert audience, by making use of an existing and relevant concept that
is better aligned with journalists’ (and therefore journalism researchers’) perceptions of the
interlingual element of the newswriting task. For the same reason of terminological align-
ment, news translation researchers may find it productive to engage the concept of domestica-
tion, as it is used in journalism studies, rather than the alternative recontextualization generated
in the literature, in order to highlight the significance of translation in news domestication
processes, and of domesticating translation strategies.
Among the findings of the news translation literature published to date, the chapter has
highlighted the double invisibility of translation in the news. The invisibility of translation in
newswriting processes reflects a lack of consciousness of translation on the part of practitioners,
inviting research that directly engages journalists as an audience or as active participants.

301
Claire Scammell

The invisibility of translation in global news products, connected to the norm for domesticat-
ing translation practices, has two implications of relevance to debates in journalism studies
on news domestication more widely, and to sociological debates on cosmopolitanism and
the media. First, the use of a domesticating approach means that readers’ interpretations
of foreign realities are immediately limited by translations which prioritize communicat-
ing foreign-language information in terms that the reader will immediately recognize and
understand. Second, a domesticating approach to translation obscures the journalist’s inter-
linguistic intervention in the text, and thus the aforementioned impact of the translation
process on the reporting of global events and the local contexts they occur within. Contri-
butions from translation studies can recognize the need for news content, as a global product,
to undergo a process of domestication but also draw interdisciplinary attention to the impact
of domesticating translations as part of this process.
As mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, the continually evolving global media
landscape presents opportunities for research that specifies the involvement of translation
in a multitude of developing news contexts. This includes, but is not limited to, research
examining the involvement of translation in citizen journalism, news reported via social
media platforms, and news content published on dedicated news websites, all of which reach
global audiences. In the latter category, in addition to the websites of long- standing national
newspapers (that may or may not still exist in print form – with potential for comparisons
if they do), are portal websites (such as Yahoo! News and Google News) offering news content
aggregated from other news providers, and so-called ‘viral’ news sites (such as BuzzFeed
and Upworthy). In each of these contexts, the research can take either or both a text-based
approach (where the reporting itself is examined) or an audience-based approach (where
the reader’s experience of the reporting is the focus). The latter approach, despite gaining
in popularity in the subarea of audiovisual translation (see di Giovanni and Gambier 2018),
remains under-used in translation studies generally and thus presents opportunities for news
translation scholars to contribute to methodological advancements in the discipline.

Further reading
Bielsa, E. and Bassnett, S. (2009) Translation in Global News. London: Routledge.
A detailed examination of the translation involved in the production of news by the global news
agencies.
Davier, L., van Doorslaer, L. and Schäffner, C. (eds.) (2018) Across Languages and Cultures, 19(2), ­
pp. 155–278.
­ ­ ​­
A special edition focused on methodological approaches to news translation research.
Scammell, C. (2018) Translation Strategies in Global News: What Sarkozy Said in the Suburbs. Cham: Pal-
grave Pivot.
A short monograph investigating the translation strategies employed by journalists when reporting
foreign news events to home audiences.
Valdeón, R. A. (2015) ‘Fifteen Years of Journalistic Translation Research and More’, Perspectives: Stud-
ies in Translatology, 23(4),
­ pp. 634–662.
­ ­ ​­
A survey of the contributions made to the subarea of news translation research in its first 15 years.

References
Bani, S. (2006) ‘An Analysis of Press Translation Process’, in Conway, K. and Bassnett, S. (eds.), Trans-
lation in Global News (Conference Proceedings). Warwick, UK: University of Warwick, pp. 35– 45.
Bassnett, S. (2005) ‘Bringing the News Back Home: Strategies of Acculturation and Foreignisation’,
Language and Intercultural Communication, 5(2),
­ pp. 120–130.
­ ­ ​­

302
 Globalization/localization of news

Beck, U. (2006) The Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Beliveau, R., Hahn, O. and Guido, I. (2011) ‘Foreign Correspondents as Mediators and Translators’, in
Gross, P. and Kopper, G. G. (eds.), Understanding Foreign Correspondence: A Euro-American Perspective
of Concepts, Methodologies, and Theories. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 129–163.
Bielsa, E. (2005) ‘Globalisation and Translation: A Theoretical Approach’, Language and Intercultural
Communication, 5(2),­ pp. 131–144.
­ ­ ​­
Bielsa, E. (2007) ‘Translation in Global News Agencies’, Target, 19(1),
­ pp. 135–155.
­ ­ ​­
Bielsa, E. (2016) ‘News Translation: Global or Cosmopolitan Connections?’, Media, Culture and Society,
38(2),
­ pp. 196–211.
­ ­ ​­
Bielsa, E. and Bassnett, S. (2009) Translation in Global News. London: Routledge.
­

­ ­ ​­
­
­ ­ ​­
Cheesman, T. and Nohl, A. M. (2011) ‘Many Voices, One BBC World Service? The 2008 US Elec-
tions, Gatekeeping and ­Trans-Editing’, ​­ Journalism, 12(2),­ pp. 217–233.
­ ­ ​­
Clausen, L. (2004) ‘Localizing the Global: “Domestication” Processes in International News Produc-
tion’, Media, Culture and Society, 26(1), ­ pp. 25–44.­ ­ ​­
Clausen, L. (2009) ‘International News Flow’, in Allan, S. (ed.), The Routledge Companion to News and
Journalism. London: Routledge, pp. 127–136. ­ ­ ​­
Conway, K. (2017) ‘Encoding/ Decoding as Translation’, International Journal of Communication, 11,
­ ­
pp. 710–727. ​­ ­ ­ ­
Available online: http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/5922/1928­ ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 4
July 2018].
Cotter, C. (2010) News Talk: Investigating the Language of Journalism. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge
­University Press.
Cronin, M. (2010) ‘Globalization and Translation’, in van Doorslaer, L. and Gambier, Y. (eds.), Handbook
of Translation Studies. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 134–140. ­ ­ ​­
Davier, L. (2014) ‘The Paradoxical Invisibility of Translation in the Highly Multilingual Context of
News Agencies’, Global Media and Communication, 10(1), ­ pp. 53–72.
­ ­ ​­
Davier, L. (2017) Les enjeux de la traduction dans les agences de presse. Presses Universitaires de Septentrion.
di Giovanni, E. and Gambier, Y. (eds.) (2018) Reception Studies and Audiovisual Translation. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.
Franjié, L. (2009) ‘Quand la traduction devient un moyen de communication orientée: le cas du Cour-
rier International pendant la guerre du Liban de 2006’, in Guidère, M. (ed.), Traduction et communi-
cation orientée. Paris: Le Manuscrit, pp. 61–86. ­ ­ ​­
GALA. (2019) ­ What Is Localization? Available online: https://www.gala-global.org/industry/intro-
­ ­ ​­ ­ ­­ ­​
­­ ​­ ­­
language-industry/what-localization​­ [Accessed 10 June 2019].
Gambier, Y. (2016) ‘Rapid and Radical Changes in Translation and Translation Studies’, International
Journal of Communication, 10, pp. 887–906.
­ ­ ​­ Available online: http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/
­ ­ ­ ­ ­
view/3824 [Accessed 4 July 2018].
Gentzler, E. and Tymoczko, M. (2002) Translation and Power. Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press.
Gerodimos, R. (2013) ‘Global News, Global Challenges’, in Fowler-Watt, K. and Allan, S. (eds.),
Journalism: New Challenges. Bournemouth, UK: Bournemouth University, Centre for Journalism &
Communication Research, pp. 476–498.­ ­ ​­
Gurevitch, M., Levy, M. R. and Roeh, I. (1991) ‘The Global Newsroom: Convergences and Diversities
in the Globalisation of Television News’, in Dahlgren, P. and Sparks, C. (eds.), Communication and
Citizenship: Journalism and the Public Sphere in the New Media Age. London: Routledge, pp. 195–216. ­ ­ ​­
Hannerz, U. (1990) ‘Cosmopolitans and Locals in World Culture’, Theory, Culture  & Society, 7,
pp. 237–251.
­ ­ ​­
Hernández Guerrero, M. J. (2010) ‘Translated Interviews in Printed Media  – A Case Study of the
Spanish Daily El Mundo’, Across Languages and Cultures, 11(2), ­ pp. 217–232.
­ ­ ​­
Hernando, B. M. (1999) ‘Traducción y periodismo o el doble y misterioso escepticismo’, Estudios sobre
el mensaje periodístico, 5, pp. 129–141.
­ ­ ​­
Holland, R. (2013) ‘News Translation’, in Millan, C. and Bartrina, F. (eds.), Routledge Handbook of
Translation Studies. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 332–346. ­ ­ ​­

303
Claire Scammell

Jukes, S. (2013) ‘A Perfect Storm’, in Fowler-Watt, K. and Allan, S. (eds.), Journalism: New Challenges.
Bournemouth, UK: Bournemouth University, Centre for Journalism & Communication Research,
­ ­ ​­
pp. 1–18.
Kang, J.-H. (2007) ‘Recontextualization of News Discourse: A Case Study of Translation of News
Discourse on North Korea’, The Translator, 13(2), ­ pp. 219–242.
­ ­ ​­
Károly, K. (2010) ‘News Discourse in Translation: Topical Structure and News Content in the Analytical
News Article’, Meta: Translators’ Journal, 57(4), ­ pp. 884–908.
­ ­ ​­
Károly, K. (2018) ‘Media and Translation’, in Cotter, C. and Perrin, D. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook
of Language and Media. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 388–402. ­ ­ ​­
Lu, G.-H. and Chen. Y.- M. (2011) ‘The Mediation of Reader Involvement in Soft News Transediting’,
Translation and Interpreting, 3(2),
­ pp. 48–66.
­ ­ ​­ ­ ­ ​­ ­
Available online: http://www.trans-int.org/index.php/ ­
transint/article/view/148 [Accessed 4 July 2018].
MacGregor, P. (2013) ‘International News Agencies: Global Eyes that Never Blink’, in Fowler-Watt,
K. and Allan, S. (eds.), Journalism: New Challenges. Bournemouth, UK: Bournemouth University,
Centre for Journalism & Communication Research, pp. 35–63. ­ ­ ​­
Orengo, A. (2005) ‘Localising News: Translation and the “Global-National” Dichotomy’, Language
and Intercultural Communication, 5(2), ­ pp. 168–187.
­ ­ ​­
Paterson, C. (2007) ‘International News on the Internet: Why More Is Less’, Ethical Space: The Interna-
tional Journal of Communication Ethics, 4(1/2),
­ ­ pp. 57–66.
­ ­ ​­ Available online: http://www.communication
­
ethics.net/journal/v4n1-2/v4n1-2_12.pdf
­ ­­ ​­ ­­ ​­ [Accessed 4 July 2018].
Pym, A. (2004) The Moving Text: Localization, Translation, and Distribution. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Reuters. (2014)
­ A Handbook of Reuters Journalism. Available online: http://handbook.reuters.com/
index.php?title=Main_Page. [Accessed 2 October 2014].
Robertson, A. (2010) Mediated Cosmopolitanism. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
­

­ ­ ​­
Scammell, C. (2018) Translation Strategies in Global News: What Sarkozy Said in the Suburbs. Cham: Pal-
grave Pivot.
Schäffner, C. (ed.) (2000) ‘Introduction: Globalisation, Communication, Translation’, in Translation in
the Global Village. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 1–10. ­ ­ ​­
Schäffner, C. (2005) ‘Bringing a German Voice to English- speaking Readers: Spiegel International’,
Language and Intercultural Communication, 5(2), ­ pp. 154–167.
­ ­ ​­
Schäffner, C. (2012) ‘Rethinking Transediting’, Meta: Translators’ Journal, 57(4), ­ pp. 866–883.
­ ­ ​­
Schäffner, C. (2017) ‘Language, Interpreting, and Translation in the News Media’, in Malmkjær, K.
(ed.),
­ The Routledge Handbook of Translation Studies and Linguistics. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 327–341.
­ ­ ​­
­Snell-Hornby,
​­ M. (2006)
­ The Turns of Translation Studies: New Paradigms or Shifting Viewpoints? Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.
Stetting, K. (1989) ‘Transediting. A New Term for Coping with the Grey Area between Editing and
Translating’, in Caie, G., Haastrup, K., Jakobsen, A. L., Nielsen, A. L., Sevaldsen, J., Specht, H.
and Zettersten, A. (eds.), Proceedings from the Fourth Nordic Conference for English Studies. Copenhagen:
University of Copenhagen, pp. 371–382.
­ ­ ​­
Tsai, C. (2012) ‘Television News Translation in the Era of Market- d riven Journalism’, Meta: Translators’
Journal, 57(4),
­ pp. 1060–1080.
­ ­ ​­
Tuchman, G. (1978) Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality. New York: The Free Press.
Tymoczko, M. (2009) ‘Translation, Ethics and Ideology in a Violent Globalizing World’, in Bielsa,
E. and Hughes, C. W. (eds.), Globalization, Political Violence and Translation. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, pp. 171–194.
­ ­ ​­
Valdeón, R. A. (2015) ‘Fifteen Years of Journalistic Translation Research and More’, Perspectives: Studies
in Translatology, 23(4),
­ pp. 634–662.
­ ­ ​­
Valdeón, R. A. (2016) ‘The Construction of National Images through News Translation: Self-Framing
in El País English Edition’, in van Doorslaer, L., Flynn, P. and Leerssen, J. (eds.), Interconnecting
Translation Studies and Imagology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 219–237. ­ ­ ​­
Valdeón, R. A. (2018) ‘On the Use of the Term “Translation” in Journalism Studies’, Journalism, 19(2), ­
­ ­ ​­
pp. 252–269.
van Doorslaer, L. (2009) ‘How Language and ( Non-)Translation Impact on Media Newsrooms: The
Case of Newspapers in Belgium’, Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, 17(2), ­ pp. 83–92.
­ ­ ​­

304
 Globalization/localization of news

van Leeuwen, T. (2006) ‘Translation, Adaptation, Globalization: The Vietnam News’, Journalism, 7(2), ­
pp. 217–237.
­ ­ ​­
van Rooyen, M. (2018) ‘Investigating Translation Flows: Community Radio News in South Africa’,
Across Languages and Cultures, 19(2),
­ pp. 259–278.
­ ­ ​­ 

Venuti, L. (2008) The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
Wilke, J. and Rosenberger, B. (1994) ‘Importing Foreign News: A Case Study of the German Service
of the Associated Press’, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 71(2), ­ pp. 421–432.
­ ­ ​­ Available
­ ­ ­ ­ ­
online: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/107769909407100215 [Accessed 4 July 2018].

305
 21
Museums as translation zones
Robert Neather

Introduction
Museums are important sites of cultural representation in which translation plays a cru-
cial part. Translation here may be understood as both cultural translation and interlingual
translation. This distinction is neatly captured in the idea of ‘museums as translations’ versus
‘translations in the museum’ (Sturge 2007), a formulation that echoes the similar distinction
made between ‘museums as texts’ and ‘texts in the museum’ ( Ravelli 2006). In the first sense,
all museums, whatever publics they engage with, may be said to be involved in an act of trans-
lation, a representation and refraction of culture in which as Bennett (discussed in Hall 2006)
reminds us, the viewer’s access to knowledge is always mediated. In the second, more specific
sense of translation, interlingual translations of texts in the museum space work together to
construct this cultural translation through a complex multi-semiotic interaction with objects,
visuals and secondary signifiers such as lighting. In addition, the museum environment is
also characterized by intralingual translation, involving intertextual reworkings of similar
information across texts.
These differing levels of translation apply when we consider the notion of museums as
translation zones: translation may take place at the level of cultural representation, or of tex-
tual translation. The term ‘translation zone’ is derived from the idea of the ‘contact zone’, first
proposed by Marie Louise Pratt and subsequently developed by Clifford (1997). Clifford’s
work, in particular his chapter ‘Museums as Contact Zones’, has led to a significant amount
of theorization regarding the museum as contact zone and the nature of ‘contact work’ in the
museum, in such aspects as community inclusion in the planning of exhibitions, ritual access
to objects in the museum by indigenous communities, and repatriation of objects acquired
under colonial rule. Of particular interest for Clifford is the way that ‘asymmetrical power re-
lationships’ (1997: 194) between colonizers and colonized can be addressed through attempts
at building reciprocity. A case in point is that of the Northwest Coast Indian collection of the
Portland Museum of Art. In an attempt to foster reciprocity and inclusion, a group of Tlingit
elders were invited to the museum, where they sat with museum professionals, handling
and talking about objects in the museum’s possession that were originally part of the Tlingit
cultural patrimony. Such encounters may be viewed as cases of cultural translation in action,

306
 Museums as translation zones

but they also frequently include specifically interlingual activity. Thus in the Tlingit case, the
elders were ‘accompanied by a couple of younger Tlingit translators’ (1997: 188). As Sturge
(2007: 164) notes, the museum in this conception thus becomes ‘a space where different lan-
guages meet and struggle to be heard’. In such a case, then, the museum is both contact zone
and translation zone: the latter is an inextricable part of the former. Or as Simon (2013: 181)
observes, ‘Translation is logically one of the major activities in the contact zone’.
If the term ‘translation zone’ clearly shares considerable overlap – in some instances even
identity – with that of ‘contact zone’, translation studies scholars have developed the term to
denote a more specifically cross-l inguistic intercultural interaction. Such zones have been
described as ‘areas of intense interaction across languages, spaces defined by an acute con-
sciousness of cultural negotiations’ (Cronin and Simon 2014: 182), or by ‘a relentless to-
and-fro of language, […] by the kinds of polymorphous translation practices characteristic of
multilingual milieus’ (Simon 2013: 181). Cities are one such space that has been extensively
approached through the lens of the translation zone (e.g. Cronin and Simon 2014, and contri-
butions to their special issue of Translation Studies), while more recently the term has been ex-
tended to spaces such as the theatre, as in Marinetti (2018: 19), who explores ‘the way in which
multiple languages on the stage interact with the performing body of the actor’. The term has
also been used beyond the Translation Studies discipline, as by Rantisi and Leslie (2015), who
analyse the performance company Cirque du Soleil as a translation zone, but drawing on an
Actor Network Theory understanding of translation, in which the zone becomes ‘an open
and unbounded space that accommodates fluid exchanges between actants’ (147).
In addition to contact zone and translation zone, it is worth rehearsing a third term,
developed in detail by Onciul (2015), namely ‘engagement zone’. Onciul proposes diagram-
matic models for how engagement works differently depending on whether the museum is
­community-run ​­ rather than ­non-community-run.
­​­­ ​­ Several points in Onciul’s models are
useful for our thinking about forms of contact – or translation – in the museum. First, Onciul
introduces the distinction, borrowed from Shryock (2004) ­ ­­ ​­
of ‘off-stage’ ­­ ­​­­ ​­
(behind-the-scenes)
work that is not publicly visible and ‘on-stage’ representations that are publicly presented in
the final exhibition. Community engagement occurs as an off- stage activity, for instance
in the course of consulting with source communities. Second, institution, community and
audience overlap in various ways. In community-r un museums, the institutional practices of
the museum are embedded within the community in question, where in non- community-
r un museums they are separate. Likewise, the community, whether engaged or not in the ex-
hibition planning process, will also overlap with the audience, though not fully: a significant
tranche of visitors will be from outside the community in question. Third, the engagement
zone is not the same as the whole museum: rather, in Onciul’s conceptualization, only those
exhibitions or other activities of the museum that were generated through off- stage commu-
nity engagement belong to the engagement zone. This last point reminds us as to the level of
interaction under consideration: exhibition or museum level. For present purposes we may
still argue that the whole museum is an engagement (or contact) zone, whether or not the
off- stage processes have involved engagement, if we extend the conception of engagement
to involve the on-stage engagement of the broader visiting public with a given community
or culture through the exhibition. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that for most
analysis, the unit is the exhibition.
When considering museums as translation zones, then, we need to take in a whole range
of different activities that encompass both off-stage and on- stage aspects of cultural interac-
tion and translation: from ethnographic exchanges between museum professionals and indig-
enous peoples (whether involving interlingual translation or not), to attempts at encouraging

307
Robert Neather

inclusivity in multicultural societies and at representing the experience of minorities more

sensitively, to catering for different foreign language audiences during the museum visit
through the provision of adequate multilingual explanatory resources such as labels. These
different exchanges are, in turn, underpinned by a series of considerations that include the
following: cross-cultural differences in attitudes to objects and collecting; differing ‘museum
epistemologies’, i.e. understandings as to how knowledge should be produced and presented
in the museum (Guillot 2014); the perceived purpose of particular museums; the type of
museum involved (e.g. national or local?), and the particular space in which a visit takes
place – for example, does the museum take the form of a heritage site such as a castle or tem-
ple, a memorial site, or a historic house? Again, how can one reconcile the potential need to
incorporate different narratives and voices across different languages in the museum space,
for different visitor groups? Moreover, these issues must increasingly be considered in the
context of globalization, a context that raises further questions which include, amongst oth-
ers: how museums respond to the demands of the global heritage tourism industry, how they
negotiate ‘the tensions and paradoxes between simultaneous homogenizing and differentiat-
ing tendencies’ ( Rectanus 2006/2011: 382), for instance in the representation of knowledge
within the museum space, and how they translate the local into the global or vice versa.

Contact, community and inclusivity in the museum: processes of

­
‘translation’ ­off-stage
​­
Traditional representational practices in the museum have tended to involve the construction
of a unified message over which the curator has authority, a didacticism which has its roots
in the beginnings of the modern museum in the nineteenth century. As Hall, discussing
Bennett, notes, the modern museum functioned as a technology of social regulation ‘ by
promoting a public morality of education and improvement’ ( Hall 2006: 74) as part of what
Bennett styles the ‘exhibitionary complex’. Such curatorial didacticism can still be found in
museums today, and as Bennett elaborates:

The challenge now is to reinvent the museum as an institution that can orchestrate new
relations and perceptions of difference that both break free from the hierarchically or-
ganized forms of stigmatic othering that characterized the exhibitionary complex and
provide more socially invigorating and, from a civic perspective, more beneficial inter-
faces between different cultures.
(Bennett 2006: 59)

In this vein, contemporary museum practice and research have increasingly been preoccu-
pied with the question of community engagement and the establishment of new relationships
that seek to break down the traditional institutional power structures of the museum and
recognize a multiplicity of alternative interpretations. Hooper- Greenhill (2000) refers to this
more community- oriented, pluralistic museum environment as the ‘post-museum’. Collabo-
ration has increasingly been viewed as central to such community engagement, to the extent
that Karp and Kratz (2015: 281) observe a ‘collaborative turn in museum and heritage prac-
tice’. In its introduction of difference into the dynamics of the museum, collaboration, they
note, can be an important way to destabilize traditional categories underpinning museum
representation, for instance by forcing us to reconsider established ontological and epistemo-
logical conceptions surrounding objects: i.e. what they are, what they mean and how we can
construct knowledge from them through display (2015: 288–289). This leads us beyond even

308
 Museums as translation zones

the notion of the post-museum, to one in which the questioning of our preconceptions is at
the core: the ‘ interrogative museum’, where exhibits are presented as ‘essentially contested,
debatable’ (ibid.: 281). Such a destabilizing is not always appreciated by museum visitors ex-
pecting a more traditionally unified curatorial message.
The introduction of this more provisional approach to exhibitionary practice, in which
everything is open to question, necessarily entails dialogue: questions invite possible answers,
which, in turn, invite further counter-responses. In this way, museum exhibition becomes
less about the presentation of a finalized message than an invitation to take part in an on-
going process of cultural engagement, a conception encapsulated in the title of Silverman’s
(2015)
­ volume Museum as Process, to which Karp and Kratz’s work provides the conclusion.
This importance of the processual in intercultural encounters within the museum milieu is
echoed by Bennett (2006: 62), who speaks of moving beyond ‘diversity as a possession’ (that
is, something that can be instantiated through presentation of a collection informed by a
‘controlling ethnographic gaze’ (2006: 61)) to ‘an ongoing process of intercultural dialogue’.
Bodo’s (2012) notion of the museum as an ‘ intercultural space’ similarly stresses the dialogic,
participative and dynamic nature of intercultural understanding, in which the third space
of the contact zone invites the questioning of preconceptions in an open-minded encounter
with the other.
A particularly interesting example of the processual nature of intercultural interaction in
the museum, and one that brings the above into a more interlingual frame, is discussed by
Cimoli (2014, 2015), who documents the presentation of immigration as a theme in Italian
museums, as well as examining how such museums seek to engage with a population whose
demographic is changing through the arrival of an increased number of immigrants from the
Middle East and elsewhere. Cimoli (2014: 85) identifies a shift from an emphasis on multicul-
turalism to interculturalism, i.e. from the simple co-existence of different cultural groups in
Italian society to ‘an active attitude […] in which shared spaces, languages and horizons are
creatively sought by all the actors concerned’, and in which interlingual translation therefore
serves what Simon (2013: 184) calls a ‘ furthering’ effect, facilitating the interchange and
cross-fertilization of cultures and languages within the translation zone. Various techniques
are employed, including storytelling and autobiographical approaches to the interpretation
of certain works by migrant- origin mediators who are trained to ‘translate’ the exhibition
‘not only linguistically but also culturally, for a specific community, by discovering common
elements and shared features’ (Cimoli 2014: 94).
Contact work such as collaboration with museum stakeholder communities can often
be a messy business, involving the challenging of cultural and epistemological assumptions,
the questioning of existing power relations, and the cultivation of an openness to negotia-
tion and hybridity. The unease that can arise from such a process may be felt by both sides
of the collaboration  – museum professionals and the members of the particular commu-
nity in question – as well as by the broader visiting public. Lynch cites several examples of
how ‘consultation’ with stakeholder communities can easily degenerate into a box-ticking
diversity exercise that seeks to give legitimacy to the resultant exhibition, while only offer-
ing ‘empowerment-l ite’ (2014: 70) to the community involved. A case in point is the 2007
Bicentenary of Britain’s Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, where black communities were
brought in for consultation in a last-m inute fashion after the main messages, design and
objects for the exhibition had already been decided by museum staff. In a second case, the
Manchester Museum established a Collective Conversations programme housed in a space
explicitly labelled ‘Contact Zone’, a means to try and give physical form to Clifford’s ideal.
While the programme was award-winning and innovative in its involvement of refugee (e.g.

309
Robert Neather

Somali) communities in dialogue, it nevertheless was limited in the scope it offered for gen-
uine contestation of museum authority: Lynch observes how participants quickly ‘ learn[ed]
the prohibitive culture of the museum’ and where curatorial authority was contested, the
museum exerted a ‘subtle but concerted effort to regain control’ (ibid: 72).
This issue of ‘empowerment-lite’ (or as Lynch also describes it, ‘participation-lite’), or
alternatively the sense of over-zealous pursuit of community engagement, is evident in var-
ious cases where the community has, so to speak, bitten back. Karp and Kratz (2015: 287)
highlight the issue of resistance, a theme that runs through a number of case studies. Lynch
(2014: 71), for instance, cites the experiences of a curator at Hackney Museum in East Lon-
don, in which there was a furious backlash on the part of certain community members, who
experienced ‘weariness, … disappointment, [and] frustration’ with the consultation process.
A similar situation is highlighted by Johansson (2014: 127), who discusses the case of the
Rosengård Project, an attempt by Malmö Museums (the body responsible for overseeing
museums in Malmö) to plan and deliver exhibitions in collaboration with the district of
Rosengård, a community comprised of 80% immigrants. While museum staff saw them-
selves as helping the community and giving the residents a voice, they encountered ‘project
exhaustion’ and a lack of enthusiasm on the part of the adult inhabitants, which meant the
whole project had to be reconfigured through engagement with schools. As Johansson notes,
while there were subsequently positive outcomes in terms of improving the negative image
of the district in question, ‘ its limitations with respect to unequal power relations within the
contact zone’ (ibid.: 128) were clear.
Such questions of empowerment are particularly prominent in ‘settler societies’ such as
Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which have seen concerted efforts in the museum
milieu – partly driven by national policies (e.g. McCarthy 2011/2016: 6; Nettelbeck 2012:
46) – to redress power imbalances, for instance in what constitute accepted national narratives
and how objects are treated. McCarthy, for instance, notes a ‘growing Māori impatience with
the compromises of biculturalism, having to balance Māori and Pākehā [i.e. white European]
cultures within a bicameral national framework’ (2018: 46), notwithstanding the significant
steps taken in New Zealand museums such as the Te Papa Tongarewa museum, towards in-
clusion of the Māori community. Onciul similarly discusses problems in the representation
and involvement of First Nation peoples in Canadian museums. She notes that while engage-
ment can take many forms, ‘none of [these] solve the problems associated with represent-
ing complex, multifaceted communities’ (2015: 71). Developing the idea of the ‘engagement
zone’ as a means to map these complexities, her work also calls for a greater indigenization of
museum practice, a call echoed by McCarthy, who advocates a ‘Māori museology’.
As mentioned earlier, the results of collaboration in the museum contact zone can some-
times be controversial in their questioning of existing sanctioned interpretations, or can
be confusing to readers expecting a ‘safer’ or more traditional exhibitionary epistemology.
Again, ‘settler societies’ are a particular case in point. A frequently cited case is the National
Museum of Australia ( Bennett 2006; Nettelbeck 2012), which included a ‘Contested Fron-
tiers’ exhibit dealing with the dispossession of indigenous communities by white settlers.
Claims were made by Conservative historians that in taking an indigenous perspective, the
museum was giving excessive credence to aboriginal oral history and institutionally sanc-
tioning ‘an undocumented myth lacking in historical verification’ ( Nettelbeck 2012: 47), a
dichotomy that Bennett (2006: 60) frames in terms of ‘mediating the relations between the
authority of memory and that of documented history’. The museum’s aim had been to pres-
ent ‘the national story as “a dynamic forum for discussion and reflection”’ ( Nettelbeck 2012:
47); yet the presentation of diverse and alternative perspectives may be seen as undermining

310
 Museums as translation zones

the narrative cohesion that many visitors – and indeed critics – m ight expect from a national
museum. Similar problems have arisen in the extensively researched Te Papa Tongarewa mu-
seum in New Zealand and the Canadian Museum of Civilization ( Nettelbeck 2012).

Language, translation and representation: on-stage issues

Having considered how broad issues of intercultural contact and community engagement
shape the conception and work of the museum as a contact zone, particularly in the ‘off- stage’
process, we now turn to examine more specific questions of how language and interlingual
translation work within the museum to shape representation and facilitate intercultural con-
tact ‘on- stage’, that is, how they operate in the domain of public consumption, whether that
viewing public includes members of the community involved in and represented by the con-
tact work undertaken, or whether they are members of the broader public.
The museum environment may be viewed as a multi- semiotic milieu in which different
sets of resources – what Whitehead (2012) calls ‘registers’ – interact with the objects displayed
to produce meaning. The first of these is the ‘verbal register’, which comprises the various
forms of interpretive texts available, from wall panels to individual labels, to non- displayed
texts such as audio guides and the oral explanations delivered by museum docents (see Dean
1994 for one influential typology). In a given exhibition, such texts can be conceptualized
as working together to form a ‘m acro-genre’ ( Ravelli 2006), in which different texts within
and across different sections of an exhibition complement each other to deliver the exhibi-
tion’s central message. A common aspect of textual construction in the exhibition space is
what Neather (2012a) styles ‘ intergeneric intertextuality’: various forms of repetition and
cross-reference are used to create texts that echo and reinforce one another.
The second of Whitehead’s registers is the ‘environmental register’, and denotes other,
non-verbal resources such as lighting and spatial layout, and even aspects such as the co-
lour of given walls in the exhibition space. To this, we may also add visual resources such
as pictures and diagrams, which provide further interpretive framing. Both the verbal and
environmental registers are curatorially controlled. Finally there is what Whitehead terms
the ‘experiential register’, which is, by contrast, visitor- controlled. This includes an extensive
range of elements that influence how – and whether – the curatorially controlled registers are
received and consumed, and thus, Whitehead argues, this is the most important influence on
meaning making in the museum. These elements include the cultural capital of the visitor,
their existing level of subject knowledge and the extent of their pre-v isit preparation, but
also such seemingly trivial or random factors as how much time the visitor has, whether the
visit is made alone or with children in tow and whether an available toilet can be found. Also
of importance here are the extent to which the broader accessibility needs of the visitor are
catered for, e.g. whether audio- description ( Perego 2019) is available.
When considered in a bilingual or multilingual environment, the interaction of verbal
and environmental registers becomes increasingly complex. In addition to a whole Source
Text system, we now have one or more Target Text systems, whose inclusion entails several
considerations. First, there is the question of available space. If, for example, two, three or
more languages are to be included on a wall panel, this necessarily imposes physical restric-
tions on what can be said. There is also the additional spatial factor that some languages
translate to very different physical lengths on the page: Chinese, for example, is spatially
highly compact, but its English translation will take considerably more space. In the case of
the Chinese/English pair, this frequently raises questions as to what material can or should
be cut in the English translation. Neather (2008) observes that one approach may be to cut

311
Robert Neather

material that is perceived as already ‘visually available’: where a teapot in Hong Kong’s Flag-
staff House Museum of Tea Ware has a pattern that obviously features flowers and birds, the
translator has cut that from the English translation (where it is present in the Chinese source).
Equally, in the same museum, where another teapot is described as being modelled on an
ancient drum, this is retained in translation as this aspect of the design is visually unavailable
to all but the most specialist viewer. The intertextual nature of the Source and Target Text
systems provides another way of handling the cutting of information, allowing the repriori-
tization of information across different textual resources. Neather (2012a) provides a detailed
account of how information is reapportioned in a display in Wuhan Municipal Museum
presenting the famous nineteenth- century official Lin Zexu, whose role in destroying opium
during the Opium War has made him a national hero. Material in the Chinese label, such as
the name of Lin’s treatise on prohibition, is excised from the English, but it is made available
in the optional audio guide for those who wish for additional information.
Spatial restrictions are only one reason for presentational differences in the verbal register.
Others range from the practical to the ideological. On the practical side, limitations on fi-
nancial resources are one key problem, coupled with perceptions as to how necessary it may
be to have a translation, and the extent to which a qualified translator can be found. Neather
(2012b), in a survey of museum curators in Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou, finds that
funds may sometimes not be available, or that translation may be seen as an afterthought
that is not factored into the overall planning process, and thus deprioritized as of limited
importance. Likewise, anxieties over the accuracy of translation output may lead to simpli-
fied translations or simply a provision of minimal text, thus giving foreign language visitors
insufficient information to decode the cultural significance of the objects on view.
The simultaneous presence of both Source and Target Texts also raises the question of
how audiences from two (or more) different linguacultural groups are addressed within the
same physical space and in relation to the same objects. A particularly interesting area for
examining interlingual adjustments (or the effects of their absence) is memorial museums
or heritage sites of importance for the collective memory of the Source Culture. Neather
(2012c) examines the case of the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Guangzhou, which com-
memorates a key figure in modern Chinese history. Sun is interesting since he is regarded as
the ‘ father of the nation’ by both the communist People’s Republic of China ( PRC) and the
nationalist Republic of China (i.e. Taiwan). Drawing on House’s (1976) model of translation
quality assessment, analysis of certain texts in the exhibition housed within the Hall reveals
some attempt to tone down the revolutionary hyperbole of the Source Texts, perhaps in an
effort not to alienate foreign readers. Nevertheless, in its retaining of the Source Text’s ‘we’-
orientation (e.g. ‘… will help us recall Sun Yat- sen’s glorious course of revolution’), the Tar-
get Text acts, in Nord’s terms, more as a documentary translation than an instrumental one,
documenting the Source Culture’s mode of address to Source Culture visitors rather than
addressing Target readers directly in a presentational idiom adjusted to their own needs. The
approach is a common exhibitionary tactic in Mainland Chinese museums more generally,
where revolutionary rhetoric is involved. Thus, Neather (2012a) finds a similar reduction of
revolutionary intensity in texts in Wuhan Municipal Museum, while these nevertheless still
retain a clear ideological line. Such approaches, then, seek to find an acceptable tenor while
equally not deviating from the carefully calibrated rhetoric of the source.
The issue of how source and target voices – and narratives – converge or diverge is also
taken up by Liao. Liao (2016) uses social narrative theory to analyse the 228 Museum in
Taipei, a museum presenting and memorializing an instance of political persecution that is
still highly emotive for many Taiwanese people. She shows how aspects such as reframing

312
 Museums as translation zones

and deixis are used to construct different spatio-temporal relations to the 228 Incident for
Taiwan Chinese and English-speaking foreign visitors, so that the latter ‘are constantly re-
minded that they are viewing the memory of another – d ifferent – g roup of people’ (2016:
195). ( The same museum is analysed again, this time through the lens of critical discourse
analysis, in Chen and Liao 2017.) Liao (2015) examines the case of an exhibition showcasing
the photography of a nineteenth- century British orientalist photographer. The photogra-
pher’s oeuvre, which consists principally of posed portraits of Chinese people, might be
construed in two opposing, but potentially equally valid ways: as perpetuating an orientalist
and somewhat negative vision of the East, or as helping to catalogue the experience of the
Chinese and increase Western awareness. Liao shows how these two contradictory accounts
are presented in parallel through the English and Chinese explanatory texts according to the
curator’s perception of the needs of the two different linguacultural groups of visitors. Thus
while English- speaking viewers are presented with a critique of the photographer’s ‘cold,
imperialist gaze’ (2015: 185), Chinese readers read the photos through the textual framing
of the photographer as a friend of China, whose photos convey his ‘ humanitarian approach’
(2015: 187). This raises a question that has hitherto been seldom researched: how do bilin-
gual visitors, with equal access to both Source and Target Texts, use and respond to such a
dual narrative. As Liao demonstrates from analysis of the comments in visitor books (again,
a hitherto underused methodology) not all such readers are comfortable with the duality,
which at worst may even be seen as a form of curatorial duplicity or unreliability. Again,
such reactions recall our earlier discussion regarding the unease sometimes encountered by
visitors in the contact zone of the museum exhibition, when faced with a more self-reflexive
mode of display that calls attention to and interrogates (to recall Karp and Kratz’s term) the
constructed nature of knowledge and provisionality of museum epistemologies.
Two further studies of divergent narrative practices deserve mention here. Witcomb
(2003) provides an account of an exhibition that involved members of the Portuguese dias-
pora in Australia. For this source community, who provided the objects to be displayed, the
objects were very much bound up with their own life experiences and their personal and
collective memory, and as such were touchstones to life stories, rather than artefacts requiring
‘objective’ interpretation. This recalls the issue, raised earlier, of objects having fundamen-
tally different ontological status for different groups. Witcomb details how language and
text were used in a more radical form of interlingual practice that moved well beyond more
traditionally conceived forms of translation. Strategies included:

the use of Portuguese in the titles for many of the labels, a catalogue which, while
mainly in English, also included extracts from the oral histories in Portuguese, and a
compact disc, with edited extracts from the oral histories which was played in the back-
ground on a continuous loop for those visitors who could not read English.
(Witcomb
­ 2003: ­93–94)
​­

A second study, by Deganutti, Parish and Rowley (2018), offers one of the very few examina-
tions to date of the modalities and politics of multilingual (in this case quadrilingual) display.
Examining multilingual museums of the First World War, they conceptualize representation
in war museums as either ‘antagonistic’, where the experience of the victors is emphasized, or
‘agonistic’, where representation instead aims at encouraging empathy and inclusivity. In terms
of creating an effective contact zone, the ‘agonistic’ would seem the preferable mode here, since
it ‘promotes the cosmopolitan message that the First World War was a senseless war without jus-
tification for all involved’ (2018: 71). An example is the Kobarid Museum, located in Slovenia

313
Robert Neather

close to the Italian border near the site of a major battle. This area may itself be thought of as a
geographically defined translation zone similar to the spaces identified by Cronin and Simon
(2014), and in its use of multiple display languages, with still further languages available in
audio guide form, the museum seeks to some extent to echo the complexities of this linguistic
contact zone. Three levels of multilingual resources are discerned: original objects that include
script (e.g. multilingual postcards) or photos in which script appears, interpretive labels and wall
panels in the exhibition, and other resources such as audio guides and an introductory film.
Deganutti, Parish and Rowley dissect the different polarities of visitor experience – from full
linguistic inclusion to exclusion – that may occur depending on the intricate interplay of these
three different levels and on what is included in the Target Texts (e.g. whether the wording in
a photo is translated). As they suggest, slips in the linguistic handling of the agonistic mode can
lead to a swing back towards antagonism for certain linguacultural visitor groups.
Deganutti, Parish and Rowley’s work highlights a major gap in research in the museum
translation field that is particularly germane to the understanding of museums as translation
zones, namely the visitor experience. For one of the two museums the authors discuss, they
refer to visitor comments books, a methodology also used by Liao (2015), as discussed earlier.
However, one is struck by the fact that, where research in the field of museum translation has
been expanding, such that there is a growing body of cases analysing what we earlier referred
to, after Whitehead, as the curatorially controlled registers of interpretation, little empirical
evidence exists regarding the use of bilingual and multilingual resources by museum visitors.
This is in stark contrast to work in the museum studies community, where Visitor Studies
is a well- established sub- discipline that incorporates a range of ethnographic methodolo-
gies from surveys, questionnaires, interviews and pre-/post-v isit focus groups, to the remote
tracking of conversations between pairs of visitors and the use of detailed self-reflective visit
journals. A possible issue for researchers may be that such methodologies would seem far
more easily implementable by museum staff – many of whom are also conducting research in
museum studies – than for those in the translation studies community. Needless to say, few if
any studies of bi/multilingual museum visitors exist that attempt to conceptualize the visitor
experience in terms of the contact zone.

Globalization and the museum translation zone

When these issues are more explicitly placed in the context of globalization, several key
considerations arise. First, if the museum creates a space for engagement and understanding
between communities and cultures, how might this understanding be theorized? Schorch
(2013:
­ 77) suggests that the ­museum-as-contact-zone
­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ creates a ‘pluralist
­ cosmopolitan space’,
in which visitors move through three key stages as they undergo a kind of cosmopolitanizing
transformation of their existing views. The first stage involves the production of ‘ bicultural
meanings’, when the visitor’s pre-existing views are exposed to the other in the space of the
exhibition. In the second stage, the visitor moves to ‘cross- cultural dialogue’, as he or she
begins to engage with and accept the world presented, overcoming any ‘ initial reluctance’
(2014: 72). Finally, stage three moves from this dialogic engagement to one of ‘cross-cultural
hermeneutics’, in which the visitor experiences a ‘shifting sense of self ’ (2014: 77) and is able
to see the world through the eyes of the other; Schorch suggests that the role of the museum
docent is particularly important in facilitating this shift. Schorch’s work is one of only a few
studies from an explicitly contact-zone perspective to focus on the on- stage visitor experi-
ence of the contact zone, and to use an ethnographic methodology to gauge the cosmopoli-
tanizing effect on the visitor experience.

314
 Museums as translation zones

Other studies have questioned the possibilities of the contact zone as a cosmopolitan space.
Dibley (2005) argues that Clifford’s work espouses a ‘redemptive’ agenda which, while show-
ing an admirable concern for righting the wrongs of colonial interactions, is nevertheless
still rooted in the same power structures and inequalities of the traditional museum: inviting
colonized or indigenous peoples into the museum to share their own perspectives on objects
previously acquired from them – legally or otherwise – ensures that contact still operates on
the colonizer’s terms. A similar point is developed by Boast (2011), who cites the case of the
New Guinea Sculpture Garden at Stanford University, a collaboration between Stanford and
a group of Papuan artists. Both sides had ‘ fundamentally different sets of assumptions about
what the engagements were for’ (2011: 63). While such incommensurability underlies ‘all
contact zone engagements’, Boast argues, ‘ in an incommensurable context, dominance wins’
(2011: 63), and oppositional discourses are ultimately supressed. For the same reasons, Dibley
(2011) finds in the idea of the British Museum as ‘a repository of the heritage … of the world’
(Appiah, quoted at Dibley 2011: 156) a false cosmopolitanism that he styles, after Andrew
McClellan, ‘cosmocharlatanism’.
­
These issues surrounding cosmopolitanism, such as the notion of a shared world heritage
and who has the right to present it, are especially important in regard to memorial museums
and trauma sites. The Holocaust is a prime example of a tragedy that has become a site of
‘cosmopolitan memory’, a form of memory that stresses the suffering of the victims and the
universal lessons for humankind as a whole. Holocaust museums play a crucial role in foster-
ing this memory, and have become a point of reference for memorial museums elsewhere,
as Denton (2014) notes in relation to the Memorial to Victims of the Nanjing Massacre by
the Japanese Invaders. This memorial is an important site for constructing a sense of na-
tional identity, in which the Chinese people can unite around the collective memory of the
atrocities carried out by the Japanese army. At the same time, it seeks to produce the kind of
cosmopolitan memory engendered by Holocaust museums, in part as a means to gain greater
international recognition of the true horror of the event and silence Japanese counter- claims
as to the historical facts. Such appeals to both the local and the global can sometimes be a
delicate balance. Soh and Connolly (2014) highlight how the case of the Korean ‘Comfort
Women’, who suffered at the hands of the Japanese as sex slaves, has become a focus of cos-
mopolitan memory through the building of memorials in the United States and elsewhere.
Yet, important as such globalizing efforts are, they note, there equally remains anxiety about
losing the local aspects of remembrance of this tragedy.
Anxieties over the place of the local within the global also bring in considerations sur-
rounding the global consumption of culture. As Hancock puts it in her study of Dakshin-
aChitra, a South Indian cultural park housing reconstructed regional architecture and live
displays of folk customs, a site must ‘[ensure] that its authenticity, its pastness, remains legible
within global cultures of consumption’ (2015: 201). The ‘spatial syntax’ of the site, includ-
ing such facilities as a snack bar, shop and theatre, is only one of several ways in which
the site’s director seeks to meet the expectations of a global cosmopolitan audience (and to
raise funds from them), although its detractors see in it a ‘Disneyfied version of southern
India’s past (2015: 188). Rectanus (2006/2011: 390) similarly picks up on the question of
the ‘“Disneyfication” of museum spaces’, highlighting several aspects that lead to this, one
of which is architecture. Speaking of Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum Berlin, Rectanus
notes how its architectural aspect ‘shifted attention to audience interaction with the struc-
ture, as a quasi-touristic experience, rather than engaging the contents’ (ibid.). Equally, the
imprimatur of global heritage organizations such as UNESCO can also lead to anxiety over
commodification: Denton (2014), for instance, notes how the Unit 731 Museum in Northeast

315
Robert Neather

China, a site of Japanese wartime atrocities, was considering applying for UNESCO World
Heritage status: but concerns were raised that this move would water down the commem-
orative value of the site, while turning it into another stop on the global heritage itinerary.
Such attempts to plug into the global heritage sphere can also drive isomorphic tendencies
in exhibitionary practice. Neather (2012a: 211) borrows the term ‘coercive isomorphism’
from Dimaggio and Powell, for whom it denotes ‘ both formal and informal pressures exerted
on organizations by other organizations upon which they are dependent and by cultural ex-
pectations in the society…’ (quoted at ibid.: 211–212). Such isomorphism, Neather finds, is
present not only in museums’ presentation but also in what he refers to as ‘meta-presentation’,
i.e. the approaches and strategies used in transferring museum resources interlingually. Soh
and Connolly (2014) likewise invoke similar terms when they observe ‘mimetic isomor-
phism’ at work in the way that national museums in Japan, Korea and China approach the
presentation of the Second World War: while the interpretations presented differ greatly, the
strategy of using the war to present a totalizing nationalist narrative is shared.
While these discussions reflect concerns over the potential for the local to become sub-
sumed within the global, it is important to remember that interaction also works in the other
direction, from the global to the local. Rectanus (2006/2011) notes, for example, how the
exchange of objects that is an essential part of exhibitionary and institutional culture in the
contemporary museum is ‘conducted globally’ but ‘recontextualized locally’ (382), and he
discusses how a global enterprise such as the Guggenheim Museum is variously ‘translated’
into the local context – for instance when the Guggenheim’s Art of the Motorcycle exhibition
moved to Bilbao. The notion of local here, Rectanus observes, is complicated by the fact that
‘a significant percentage of the audience is visiting the museum as part of cultural tourism’
(383). Bringing the discussion back to the case of memorial museums, Muzaini and Yeoh
(2005) discuss the Changi Chapel and Museum in Singapore, which is dedicated to the
thousands of predominantly foreign prisoners of war who lost their lives in the notorious
Changi jail. Despite its location in Singapore, the site is one whose predominant significance
has been as part of the global remembrance of the Second World War, and as a site of pil-
grimage for foreign visitors. The authors document the Singapore Government’s attempts to
‘“nationalise” its memories of the Second World War by extracting the “ local” out of what
was essentially a “global” war’ (2005: 2) and creating a place not of pilgrimage but rather of
national reflection. While this has been generally appreciated, the difficulty of reconciling
the needs of global and local visitors is strikingly illustrated by the very different behaviours
they show in the museum space, with international visitors shocked by the loud and irrev-
erent attitude of the locals. The project also highlights a further difficulty, namely how to
define ‘the local’: even the name ‘chapel’ is enough to invoke a Christian orientation that is
offputting or even offensive to locals of other faiths (ibid.: 10).

Conclusion: looking forward

We have seen that the concept of museums as translation zones may be understood in dif-
ferent ways. Translation may refer in a broad sense to the translation of cultures within the
exhibition space, whether or not that involves interlingual transfer, while at a more specific
level it involves the interlingual translation of materials to create a bi/multilingual exhibition
space. Equally, in addition to these more explicit forms of on- stage activity, translation may
also occur off-stage, for instance in consultation with source communities, again frequently
but not always involving interlingual translation. We have also seen that this distinction
between off- stage and on- stage informs the nature of ‘contact’  – or as Onciul terms it,

316
 Museums as translation zones

‘engagement’. While engagement in Onciul’s model refers to essentially off- stage activity, we
have proposed that visitor interactions with displayed materials in the contact zone of a given
exhibition can also be seen as a form of engagement, but one that is on- stage.
Museum studies has seen considerable research in regard to contact work, as the earlier dis-
cussion has shown. On the global stage, the opportunities and challenges of intercommunity
engagement and its onstage representation play out in the broader interplay of the global and
the local, giving rise to a number of important questions, some of which have been rehearsed
earlier. These include (i) the extent to which the museum as translation zone creates a space for
cosmopolitan understanding, (ii) how far such a cosmopolitanism allows for the co-existence
and presentation of potentially incommensurable viewpoints, (iii) the homogenizing effects
of the global on the local, and the localization of the global (as in the Changi case) and
(iv) the trend towards isomorphism in representational approaches as the ‘ homogenous discur-
sive space’ ( Neather 2012a: 212) in which museums operate has taken on a global dimension.
As a growing number of case studies illustrate, contact work of any sort is often imperfect and
messy in nature: each exhibition will pose different challenges for engagement, and in each
case, the interactions and collisions involved – the translations between institutions, between
museum epistemologies, between global and local forces – will produce what Karp and Kratz
(2015: 280) term ‘translational wrinkles’. In each case the sense of working things out collab-
oratively, of encounter as process (Silverman 2015), is key.
In the translation studies discipline, museum translation has attracted increasing scholarly
interest, and we now know much more about how interlingual translations are produced, and
the multimodal and ideological considerations in their construction. Yet considerable further
research is required. First, there is the need, as Guillot (2014) notes, to simply ‘take stock’: the
variety of translation work and forms of translation being undertaken for and in the museum
community is immense, and we lack a comprehensive understanding of how these types inter-
sect in museum practice. Second, there are a range of genres and textual practices that require
further inquiry. Audio guides are just one example of a genre which has seen little study, at
least in the translation context, while the way that contact takes place in situ between foreign
language visitors and museum guides and docents also awaits our attention. Finally, as men-
tioned earlier, our understanding of visitor engagement with and experience of bi/multilingual
texts in the exhibition space and how that affects issues of on-stage engagement have been little
studied. In this regard, an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to research is essential.
The kind of empirical data required for such studies can perhaps only be gleaned in coopera-
tion with museums, which need in their turn to recognize the importance of studying target
language visitors. This last area is perhaps the most important to understanding how the mu-
seum as translation zone can most effectively serve its different linguistic publics.

Further reading
Karp, I., Kratz, C. A., Szwaja, L. and Y barra-Frausto, T. (eds.) (2006) Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/
Global Transformations. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
The third volume in a trilogy that also comprises Exhibiting Cultures and Museums and Communities; this
is a seminal collection of museological research that examines the museum in an increasingly global-
ized context.
Silverman, R. A. (ed.) (2015) Museum as Process: Translating Local and Global Knowledges. London and
New York: Routledge.
An important work for understanding the processual nature of intercultural encounters in the mu-
seum, issues of museum engagement with source communities and how knowledge is translated (in the
broad sense of the term) and reconstructed through collaboration.

317
Robert Neather

Sturge, S. (2007) Representing Others: Translation, Ethnography and the Museum. Manchester: St. Jerome.
Still the only book-length work to date on translation and the museum, and essential reading.

References
Bennett, T. (2006) ‘Exhibition, Difference, and the Logic of Culture’, in Karp, I. Kratz, C. A. Szwaja,
L. and ­Ybarra-Frausto, ​­ T. (eds.),
­ Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, pp. 46–69. ­ ­ ​­
Boast, R. (2011) ‘Neocolonial Collaboration: Museum as Contact Zone Revisited’, Museum Anthropol-
ogy, 34(1),
­ pp. 56–70.
­ ­ ​­
Bodo, S. (2012) ‘Museums as Intercultural Spaces’, in Sandell, R. and Nightingale, E. (eds.), Museums,
Equality and Social Justice. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 181–191.
Chen, C.-L. and Liao, M.-H. (2017) ‘National Identity, International Visitors: Narration and Transla-
tion of the Taipei 228 Memorial Museum’, Museum and Society, 15(1), ­ pp. 56–68.
­ ­ ​­
Cimoli, A. C. (2014) ‘Immigration: Politics, Rhetoric and Participatory Practices in Italian Museums’,
in Gouriévidis, L. (ed.), Museums and Migration: History, Memory and Politics. London and New York:
Routledge, pp. 84–102. ­ ­ ​­
Cimoli, A. C. (2015) ‘Identity, Complexity, Immigration: Staging the Present in Italian Migration
Museums’, in Whitehead, C. Lloyd, K. Eckersley, S. and Mason, R. (eds.), Museums, Migration and
Identity in Europe: Peoples, Places and Identities. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 285–315. ­ ­ ​­
Clifford, J. (1997) Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Cronin, M. and Simon, S. (2014) ‘Introduction: The City as Translation Zone’, Translation Studies, 7(2), ­
pp. 119–132.
­ ­ ​­
Dean, D. (1994) Museum Exhibition: Theory and Practice. London and New York: Routledge.
Deganutti, M., Parish, N. and Rowley, R. (2018) ‘Representing Multilingual Difficult History: Voices
of the First World War in the Kobarid Museum (Slovenia) and the Historial de la Grande Guerre
(France)’,
­ Journal of Specialised Translation, 29, pp. 63–80. ­ ­ ​­
Denton, K. (2014) Exhibiting the Past: Historical Memory and the Politics of Museums in Postsocialist China.
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Dibley, B. (2005) ‘The Museum’s Redemption: Contact Zones, Government and the Limits of
Reform’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 8(1), ­ pp. 5–27.
­ ­ ​­
Dibley, B. (2011) ‘Museums and a Common World: Climate Change, Cosmopolitics, Museum Practice’,
Museum and Society, 9(2), ­ pp. 154–165.
­ ­ ​­
Guillot, M.-N. (2014) ‘Cross- cultural Pragmatics and Translation: The Case of Museum Texts as
Interlingual Representation’, in J. House (ed.), Translation: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 73–95. ­ ­ ​­
Hall, M. (2006) ‘The Reappearance of the Authentic’, in Karp, I., Kratz, C. A., Szwaja, L. Y barra-
­Frausto, T. (eds.), ­ Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations, Durham, NC: Duke Uni-
versity Press, pp. 70–101.­ ­ ​­
Hancock, M. (2015) ‘Remembering the Rural in Suburban Chennai: The Artisanal Pasts of Dakshi-
naChitra’, in Mathur, S. and Singh, K. (eds.), No Touching, No Spitting, No Praying: The Museum in
South Asia. London, New York and New Delhi: Routledge, pp. 184–202.
­Hooper-Greenhill,
​­ E. (2000)
­ Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture. London and New York:
Routledge.
Johansson, C. (2014) ‘The Museum in a Multicultural Setting: The Case of Malmö Museums’, in
Gouriévidis, L. (ed.), Museums and Migration: History, Memory and Politics. London and New York:
Routledge, pp. 122–137.­ ­ ​­
Karp, I. and Kratz, C. A. (2015) ‘The Interrogative Museum’, in Silverman, R.A (ed.), Museum as Process:
Translating Local and Global Knowledges. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 279–298.
Liao, M.-H. (2015) ‘One Photo, Two Stories: Chinese Photos in British Museums’, East Asian Journal
of Popular Culture, 1(2), ­ pp. 177–191.
­ ­ ​­
Liao, M.-H. (2016) ‘Translating Time and Space in the Memorial Museum’, Translation Spaces, 5(2), ­
­
pp.181–199.​­
Lynch, B. (2014) ‘Whose Cake is it Anyway?’: Museums, Civil Society and the Changing Reality of
Public Engagement’, in Gouriévidis, L. (ed.), Museums and Migration: History, Memory and Politics.
London and New York: Routledge, pp. 67– 80.

318
 Museums as translation zones

Marinetti, C. (2018) ‘Theatre as a “Translation Zone”: Multilingualism, Identity and the Performing
Body in the Work of Teatro delle Albe’, The Translator, 24(2), ­ pp. 129–146.
­ ­ ​­
McCarthy, C. (2011/2016)
­ ­ Museums and Maori: Heritage Professionals, Indigenous Collections, Current Practice.
Left Coast Press, reprinted London and New York: Routledge.
McCarthy, C. (2018) ‘Indigenization: Reconceptualizing Museology’, in Knell, S. (ed.), The Contempo-
rary Museum: Shaping Museums for the Global Now. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 37–54.
Muzaini, H. and Yeoh, B. S. A. (2005) ‘Contesting “Local” Commemoration of the Second World
War: The Case of the Changi Chapel and Museum in Singapore’, Australian Geographer, 36(1), ­
pp. 1–17.
­ ­ ​­
Neather, R. (2008) ‘Translating Tea: On the Semiotics of Interlingual Practice in the Hong Kong
Museum of Tea Ware’, META: Translators’ Journal, 53(1), ­ pp. 218–240.
­ ­ ​­
Neather, R. (2012a) ‘Intertextuality, Translation and the Semiotics of Museum Presentation: The Case
of Bilingual Texts in Chinese Museums.’ Semiotica, 192, pp. 197–218.
­ ­ ​­
Neather, R. (2012b) ‘“Non- expert” Translators in a Professional Community: Identity, Anxiety
and Perceptions of Translator Expertise in the Chinese Museum Community.’ The Translator, 18,
­ ­
pp. 245–268.​­
Neather, R. (2012c) ‘Communicating Identity in the Bilingual Heritage Site: Presentations of Sun
Yat- sen in Guangzhou and Macau’, in Tan, Z. and Hu, G. (eds.), Fānyì yŭ kuàwénhuà jiāoliú: jīdiàn
yŭ shìjué 翻譯與跨文化交流：積澱與視覺 [Translation and Intercultural Communication: Impacts and
Perspectives]. Shanghai: Shanghai Waiyu Jiaoyu Chubanshe, pp. 163–180.
Nettelbeck, A. (2012) ‘Remembering Indigenous Dispossession in the National Museum: The National
Museum of Australia and the Canadian Museum of Civilization’, Time and Society, 21(1), ­ pp. 39–54.
­ ­ ​­
Onciul, B. (2015) Museums, Heritage and Indigenous Voice: Decolonizing Engagement. London and New
York: Routledge.
Perego, E., (2019) ‘Into the Language of Museum Audio Descriptions: A Corpus-based Study.’ Perspec-
tives, 27(3),
­ pp. 333–349.
­ ­ ​­
Rantisi, N. M. and Leslie, D. (2015) ‘Circus in Action: Exploring the Role of a Translation Zone in
the Cirque du Soleil’s Creative Practices’, Economic Geography, 91(2), ­ pp. 147–164.
­ ­ ​­
Ravelli, L. (2006) Museum Texts: Communication Frameworks. London and New York: Routledge.
Rectanus, M. W. (2006/2011) ‘Globalization: Incorporating the Museum’, in MacDonald, S. (ed.), A
Companion to Museum Studies. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell,
­ ​­ ­ ­
pp. 381–397. ​­
Schorch, P. (2013) ‘Contact Zones, Third Spaces, and the Act of Interpretation’, Museum and Society,
11(1),
­ pp. 68–81.
­ ­ ​­
Shryock, A. (ed.) (2004) Off Stage/On Display: Intimacy and Ethnography in the Age of Public Culture.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Silverman, R. A. (ed.) (2015) Museum as Process: Translating Local and Global Knowledges. London and
New York: Routledge.
Simon, S. (2013) ‘Translation Zone’, in Gambier, Y. and van Doorslaer, L. (eds.), Handbook of Translation
Studies, vol 4. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 181–185.
Soh, C. and Connolly, D. (2014) ‘Cosmopolitan Memories in East Asia: Revisiting and Reinventing
the Second World War’, International Journal of Transitional Justice, 8(3), ­ pp. 383–340.
­ ­ ​­
Sturge, S. (2007) Representing Others: Translation, Ethnography and the Museum. Manchester: St. Jerome.
Whitehead, C. (2012) Interpreting Art in Museums and Galleries. London and New York: Routledge.
Witcomb, A. (2003) Reimagining the Museum: Beyond the Mausoleum. London and New York: Routledge.

319
 Part IV
Economics
 22
Translation in the neoliberal era
Joss Moorkens

Introduction
In recent years we have seen an explosion of digital content. In 2007, humans had created
capacity for 264 exabytes of data ( Hilbert and López 2011). By 2018, we had capacity for
33,000 exabytes across multiple modes and media, with predictions for this to reach 175,000
by 2025 ( Reinsel et al. 2018). Consequently, there is more material than ever before being
translated by a growing number of human translators and by a growing number of machines.
The outlook for both human and machine translation (MT) appears bright, and one might
think that this situation would result in rising payment for translators. However, the political
and economic climate has combined with application of technologies to inhibit price growth
in the translation industry. These pressures are not applied equally, and some translators have
found themselves to be more vulnerable to the vagaries of the translation marketplace.
In this chapter, I look first at the economic and political context in which neoliberal eco-
nomic policies and globalization have served to depress prices in many markets, translation in-
cluded. MT and leveraging technologies were initially envisaged with lofty humanitarian and
human-centred goals, although these appear to have changed a little over time as economic
imperatives have encouraged pragmatism. I consider the profile of contemporary professional
and paraprofessional translators, some of whom are thriving while carrying out the multiple
roles expected in the current marketplace while others struggle to make a decent living.
In examining translation in the neoliberal era, I use the 3D quality model as proposed by
Abdallah (2014), beginning with the growing complexity of the translation process and its
inherent communication difficulties, considering the changing product quality expectations,
and finally looking at social quality for translators.1 The changes described in this chapter are
part of a continuing trend within and beyond the translation industry. I suggest some possible
disruptions to this trend in the final section of this chapter.

Economic context
In this section I will introduce the interconnected and influential concepts of neoliberal-
ism and austerity. Konzelmann (2012: 2) defines economic austerity as a series of measures

323
Joss Moorkens

(usually tax increases and/or public expenditure reductions) with the aim of reducing a
country’s deficit, i.e. ‘the difference between what the government spends and the reve-
nues it earns’. Blyth (2012: 2) explains that this ‘voluntary deflation’ is intended to restore
competitiveness but has had substantial negative effects. Internationally, governments have
imposed periods of austerity following war efforts, or as a control measure for overheating
or underperforming economies. By the 1960s, many governments had begun to grow their
public debts while increasing public spending and, in some cases, social welfare systems, and
in 1971 the US dollar was decoupled from the gold standard, loosening the control that the
United States and other governments had over their finances. In response, the application
of austerity became ideological, and the US and Europe increased their focus on managing
inflation, reducing government spending and reducing taxes that might be perceived to
deter trade. New economic liberalism, or neoliberalism, adopting austerity policies as part
of minimization of state control, became conventional wisdom, crossing political party and
institutional lines (McNamara 1999), encouraged by OECD reports and sometimes imposed
via the International Monetary Fund (IMF; Broome and Seabrooke 2007: 9).
This policy redoubled in the 1980s under leaders such as Reagan and Thatcher in the
United States and United Kingdom, leading to increased liberalization of trade and the
requirement of flexibility in the labour markets. The shrinking role of the state in neolib-
eral economies has more recently led to a move towards ‘greater personal responsibility for
economic and financial well-being’ ( Neff 2012: 9) rather than a responsibility weighing on
companies or the state. As barriers to trade have become fewer, international markets have
grown – g lobalization – and we now have a situation whereby product creation is geographi-
cally displaced within a ‘global value chain’, with associated trends of ‘ intensification, speed-
up, and standardisation of work’ ( Huws 2014: 116).
Following the economic crisis of 2007/2008, several countries required financial assis-
tance from the IMF, who demanded ‘fiscal consolidation plans’, restricting spending rela-
tive to GDP and encouraging easing of employment protection rules ( Teague 2016), aside
from the exceptional case of Iceland, where a more consultative approach was taken ( Wade
and Sigurgeirsdottir 2012). This encouraged a growth in non- standard rather than perma-
nent employment. Non-standard or contingent work has been growing worldwide for many
years, with numbers more than doubling in the United States between 1969 and 1993, and
reaching 40.4% in 2010 (Cummings and Kreiss 2008). Broughton et al. (2016) estimate the
rate of standard employment in the European Union ( EU) to be at roughly 59% and drop-
ping, with 7.6% of EU workers at risk if wages are further driven down by outsourcing.
Rubery (2013) has highlighted how women tend to suffer disproportionately in times of
austerity, and there are disparities of gender within the numbers reported here, as women are
more likely to work on a part-t ime or freelance basis across the EU ( Broughton et al. 2016),
with large gender differences noticeable in countries such as Switzerland, where 59% of
women work part-t ime, as compared to 18% of men ( Federal Statistical Office 2019). 26.4%
of EU workers (including over 70% of Greek workers) work on an involuntary part-time
basis as they are unable to find full-t ime employment, with a tendency for these workers to
be female (Chiripanhura and Zhang 2019).
These statistics are relevant to the translation industry, where estimates of the number of
professional translators begin at 330,000 worldwide, of whom 70% are women ( Pym et al.
2012). Roughly 75% of translators are thought to work on a freelance basis, a far greater
proportion than among employees generally ( Pym et al. 2012; Moorkens 2017). It can be dif-
ficult to estimate the number of professional translators accurately, as many freelance work-
ers (and teleworkers) work in isolation, without membership of professional organizations.2

324
 Translation in the neoliberal era

Many translators work on a part-time basis, some as part of the gig economy, and the occu-
pational boundaries are i ll- defined. To be a professional translator, one does not require any
particular formal training or accreditation ( Katan 2011).
Translator numbers have grown during a time when there has been a trend towards free-
lance and contingent work. The neoliberal era has enabled globalization, and the increased
speed and prevalence of international communication has led to an increased demand for
translated material in recent years. The number of translators and interpreters in the United
States, for example, grew from 15,190 in 2000 to 53,150 in 2017 ( Bureau of Labor Statistics
2018) and continues to expand. Similarly, the size of the language service industry as re-
ported by CSA Research ( DePalma et al. 2018) continues to grow year on year. Translation
companies have become reliant on scaling to meet demand by outsourcing to freelance trans-
lators, with pricing for external clients based on this ‘vendor model’ of employment without
the extraneous costs incurred by direct employees. This model of employment has not tended
to empower translators.
Harvey (2006: 154) wrote about a wave of financialization post-1980, ‘marked by its
speculative and predatory style’. This too has had an effect on translation, as the largest trans-
lation companies are publicly traded, and thus subject to the vagaries of the financial markets
( justification for unilateral translator rate cuts such as that imposed by Lionbridge in 2010;
Bavington 2010). The number of mergers and acquisitions in the translation industry has in-
creased, with at least 48 transactions in 2018 (Slator 2019). Kronenberg (2018) has compiled
a timeline of acquisitions by the company RWS since 2014, noting the increases in profits
while tightly limiting rates and payment terms to freelance translators that fits with Brennan’s
(2009) summary of a ‘regime of privatisation’ involved in ‘ lowering the price of adversarial
intellectual work’. Rushkoff (2016: 17) notes that large companies tend to prioritize short-
term returns to shareholders by lowering costs, ‘no matter what it means for top-line growth
or long-term profitability’, the speed and scale of this process exacerbated by digital pro-
cesses. While technology is an enabler of global communication, requiring more translation,
it also means that production networks can be globally dispersed, with many large language
service providers spreading their offices across time zones. The technological context for
translation in the age of austerity is discussed in the following section.

Technological context
From the outset, the development of MT had lofty rather than pragmatic goals. Weaver’s
1947 letter to Wiener, cyberneticist and enthusiast of interdisciplinary research, stressed the
necessity of MT ‘ for the constructive and peaceful future of the planet’ ( Weaver 1947: 1).
Inherent in translation automation, however, was a threat to human translators. By 1951 Bar-
Hillel concluded (‘ for the time being’) that fully automatic high-quality MT was not feasible,
and rather that a ‘mixed MT’ ‘ in which a human brain intervenes’ before and/or after the MT
process would be necessary for optimal accuracy ( Weaver 1947: 230). The spectre of automa-
tion was also raised in the Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee (ALPAC)
report of 1966: ‘Someday, perhaps, the machines will make it, but I as a translator do not yet
believe that I must throw my monkey wrench into the machinery in order to prevent my
technological unemployment’ (ibid.: 28).
Translation was far from the only industry where the threat of automation was felt. Strom
(1975) was one of several authors in the 1960s and 1970s who suggested that, in the light of
jobs being replaced (contemporarily) by automation at the rate of 40,000 per week, it was
time for workers to labour for fewer hours and to prepare themselves for a leisure-focused

325
Joss Moorkens

society. This has not transpired, although we have seen a gradual reduction in average work-
ing hours ( Lee et al. 2007). More recently, Frey and Osborne estimated that 47% of total US
employment was at risk of being replaced due to automation, with computerization due to
‘substitute for low- skill and low-wage jobs in the near future’ (2013: 42). With this in mind,
the situation for translators looks comparatively positive. The demand for human translation
is still increasing ( Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018), despite predictions of automation of the
translator’s role ( Katan 2016) and widespread automation anxiety among translators ( Vieira
2018).
MT was still rarely used in production when, in 1980, Kay suggested the development of
a Translator’s Amanuensis, a tool with source and target windows presented in the user in-
terface, which would suggest ‘statistically significant words and phrases’ that had appeared in
previous stored translations ( Kay 1980: 16). Kay stressed that his tool would always be ‘under
the tight control of a human translator’ and was intended to ‘ help increase his productivity
and not to supplant him’ (1980: 18). Kay intended his Amanuensis to free the translator from
work that was ‘mechanical and routine’ in order to make the work ‘more rewarding, more
exciting, more human’ (1980: 1).
Although tools capable of multilingual word processing appeared earlier, the first tools to
feature translation memories ( TM) were released in the early 1990s. Early adopters of these
tools had the opportunity to increase productivity once past the initial learning curve, but
as TM tools came to be more widely used, the power shifted to (especially larger) clients as
discounts based on fuzzy matches began to be applied by translation buyers with ‘very little
grounds for negotiation’ (García 2006: 102). Specialized translators who had invested in TM
tools expecting to gain a competitive advantage found instead that expected throughput had
increased as word rates had decreased. For directly employed translators such as those at the
European Commission Directorate General for Translation, expectations for productivity
tended to rise (Strandvik 2019). As Lafargue observed in 1883, as technology enables ‘an
ever-increasing rapidity and exactness’, the worker, ‘ instead of prolonging his former rest
times, redoubles his ardour, as if he wished to rival the machine’ ( Lafargue 2011: 20).
The widespread use of TM tools has allowed translation buyers to build up a repository
of human translations. When these were first shared by translators on an ad-hoc basis, there
was industry concern ( Topping 2000), but it is now commonplace for translators to work on
a large networked TM, with translators benefiting from the prior work of others just as fu-
ture translators will benefit from their work (Gough 2011). This tacit agreement to share TM
data led to a precedent whereby TMs are returned to the translation buyer, even though the
ownership of copyright for a translation is complex and less clear- cut. Although the original
author (or their assigned copyright owner) also owns a translation of their work according
to the Berne Convention (1886), there should also be rights accrued for the translator when
work is creative or original. The original author may not use a translation as the basis for a
further translation without permission or royalty payment (Cabanellas 2015), and creators
of a database (such as a TM) may have rights depending on the jurisdiction and their efforts
in creating and maintaining that database ( Troussel and Debussche 2014). The most popu-
lar MT paradigms since the 1990s have been data- d riven, relying on human translation for
training and testing. The aligned source and target segments held in a TM file are ideal raw
materials for MT training, and are commonly put to this secondary use, without the consent
of or compensation to the human translator.
This is in keeping with trends in digitally mediated work beyond translation and a ‘sharing
economy that is more extractive than it is circulatory’ ( Rushkoff 2016: 218). The metaphor
of data as oil suggests that data is naturally occurring and therefore free to use rather than

326
 Translation in the neoliberal era

the product of valuable human effort. Zoboff (2019: 105) writes of extractive companies
‘simultaneously ignoring, evading, contesting, reshaping, or otherwise vanquishing laws’
that threaten their access to data. This data dispossession is increasingly problematic as ma-
chine learning techniques are applied to huge data sets in order to extract patterns without
explicit operator instruction. Translation data sets, once extracted, are valued highly ( Diño
2018); yet curiously at a granular scale they are often expected as a cost-free bonus for a
translation job.
A handful of research papers were published on the application of machine learning to
translation using neural networks in 2014 ( Bahdanau et al. 2014 contains a short review),
but by 2016 it had become clear that neural MT ( NMT) was the new state of the art in MT
(Castilho et  al. 2017). In common with other applications of machine learning, there are
regular media stories about impending technological unemployment and leaps in quality,
and while these are often overblown, the improvement in MT quality for general domain
texts in language pairs for which there are large data sets available has been impressive.
Evaluations have found increased fluency and lower numbers of errors, although these have
not been associated with significant increases in productivity when NMT is used in the
production of publishable texts (Castilho et al. 2019). The increase in output quality and the
media attention on NMT mean that more translation agencies are offering products using
NMT in response to client demand, and a wider variety of use cases are being found for raw
and post- edited MT ( Way 2018). Aside from gist translation, raw NMT is being used for
low-risk, perishable content such as online reviews and auctions, access to information from
foreign-language academic articles, for e- discovery to identify which legal documents are
worth having humans translate, and for some localization work. Post- editing, although not
popular with many translators, is the fastest growing sector of the translation market, and is
used in cases where employers want to cut costs and raw MT would be considered too risky
( Lommel and DePalma 2016).
Automation is being applied to translation in other ways, such as in lights- out project
management systems that can automate workflow steps, assigning jobs to translators based
on cost and reputation scores without human input (Sakamoto 2018). Modern translation
editing tools and proprietary translation portals in which translators interact with TM, MT
and terminology suggestions in the production of a translated text can also save details of user
interaction in the form of telemetry or logs of user activity data for potential reuse and sur-
veillance. This data could be used to identify the user based on typing patterns and, if com-
bined with data from other sources, could be used to make inferences or predictions about
the user that may be useful to the receiver in negotiations or may affect business decisions
( Wachter and Mittelstadt 2019), particularly if associated with translation quality evaluation.
The EU are at the forefront of legal efforts to protect personal data, and the General Data
Protection Regulation offers safeguards to such data, but inferred data may not be covered by
such regulations and the law will inevitably be a step or two behind technology. This is the
dynamic technological environment in which translators will need to successfully negotiate
varied expectations in order to thrive. The profile and requirements of a translator in this
context will be discussed in the following section.

Translators’ profile
According to Pym et  al. (2012), most professional translators are female and work on a
freelance basis. In Moorkens and O’Brien’s (2017) survey of over 400 translators, most re-
spondents aged 20–30 work directly for a company and the majority over 30, with the share

327
Joss Moorkens

growing progressively, work on a freelance basis. 31% said that they work with a single
agency, putting them at risk if there is a change in that agency. Some translators prefer free-
lance work, as they gain autonomy that they may not otherwise enjoy when working for
a language service provider, where career progression is likely to entail a move away from
translation into administration or management. As most translation is outsourced, many
translators have little choice but to work on a freelance basis (Moorkens 2017). While there
may be short-term gains for the worker for avoiding tax or to earn a higher basic wage, the
employer manages to save on many obligations including continued employment, evading
regulations for minimum rates of pay, annual leave, sick leave, pension contributions, aside
from the cost of light, heat, hardware, software, desks, seating and office space (Campbell
et al. 2004). This situation is exacerbated when translators are employed via a crowdsourcing
platform. The low-trust nature of crowdwork means that workers and employers rely on
reputational systems on the crowdsourcing platforms, with high-reputation workers flooded
with work, which they may subcontract within the crowd, and low-reputation workers sub-
ject to sudden deactivation ( Prassl 2018). Crowdworkers spend a lot of unpaid time searching
for jobs and, like freelancers, do not receive benefits of direct employment. In addition, their
low rates of pay often inhibit access to healthcare ( Wood et al. 2019).
The expectations of translators in the neoliberal era are varied. Where early discussions
on translator competence considered concepts such as self-awareness and self-confidence
( Kussmaul 1995), a growing list of sub-competences have been suggested by various authors
and groups ( EMT Network 2009; Göpferich 2009; PACTE 2017) that incorporate strate-
gic and instrumental competence to do with language, text, terminology, subject matter
expertise and others. The most recent European Master’s in Translation network compe-
tences ( EMT Network 2017) recommended and required for accredited translation Mas-
ter’s programmes, incorporates categories of competence such as ‘Language and Culture’,
‘Translation’ and technical competences such as knowledge of MT paradigms, their training
and pre- or post-processing. Moving beyond the textual and technical, the ‘Personal and
Interpersonal’ category incorporates planning, social media, communication and reflective
practice. The ‘Service Provision’ category includes sub- competences involving project man-
agement, negotiation, marketing and strategizing.
In practice, translator practices, skills, motivations and abilities are massively varied
(Gouadec 2007) and some commentators have criticized long lists of competences ( Pym 2003),
but the EMT Network, particularly with their interpersonal and service provision categories,
attempt to address what Jemielity (2018: 535) calls ‘ ideological and behavioural “disconnects”
between translator-culture and businessperson-culture’ that might lead translators to under-
sell themselves and their unique skill-sets. While Jemielity and others (such as Durban 2004;
Drugan 2013) make the case for the highly specialized, business-savvy translator as an exem-
plar of financial and professional success, there are many variants of translators who make a
comfortable living and choose work that they enjoy for direct clients and agencies with whom
they have a mutually respectful working relationship. Some h igh-profile translators have been
proactive in encouraging translators to specialize and market themselves to maximize their
value ( Durban 2011; McKay 2011). Not all translators have the ability, language pair, area of
speciality, opportunity or skill-set required to follow these examples, or indeed, many may not
wish to aim for high-end markets (those who Jemielity (2018: 535) considers ‘economically
unambitious’). There may be reasons beyond ambition for translators to report disempower-
ment (Abdallah 2010), low professional visibility ( Dam and Zethsen 2011) and low degrees
of influence, although despite relatively meagre average rates of pay translators appear overall
to be quite satisfied with their job ( Dam and Zethsen 2016; Ruokinen and Mäkisalo 2018).

328
 Translation in the neoliberal era

The requirement for freelance translators to spend time on the elements of their role
identified in the interpersonal and service provision competence categories indicates that the
amount of time actually translating must be lessened, which may be off-putting for those
with little interest in activities beyond translation. Those paid at word rates are often not
directly paid for related work such as on terminology or in solving formatting problems. The
average word rate in many regions has not risen in line with inflation, meaning that many
translators may be earning less per word in real terms in 2018 than they were at the close of
the previous millennium ( Dunne 2012). Surveys such as Moorkens (2020a) have reported on
translators who are carving out a successful career, maintaining skills and morale, and fi ne-
t uning their abilities, and others for whom the various requirements of the contemporary
translator are a grind, such as the person who responded that they have been ‘actively moving
out of the career for some time now. Isolation of self-employed working from home [was]
literally killing me, as was RSI (repetitive strain injury) and stress related to tight deadlines
and the cut throat market’ (64). Hendzel (2014) considers that the conditions, pay rates and
marketability of translators are massively varied across a ‘quality continuum’, with the ma-
jority of translators catering to the lower end of the market (lower in terms of price, risk and
quality), and the high end, in which translators are highly paid for specialized work, ignored
in most reports and analysis. Abdallah (2014) believes that the product, process and social
quality of translation cannot be considered in isolation, and that each is likely to differ based
on the economic value associated with a translation and the risk of failure.

Translation quality
Translation quality is increasingly considered based on fitness for purpose. The ASTM Inter-
national (formerly the American Society for Testing and Materials) definition of translation
quality states that ‘A quality translation demonstrates required accuracy and fluency for the
audience and purpose and complies with all other specifications negotiated between the re-
quester and provider, taking into account end-user needs’ ( Koby et al. 2014: 416). If the value
of the product or the risk of translation error is high, then the quality will need to be care-
fully calibrated. Quality control in the Directorate- General for Translation in the European
Commission, for example, is particularly involved, as texts in each language may be consid-
ered legally binding and thus require h igh-quality translation ( Drugan et al. 2018). Canfora
and Ottmann (2018) identify several types of risks in the case of mistranslation, such as risk
of injury or death, legal or reputational risk, risk of impaired communication, financial risk
and risk to property. Exposure to such risk is affected by circulation, number of language
pairs and technology employed (including MT).
The variables of time, cost and quality are often invoked in discussions of translation
project management and workflow decisions. In some quarters, there is a tendency to place
a short-term focus on cost, ‘contracting the work to the lowest bidder ignoring quality and
downplaying the consequent costs that poor quality may entail’ (Sosoni and Rogers 2013: 8).
For translators who have established an area of specialization working with direct clients, they
may be able to effectively demonstrate their value and expertise. An intermediary may be less
successful in communicating the risks to translation buyers or in helping them to differenti-
ate high from low quality. Dunne (2012: 154) suggests that when ‘clients cannot distinguish
between quality, and thus value, price becomes the primary differentiating feature’. If a text
is considered to be low-risk or of low value, the process is likely to change accordingly, with
fewer resources put into creating a quality source text, increased attempts to maximize lever-
age or to introduce MT and fewer review and quality assurance steps after translation. As the

329
Joss Moorkens

product is less likely to be considered unique, each step (or person) in the process is considered
replaceable ( Dunne 2012) or the tasks split into microtasks to be carried out anonymously via
a crowdsourcing platform ( Jiménez- Crespo 2018). This has the effect of increasing the num-
ber of nodes in the production network, without encouraging communication between them.
There may be no opportunity for the crowdworker or the freelance translator outsourced
automatically in a lights-out project management scenario to reach a point of contact at all.
For texts considered to be perishable or low-r isk, the level of automation is likely to
increase ( Way 2018), as noted in the Section ‘Technological context’. Translation buyers
assume that use of MT will generate large cost savings, but that may not be the case, depend-
ing on the required translation quality and the quality of the MT output. In addition, there
may be pushback from translators, who tend not to enjoy the task of post- editing MT output
(Moorkens and O’Brien 2017; Kazlauskas 2018). Post- editing is latterly becoming more com-
mon in audiovisual translation, an area of translation for which TM was not considered useful
( Pidchamook 2018). The increased quality expectations of NMT do not necessarily equate
to improved post- editing productivity, as fluency has been found to make errors difficult to
spot (Castilho et al. 2017). Use of interactive and adaptive NMT rather than post- editing
appears to improve the usability of MT-a ssisted translation, without a statistically significant
increase in throughput when compared with using statistical MT ( Daems and Macken 2019).
Moorkens and O’Brien (2017) found that translators were generally dissatisfied with the
usability of their translation editing environments, despite many years of development, so
improved usability is welcome as a way of improving social quality of the translation process.
Abdallah (2014) believes that considerations of translation quality must include social
quality in addition to product and process quality. Similarly, Risku and Windhager (2013)
proposes investigation of the effects of the social and spatial characteristics of translators’
working environments. Pressure on cost and stress caused by short deadlines impact neg-
atively on social quality, but there are many other factors beyond time, cost and product
quality. It is very common for translators to work in isolation, even those within companies
( Jemielity 2018). This has implications for their agency, for perceived respect within an
organization and for organizational identification ( Bartel et al. 2012). Freelance translators
often have no access to the production network beyond a single point of contact, who may
leave or change roles, or who may not be supportive in the first place. Freelance respondents
in Moorkens (2020a) reported a weak sense of purpose in work, a strong factor in job dis-
satisfaction (see also Krifa 2016), along with negative perceptions of fairness in work. Their
responses to questions relating to payment, colleagues and job security compared poorly to
their securely employed public service colleagues. Freelance translators tend to focus less on
ergonomic well-being using laptop computers at desks and in seats that are not built for long-
term use ( Ehrensberger-Dow et al. 2014), whereas company employees may have ergonomic
assessments in the workplace and more appropriate workstations. These factors of social qual-
ity, Abdallah (2014) argues, affect process quality, which, in turn, affects product quality, and
as such should be a strong consideration in a translation production network, particularly in
light of the increasing popularity of highly collaborative and platform-mediated work that
requires near-live turnaround times (Moorkens 2020b).

Conclusion
The translation industry has grown massively in the neoliberal era, in which the trend has
been towards freelance or contingent work that is ‘flexible, scalable, or cost- effective enough

330
 Translation in the neoliberal era

to respond to market demands’ ( Kelly et al., 2012: 2). At the highest level, language service
providers are shareholder owned and subject to acquisition by larger conglomerates, in whose
shareholders’ interest, short-term economic decisions are commonplace. Technology affords
the possibility to cut costs using troves of previous translations for leverage or for training of
MT systems, although the cost reduction when incorporating MT into translation workflows
is rarely as significant as anticipated ( Kazlauskas 2018). Artificial intelligence may be used
in other ways in translation workflows, such as for lights-out project management, where
employment decisions are left to an algorithm. This ideally means that decisions are based on
aggregated data rather than subjective human judgement ( Bodie et al. 2016).
The way that this affects the translator’s profile and translation quality depends very much
on the type of employer and their trust relationship with the translator, the economic value of
the text, the risk of mistranslation and the extent to which the value and risk are understood
by the translation buyer. At the higher end of the translation marketplace, translators’ pay and
conditions reflect their unique and specialized skills that are difficult for the buyer, whether
direct clients or agencies, to replace. At the other end, each part of the production network,
whether human or machine, may be considered replaceable by another for reasons of cost,
time or quality, and the quality target may be lower to reflect the value, risk or perishability
of the content to be translated. These translators are more likely to work with MT, whether
post- editing or otherwise post-processing, and the lack of payment for annual leave, sick
leave, pension contributions, along with office, hardware and software costs, is more pressing
due to constant pressure on cost and stress due to tight deadlines.
The poor social quality of translation at the lower end of the market, despite the fact
that translation needs are growing and more human translators are required, represents a
potential disruption to the industry. If the occupation of translator is not appealing, fewer
students will study translation and workers will leave the industry. There are sporadic re-
ports of translators exiting in studies such as Abdallah (2014) and Moorkens (2020a), and
Moorkens (2020b) proposes foregrounding sustainability within translation work systems.
A further threat of disruption is in translation copyright. At present, translations and TMs
are usually given to translation buyers, but Troussel and Debussche (2014), Cabanellas
(2015) and others believe that translators may have some claim to copyright. Due to their
creative contributions, they can assert translation copyright so that retranslations of their
work will require permission and possible royalties, and they may claim copyright over the
TM database, depending on the efforts to create and maintain it. If the copyrights of the
original author, employer and translator were asserted, this could create an anticommons,
whereby the competing claims render the data unusable for leverage and for MT training
(Moorkens and Lewis 2019). Finally, there could be further moves towards collective action
on the part of freelance and even crowdworkers. The most likely avenue for this appears
to be national and international translator organizations. An example of this is collective
bargaining agreements in place for Medicaid translators and interpreters in Washington
State, US (Moorkens 2017), or in the standard terms and conditions of the Netherlands
Association of Interpreters and Translators for translation work, which states that unless it is
‘expressly stated otherwise in writing, the translator reserves the copyright on translations
and other texts produced by the translator’ ( NGTV 2017). These types of collective action
are considered vital by De Stefano (2019), and are part of an active discussion within the
EU, where the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe recommended a lifting
of restrictions on collective bargaining for the self- employed ( European Trade Union Con-
federation 2018).

331
Joss Moorkens

Further reading
Abdallah, K. (2010) ‘Translators’ Agency in Production Networks’, in Kinnunen, T. and Koskinen, K.
(eds.),
­ Translators’ Agency. Tampere: Tampere University Press, pp. 11– 46.
This book chapter analyses agency as perceived by translators in a production network, and looks at
their coping strategies when cooperation and trust break down.
Dunne, K. (2012) ‘The Industrialization of Translation: Causes, Consequences and Challenges’, Trans-
lation Spaces, 1, pp. 143–168.
­ ­ ​­
This article considers the causes, consequences and challenges of the industrialization of translation,
suggesting some reasons for commodification and related topics for research.
Jemielity, D. (2018) ‘Translation in Intercultural Business and Economic Environments’, in Harding,
S. and Carbondell Cortés, O. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Culture. London:
Routledge, pp. 533–557.
­ ­ ​­
This chapter offers an alternative viewpoint of the industry from the perspective of specialist translators
who have internalized the business ethos, demonstrating that some sectors of the freelance workforce
are operating successfully.
Moorkens, J. (2017) ‘Under Pressure: Translation in Times of Austerity’, Perspectives, 25(3),
­ pp. 464–477.
­ ­ ​­
This article presents an overview of freelance work in the lower- end translation market, placing trans-
lation work in the context of other forms of cultural and knowledge work that are similarly subject to
commodification.
Ruokonen, M. (2013) ‘Studying Translator Status: Three Points of View’, in Eronen, M. and Rodi-
­Risberg, M. (eds.),
­ Haasteena näkökulma: Point of View as Challenge. VAKKI Publications 2. Vaasa:
University of Vaasa, pp. 327–338.
­ ­ ​­
A comprehensive review of works relating to the professionalization of translation and of the percep-
tions of prestige associated with the role, reviewing work on the topic by Dam and Zethsen, Katan,
Koskinen and many others.

Notes

References
Abdallah, K. (2010) ‘Translators’ Agency in Production Networks’, in Kinnunen, T. and Koskinen, K.
(eds.),
­ Translators’ Agency. Tampere: Tampere University Press, pp. 11– 46.
Abdallah, K. (2014) ‘Social Quality: Key to Collective Problem Solving in Translation Production
Networks’, in Ločmele, G. and Veisbergs, A. (eds.), Translation, Quality, Costs. Riga: University of
Latvia Press, pp. 5–18.
­ ­ ​­
‘Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee’ (ALPAC). (1966) Languages and Machines: Com-
puters in Translation and Linguistics. A Report by the Automatic Language Processing Advisory Com-
mittee, Division of Behavioral Sciences. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, National
­ ­ ​­ ­­
Research Council. Available online: http://www.mt-archive.info/ALPAC-1966.pdf ​­ [Accessed 1
March 2019].
Bahdanau, D., Cho, K. and Bengio, Y. (2014) ‘Neural Machine Translation by Jointly Learning to Align
and Translate’, arXiv:1409.0473. Available online: https://arxiv.org/abs/1409.0473v4 [Accessed 25
April 2020].
­
­ ­ ­ ​­
Bartel, C. A., Wrzesniewski, A. and Wiesenfeld, B. M. (2012) ‘Knowing where you Stand: Physical
Isolation, Perceived Respect, and Organizational Identification among Virtual Employees’, Organi-
zation Science, 23(3), ­ pp. 743–757.
­ ­ ​­

332
 Translation in the neoliberal era

Bavington, C. (2010) ‘“Naughty, naughty Lionbridge”, A Pragmatic Eye Blogpost’. Available online:
http://cbavington.com/blog/2010/11/07/naughty-naughty-lionbridge/
­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 27 June 2019].
Blyth, M. (2012) Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bodie, M. T., Cherry, M. A., McCormick, M. L. and Tang, J. (2016) ‘The Law and Policy of People
Analytics’, University of Colorado Law Review, 88(4), ­ pp.  ­ ­961–1042. ​­ Available online: https://ssrn. ­
com/abstract=2769980 [Accessed 27 June 2019].
Brennan, T. (2009) ‘Intellectual Labor’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 108(2), ­ pp. 395–415.
­ ­ ​­
Broome, A. and Seabrooke, L. (2007) ‘Seeing Like the IMF: Institutional Change in Small Open
Economies’, Review of International Political Economy, 14, pp. 576–601. ­ ­ ​­
Broughton, A., Green, M., Rickard, C., Swift, S., Eichhorst, W., Tobsch, V. and Tros, F. (2016) Precari-
ous Employment in Europe: Patterns, Trends and Policy Strategies ( Report). Brussels: European Parliament
Directorate General for Internal Policies.
Bureau of Labor Statistics (2018) ‘Occupational Employment Statistics’, United States Department of
Labor. Available online: https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm [Accessed 10 February 2019].
Cabanellas, G. (2015) The Legal Environment of Translation. London: Routledge.
Campbell, I., Watson, I. and Buchanan, J. (2004) ‘Temporary Agency Work in Australia ( Part I)’, in Burgess,
J. and Connell, J. (eds.), International Perspectives on Temporary Work. London: Routledge, pp. 129–144. ­ ­ ​­
Canfora, C. and Ottmann, A. (2018) ‘Of Ostriches, Pyramids, and Swiss Cheese: Risks in Safety-
­critical Translations’, Translation Spaces, 7(2), ­ pp. 167–201.
­ ­ ​­
Castilho, S., Gaspari, F., Moorkens, J., Popovic, M. and Toral, A. (2019) ‘Editors’ Foreword to Special
Issue on Human Factors in Neural Machine Translation’, Machine Translation, 33(1), ­ pp. 1–7.
­ ­ ​­
Castilho, S., Moorkens, J., Gaspari, F., Calixto, I., Tinsley, J. and Way, A. (2017) ‘Is Neural Machine
Translation the New ­State-of-the-Art?’,
­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ Prague Bulletin of Mathematical Linguistics, 108, pp. 109–120. ­ ­ ​­
Chiripanhura, B. and Zhang, P. Y. (2019) ‘Labour Market Economic Commentary: Janu-
ary 2019’, U.K. Office for National Statistics Report. Available online: https://www.ons.gov.
uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeet
­ ­ ­ ypes/articles/
­ ­
labourmarketeconomiccommentary/january2019#economic-inactivity
­ ­ ​­ [Accessed 14 February 2019].
Cummings, K. J. and Kreiss, K. (2008) ‘Contingent Workers and Contingent Health: Risks of a Mod-
ern Economy’, Journal of the American Medical Association, 299, pp. 448–450. ­ ­ ​­
Daems, J. and Macken, L. (2019) ‘Interactive Adaptive SMT vs. Interactive Adaptive NMT: A User
Experience Evaluation’, Machine Translation 33(1), ­ pp. 117–134.­ ­ ​­
Dam, H. V. and Zethsen, K. K. (2011) ‘The Status of Professional Business Translators on the Dan-
ish Market: A Comparative Study of Company, Agency and Freelance Translators’, Meta, 56(4), ­
pp. 976–997.
­ ­ ​­
Dam, H. V. and Zethsen, K. K. (2016) ‘“I think it is a wonderful job.” On the Solidity of the Trans-
lation Profession’, Journal of Specialised Translation 25, pp. 174–187. ­ ­ ​­ Available online: http://www. ­
jostrans.org/issue25/art_dam.php [Accessed 25 April 2020].
De Stefano, V. (2019) ‘“Negotiating the Algorithm”: Automation, Artificial Intelligence and Labour
Protection’, Comparative Labor Law  & Policy Journal, 41(1), 2019. Available online: http://dx.doi.
org/10.2139/ssrn.3178233.
­ ­
DePalma, D. A., Pielmeier, H. and Stewart, R. G. (2018) The Language Services Market: 2018 (Report). ­
Boston, MA: Common Sense Advisory.
Diño, G. (2018) ‘Korean Voice Assistant Highlights Tech’s Insatiable Hunger for Language Data’,
Slator, Oct. 8, 2018. Available online: https://slator.com/technology/korean-voice-assistant-
­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​
­­highlights-techs-insatiable-hunger-for-language-data/
­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 25 April 2020].
Drugan, J. (2013) Quality in Professional Translation. Assessment and Improvement. London and New York:
Bloomsbury.
Drugan, J., Strandvik, I. and Vuorinen, E. (2018) ‘Translation Quality, Quality Management and
Agency: Principles and Practice in the European Union Institutions’, in Moorkens, J., Castilho,
S., Gaspari, F. and Doherty, S. (eds.), Translation Quality Assessment. Berlin: Springer, pp. 39–68. ­ ­ ​­
Durban, C. (2004) ‘Demanding Clients State Their Case: Comments on the Client Round Table at La
Rochelle’, Journal of Specialised Translation, 1, pp. 3–7. ­ ­ ​­ Available online: https://jostrans.org/issue01/ ­ ­ ­
art_durban.pdf [Accessed 27 June 2019].
Durban, C. (2011) Translation: Getting it Right. A Guide to Buying Translation. Available online: https://
www.atanet.org/publications/getting_it_right.php [Accessed 3 February 2019].
­

333
Joss Moorkens

Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW). Available online: https://www.zhaw.ch/storage/

linguistik/forschung/uebersetzungswissenschaft/ergotrans-survey-report-en.pdf
­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
European Trade Union Confederation (2018) ‘Council of Europe Recognises Bargaining Rights of
Self-employed:
­ ​­ Now EU Should Follow’. Available online: https://www.etuc.org/en/pressrelease/ ­ ­ ­ -
council-europe-recognises-bargaining-rights-self-employed-now-eu-should-follow
­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 7
January 2019].
Faes, F. (2018) ‘The Language Industry According to LinkedIn’. Available online: https://slator.com/-
data-research/the-language-industry-according-to-linkedin/
​­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 19 May 2020].
Federal Statistical Office (2019) ‘59% der Frauen und 18% der Männer arbeiten Teilzeit’. Available
online: https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfsstatic/dam/assets/7106820/master
­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 15 May 2020].
Frey, C. B. and Osborne, M. A. (2013) ‘The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to
Computerisation?’ Oxford Martin School. Available online: http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/
downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf [Accessed 15 May 2020].
García, I. (2006) ‘Translation Memories: A Blessing or a Curse?’, in Pym, A. and Perekrestenko, S.
­
(eds.), Translation Technology and Its Teaching. Tarragona: Universitat Rovira i Virgili, pp. 97–105.
Göpferich, S. (2009) ‘Towards a Model of Translation Competence and Its Acquisition: The Longi-
tudinal Study “TransComp”’, in Göpferich, S., Jakobsen, A. L. and Mees, I. M. (eds.), Behind the
Mind: Methods. Models and Results in Translation Process Research. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur
­ ­ ​­
Press, pp. 11–37.
Gouadec, D. (2007) Translation as a Profession. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Gough, J. (2011) ‘An Empirical Study of Professional Translators’ Attitudes, Use and Awareness of
Web 2.0 Technologies, and Implications for the Adoption of Emerging Technologies and Trends’,
Linguistica Antverpiensia, 10, pp. 195–217. ­ ­ ​­
Harvey, D. (2006) ‘Neo-Liberalism as Creative Destruction’, Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human
Geography, 88(2), ­ pp. 145–158.
­ ­ ​­
Hendzel, K. (2014) ‘It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times’. Available online: http://www.
­­ ­​­­
kevinhendzel.com/it-was-the-best-of-times-it-was-the-worst-of-times-how-the-premium-
­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​
­­market-offers-translators-prosperity-in-an-era-of-collapsing-bulk-market-rates/
­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 15 May
2020].
Hilbert, M. and López, P. (2011) ‘The World’s Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and
Compute Information’, Science, 332, pp. 60–65. ­ ­ ​­
Huws, U. (2014) Labor in the Global Digital Economy: The Cybertariat Comes of Age. New York: Monthly
Review Press.
Jemielity, D. (2018) ‘Translation in Intercultural Business and Economic Environments’, in Harding,
S. and Carbondell Cortés, O. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Culture. London:
Routledge, pp. 533–557. ­ ­ ​­
­

­ ­ ­ ​­
Katan, D. (2011) ‘Occupation or Profession: A Survey of the Translators’ World’, in Sela- Sheffy, R. and
Shlesinger, M. (eds.), Profession, Identity and Status: Translators and Interpreters as an Occupational Group.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: ­ ­ ­
John Benjamins, pp. 65–88. ​­
Katan, D. (2016) ‘Translation at the Cross-roads: Time for the Transcreational Turn?’, Perspectives,
­ 365–381.
24(3), ­ ​­
Kay, M. (1980) ‘The Proper Place of Men and Machines in Language Translation’, Technical Report
­
CSL-80-11, ­​­­ ​­ Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). ­
Kazlauskas, M. (2018) ‘How an LSP from the Baltics Uses TAUS DQF to Minimize Loss with more
Efficient and Fair Billing’, TAUS Blog. Available online: https://blog.taus.net/synergium-use-case-
­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​
­­dqf-as-a-reliable-risk-management-tool
­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 15 May 2020].
Kelly, N., DePalma, D. A. and Hegde, V. (2012) Voices from the Freelance Translator Community (Report). ­
Boston, MA: Common Sense Advisory.
Koby, G. S., Fields, P., Hague, D., Lommel, A. and Melby, A. 2014. ‘Defining Translation Quality’,
Revista Tradumàtica: tecnologies de la traducció, 12, pp. 413–420. ­ ­ ​­
Konzelmann, S. (2012) ‘The Economics of Austerity’. University of Cambridge Working Paper 434.
Krifa (2016) ­ Job Satisfaction Index ( Report). Copenhagen: Happiness Research Institute.
Kronenberg, K. (2018) ‘A Timeline of RWS Acquisitions’. Available online: www.kf kronenberg.
com/Timeline_of_RWS_acquisitions.doc [Accessed 15 May 2020].

334
 Translation in the neoliberal era

Kussmaul, P. (1995) Training the Translator. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Lafargue, P. (1883, reprinted 2011) The Right to Be Lazy. Oakland, CA: AK Press.
Lee, S. McCann, D. and Messenger, J. C. (2007) Working Time around the World. Abingdon: Routledge.
Lommel, A. and DePalma, D. A. (2016) ‘Europe’s Leading Role in Machine Translation’ Common
Sense Advisory Report. Available online: http://cracker-project.eu/wp-content/uploads/Europes_
­­ ​­ ­­ ​­ ­ ­
Leading_Role_in_MT.pdf [Accessed 20 June 2019].
McKay, C. (2011). ‘How Much Do Freelance Translators Earn? Is It Enough?’, Available online: http://
www.thoughtsontranslation.com/2011/03/07/how-much-do-freelance-translators-earn-is-it-
­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​
enough/ [Accessed 15 May 2020].
McNamara, K. R. (1999) ‘Consensus and Constraint: Ideas and Capital Mobility in European Mone-
tary Integration’, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 37, pp. 455–476. ­ ­ ​­
Moorkens, J. (2017) ‘Under Pressure: Translation in Times of Austerity’, Perspectives, 25(3), ­ pp. 464–477.
­ ­ ​­
Moorkens, J. (2020a) ‘Comparative Satisfaction among Freelance and Directly- employed Irish-
­language Translators’, Translation and Interpreting, 12(1), ­ pp. 55–73. ­ ­ ​­
Moorkens, J. (2020b) ‘“A tiny cog in a large machine”: Digital Taylorism in the Translation Industry’,
Translation Spaces, 9(1), ­ pp. 12–34.
­ ­ ​­
Moorkens, J. and Lewis, D. (2019) ‘Research Questions and a Proposal for the Future Governance of
Translation Data’, Journal of Specialised Translation, 32, pp. 2–25. ­ ­ ​­
Moorkens, J. and O’Brien, S. (2017) ‘Assessing User Interface Needs of Post- editors of Machine Trans-
lation’, in D. Kenny (ed.) Human Issues in Translation Technology. London: Routledge, pp. 109–130. ­ ­ ​­
Neff, G. (2012) Venture Labor: Work and the Burden of Risk in Innovative Industries. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
NGTV (2017) ‘General Terms and Conditions of the Netherlands Association of Interpreters and
Translators for Translation Work’, Available online: https://ngtv.nl/application/files/1215/2846/
6121/NGTV_logo_algemene_voorwaarden_Engels_20170915.pdf [Accessed 15 May 2020].
PACTE Group (2017) Researching Translation Competence. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Pidchamook, W. (2018). ‘Is “Good Enough” Really Good Enough?  – Ethics and Working Condi-
tions of Part-Time Freelance Subtitlers’. Paper presented at conference Languages & the Media 2018
(Berlin,
­ ­3–5​­ October 2018).
Prassl, J. (2018) Humans as a Service: The Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Pym, A. (2003) ‘Redefining Translation Competence in an Electronic Age. In Defence of a Minimalist
Approach’, Meta, 48(4), ­ pp. 481–497.
­ ­ ​­
Pym, A., Grin, F., Sfreddo, C. and Chan, A. L. J. (2012) The Status of the Translation Profession in
the European Union. Studies on Translation and Multilingualism 7/2012. Luxembourg: Publications
Office of the European Union. Available online: file:///C:/Users/dionk_000/ Downloads/gp_
eudor_WEB_HC3212205ENC_002.pdf.en.pdf [Accessed 15 May 2020].
Reinsel, D., Gantz, J. and Rydning, J. (2018) ‘The Digitization of the World: From Edge to Core’.
IDC White Paper. Available online: https://www.seagate.com/www-content/our-story/trends/
­ ­­ ​­ ­­ ​­ ­
files/idc-seagate-dataage-whitepaper.pdf
­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 15 May 2020].
Risku, H. and Windhager, F. (2013) ‘Translation in the Network Economy: A Follow-up Study’,
Target, 25(1), ­ pp. 33–45.
­ ­ ​­
Rubery, J. (2013) ‘From “Women and Recession” to “Women and Austerity”: A Framework for Anal-
ysis’, in Karamessini, M. and Rubery, J. (eds.), Women and Austerity: The Economic Crisis and the
Future for Gender Equality. London: Routledge, pp. 17–36. ­ ­ ​­
Ruokonen, M. (2013) ‘Studying Translator Status: Three Points of View’, in Eronen, M. and Rodi-
Risberg,
­ M. (eds.),
­ Haasteena näkökulma: Point of View as Challenge. VAKKI Publications 2. Vaasa:
University of Vaasa, pp. 327–338. ­ ­ ​­
Ruokonen, M. and Mäkisalo, J. (2018) ‘M iddling- status Profession, High- status Work: Finnish Trans-
lators’ Status Perceptions in the Light of Their Backgrounds, Working Conditions and Job Satisfac-
tion’, Translation & Interpreting, 10(1), ­ pp. 1–17.
­ ­ ​­
Rushkoff, D. (2016) Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus. New York: Penguin Random House.
Sakamoto, A. (2018) ‘Disruption in Translator- client Matching: Paid Crowdsourcing Platforms vs
Human Project Managers’, Revista Tradumatica, 16, pp. 85–94. ­ ­ ​­
Slator (2019) ‘Slator 2018 Language Industry M&A and Funding Report’, Slator (11 January). Available
­ ­­ ​­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­
online: https://slator.com/data-research/slator-2018-language-industry-ma-and-funding-report/ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
[Accessed 15 February 2019].

335
Joss Moorkens

Sosoni, V. and Rogers, M. (2013) ‘Translation in an Age of Austerity: From Riches to Pauper, or not?’,
mTm 5, 5–17. ­ ​­
Strandvik, I. (2019) ‘Translation Quality Evaluation at the European Commission’. Paper presented at
the LQA Symposium, Zurich, Switzerland.
Strom, R. (1975) ‘Education for a Leisure Society’, The American Biology Teacher, 37, pp. 496–499. ­ ­ ​­
Teague, P. (2016) ‘Ireland and the “GIPS” Countries’, in Roche, W. K., O’Connell, P. J. and Proth-
ero, A. (eds.), Austerity and Recovery in Ireland: Europe’s Poster Child and the Great Recession. Oxford:
­ ­
Oxford University Press, pp. 141–159. ​­
Topping, S. (2000) ‘Sharing Translation Database Information: Considerations for Developing an Eth-
ical and Viable Exchange of Data’, Multilingual Computing and Technology 11(5), ­ pp. 59–61.
­ ­ ​­ Available
online: https://multilingual.com/view-article/?art_id=1105
­ ­­ ​­ [Accessed 15 May 2020].
Troussel, J.- C. and Debussche. J. G. (2014) ‘Translation and Intellectual Property Rights’. Report by
Bird & Bird for the European Commission DG Translation. Luxembourg: European Commission.
Available online: https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/e079e290-
­ ­ ­­ ​­ ​­ ­ ­­ ­​
e250-482d-9d4f-dae566ba67ff/
­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 15 May 2020].
Vieira, L. N. (2018) ‘Automation Anxiety and Translators’, Translation Studies, 13(1), ­ pp. 1–21.
­ ­ ​­
Wachter, S. and Mittelstadt, K. (2019) ‘A Right to Reasonable Inferences: Re-Thinking Data Protection
Law in the Age of Big Data and AI’, Columbia Business Law Review, 2, preprint.
Wade, R. and Sigurgeirsdottir, S. (2012) ‘Iceland’s Rise, Fall, Stabilisation and Beyond’, Cambridge
Journal of Economics, 36, pp. 127–144.
­ ­ ​­
Way, A. (2018) ‘Quality Expectations of Machine Translation’, in Moorkens, J., Castilho, S., Gaspari,
F. and Doherty, S. (eds.), Translation Quality Assessment. Berlin: Springer, pp. 159–178.
­ ­ ​­
Weaver, W. (1947) ‘Letter to Norbert Wiener’, Rockefeller Foundation Archives.
Wood, A. J., Graham, M., Lehdonvirta, V. and Hjorth, I. (2019) ‘Networked but Commodified: The
( Dis)Embeddedness of Digital Labour in the Gig Economy’, Sociology, 53(5), ­ pp. 931–950.
­ ­ ​­
Zoboff, S. (2019) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. London: Profile.

336
 23
Translating tourism
David Katan

Introduction
One of the pillars of globalization is the facilitation of multidirectional flows of people,
which Ritzer (2010: 24), following Bauman (1998), divides into two groups: those that ‘ have
to’ such as migrants, and tourists: ‘People who move about the world because they want to;
because they are “ light”’. This light movement is ‘an intensely social and communicative
business’ ( Thurlow and Jaworski 2011: 289), and translation (including self-t ranslation and
the use of a lingua franca) is vital to it being a ‘truly global cultural industry’ (Heller et al.
2014a: 427).
We will look at some of the issues concerning tourism translation, what it includes and
how the topic has been approached within tourism and translation studies. In particular, we
will investigate how translation affects key areas in international tourism: accessibility, au-
thenticity, sustainability and the tourist gaze.

Tourism and translation

Tourism translation is big business, accounting possibly for well over a quarter of translated
material ( Katan 2011: 69). Also, Sulaiman and Wilson (2018: 1) claim that tourism pro-
motional material is one of the most translated genres globally. What is to be included in
tourism translation is clearly listed by commercial providers as: ‘ brochures, holiday guides,
hotel information, contracts, press releases and promotional materials’ ( Kwintessential 2019).
Though tourism translation is clearly part of commercial translation, there is also increasing
demand for translation from government departments and NGOs involved in providing
tourism material for natural and cultural heritage sites, now attracting an increasing share of
visits from international tourists ( Richards 2018).
In terms of globalization, mass tourism is characterized by what Cohen termed ‘the en-
vironmental bubble’: ‘the [low] degree to which a tourist exposes himself to the strange-
ness of the host society’ (Cohen and Cooper 1986: 539), while, at the same time, satisfying
‘accessibility’ and the instant gratification needs inherent in friction-f ree communication
across borders. This parallels the domesticating norm ( Venuti 1998) in translation. ‘Travel’,

337
David Katan

on the other hand, may be seen as part of the ‘slow’ movement (Gardner 2009; Oh et al.
2016), with a focus on ‘the authentic’, and on enjoying the challenge of perceptible barriers.
In translation, this is the domain of foreignization ( Venuti 1998), where the reader seeks out
the ‘ local’, is wilfully alienated and gratification is delayed.
‘Travel writing’ as a genre is considered part of literary translation ( Katan 2014), while
‘tourism writing’  – being more concerned with pragmatics than stylistics  – is considered
non-l iterary, technical or commercial translation. That said, the lines dividing travel and
tourism are also blurred, given that though tourism may be global, the ‘ local’ must man-
ifest itself as different to motivate the journey in the first place. Moreover, as MacCannell
suggests, this difference should contain at least an element of ‘staged authenticity’ (1973) or
‘strangerhood’ (Cohen 1972: 165), which ‘excites, titillates and gratifies’. It seems evident that
the tourism industry in general is moving towards a slower ‘travel’ position, due to a general
increase in cultural tourism ( Richards 2018), and what has been called a shift towards a ‘post’
or ‘anti’ tourism stance (Francesconi 2007). This suggests that tourism translation will also
require an understanding of the literary aspects of texts.
One of the first translation questions is ‘which language combination(s)?’. As English
is the default ‘auxiliary language’ of international tourism and travel (Crystal 2003: 89), it
makes economic sense for non-Anglo countries to translate primarily into English too. But
of course, this pragmatism may equally well be interpreted as ideological, and may be seen as
pandering to a neo-colonial, neo-Babelian (Cronin 2000: 122, 2003: 59– 60) thesis of global
accessibility, whereby English asserts itself as the only language of tourism to the detriment of
the local or national language. It should also be remembered that globally, Mandarin Chinese
is not only the second most popular language on the internet (Sitsanis 2018), but ‘The unstop-
pable rise of the Chinese Traveller’ means that by 2030 Chinese tourists may well account for
a quarter of all international tourism (Smith 2019). Also, though English may be the lingua
franca, research shows that visitors whose first language is not English clearly appreciate being
addressed in their own language: they have fewer problems finding websites, spend up to dou-
ble the time on the sites, ‘ feel welcomed’ and derive ‘positive bonding’ (Arlt 2007).
Clearly, this research refers to those sites that go beyond what might be called ‘ language
dressing’, where only the home page has been translated (or machine translated as a formal
gesture), and where further links/pages remain untranslated or not updated. The phenome-
non is extremely common. For example, an English guide to Salento ( Italy), translated from
the Italian, offers links to 22 websites: 65% have information in Italian only, while the rest
bar one have only limited information in English ( Danese 2013; see also Arlt 2007).
In the case of ‘English plus’ multilingual translations, other political needs and symbolic
values may come to the fore. For example, Heller et  al. (2014b: 557) examine a Spanish
museum’s multilingual website, which also contains versions in Galician and Basque. They
argue that the additional languages have been added ‘as a gesture to political solidarities with
regions of Spain that also have a minority language’, given that a maximum of 5% speak
Basque, and 2% speak Galician – and these speakers would also be bilingual.
Once the language(s) have been chosen, there is the question of who will translate. Ideally,
tourism translation is carried out ‘ by professional translators working into their language
of habitual use’ ( Kelly 1998: 34; also Sulaiman and Wilson 2018: 637). In reality, there is
anecdotal evidence which suggests that much tourism translation is done into the second lan-
guage, and the quality may not be so different (Stewart 2008; Pokorn 2016), especially if the
translation is into a lingua franca. The real issue, though, is that evidence points to a marked
lack of interest in quality control, even at national level. For example, Napu’s (2016) study of
the Indonesian Tourist Board’s control assurance process is a damning: ‘anyone with English

338
 Translating tourism

language skills who happens to be in the office’. (See also Yang’s 2018 criticism of tourism
translation in China.)
There is also the issue of neuro-machine translation. The seamless ‘Hey, Google, be my
interpreter’ ( Kohn 2019) phone App currently speaks across 44 languages, and is no lon-
ger a novelty. Accommodation and travel booking is already carried out seamlessly using
multilingual platforms that ‘auto-m agically’ substitute the translator. The availability and
ease of use of the software at a personal level provide the perfect partner for what Friedman
calls ‘Globalization 3.0’. Globalization 1.0 and 2.0 relate to the eras of nation states and then
of multinational organizations dominating world trade, while 3.0 ushers in ‘the newfound
power for individuals to collaborate and compete globally’ ( Friedman 2006: 10). So, the
miriad of small tourist enterprises, from B&Bs to cooking schools and wine tasting events,
that once were only able to attract local tourists, now at the click of an app can (and do) pro-
mote internationally cost free. At the same time though, ‘ booking.com’ (Huston 2016) boasts
an undefined ‘ large group’ of in-house translators for their websites because ‘ it will be years
before a computer can do perfect translations’.
However, professional translators are not necessarily tasked with the job, due to the trans-
lators’ perceived deontological constraints (Sulaiman 2016: 62; Agorni 2019: 68). In short,
communication with the new reader is not part of the remit. Indeed, non-professional cul-
tural informers, such as travelblog compatriots who have gained insider knowledge, are able
to align point of view with that of their reader much better than professional translators
( Katan 2016b). Cronin (2013: 197) also uses the term ‘ interpreter/informant’, suggesting
that it is native (rather than acquired) insidership that confers, at least, prima facie legitimacy.
Sulaiman and Wilson (2019: 196) also note that target-language copy writers rather than
professionally qualified translators are often preferred.

Tourism studies and translation studies

Tourism translation still remains marginal and little understood in tourism studies (Cronin 2000;
157; Hall-Lew and Lew 2014; Agorni 2018, 2019). The impact of linguistic acculturation in
tourism began to be discussed in the 1970s in terms of host-guest assymetry, whereby ‘the usually
less literate host population produces numbers of bilingual individuals, while the tourist popula-
tion generally refrains from learning the host’s language’ (Nuňez 1989: 266). As Cohen and Coo-
per (1986) note, this self-translation accentuates the assymetries between the host community
that works to provide a service, and the leasured community of tourists who will have paid for it.
In the 1980s, Cohen and Cooper (1986) introduced the issue of language mediation into
tourism studies (see also Agorni 2018). They divided the ‘mediators’ into two basic groups.
The first group are the translators and interpreters ‘concerned exclusively with linguistic ex-
actitude [and] to reproduce the communication value of the source text’. The second group
are ‘ language brokers’ or ‘go betweens’ (quoting Shanklin 1980). For the brokers, language
‘ is only incidental to a wider range of tasks’. The non-professional tourist guide will also
provide ‘social mediation with the local population and the dissemination of information,
explanation and interpretation of sites visited’ (1986: 556). The authors also mention a blur-
ring of roles when ‘even professional guides do not consider the ability for correct simultane-
ous translations of conversations between tourists and locals an important professional skill’.
Though there is some terminological confusion, Cohen and Cooper’s conclusion is clear:
interpreters in the tourism field do more than interpret.
There appears to be extremely limited tourism research on translation, and comments
such as ‘a reader-oriented translation is popular’ ( Yang 2018: 297) are not helpful, given

339
David Katan

that translation scholars have been underlining for some time that tourism translation tends
towards maintaining source text patterns ( Lorés 2004: 142) or at best to what Mason (2004:
166) calls ‘a­ hesitancy’ between a source-text-oriented
­ ­​­­ ​­ and a ­reader-oriented
​­ approach. This
hesitancy has, if anything, become more pronounced as Globalization 3.0 encourages more
small enterprises to use ­off-the-peg
­​­­ ​­ translation software or, at best, ­low-cost
​­ and hence low-
­ ​
­risk ­source-text-oriented,
­​­­ ​­ amateurs.
If we look at translation studies, courses in the translation of tourism are noticeably ab-
sent ( Durán Muñoz 2011). For example, out of 43 universities (in the United Kingdom and
Ireland, Hadley 2015) offering an MA in Translation, only one specializes in tourism, while
Agorni (2019) finds only one specialized course in the rest of Europe. And translation schol-
ars have not been slow to lament the lack of academic research in the area ( Durán Muñoz
2012; Hogg et al. 2014; Agorni 2019). That said, much has been published; see Magris and
Ross’ (2018: 266) detailed overview of tourism translation, mainly on promotional material.
Traditionally, published work has been prescriptive, criticizing the lack of professional
(i.e. language) competencies in the translation of informational and promotional texts. The
focus has been on source language interference and t arget-language errors, a criticism that
continues unabated today (e.g. Howcroft 2015; Skibitska 2015; Quin et al. 2017). With the
arrival of the skopos theory and the functional approach, studies heralded by Kelly (1998) and
Snell-Hornby (1999: 103) began to move research on from discussions of ‘ bungled linguistic
products’ to investigations of focus, information load, relevance and the loss of persuasive
features in translation (e.g. Navarro Errasti et al. 2004).
Further, more descriptive, sub-strands may also be traced. First, we have the rise of com-
parable and parallel corpora to investigate ‘equivalences’ based either on Nida’s (1964) or Hui
and Triandis’ (1985) understanding of the concept. Researchers here use collocations, key-
words and word frequency lists to identify functional equivalents across languages, and also
the extent that translated texts capture these equivalences at a linguistic level (e.g. Tognini
Bonelli and Manca 2004; Cappelli 2008; Manca 2018) and at the level of genre ( Hogg et al.
2014; Manca 2016). Moving away from a language-centred focus, a number of researchers
(following Katan 2004) link the effectiveness of tourism translation to cultural orientations
(e.g. Manca 2012; Navarro 2016; Sulaiman and Wilson 2018, 2019).
Indeed, tourism translation, unlike many other fields, is inherently culture-bound; and
the translation of culture specific items using a taxonomy of procedures or strategies, such as
those provided by Aixela (1997), has been well studied (e.g. Agorni 2016). A further particu-
larity of tourism translation is its inherent focus on the visual (as exemplified by ‘The Tourist
Gaze’, Urry and Larsen 2011). So, of particular interest among scholars today is the multi-
modal analysis of texts (following Kress and van Leeuwen 2006; Francesconi 2014) with
an accent on contrastive analysis (e.g. Manca 2016; Fina 2018; see also Arlt 2007). For the
future, Magris and Ross (2018: 286) suggest that tourism translation could focus on cultural
stereotypical images of destinations and cultures (imagology), and how they are translated
(see also Flynn et al. 2016).
Reader reception of translated tourism texts is still extremely under studied, though small
focus groups have been used (e.g. Cómitre Narváez 2014; Sulaiman 2016; Sulaiman and
Wilson 2019) to discuss the attractiveness of translated promotional material, while Cranmer
(2016) discusses international museum-visitor reception of culturally customized material
such as adapting the formatting as well as the images. Museum translation, and the whole
area of the cultural or heritage tourism industry, is also a growing area of interest by trans-
lation scholars ( Liao 2018), due in no little part to the increase in visits from international
tourists ( Richards 2018). Little appears to have been researched in tourism interpreting, but

340
 Translating tourism

see Gavioli (2015), whose survey of interpreters for tourist guides supports Cohen and Coo-
per’s (1986) claim that interpreters tend to be mindful (see below), and expand on what the
local guides say for the benefit of the international visitors.
A more sociological area is also being pursued such as the study of tourism translation
commissioning and quality assurance mentioned earlier. And, given that much of tourism
translation may be classified as marketing, there has also been discussion on the blurred lines
dividing translation and rewriting ( Kelly 1998; Agorni 2012), as well as the non use of trans-
lators, also mentioned earlier. Finally, more political questions regarding tourism translation
in rendering the exotic familiar ( Jaworski et al. 2003: 16), its effect on minority languages
and the broadening (or narrowing) of the mind are also the object of study (e.g. Cronin 2000,
2003; Thurlow and Jaworski 2010b, 2011), and will be discussed below.

Accessibility and authenticity

These two arguments dominate the tourism debate. The United Nations promotion of
‘accessible tourism’ as a basic human right includes the need for clarity of information ‘ in
tourism literature and other promotional material used in tourism […to] be used by every-
one’ ( UNWTO 2013). This coincides with more recent tourism translation scholar attention
on skopos and the reader’s ‘out-group’ ( Bell 1984) or ‘outsider’ status ( Katan 2012; Agorni
2018). In general, original language tourism texts are written to explain or promote what is
unknown for readers, i.e. for those with low epistemic status (Heritage 2015). So, these read-
ers are per se epistemic outsiders. The content discussed will refer explicitly to knowledge
that they have limited access to ( Dillon 1992), whether this knowledge regard a specialist
theme (such as archeology or art), local procedures (such as transportation) or to local customs
and traditions. At the same time, this readership will have open access to the language, and
also to a similar culture-bound model of the world ( Katan 2004) as the writer (such as tacit
knowledge regarding local geography, history and religious practices). So, we have two levels
of insider/outsidership: epistemic and languacultural.
There will be rare cases where texts are written ‘to be translated’ (internationalized or
localization-ready; see Cranmer 2016). In general, tourism translation is a particular case of
‘entextualization’ ( Bauman and Briggs 1990) or creating a text for an unforseen, secondary,
communication situation ( Pilar Navarro 2004: 202). If we take the ‘ langua’ part first, the first
question will concern readership, which begs questions of appropriate variety and style. In
the special case of translating into a lingua franca (such as a Spanish guide published in Ven-
ice for all Spanish speakers) local varieties need to be avoided, and Katan (2016a) suggests a
KISSy ( Keep It Short and Simple) ‘ low context communication’ approach. Kelly (1998: 36)
points out, however, that though this may work for English, this cannot be an approach for
all languages, given the fact that many outsider readerships appear to be comfortable being
addressed as specialists (Mason 2004: 165).
Tourism material translated for a local market, on the other hand, requires the under-
standing that ‘National ideologies and cultural borders are still with us’ ( Flynn et al. 2016: 1).
Similarly, Magris and Ross’ (2018: 285) analysis of generic structures of Dutch, German and
Italian tourist promotion websites demonstrates that ‘even in the globalisation era the world
is not yet globalised’. So culture-boundness remains a key issue (Agorni 2016: 19), suggesting
that tourism translators need to be creative, and adapt, localize or transcreate (e.g. Katan
2016b; Manca 2016: 173; Cranmer 2019).
Katan (2012; also Agorni 2018) suggests adapting Greimas’ concept of ‘pouvoir faire’ when
the prime purpose of the text is accessibility to enable readers to act as if they were langua and

341
David Katan

cultural insiders. This suggests that non-commercial tourism translation could be included in
Public Service Interpreting and Translation ( PSIT), given its focus on translation to ‘permit
[reader] participation and, therefore, empowerment’ ( Taibi 2011). This approach requires
what Bell (1984: 184; see also Mason 2004: 164–166) calls an ‘ initiative shift’, a redefinition of
the relationship between the addresser and addressee ( by in this case the translator). This also
means the translator being ‘mindful’ of the perspective and sensitivity of the new audience of
outsiders. Mindfulness was first discussed in museum translation in terms of considering the
connections visitors make when reading interpreted material (Moscardo 2017), while Katan
(2019) suggests that a mindless translation is one that focuses exclusively (or at best) on the
langua features of the source text.
A mindful approach is essential if we take into consideration the cultural boundness of
‘the tourist gaze’, a much studied concept in tourism studies ( Urry and Larsen 2011). It is a
tourist model of the world, a limited and generally distorted outsider view of the other, and
is an essential component of imagology. The distortion can easily become visible when the
gaze is entextualized without audience resynching. Clear cases are those where countries
without the resources to produce their own original language guides to foreign destinations
translate already published guides. So, for example, Dybiec (2011: 6) finds that a Polish guide
to Portugal, in the section ‘Travellers’ Stories’, focuses exclusively on Byron and other, less
well-known Anglo writers, thus reproducing ‘the Anglo- Saxon gaze’ for a Polish audience.
A related development is that of the translation of travel guides ‘ back’ into the language
of the tourist destination. Wheeler and Wheeler (2007: 286–287) tell us that the first French
translation of their English ‘Lonely Planet’ guide to France was ‘a mistake’ because it was ‘not
totally aligned with French demands’. The new guide needed more on cinema and cuisine,
and clearly less on how to get there or where the various consulates were. Little research,
however, appears to have been done on what strategies have been used to mediate the differ-
ing accessibility needs and authenticity concerns, and to what extent the tourist gaze in these
newer guides has been resynched ( but see Maher 2012).
This distortion may well be ideological. The very first French Michelin Guides were
overtly anti- German (Harp 2001: 118), and present- day tourist guides continue to delete and
distort according to their own national interests. For example, the Marble Boat at the Bejing
Summer Palace symbolizes the Empress’ embezzling and profiligate spending – according
to the Anglo ‘Rough Guides’ (2017: 96). Whereas the informative panel at the boat itself
faithfully translates the Chinese stance: ‘Marble Boat, its Chinese style structure has nothing
left, which silently accused Anglo-French forces of their guilty (sic). Empress Dowager Cixi
had it restored with a European style’ (in Katan 2016b: 80). The guilt refers to the systematic
pillaging and burning of the Palace in 1860 carried out by British and French forces. It is
now ‘a place that tells a story of cultural destruction that everyone in China knows about,
but hardly anyone outside … and which causes China great pain’ ( Bowlby 2015). Unfortu-
nately, though, the translation does nothing to render for the outsider what is implicit for the
languacultural insider, and so finds itself out-of- sync with its new audience.
Resynching requires manipulation, which may of course result not only in opening up
reader horisons, but equally may result in further exoticization, pandering to outsider stereo-
types. For example, Dijkstra (2016: 207) notes how certain translation choices made in the
German translation of a Welsh guidebook ‘exoticized Wales as a “ fairytale” land of sorcerers
and druids which lacked a vibrant contemporary culture’.
Counterpoised to accessibility is the quest for the ‘authentic’ experience (Fodde 2017): the
need for self- discovery and bodily immersion in the foreign. What counts as foreign and hence
part of strangerhood, though, changes according to languacultural readership. For example,

342
 Translating tourism

while every Anglo and German travelblog report regarding Puglia praised the (simple, tradi-
tional, genuine) food and wine, only 16% of the Italian bloggers did so ( D’Egidio 2014: 65).
Translation without intervention cannot direct the reader to the ‘authentic’ food and wine if
it is only implicit in the original text. At the same time, though, slow travel theory has it that
mindful intervention actually detracts. As Steiner and Reisinger (2006: 302) state: ‘Tourists
being authentic would be uninterested in a tour guide’s explanation’.
Authenticity in translation certainly includes the enshrining and sacralization (MacCannell
1999) of the foreign language itself within translation, called ‘ languaging’ ( Potter 1970; Dann
1996: 184; Cappelli et  al. 2013; Zummo 2018), ‘translanguaging’ (Garcia and Wei 2014),
‘ language crossing’ ( Jaworski et al. 2003: 17) or ‘mimesis’ (Cronin 2003: 159). Here, rather
than the language difference creating a barrier, it is a positive ‘ feature’ (Heller et al. 2014a:
431), as a way of both enriching cultural tourism (Heller et al. 2014b) and revitalizing indige-
nous languages (Greathouse-A mador 2005; Whitney- Gould et al. 2018). Indeed, Farry (2015)
suggests that gazing (in staged doses) at the foreign language itself might be the only authentic
experience left.
Issues regarding languaging abound, and range from criticism of the haphazard nature in
the way it is applied in travel/tourism guides (Christiansen 2016; Cesiri 2016) to the idea of
languaging as commodification ( Thurlow and Jaworski 2010a) or fetishism (Cronin 2000: 90;
Kelly-Holmes 2014, 2016), whereby the original language is retained for decoration rather
than for communication. The net result may well be an ‘eccentricizing’ and ‘exoticizing’ ef-
fect (Shamma 2005: 63), or that of banalization ( Thurlow and Jaworski 2011), where specific
local practices and languages are appropriated. So, through a mixture of over-generalization,
distortion and linguistic deletion, it is not difficult to be convinced that latte (outside of Italy)
is a type of coffee, or that sushi is Japanese for raw fish. This is where translation rather than
languaging would actually direct the tourist to a more authentic experience.
The focus of the ‘authentic’ slow travel credo closely follows the WTO recommenda-
tions regarding sustainable tourism, which includes the tourist’s engagement with the host
community to improve ‘ inter-cultural understanding and tolerance’ ( UNWTO n.d.). Along
with the languaging, we may say that guidebook translation tips, glossaries and accompany-
ing phrase books are a nod in this direction.
Unfortunately, though, the translations are one-way transactions that in practice, accord-
ing to a postmodernist view: ‘exoticise the destination, to provide the tourist with a frisson of
dépaysement’ ( Thurlow and Jaworski 2010a: 219), resulting in more of a ludic than authentic
experience ( Wilson 2018: 135–137). The critics point out that the appropriacy of the lan-
guage of the discourse fragments is never explained; so the self-interested questions such
as ‘ how old are you’ and ‘are you married’ cannot encourage actual engagement given the
default presumption of high epistemic status ( Heritage 2015), i.e. the tourist’s right to know.
Thurlow and Jaworski conclude: ‘ languages … are inevitably and unavoidably caught up in
the political economy of global capitalism. And the same is true of the seemingly innocent
guidebook glossary’ ( Thurlow and Jaworski 2010a: 222; see also Schaff 2013: 324).
In interlingual tourism discourse, though the receiving destination and its community
will be central, there will be little agency involved in being host. In addition, as Farr (2007:
616) points out, it is not only the discourse that the host community is rarely party to, but
also ‘cultural images of tourist destinations in developing countries (and the often sexualized
and racialized native ‘others’ who inhabit them) are commonly culled by foreign market-
ers, without any local input or control’. Indeed, as accessibility improves thanks to effective
translation, and to the fact that tourists can ‘do 7 countries in 7 days’, so communication with
‘the other’ necessarily decreases (Cronin 2000: 196). Hence, though tourism is grounded in

343
David Katan

discourse, it is not discourse with the destination community. Instead, translation is abso-
lutely vital to maintaining the environmental bubble, allowing the global tourist, away from
home, to ‘ function and interact in much the same way as he does in his own habitat’ (Cohen
1972: 166). This has been the expected state of affairs ever since the ‘ jet set’ took to the air,
with the self-t ranslating ‘attractive Miss Dietland von Schonfeldt – a t ypical Lufthansa stew-
ardess [who] of course, speaks fluent English’ ( Boorstin 1961: 95). Thurlow (2003) adds the
importance of translating the inflight magazine in completing the airline’s global cosmopol-
itan image.
Translation also further eases access without engagement in the transformation from cos-
mopolitan to denizen. Bagley’s (2015: 39) study of retiree Germans in Majorca concludes
that ‘since translators abound … creating a Heimat [homely home] abroad does not involve
integration into the host country’s lifestyle and culture’.
This seameless access to host destinations seriously affects the sustainability of destinations,
such as Venice, where over-tourism has led to anti-tourism (Seraphin et al. 2018). So, transla-
tion is also now being used to foster a more sustainable tourism. The ‘#EnjoyRespectVenezia’
(Città di Venezia 2017) campaign, for example, has ‘Good rules for the responsible visitor’ in
11 languages. To what extent they are read or followed is not (yet) known.
It is not only the sustainability of the host community that can suffer through (irresponsible)
translation. The values of the guests may also be ignored. For example, Tognini Bonelli and
Manca (2004) note the offensiveness in Italian of the ubiquitous ‘children and dogs welcome’
in British tourism promotional material. The Australian 2006 tourism promotional cam-
paign, ‘Where the bloody hell are you’, highlighting Australian informality as an attractive
feature, had unsurprisingly the opposite affect for a number of potential guest cultures ( Yang
2018). Similarly, Sulaiman’s (2016) survey of reception of Australian brochures in Malaysian,
of ‘attractive’ language such as earthly ‘ beauty’ and ‘paradise’, was regarded as profane for
Muslim readers.
The advice given regarding ‘audiencing’ to authors interested in religiously motivated
tourism can be generalized for all tourism translation issues: ‘ be mindful of who it is [you]
are writing for … whose voice are you using?’ ( Jamal and Qayum 2019: 31). The authors
focus on semantics and illustrate how Western non-Muslim discourse tends to treat ‘Islamic
tourism’ and ‘Halal tourism’ as value-free descriptors, ignoring the strongly different emo-
tive connotations when adressed to a Muslim audience. So, what can work well in the host
destination language, where the religious presence is negligable, can boomerang when trans-
lated. Indeed, in an article entitled ‘Dear Spain: Want to attract Jews?’ Levy (2017) notes
that a Spanish kosher- style menu includes a sparkling wine entitled ‘Christmas cava’. This
works in Spanish given that the audience will be predominantly Spanish and Catholic, and is
unlikely to notice that ‘Christmas’ is not an obvious attractor for Jews. Katan (forthcoming)
notices a similar issue translating the Italian Guide to Jewish Salento, and its explanation of
‘Pesach’ as ‘La pasqua ebriaca/Jewish Easter’. The analogy is useful for the primary Italian,
non-Jewish, audience, given there is no translation in Italian. But it is unnecessary (if not
mildly offensive) when translated for the new audience, given the commonly used English
term ‘Passover’.
­

Conclusion
Global tourism presupposes accessibility and accounting for tourist outsider pouvoir faire
needs. However, ‘ frictionless accessibility’ mindlessly steamrolls tourists into and through
the destination community in encapsuled environmental bubbles, doing little to promote

344
 Translating tourism

sustainability. Translation is vital to providing access and facilitating travel across borders;
yet the quality of the product demonstrates an alarming lack of investment in the process.
Also the subject area has yet to be taken seriously in tourism studies or in translation train-
ing. This situation has been compounded by the rise of Globalization 3.0, enabling cost-f ree
‘translation’ into and out of almost any language, while increasing the extent of un- synched
­auto-magic
​­ translations.
At the same time, the same Globalization 3.0 can help translators dip into the wealth of
natural-translator and cultural-informer ( Katan 2016b) examples of recontextualizing for
the new audience, creating ‘ just enough’ friction to allow the tourist to appreciate and value
differences. As Agorni (2016: 20) says, ‘ it is this lack of correspondence between the destina-
tion and the tourist that keeps the process of signification alive’. Indeed it is the translator’s
mindful initiative shift and ability to re-audience either for total epistemic and languacul-
tural outsiders or for particular epistemic readerships (such as those interested in religious
tourism) that should constitute the translator’s added value in mediating accessibility and
sustainability.
For the future, sustainability is clearly key, and with that research into how mindful trans-
lation may have a bearing, beyond the deontologically constrained multilingual translations
of, for example, ‘#EnjoyRespectVenezia’. As Globalization 3.0 consolidates so it should also
become imperative that research focuses on the longer-term cost of mindless translation on
the success of promotion, on quality of stay, on strengthening the ethnocentric tourist gaze
(the imagology) and on relations with the host community.

Further reading
Agorni, M. (2018) ‘Cultural Representation Through Translation: An Insider- Outsider Perspec-
tive on the Translation of Tourism Promotional Discourse’, Altre Modernità/Other Modernities, 20,
pp. 253–275.
­ ­ ​­
Dicusses tourism translation as requiring intercultural mediation, and provides an overview of current
work both from translation scholars and from tourism studies.
Altre Modernità (2019)
­ Mind the Gap in Tourism Discourse: traduzione, mediazione, inclusione, 21.
A multilingual special issue focussing on contrastive linguistic and translation issues when mediating
( physical as well as communicative) accessibility and inclusion in tourism texts across languages.
Cronin, M. (2000) Across the Lines: Travel, Language, Translation. Cork: Cork University Press.
An engaging philosophical look at how (change of ) language affects travel, and how international
travel is affecting language use.
Cultus (2016)
­ Tourism Across Cultures: Accessibility in Tourist Communication, 9(1), edited by Manca, E. and
Spinzi, C.; 9(2) edited by Katan, D. and Spinzi, C.
A Cultus double issue providing a wide-ranging overview of recent research addressing issues in heri-
tage and tourism discourse with a strong focus on contrastive linguistics and translation.
Sulaiman, Z. and Wilson, R. (2019). Translation and Tourism: Strategies for Effective Cross-Cultural Promo-
tion. Singapore: Springer.
Focuses on the translating tourism promotional materials ( TPMs) and through experimental research
identifies effective translation guidelines for stakeholders in the industry and strategies for the translator.

References
Agorni, M. (2012) ‘Tourism Communication: The Translator’s Responsibility in the Translation of
Cultural Difference’, Pasos, 10(4),
­ pp. 5–11.
­ ­ ​­
Agorni, M. (2016) ‘Tourism across Languages and Cultures: Accessibility through Translation’, Cultus,
9(2),
­ pp. 13–27.
­ ­ ​­
Agorni, M. (2018) ‘Cultural Representation through Translation: aAn Insider- outsider Perspective on
the Translation of Tourism Promotional Discourse’, Altre Modernità, 30, pp. 253–275.
­ ­ ​­

345
David Katan

Agorni, M. (2019) ‘Challenges in the Professional Training of Language and Intercultural Mediators:
Translating Tourism ­Cross-cultural ​­ Communication’, Cultus, 12, pp. 56–72. ­ ­ ​­
Aixela, J. F. (1997) ‘Culture- specific Items in Translation’, in Álvarez, R. and Vidal C-Á. (eds.), Trans-
lation, Power, Subversion. Clevedon: Multilingual, pp. 52–78. ­ ­ ​­
Arlt, W. G. (2007) ‘Feeling Welcome: Internet Tourism Marketing across Cultures’, in Pease, W.
Rowe, M. and Cooper, M. (eds.), Information and Communication Technologies in Support of the Tourism
Industry. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, pp. 314–338.
Bagley, P. (2015) ‘Mein Mallorca: A German- Spanish Love Affair’, in Barker, A. D. (ed.), Identity and
Intercultural Exchange in Travel and Tourism. Bristol: Channel View, pp. 36–46. ­ ­ ​­
Bauman, R. and Briggs, C. L. (1990) ‘Poetics and Performance as Critical Perspectives on Language
and Social-life’,
­ ​­ Annual Review of Anthropology, 19, pp. 59–88. ­ ­ ​­
Bauman, Z. (1998) Globalization: The Human Consequences. New York: Columbia.
Bell, A. (1984) ‘Language Style as Audience Design’, Language in Society, 13(2), ­ pp. 145–204.
­ ­ ​­
Boorstin, D. J. (1961) The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New York: Harper and Row.
Bowlby, C. (2015) The Palace of Shame that Makes China Angry. Available online: https://www.bbc.
­ ­­
com/news/magazine-30810596 ​­ [Accessed 21 July 2019].
Cappelli, G. (2008) ‘The Ttranslation of Tourism-related Websites and Localization: Problems and
Perspectives’, RILA ( Rassegna Italiana di Linguistica Applicata), pp. 97–115. ­ ­ ​­
Cappelli, G. (2013) ‘Travelling Words: Languaging in English Tourism Discourse’, in Yarrington, ‎ A.,
Villani, S. and ‎ Kelly, J. (eds.), Travels and Translations: Anglo-Italian Cultural Transactions. Amsterdam:
Rodopi, pp. 353–374.
­ ­ ​­
Cesiri, D. (2016) ‘Promoting Venice through Digital Travel Guidebooks: A Case Study of Texts Writ-
ten in English and in Italian’, Cultus, 9(1), ­ pp. 49–67.
­ ­ ​­
Christiansen, T. (2016) ‘Translanguaging and its Effects on Accessibility in Travel Writing: A Case
Study: H.V. Morton on Apulia’, Cultus, 9(1), ­ pp. 131–152.
­ ­ ​­
Città di Venezia. (2017) Good Rules for the Responsible visitor. Available online: https://www.comune.
­ ­ ­­ ­​­­
venezia.it/en/content/buone-pratiche-il-visitatore-responsabile ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 22 January 2020].
Cohen, E. (1972) ‘Towards a Sociology of International Tourism’, Social Research, 39(1), ­ pp. 164–182.
­ ­ ​­
Cohen, E. and Cooper, R. (1986) ‘Language and Tourism’, Annals of Tourism Research, 13(4), ­ pp. 533–564.
­ ­ ​­
Cómitre Narváez, I. (2014) ‘How to Translate Culture- specific Items: A Case Study of Tourist Promo-
tion Campaign by Turespaña’, Journal of Specialised Translation, 21, pp. 71–112. ­ ­ ​­
Cranmer, R. (2016) ‘Communicating with International Visitors: The Case of Museums and Galler-
ies’, Cultus, 9(2), ­ pp. 91–105.
­ ­ ​­
Cranmer, R. (2019) ‘The Inclusion of International Tourists: Developing the Translator- client Rela-
tionship’, Altre Modernità, 21, pp. 55–60. ­ ­ ​­
Cronin, M. (2000) Across the Lines: Travel, Language, Translation. Cork: Cork University Press.
Cronin, M. (2003) Translation and Globalization. London: Routledge.
Cronin, M. (2013) ‘Travel and Translation’, in Gambier, Y. and van Doorslaer, L. (eds.), Handbook of
Translation Studies: Volume 4. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 194–199. ­ ­ ​­
Crystal, D. (2003) English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Danese, S. (2013) Internazionalizzazione del turismo: ‘Do you Speak English in Salento?’ Unpublished MA
Thesis, University of Salento ( Lecce).
Dann, G. (1996) The Language of Tourism. A Sociolinguistic Perspective. Wallingford: CAB International.
D’Egidio, A. (2014) ‘The Tourist Gaze in English, Italian and German Travel Articles about Puglia: A
Corpus-based
­ ​­ Study. ICAME Journal, 38, pp. 57–72. ­ ­ ​­
Dijkstra, A. (2016) ‘Marginalizing and Exoticizing Wales: Shifting Representations in Translated
Guidebooks’, Translation Studies, 9(2), ­ 198–211.
­ ​­
Dillon, G. (1992) ‘Insider Reading and Linguistic form: Contextual Knowledge and the Reading of
Linguistic Discourse’, in Toolan, M. (ed.), Language, Text and Context. Essays in Stylistics. London:
Routledge, pp. 39–52. ­ ­ ​­
Durán Muñoz, I. (2011) ‘Tourist Translations as a Mediation Tool: Misunderstandings and Difficulties.
Cadernos de Tradução, 1(27), ­ ­ ­
pp. 29–49. ​­
Durán Muñoz, I. (2012) ‘Analysing Common Mistakes in Translations of Tourist Texts (Spanish,
English and German)’, Onomázein, 26, pp. 335–349. ­ ­ ​­
Dybiec, J. (2011) Guided Gazes or Travelling in a Translated World? Practices and Performances of Translation
on the Polish Guidebook Market. Available online: https://www.academia.edu/1259291/Guided_ ­ ­ ­
gazes_or_travelling_in_a_Translated_World [Accessed 29 February 2020]

346
 Translating tourism

Farr, K. (2007) ‘Globalization and Sexuality’, in Ritzer, G. (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Globaliza-
tion. Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 610–629. ­ ­ ​­
Farry, O. (2015) ‘In Search of Authenticity: What’s the Difference between a Traveller and a Tour-
ist?’, New Statesman, 4 August. Available online: https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2015/
08/search-authenticity-whats-difference-between-traveller-and-tourist
­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 8 March 2019].
Fina, M. E. (2018) Investigating Effective Audio Guiding: A Multimodal Comparison of the Genre in Italian
and English. Roma: Carocci.
Flynn, P., Leersen, J. and van Doorslaer, L. (2016) ‘On Translated Images, Stereotypes and Disciplines’,
in Flynn, P., Leersen, J. and van Doorslaer, L. (eds.), Interconnecting Translation Studies and Imagology.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 1–20. ­ ­ ​­
Fodde, L. (2017) ‘Accessibility through the Staging of Authenticity in Tourist Discourse’, in Maci, S., ‎
Gotti, ‎ M. and Sala, M. (eds.), Ways of Seeing, Ways of Being: Representing the Voices of Tourism. Berne:
Peter Lang, pp. 240–259.
­ ­ ​­
Francesconi, S. (2007) English for Tourism Promotion: Italy in British Tourism Texts. Milan: Hoepli.
Francesconi, S. (2014) Reading Tourism Texts: A Multimodal Analysis. Bristol: Channel View.
Friedman, T. (2006) The World Is Flat. London: Penguin.
Garcia, O. and Wei, L. (2014) Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. New York: Palgrave-
​­Macmillan.
Gardner, N. (2009) ‘A Manifesto for Slow Travel’, Hidden Europe, 25. Available online: https://www.
­­ ­​­­
hiddeneurope.co.uk/a-manifesto-for-slow-travel ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 29 January 2020].
Gavioli, L. (2015) ‘Negotiating Territories of Knowledge: On Interpreting Talk in Guided Tours’, The
Interpreters’ Newsletter, 20, pp. 73–86.­ ­ ​­
­
­ ­ ­ ​­
Hadley, J. (2015) List of UK and ROI Universities Offering Masters Degrees in Translation Studies. Available
online:  https://www.academia.edu/12021563/List_of_UK_and_ROI_Universities_Offering_
­ ­ ­
Masters_Degrees_in_Translation_Studies [Accessed 6 May 2029].
­

­ ­ ​­
Harp, S. (2001) Marketing Michelin: Advertising and Cultural Identity in Twentieth-Century France. Balti-
more, MD: John Hopkins University Press.
Heller, M., Jaworski, A. and Thurlow, C. (2014a) ‘Introduction: Sociolinguistics and Tourism  –
Mobilities, Markets, Multilingualism’, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 18(4), ­ pp. 425–457.
­ ­ ​­
Heller, M., Pujolar, J. and Duchêne, A. (2014b) ‘Linguistic Commodification in Tourism’, Journal of
Sociolinguistics, 18(4), ­ pp. 539–566.
­ ­ ​­
Heritage, J. (2015) ‘Action Formation and Its Epistemic (and Other) Backgrounds’, Discourse Studies,
15(5),
­ pp. 551–578.
­ ­ ​­
Hogg, G., Liao, M.-H. and O’Gorman, K. (2014) ‘Reading between the Lines: Multidimensional
Translation in Tourism Consumption’, Tourism Management, 42(3), ­ pp. 157–164.
­ ­ ​­
Howcroft, S. (2015) ‘Eating Portugal: Translating Food’, in Barker, A. (ed.), Identity and Intercultural
Exchange in Travel and Tourism. Bristol: Channel View, pp. 206–220. ­ ­ ​­
Hui, H. and Triandis, H. (1985) ‘Measurement in Cross- Cultural Psychology: A Review and Compar-
ison of Strategies’, Journal of ­Cross-Cultural ​­ Psychology, 16(2),
­ pp. 131–152.
­ ­ ​­
Huston, D. (2016) ‘Priceline’s CEO on Creating an In-house Multilingual Customer Service Opera-
tion’, Harvard Business Review, April. Available online: https://hbr.org/2016/04/pricelines-ceo-on-
­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​
­­creating-an-in-house-multilingual-customer-service-operation
­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 8 March 2019].
Jamal, A. and Qayum, B. (2019) ‘Religion and Islamic Tourism Destinations’, in Jamal, ‎ A, Griffin, K.
and ‎ Raj, R. (eds.), Islamic Tourism: Management of Travel Destinations. Wallingford: CABI, pp. 26–37. ­ ­ ​­
Jaworski, A., Thurlow, C., Lawson, S. and Ylänne-McEwen, V. (2003) ‘The Uses and Representations
of Local Languages in Tourist Destinations: A View from British TV Holiday Programmes’, Lan-
guage Awareness, 12(1), ­ pp. 5–29.
­ ­ ​­
Katan, D. (2004) Translating Cultures: An Introduction for Translators, Interpreters and Mediators. Manches-
ter: St. Jerome.
Katan, D. (2011) ‘Occupation or Profession: A Survey of the Translator’s World’, in Sela- Sheffy, R. and
Shlesinger, M. (eds.), Identity and Status in the Translation Professions. Amsterdam: John Benjamin,
pp. 65–87.
­ ­ ​­

347
David Katan

Katan, D. (2012) ‘Translating the Tourist Gaze: From Heritage and “Culture” to Actual Encounter’,
Pasos, 10(4), ­ pp. 83–95.
­ ­ ​­
Katan, D. (2014) ‘Translating the “Literary” in Literary Translation in Practce’, Lingue e Linguaggi, 14,
pp. 7–29.
­ ­ ​­
Katan, D. (2016a) ‘Translation at the Cross-roads: Time for the Transcreational Turn?’, Perspectives, 24(3), ­
pp. 365–381.
­ ­ ​­
Katan, D. (2016b) ‘Translating for Outsider Tourists: Cultural Informers Do It Better’, Cultus, 9(2), ­
pp. 63–90.
­ ­ ​­
Katan, D. (2019) ‘Difference and Ethnocentrism in Translation: In Defence of Mindful Essentialism’,
in Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk,
­ ​­ B. (ed.),
­ Contacts and Contrasts in Educational Contexts and Translation.
New York: Springer, pp. 119–142.
­ ­ ​­
Katan, D. (2020) ‘Cultural Approaches to Translation’, in Chapelle, C. (ed.), The Concise Encyclopedia of
Applied Linguistics. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, pp. 378–387.
­ ­ ​­
Katan, D. ( Forthcoming) ‘Translating the Tourist Guide’, in Lelli, F. and Ghio, F. (eds.), Guide to Jewish
Salento. Lecce: Capone.
Kelly, D. (1998) ‘The Translation of Texts from the Tourist Sector: Textual Conventions, Cultural
Distance and Other Constraints. TRANS: revista de traductología, 2, pp. 33–42.
­ ­ ​­
­
­ ­ ​­
­

Kohn, M. (2019) ‘Is the Era of Artificial Speech Translation Upon Us?’, The Guardian. Available online:
­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/17/is-the-era-of-artificial-speech-translation- ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​
­­upon-us​­ [Accessed 8 March 2019].
Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (2006) The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge.
Kwintessential. (2019) ‘Translation Services for the Travel and Tourism Sector’. Available online:
­ ­ ­­ ­​­­
https://www.kwintessential.co.uk/sectors/translation-services-for-the-travel-and-tourism-sector ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
[Accessed 29 January 2019].
Levy, D. (2017) ‘Dear Spain: Want To Attract Jews? You’re Doing It Wrong’. Available online: https://
forward.com/scribe/377722/dear-spain-want-to-attract-jews-youre-doing-it-wrong/
­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed
18 January 2020].
Liao, M. (2018) ‘Museums and Creative Industries: The Contribution of Translation Studies. Journal of
Specialised Translation, 29, pp. 45–62.
­ ­ ​­
Lorés, R. (2004) ‘Thematic Patterns in Tourist Literature’, in Navarro Errasti, M. P., Lorés Sanz, R.
and Murillo Ornat, S. (eds.), Pragmatics at Work: The Translation of Tourist Literature. Bern: Peter Lang,
pp. 103–156.
­ ­ ​­
MacCannell, D. (1973) ‘Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of Social Space in Tourist Settings’, American
Journal of Sociology, 79(3),
­ pp. 589–603.
­ ­ ​­
MacCannell, D. (1999) The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Magris, M. and Ross, D. (2018) ‘Different Ways of Cycling?: A Contrastive and Translation Analysis of
Web Texts on Cycling Holidays’, in Bielenia- Grajewska, M. (ed.), Innovative Perspectives on Tourism
Discourse. Hershey, PA: IGI global, pp. 265–291.
Maher, B. (2012) An Outsider's Guide to Italy: Translating an Englishman’s Italy into Italian. Studies
in Travel Writing, 16(2),
­ pp. 179–190.
­ ­ ​­
Manca, E. (2012) ‘Translating the Language of Tourism across Cultures: From Functionally Complete
Units of Meaning to Cultural Equivalence’, TEXTUS, 25(1), ­ ­51–67. ​­
Manca, E. (2016) Persuasion in Tourism Discourse: Methodologies and Models. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cam-
bridge Scholars.
Manca, E. (2018) ‘Verbal Techniques of the Language of Tourism across Cultures: An analysis of Five
Tourist Websites’, in Bielenia- Grajewska, M. (ed.), Innovative Perspectives on Tourism Discourse. Her-
shey, PA: IGI Global, pp. 91–110.
­ ­ ​­
Mason, I. (2004) ‘Textual Practices and Audience Design’, in Navarro Errasti, M. P., Lorés Sanz, R.
and Murillo Ornat, S. (eds.), Pragmatics at Work: The Translation of Tourist Literature. Bern: Peter
­ ­
Lang, pp. 157–176.​­
Moscardo, G. (2017) Exploring Mindfulness and Stories in Tourist Experiences. Journal of Culture,
Tourism and Hospitality Research, 11(2), ­ pp. 111–124.
­ ­ ​­

348
 Translating tourism

Napu, N. (2016) ‘Translating Tourism Promotional Texts: Translation Quality and its Relationship to
the Commissioning Process. Cultus, 9(2), ­ pp. 47–62.
­ ­ ​­
Navarro Errasti, M. P., Lorés Sanz, R. and Murillo Ornat, S. (eds.) (2004) Pragmatics at Work: The
Translation of Tourist Literature. Bern: Peter Lang.
Navarro, S. (2016) ‘‘Not up to American Standards’: A Corpus-based Analysis’, Cultus, 9(2), ­ pp. 173–189.
­ ­ ​­
Nida, E. (1964) Toward a Science of Translating. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Nuňez, T. (1989) ‘Touristic Studies in Anthropological Perspective’, in Smith, V. L. (ed.), Hosts and
Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 265–280.
Oh, H., Assaf, G. and Baloglu, S. (2016) ‘Motivations and Goals of Slow Tourism’, Journal of Travel
Research, 55(2), ­ pp. 205–219.
­ ­ ​­
Pilar Navarro, M. (2004) ‘Identification of the Right Propositional Form and the Translator’, in
Navarro Errasti, M. P., Lorés Sanz, R. and Murillo Ornat, S. (eds.), Pragmatics at Work: The Trans-
lation of Tourist Literature. Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 199–242. ­ ­ ​­
Pokorn, N. (2016) ‘Is It So Different? Competences of Teachers and Students in L2 Translation Classes’,
Rivista Internazionale di Tecnica della Traduzione/International Journal of Translation, 18, pp. 31–48. ­ ­ ​­
Potter, S. (1970) The Complete Upmanship. London: Rupert Hart-Davis. ­ ​­
Quin, J., Law, R. and Wei, J. (2017) ‘An Exploratory Study on the Readability of Hotel Websites in
China’, in Vopava, J., Douda, V., Kratcochvil, R. and Konecki, M. (eds.) Proceedings of the 10th MAC
2017. Prague: MAC Prague Consulting, pp. 215–221.
Richards, G. (2018) ‘Cultural Tourism: A Review of Recent Research and Trends. Journal of Hospitality
and Tourism Management, 36, pp. 12–21. ­ ­ ​­
Ritzer, G. (2010) Globalization: A Basic Text. Chichester: ­Wiley-Blackwell. ​­
Rough Guides (2017) The Rough Guide to China. London: Rough Guides.
Schaff, B. (2013) ‘‘Andate a farvi benedire’ and Other Useful Phrases for the English Traveller in John
Murray’s Handbooks of Travel-Talk’, in Yarrington, A. (ed.), Travels and Translations: Anglo-Italian ­ ​­
Cultural Translations. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 323–325. ­ ­ ​­
Seraphin, H., Sheeran, P. and Pilato, M. (2018) ‘O ver-tourism and the Fall of Venice as a Destination’,
Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, 9, pp. 374–376. ­ ­ ​­
Shamma, T. (2005) ‘The Exotic Dimension of Foreignizing Strategies: Burton’s Translation of the
Arabian Nights’, The Translator, 11(1), ­ pp. 51–67.
­ ­ ​­
Shanklin, E. (1980) ­ ­
‘The Irish ­Go-between’,
​­ Anthropological Quarterly, 53(3), ­ pp. 162–172.
­ ­ ​­
Sitsanis, N. (2018) ‘Top 10 Languages Used on the Internet for 2020’. Available online: https://speakt.
com/top-10-languages-used-internet/
­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 24 November 2019].
Skibitska, O. (2015) ‘The Language of Tourism: Translating Terms in Tourist Texts’, Translation
Journal. Available online: https://translationjournal.net/October-2015/the-language-of-tourism-
­ ­­ ​­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​
­­translating-terms-in-tourist-texts.html.
­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 30 January 2020].
Smith, O. (2019) ‘The Unstoppable Rise of the Chinese Traveller: Where Are They Going and What
Does It mean for Overtourism?’ Available online: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/comment/-
rise-of-the-chinese-tourist/
­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 11 November 2019].
­

­ ­ ​­
Steiner, C. and Reisinger, Y. (2006) ‘Understanding Existential Authenticity’, Annals of Tourism
Research, 33(2),
­ pp. 299–318.
­ ­ ​­
Stewart, D. (2008) ‘Vocational Translation Training Into a Foreign Language’, inTRAlinea, 10. Avail-
able online: http://www.intralinea.org/archive/article/Vocational_translation_training_into_a_
­ ­ ­ ­
foreign_language [Accesed 5 May 2020].
Sulaiman, M. Z. (2016) ‘The Misunderstood Concept of Translation in Tourism Promotion’, Transla-
tion and Interpreting, 8(1),
­ pp. 53–68.
­ ­ ​­
Sulaiman, Z. and Wilson, R. (2018) ‘Translating Tourism Promotional Materials: A Cultural-
­Conceptual Model’, Perspectives, 26(5), ­ pp. 629–645.
­ ­ ​­
Sulaiman, Z. and Wilson, R. (2019) Translation and Tourism: Strategies for Effective Cross-Cultural Promo-
tion. Singapore: Springer.
Taibi, M. (2011) ‘Public Service Translation’, in Malmkjær, K. and Windle, K. (eds.), The Oxford Hand-
book of Translation Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 214–227.
Thurlow, G. (2003) ‘Communicating a Global Reach: Inflight Magazines as a Globalizing Genre in
Tourism’, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7(4),
­ pp. 579–606.
­ ­ ​­

349
David Katan

Thurlow, C. and Jaworski, A. (2010a) ‘The Commodification of Local Linguacultures: Guidebook

glossaries’, in Jaworski, A., Thurlow, C. and Ylänne, V. (eds.), Tourism Discourse. Language and Global
Mobility. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 191–223.
Thurlow, C. and Jaworski, A. (2010b) Tourism Discourse: Language and Global Mobility. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Thurlow, C. and Jaworski, A. (2011) ‘Tourism Discourse: Languages and Banal Globalization’, Applied
Linguistics Review, 2, pp. 285–312.
­ ­ ​­
Tognini Bonelli, E. and Manca, E. (2004) ‘‘Welcoming Children, Pets and Guests: Towards Functional
Equivalence in the Languages of ‘Agriturismo’ and ‘Farmhouse Holidays’’, in Aijmer, K. and Alten-
berg, B. (eds.) Advances in Corpus Linguistics. ( ICAME 23). Amsterdam: Brill, p. 371–385.
­ ­ ​­
UNWTO. (2013) ‘Recommendations on Accessible Tourism for All’. Available online: https://­
­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ ­ ­ ­
webunwto.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/imported_images/43206/unwto_recommendations_
on_accessible_tourism.pdf [Accessed 6 May 2020].
UNWTO (n.d.). ­ Sustainable Development of Tourism. Available online: https://www.unwto.org/
sustainable- development [Accessed 6 May 2020].
Urry, J. and Larsen, J. (2011) The Tourist Gaze 3.0. London: Sage Publications.
Venuti, L. (1998) The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. London: Routledge.
Wheeler, T. and Wheeler, M. (2007) Unlikely Destinations: The Lonely Planet Story. Singapore: Periplus.
­

­ ­ ​­
Wilson, A. (2018) ‘The Local Language of Tourism in International Tourist Information Encounters:
Adapting the What and the How’, in Held, G. (ed.) Strategies of Adaptation in Tourist Communication:
Linguistic Insights. Leiden: Brill, pp. 123–144.
­ ­ ​­
Yang, P. (2018) ‘Addressing Translation Issues as Intercultural Communication Barriers in Tourism:
Language, Culture, and Communication at Play’, in Bielenia- Grajewska, M. (ed.) Innovative Perspec-
tives on Tourism Discourse. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, pp. 292–311.
Zummo, M. L. (2018) ‘On the Discursive Self- construction of Expats, Behavior and Values’, Scripta
Manent, 12, pp. 6–20.
­ ­ ​­

350
 24
Globalization, advertising and
promotional translation
Ira Torresi

Introduction
The translation of advertising and promotional discourse is closely linked to globalization.
Commercial advertising and promotional genres have the specific purpose of persuading
buyers to buy more of a given product or service. Not too dissimilarly, the purpose of non-
commercial advertising and promotion (such as awareness-raising, institutional or political
campaigns) is to influence people’s attitudes about a given institution, or issue or candidate.
The purpose of translated promotional and advertising texts, then, is to reach out to more
prospective buyers, or people to be influenced, in other language communities. One might
oversimplify the latter statement by arguing that ‘advertising and promotion are translated
to sell more (or persuade more people) internationally’. The equation between ‘ in other lan-
guage communities’ and ‘ internationally’, however, has become increasingly complicated,
whether one looks at it from the angle of marketing, culture or language use.
Let us start from the marketing aspect of the matter. Since international trade is increas-
ingly seen as a global affair rather than a mere sum of the business exchanges between each
individual seller and their respective target markets, it only seems logical for international
advertising and promotion (and their translation) to become globalized as well. A promo-
tional text or campaign may now be shared and circulated by users of social media and other
forms of instant communication across national, class, and age boundaries, thus reaching
beyond the market it was originally intended for. For marketers to maximize this kind of
effect, however, addressees must be able to understand the text or campaign – which is where
translation comes in.
The globalization of markets, understood as the removal of boundaries between the
places – whether physical or v irtual – where business exchanges occur, does not erase local
languages and cultures. More likely, it increases the participation of people of different lin-
guistic and cultural backgrounds in the same loci of business, as businesspeople or as custom-
ers (or both). These people may find a common language and a common market culture to
share their common business experiences, but such experiences will inevitably be influenced
by the participants’ languages and cultural identities, as well as by the linguistic, social and
cultural settings in which these experiences happen.

351
Ira Torresi

Moreover, end-users and retail consumers may be unaware of the workings of market
economics, and react only to those promotional stimuli that touch their own emotions by re-
lying on familiar social and cultural values that are culture- a nd tradition-bound. Pervasive
advertising can gradually and collectively push new values through, but in order to do so, it
needs to leverage the familiar value system, grafting the new values in, rather than uprooting
and replacing the old ones. This accounts for the fact that, even in the face of trade globaliza-
tion, much advertising and promotion are still translated or recreated ( pick any of the terms
discussed in the next section) into target languages and cultures that may or may not outline
separate markets.
Rather than with markets as abstractions, promotional genres deal with people, their
addressees, and with largely pre-logical behaviours that compel them to buy a product, a
service, or an idea. A retrospective meta-analysis of 880 advertising campaigns that received
an IPA Effectiveness Award suggests that one of the strategies underlying their long-term
success was to rely on emotional rather than rational or logical claims ( Binet and Field 2009,
2013). At present, it seems that such pre-logical, emotional consumer behaviours are not
going to be unifiable into universals soon: ‘although there is a worldwide convergence of
technology, media, and financial systems, desires and behaviours of consumers are not con-
verging’ (de Mooij 2013: 2). In order for promotion to be effective across boundaries, then,
translation is still key, with scholars tracing the very possibility of market globalization to
translation: ‘without translation, the global capitalist consumer- oriented and growth-fixated
economy would not be possible’ ( House 2015: 102); ‘translation [...] is what makes globaliza-
tion a reality’ (Cronin 2013: 21).
For the time being, then, the translation (or localization, transcreation) of advertising
and promotional texts remains useful for the purposes of influencing retail consumption or
end-user behaviour, and non-translation remains a deliberate translation choice that actually
presupposes a pre-translation of the source text so as to tailor it to a t rans-national consumer
­
base (Sections ‘Localizing, adapting, transcreating, rewriting: the terminology of advertising
translation in the era of global trade’ and ‘Advertising translation and cultural variation – an
accelerator of globalization?’). In any case, however, advertising and promotional translation
tends to deal with the cross- cultural variation of social norms and values that are not con-
fined by geographical and political boundaries, but travel with the people who carry them
along with their language pools.

Localizing, adapting, transcreating, rewriting: the terminology

of advertising translation in the era of global trade
The translation of promotional and advertising texts has traditionally been recognized as a
highly ‘creative’ or ‘ free’ kind of translation, both in academic and professional circles. This
is all the more true for the translation of business-to-consumer ( B2C) advertisements, a short
text genre ( Eco 2002) that is fraught with ‘g iven-for-g ranted’ cultural and social values and
stereotypes ( Torresi 2004, 2007). Such stereotypes tend to be invisible to addressees, includ-
ing translators themselves. Yet, the failure to identify them and replace them, if necessary,
with other stereotypes that are more relevant for the target consumer group may result in a
target text that, however linguistically correct and faithful to the apparent text functions of
the original, defies a persuasive purpose that is measured in terms of actual purchases ( Torresi
2017: 19; ‘se traduit par des actes réels d’achat’, Guidère 2000: 62).
In an attempt to clearly set it apart from translation realms that focus on the more or less
‘ faithful’ interlingual rendition of the source message, advertising and promotional translation,

352
 Globalization, advertising and promotional translation

whose loyalty lies more with the persuasive function of the text than with the informa-
tion content of the message, has been variously termed ‘ localization’ ( Valdés 2008; Declercq
2011), ‘adaptation’ (Cruz- García 2018) or, especially in professional practice, ‘rewriting’ or
‘transcreation’ ( Ray and Kelly 2010; Katan 2016; Benetello 2018). Agencies specializing in
the translation of promotional and advertising texts may actually circulate job announce-
ments looking for copywriters in the target languages with good reading skills in the source
language, rather than professional translators, probably following the tenet that in advertising
as well as in the language industry, ‘the most effective way to make a product truly inter-
national is to make it look and feel like a product in the target country’ (Sprung 2000: xiv).
It should be mentioned that the terms ‘adaptation’, ‘rewriting’, ‘ localization’, ‘transcreation’
mentioned earlier are actually listed as separate ‘value added’ services that can be offered by
translation service providers under the 2015 ISO 17100 standard (Annex F). What all such
terms have in common, however, is that they refer to a translation approach that transcends
the interlinguistic translation of the verbal copy and embraces all the semiotic modes of
expression in which the text is encoded (including print images, video, website structure,
voices) as well as the cultural stereotypes it conveys. Whether described as localizer, adapter,
transcreator or re-(copy)writer, the advertising translator is clearly one that is able to produce
a target text that works as an advertisement in its own right and is capable of achieving the
desired effect on the target consumer groups ( Fuentes Luque and Kelly 2000, Smith 2008).
Accordingly, advertising translation classroom practices are often described as transcending
the merely linguistic elements of the text while embracing multimodality and intersemiotic-
ity, as well as cultural awareness and consumer orientation (González Davies 2004: 124 and
­133–134;
​­ Laviosa 2007; Kong 2012; ­Enríquez-Aranda
​­ and ­Jiménez-Carra
​­ 2016).

Advertising translation and cultural variation –

an accelerator of globalization?
The burden of transforming the text in the way described earlier, however, does not rest
solely on the advertising translators, meant as the persons or teams who produce a target text
in a different language. Within large corporations, the source texts for advertising and com-
munication campaigns are increasingly designed with a global audience in mind. Such texts
are usually in English and avoid culture-specificity as much as possible. They may be designed
to be circulated worldwide without changes (or with minor ones), in what is termed a ‘global’
marketing approach that requires keeping verbal messages short and simple ( Valdés 2016:
136–137), classic examples being Coca-Cola’s ‘Happiness’ or ‘Enjoy’ campaigns or – before
the ban on cigarette advertising – Philip Morris’s ‘Welcome to Marlboro Country’ commer-
cials. Or conversely, they may function as raw materials to be transcreated locally in order to
best suit local markets, in so-called ‘glocal’ marketing. Glocalization may happen irrespective
of whether the local language is the same that is used in the source text. For instance, the
­English-language
​­ Ur-text of an ad created globally for the sole purpose of localization would
need transcreating into the British and US markets, respectively, especially if the product be-
ing advertised has a different market positioning in the two countries. This is what happened,
for instance, with advertisements for Oil of Olay’s Total Effects A nti-Blemish Moisturizer
circulated simultaneously in the British and US versions of Marie Claire in December 2005
(Torresi 2008), which used different visuals and referred to completely different sets of values
in connection with women’s beauty and ageing. While the British version, whose visual em-
bodied elegance and perfection, mentioned ‘ blemishes and the signs of ageing’, the American
one played on humour, musing on ‘wrinkles and pimples’ and ‘split-personality skin’.

353
Ira Torresi

In this process, which mirrors the ‘think globally, act locally’ motto (Adab 2000: 224), the
preparation of the original ‘multitext’ (Guidère 2009, 2011) may also be regarded as a form of
translation or pre-t ranslation. For this reason, the marketing and advertising teams that de-
sign the source campaign may largely benefit from the inclusion of translators as advisors on
how to best avoid culture specificity in the source text, in order to ensure easier translation
to different locales (Vandal-Sirois
­­ ​­ 2013: 142–143).
­ ​­
It should be pointed out that the global (i.e. untranslated) and glocal advertising ap-
proaches are possible only for corporations with local marketing offices that are capable of,
respectively, monitoring the reception of the global campaign, or suiting the non- culture-
specific source text to their respective local markets. These approaches are also relatively re-
cent. In older times, long before the concept of globalization came to the fore (approximately
until the 1980s), Western corporations did not show such a high sensitivity towards cultural
diversity, arguably because non-Western markets were considered to have marginal buy-
ing capacity. Still, their promotional and advertising texts were translated to reach out to
those largely ‘virgin’ markets, thus selling Western values and imagery along with Western
products. In fact, diachronic studies in advertising and promotional translation show how
the introduction of the advertising and promotional genres, largely translated from other
languages, has helped shape local cultures in many ways, paving the way for the present-
d ay ‘global’ base of knowledges, values and images that one takes largely for granted to-
day. Huang (2014), for instance, describes how advertisements for Western or Western-l ike
medicines introduced Western medical concepts into the early t wentieth- century Chinese
popular culture, where they mingled with the traditional Chinese conceptualizations of the
human body, its ailments and possible treatments. Ločmele (2016) points out that positively
connoted foreign cultural values were introduced in the Latvian collective imagination
through translated promotional texts in the 1920s and 1930s, before commercial advertising
ceased to exist in the Second World War and then Soviet periods of Latvian history. More
examples of this kind will be presented in Section ‘Critiques of advertising translation as an
instrument of colonialism(s)’, because they adopt a distinctively critical, feminist or postco-
lonial stance.
If the globalizing effect of advertising on the recipient social value system has been pointed
out for interlingually translated texts, then some reflections are also in order in the light
of the relatively recent trend towards non-translation ( Prieto del Pozo 2009; Nemčoková
2011; Páez Rodríguez 2013; Comitre Narváez 2015). We have already mentioned earlier that
the choice of non-translation is the result of a translation process in its own r ight – albeit the
process is initiated within marketing departments rather than by translators. Shifting to the
end-user’s point of view, however, the very spread of non-t ranslated ads whose verbal texts
are in English, and the evidence of English being the first (or only) choice whenever a pro-
motional website is made available in a second language for international audiences, seems
to consolidate the status of English as the global language. The association is never explicitly
argued for; it is taken for granted and has a normative effect, just like the cultural stereotypes
and social values so heavily relied upon in advertising ( Torresi 2005). Thus, the choice not
to translate may be perceived by addressees as a reinforcement of the stereotype of English
being, having to be, the language that should be used and understood by all humankind. One
might think about other languages that could claim global primacy over English, at least in
certain domains usually linked to country- of- origin (COO) effect, as in the case of French
for perfume advertising. This use of languages other than English linked to cultural con-
notations, however, has been dwindling since the 1990s (Snell-Hornby 2006: 140). When
one looks in depth at the countries where such languages are used, moreover, one finds that

354
 Globalization, advertising and promotional translation

there, too, advertisers have recently been relying on English language and A nglo-world
imagery to appeal to local consumers (Martin 2006). Similar usages of English or Western
non-translated brand names are spreading and becoming the preferred option even in China,
a market traditionally reliant on heavy cultural adaptation to boost product sales ( Xuechuan
He 2018: 507).
The very presence of the same advertising texts in English across different language, social
and cultural communities is far from being a neutral fact whose effects pertain only to the
linguistic domain. It is something that changes our very way of thinking – a small shift in
what Blommaert (2005: 73) calls ‘orders of indexicality’ that shape our perception of nor-
malcy. Cumulatively taken, such shifts may facilitate the gradual homogenizing of discourses
and values across cultures, which some scholars have linked to colonial and postcolonial
ethnocentric attitudes towards Otherness. They may also lead to an increasing normalization
of translanguaging practices.
One should not forget, however, that even when campaigns are designed to be circulated
globally in the same language through all media (including the internet, in-app advertising
and social media), they ‘reveal social representations and certain investments in the collective
imaginary [...] They forge worlds in the realm of the imaginary’ (Hoff and Anzanello Carras-
coza 2013: 152–3). This power to shape collective imagination may lead to forms of cultural
colonization, which the feminist, critical or postcolonial translation studies that are the foci
of the following section usually identify as proceeding from hegemonic agents rooted in cap-
italist Western cultures to substantially less empowered consumers living across the planet.

Critiques of advertising translation as an instrument of colonialism(s)

As mentioned earlier, globalizing advertising strategies that circulate the same campaign
worldwide, as well as translations of commercial campaigns that carry non-indigenous cul-
tural values, have been exposed as instruments of colonialism by a relatively recent strand of
translation scholars. Such critical readings of advertising translation focus on the cultural and
gender stereotyping it may promote in addressees, highlighting how it can turn into an in-
strument of corporations’ hegemonic power over individuals and their value systems. Critical
discursive studies explicitly or implicitly make reference to the Critical Discourse Analysis
tradition that is championed by Fairclough (1989, 1995) and is based on the concepts of hege-
mony (Gramsci 1977: 2346) and voice ( Bakhtin 1981, 1986; Blommaert 2005: 68). Examples
of similarly critical studies include Calzada Pérez (2005) on the ideological implications of
Coca Cola and McDonald advertising in Africa; Mao Sihui (2009) on orientalizing adver-
tisements for real estate in the Guangdong area; del Saz-Rubio and Pennock- Speck (2008,
2009), Torresi (2004, 2012) on gender stereotyping; and Lotfollahi et al. (2015) for a criti-
cal discursive analysis of cosmetic and hygiene product advertising translated into Persian.
Smith (2010: 53–54), conversely, identifies the translator as the agent that is colonized by the
Western corporations that advertise their products in Russia. This view implicitly acknowl-
edges translators’ status as the first recipients of the texts they translate and as disadvantaged
members of the market, rather than highlighting their alleged responsibility or agency in
perpetuating a hegemonic power that they do not, after all, partake in.
In some of the studies that use translated advertising as materials carrying cultural or eth-
nic representations, a critical stance may not be openly stated, but the influence of postcolo-
nial studies or Orientalism may still be traced. Orientalism (Said 1978; Sardar 1999) exposes
ethnic Otherness as a social and cultural product of a gaze that is grounded within the gazer’s
culture. Instances of this critical stance are the works of Chiaro (2004, 2009) or Chiaro and

355
Ira Torresi

Rossato (2015) on the representation of Italianness, and Di Giovanni (2008: 38– 40) on the
portrayal of India and Indians in Italian advertising.
An interesting subset of critical and feminist readings of advertising translation refers to
classroom practices where translated or comparative advertising is used for practical applica-
tions of Critical Discourse Analysis ( Vid and Kučiš 2015), to expose gender images as socially
and culturally constructed (Corrius Gimbert et al. 2016a), and as a means to stimulate reflec-
tion on situated learning and situated knowledges (Corrius Gimbert et al. 2016b).

The globalization of advertising translation studies

Globalization has made an additional contribution to advertising translation studies. The
opening of traditionally closed state economies to Western- style capitalism, with their coda
of booming promotional translation mainly between English and Chinese, has led to an
emerging Asian ‘school’ of translation scholars. Typically, this group of researchers deal with
issues that specifically relate to the translation of Western brand names into ideograms and
the reverse – translation of ideogram-based Chinese brands to non-Asian countries. Both
processes carry deep semiotic and cultural implications and offer plenty of food for thought,
as witnessed by the abundance of studies on brand name translation into and from Chinese –
to mention only a few English-language examples that may be easily accessed by an interna-
tional readership ( Dong and Helms 2001; He Chuansheng and Xiao Yunnan 2003; Qiong
Wang 2003; Jing Wang 2009; Hwang 2011; Kum et al. 2011; Ying Cui 2017). Several more
studies may be available to readers of Chinese.
Research on the translation of advertising carried out by Asian scholars is typically pub-
lished in m arketing- centred Asian journals and edited books, pioneering a multidisciplinary
trend that is not equally popular outside of Asia (see Section ‘Areas of interdisciplinary in-
terest’). To detail one example, Jing Jiang and Ran Wei (2012), published in the International
Marketing Review, collected a corpus of 210 print advertisements of products of Asian, Euro-
pean and North American multinational corporations. The authors conducted content anal-
ysis, with special focus on the use of Western versus non-Western cultural cues, to compare
their varying degrees of standardization in creative strategy and execution (i.e. whether the
campaign could be conceived as global, glocal or local).
Even when it is solidly focused on the translators’ rather than marketers’ perspective,
Asian research on the translation of promotional texts seems more open to incorporating
marketing concepts and concerns, as in George Ho’s (2008) call for a (monetary) value-
driven theory of translation. According to Ho, only by speaking their employers’ language –
money – w ill commercial translators be able to have their hard work and talents recognized.
Since successful translations bring an increased profit to the end client, the translator should
charge accordingly higher prices for promotional translation work, which would, in turn,
make its value more relevant for the commissioner.

Areas of interdisciplinary interest

So far, we have discussed the impact of globalization within the realm of translation studies.
It should be pointed out, however, that the practice of advertising translation (and transla-
tion in general) is likely to be impacted by globalization phenomena taking place outside its
traditional boundaries, and that may demand further points of interdisciplinary contact. I
will mention here two areas whose progress may deserve advertising translation scholars’
particular attention – international marketing and translanguaging.

356
 Globalization, advertising and promotional translation

With the exception of the Asian school of advertising translation studies briefly mentioned
earlier, and of Hofstede’s and De Mooij’s studies in the cultural aspects of international mar-
keting (Hofstede 1991, 2001; Hofstede and Hofstede 2005; De Mooij 2003, 2004, 2013),
much needs to be done to secure a firm grounding of marketing principles within advertising
translation studies. Key concepts such as COO effect ( Klein et al. 1998; Johnson 2009; Maher
and Carter 2011; Oberecker and Diamantopoulos 2011; Amatulli et al. 2019), for instance, are
seldom taken into account in translation studies, even when analysing case studies that clearly
relate to such concepts. COO is the set of qualities that consumers typically a ssociate – or
are led to associate – with a product or brand only because that product or brand (actually
or allegedly) comes from a certain country. The qualities stereotypically associated with that
country (e.g. being ‘ in fashion’ for France or Italy; mechanic or engineering precision for
Germany or Japan) are therefore transferred to those products or brands that come or are said
(or implied) to come from that country. In translation discourse about products or tourist des-
tinations being presented as ‘the real thing’, however, COO is seldom explicitly mentioned
as such, while similar considerations stemming from linguistic and semiotic cues, following
the example of the Panzani ad mentioned by Barthes (1957), may come more readily to the
researcher’s mind. This, however, risks making research circular within the realm of trans-
lation studies and its cognate disciplines, rather than expanding outside the humanities and
learning to use more synthetic and fruitful concepts belonging to international marketing.
Another concept that could be similarly useful for advertising and promotional translation
studies, but is not systematically referred to, is consumer ethnocentrism ( Usunier and Lee
2013: 18–19). Introduced by Shimp and Sharma (1987), consumer ethnocentrism refers to
consumers’ positive bias towards products coming from their own country, culture, commu-
nity or locale as opposed to foreign products ( Bizumic 2019). Apparently, it is one of the most
powerful drives against globalization, although the very fact that it is a globally recognized
trend raises doubts about its anti-global nature. Its focus on localities also tends to relate well
with another concept that looks particularly promising for future interdisciplinary directions
in advertising translation research, this time borrowed from linguistics – translanguaging.
As laid out by García and Li Wei (2014: 3, emphasis in the original), translanguaging
defines ‘fluid practices that go between and beyond socially constructed language [...] systems,
structures and practices to engage [...] multiple meaning-making systems and subjectivities’. In
other words, the notion of translanguaging questions the identity between nationality and lan-
guage, highlighting how in multilingual, multicultural environments individuals may freely
pick elements from their full array of meaning-making resources, including all the named
languages they have variously come in contact with (whether formally recognized or not) and
non-verbal resources (Mazzaferro 2018: 5). The centre of the translanguaging perspective is
the language user and his/her individual linguistic resources rather than the languages s/he
uses. Translanguaging practices are increasingly observed, due to both an increase and diversi-
fication of migration flows, and the political or de facto acknowledgement of multilingualism
in multiethnic or multinational states across the world. As a result, ‘the relationship between
language and the nation-state [is] being constantly reassessed’ ( Li Wei 2018: 15).
It would be interesting for future research, then, but also for future translation practice and
teaching, to put the ‘practical theory’ of translanguaging ( Li Wei 2018) to the test of promo-
tional translation. Translanguaging practices may be purposefully used as a means to increase
consumer identification within minority or multi-language communities, as aptly described
by Mensah (2018). When the purpose to sell or promote becomes pressing, the promoter or
advertiser might well resort to all resources at hand, whether professional or non-professional.
Style or translation quality – as assessed against standard named language varieties – may then

357
Ira Torresi

become secondary concerns, if the final result is effective for marketing a product or promot-
ing a lifestyle. The translanguaging perspective appears particularly promising when working
with self-promotional texts meant for the social media, whose communication spaces are
potentially more ‘ intimate’ for both authors and intended audience and offer more room for a
kind of communication that is less concerned with grammatical correctness than with effec-
tive customer identification ( Torresi 2021).

Conclusion
We have seen in the previous section that there is significant room for interdisciplinary research
that looks at advertising and promotional translation using concepts belonging to other fields
such as international marketing or linguistics (in particular, through the lens of translanguag-
ing). Conversely, translation studies could at least in part inform research into advertising and
promotion that is rooted into other disciplinary traditions – for instance, social, cultural or
gender studies. To mention but one example, Weinbaum et al. (2008) discuss translated ads
as shapers of a globalized gender imagery in the ‘Modern Girl’ discourse that was popular
in the interwar period (1919–1939) across the world, and still permeates women’s globalized
self-image. This study, however, does not delve into the translation processes that led to the
creation of a specific gender image. Of course it was quite legitimately out of the scope of
Weinbaum et al.’s study to investigate advertising translation as a social practice, or to discuss ad-
vertising translators’ ‘ethical and socio-political responsibilities [and thus] challeng[e] traditional
perspectives on the translator’s role in society’ ( Wolf 2010: 34). But the time may be ripe to
take the ‘sociological turn’ or the ‘sociology of translation studies’ ( Wolf 2007) a step forward,
and actively seek social and cultural scholars’ collaboration to acknowledge that translation is
an agent of sociological change and globalization at large (see Section ‘Advertising translation
and cultural variation – an accelerator of globalization?’). While almost trite within translation
studies circles, the not-so-marginal role of translation in general, and of advertising and pro-
motional translation in particular, in shaping individual and collective values and role models
appears to be rather neglected out of the boundaries of translation studies. Further interdis-
ciplinary collaborative projects, then, might facilitate a ‘translational turn’ in other fields of
research, such as – but not limited to – social or gender studies, similar to what appears to have
already started within cultural studies ( Bachmann-Medick 2014). After all, interdisciplinarity
itself can be conceptualized ‘as a form of translation across differences’, and translation ‘as a
metaphor for thinking about the challenges of researching across differences more generally –
be they linguistic, disciplinary, or cultural differences’ ( Bhambra and Holmwood 2011: 4).
With its sharp intercultural focus, embedded in the very persuasive purpose of the texts it deals
with (see Sections ‘Advertising translation and cultural variation – an accelerator of globaliza-
tion?’ and ‘Critiques of advertising translation as an instrument of colonialism(s)’), the study of
advertising and promotional translation promises to be a particularly fruitful area of translation
studies for such interdisciplinary translational research.

Further reading
Morón, M. and Calvo E. (2018) ‘Introducing Transcreation Skills in Translator Training Contexts: A
­ ​­
Situated Project-based Approach’, Journal of Specialised Translation, 29, pp. 126–148.
­ ­ ​­
In addition to introducing the topic with a well-informed diachronic examination of the term and
practice of transcreation, the paper illustrates in detail a professional training project in transcreation
involving translation students and agencies. It thus offers useful input for advertising translation class
design.

358
 Globalization, advertising and promotional translation

Risku, H., Pichler, T. and Wieser, V. (2017) ‘Transcreation as a Translation Service: Process Require-
ments and Client Expectations’, Across Languages and Cultures, 18(1),
­ ­p. 53–77.
­ ​­
The paper presents the results of the authors’ interviews with Austrian, German, Italian and Swiss
clients of an Austrian translation agency regarding their expectations about the translation or tran-
screation of promotional materials. The presentation of the empirical study is complemented with an
in- depth diachronic exploration of transcreation, both in the translation/copywriting market and in
advertising translation studies. An interesting intersection between the standpoints of marketing prac-
tice and applied translation studies.
Valdés, C. (2016) ‘Globalization and Localization in Advertising: A Love-Hate Relationship?’, Revista
de Lenguas para Fines Específicos, 22(2),
­ pp. 130–153.
­ ­ ​­
A very well informed and detailed account on how advertisers’ international marketing choices
impact translation choices. Real-life examples include instances of non- translation of the adver-
tising copy complemented with mandatory legal statements in the local language, outlining how
globalizing strategies can successfully coexist with specific local needs. Fraught with material and
reflections on the ‘pre- t ranslation’ of ads within marketing offices in order to make them more
suitable for multiple consumer bases with different national identities, languages, social and cultural
backgrounds.

References
Adab, B. (2000) ‘Towards a More Systematic Approach to the Translation of Advertising Texts’, in
Beeby, A., Ensinger, D. and Presas, M. (eds.), Investigating Translation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia:
John Benjamins, pp. 223–234.
­ ­ ​­
Amatulli, C., De Angelis, M., Vaux Halliday, S., Morris, J. and Mulazzi, F. (2019) ‘Temporal Dyna-
mism in Country of Origin Effect: The Malleability of Italians’ Perceptions Regarding the British
Sixties’, International Marketing Review, 36(6), ­ pp. 955–978.
­ ­ ​­
​­
­Bachmann-Medick, D. (ed.)­ ­
(2014) The Trans/National Study of Culture: A Translational Perspective. Ber-
lin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Holquist, M., trans. Emerson, C. and
Holquist, M. Austin, TX: University of Texas.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1986) Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, ed. Emerson, C. and Holquist, M., trans.
McGee, V. M. Austin, TX: University of Texas.
Barthes, R. (1957) Mythologies. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Benetello, C, (2018) ‘When Translation Is Not Enough: Transcreation as a Convention- defying Prac-
tice. A Practitioner’s Perspective’, Journal of Specialised Translation, 29, pp. 28–44.
­ ­ ​­
Bhambra, G. K. and Holmwood, J. (2011) ‘Introduction: Translation and the Challenge of Inter-
disciplinarity’, in Bhambra, G. K. and Holmwood, J. (eds.), Journal of Historical Sociology, 24(1), ­
­ ­ ​­
pp. 1–8.
Binet, L. and Field, P. (2009) ‘Empirical Generalizations about Advertising Campaign Success’, Journal
of Advertising Research, 49(2),­ pp. 130–133.
­ ­ ​­
Binet, L. and Field, P. (2013) The Long and the Short of It: Balancing Short and L ong-term Marketing Strat-
egies. London: IPA.
Bizumic, B. (2019) ‘Effects of the Dimensions of Ethnocentrism on Consumer Ethnocentrism: An
Examination of Multiple Mediators’, International Marketing Review, 36(5), ­ pp. 748–770.
­ ­ ​­
Blommaert, I. (2005) Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Calzada Pérez, M. (2005) ‘Proactive Translatology vis a vis Advertising Messages’, Meta, 50(4): On
unpaginated CD.
Chiaro, D. (2004) ‘Translational and Marketing Communication. A Comparison of Print and Web
Advertising of Italian Agro-Food Products’, The Translator, 10(2), ­ pp. 313–328.
­ ­ ​­
Chiaro, D. (2009) ‘Italians Doing It on the Web: Translating and Selling Italianness’, Vigo International
Journal of Applied Linguistics, 6, pp. 33–49.
­ ­ ​­
Chiaro, D. and Rossato, L. (2015) ‘Food and Translation, Translation and Food’, The Translator, 21(3), ­
pp. 237–243.
­ ­ ​­
Comitre Narváez, I. (2015) ‘Traduction et non-traduction en contexte publicitaire: Analyse contras-
tive des marques et slogans de l’Oréal ( France-Espagne)’, Parallèles, 27(2), ­ pp. 29–55.
­ ­ ​­
Corrius Gimbert, M., De Marco, M. and Espasa Borrás, E. (2016a) ‘Gender and the Translation of
Audiovisual Non-profit
­ ​­ Advertising’, Revista de Lengua para Fines Específicos, 22(2), ­ pp. 31–61.
­ ­ ​­

359
Ira Torresi

Corrius Gimbert, M., De Marco, M. and Espasa Borrás, E. (2016b) ‘Situated Learning and Situated
Knowledge: Gender, Translating Audiovisual Adverts and Professional Responsibility’, The Inter-
preter and Translator Trainer (ITT), 10(1), ­ pp. 59–75.
­ ­ ​­
Cronin, M. (2013) ‘No Direction Home? Translation and the Limits to Globalization’, Intercultural
Communication Review, 11, pp. 15–27. ­ ­ ​­
­
­ ­ ​­
De Mooij, M. (2003) Consumer Behavior and Culture. Consequences for Global Marketing and Advertising.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
De Mooij, M. (2004) ‘Translating Advertising. Painting the Tip of an Iceberg’, The Translator, 10(2), ­
­ ­
pp. 179–198. ​­
De Mooij, M. (2013) Global Marketing and Advertising: Understanding Cultural Paradoxes (4th edition).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Declercq, C. (2011) ‘Advertising and Localization’, in Malmkjær, K. and Windle, K. (eds.), The Oxford
Handbook of Translation Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 262–272.
del Saz-Rubio, M. M. and Pennock- Speck, B. (2008) ‘Male and Female Stereotypes in Spanish and
British Commercials’, in Muñoz- Calvo, M., Buesa Gómez, C. and Ruiz Moneva, M. Á. (eds.), New
Trends in Translation and Cultural Identity. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
pp. 369–382.
­ ­ ​­
del Saz-Rubio, M. M. and Pennock- Speck, B. (2009) ‘Constructing Female Identities through Femi-
nine Hygiene TV Commercials’, Journal of Pragmatics, 41(12), ­ pp. 2535–2556.
­ ­ ​­
Di Giovanni, E. (2008) ‘Translations, Transcreations and Transrepresentations of India in the Italian
Media’, Meta, 53(1), ­ pp. 26–43.
­ ­ ​­
Dong, L. C. and Helms, M. M. (2001) ‘Brand Name Translation Model: A Case Analysis of US Brands
in China’, The Journal of Brand Management, 9(2), ­ pp. 99–115.
­ ­ ​­
Eco, U. (2002) ‘Forme semplici e forme brevi’, L’Espresso, XLVIII(14), ­ ­p. 242.
­
­ ­ ­ ​­
Fairclough, N. (1989) Language and Power. London: Longman.
Fairclough, N. (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. Harlow: Pearson
Education.
Fuentes Luque, A. and Kelly, D. (2000) ‘The Translator as Mediator in Advertising Spanish Products in
English- Speaking Markets’, in Beeby, A., Ensinger, D. and Presas, M. (eds.), Investigating Translation.
Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 235–242.
García, O. and Li Wei (2014) Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. Basingstoke: Pal-
grave Macmillan.
González Davies, M. (2004) Multiple Voices in the Translation Classroom: Activities, Tasks and Projects.
Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Gramsci, A. (1977) I quaderni del carcere, ed. Gerretana for Istituto Gramsci, V., Vol. 3 (quaderni 12–29).
Turin: Giulio Einaudi Editore.
Guidère, M. (2000) Publicité et traduction. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Guidère, M. (2009) ‘De la traduction publicitaire à la communication multilingue’, Meta, 54(3), ­
pp. 417–430.
­ ­ ​­
Guidère, M. (2011) ‘Les corpus publicitaires: nouvelles approches et méthodes pour le traducteur’,
Meta, 56(2), ­ pp. 336–350.
­ ­ ​­
He Chuansheng and Xiao Yunnan, X. (2003) ‘Brand Name Translation in China: An Overview of
Practice and Theory’, Babel, 49(2), ­ pp. 131–148.
­ ­ ​­
Ho, G. (2008) Globalization and Translation: Towards a Paradigm Shift in Translation Studies. Saarbrücken:
VDM Verlag Dr. Müller.
Hoff, T. and Anzanello Carrascoza, J. (2013) ‘Advertising: The Intercultural Dialogue’s Possibilities’, in
Raw, L. (ed.), The Silk Road of Adaptation: Transformations across Disciplines and Cultures. Newcastle-
­ ­​
­­on-Tyne:
​­ Cambridge Scholars Publisher, pp. 152–159.
­ ­ ​­
Hofstede, G. (1991) Cultures and Organizations, Software of the Mind. Intercultural Cooperation and Its Impor-
tance for Survival. New York: McGraw Hill.
Hofstede, G. (2001) Culture’s Consequences, 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Hofstede, G. and Hofstede, G. I. (2005) Cultures and Organizations. Software of the Mind. New York:
McGraw Hill. Revised and expanded edition of Hofstede 1991.

360
 Globalization, advertising and promotional translation

House, J. (2015) Translation Quality Assessment: Past and Present. London: Routledge.
Huang, M. K. W. (2014) ‘Medical Advertising and Cultural Translation: The Case of Shenbao in Early
Twentieth- Century China’, in Lin, P. and Tsai, W. (eds.), Print, Profit, and Perception: Ideas, Informa-
tion and Knowledge in Chinese Societies, 1895–1949. Leiden and Boston: Brill, pp. 114–147.
Hwang, J. (2011) ‘Translation of Brand Names from a Functional Point of View’, Journal of Interpreta-
tion & Translation Research Institute, 14(2), ­ pp. 313–331.
­ ­ ​­
Jing Jiang and Ran Wei (2012) ‘Influences of Culture and Market Convergence on the International
Advertising Strategies of Multinational Corporations in North America, Europe and Asia’, Interna-
tional Marketing Review, 29(6), ­ pp. 597–622.
­ ­ ​­
Jing Wang (2009) Brand New China: Advertising, Media, and Commercial Culture. Harvard, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Johnson, J. K. (2009) American Advertising in Poland: A Study of Cultural Interactions Since 1990. Jefferson,
NC: McFarland.
Katan, D. (2016) ‘Translation at the Cross-roads: Time for the Transcreational Turn?’, Perspectives:
Studies in Translatology, 24(3), ­ pp. 365–381.
­ ­ ​­
Klein, J. G., Ettenson, R. and Morris, M. D. (1998) ’The Animosity Model of Foreign Product Pur-
chase: An Empirical Test in the People’s Republic of China’, Journal of Marketing, 62(1), ­ pp. 89–100.
­ ­ ​­
Kong, J. W. P. (2012) ‘How to Make Students Culturally Aware: The Case of Advertisement Transla-
tion’, Perspectives, 20(2),
­ pp. 219–229.
­ ­ ​­
Kum, D., Lee, Y. H. and Qiu, C. (2011) ‘Testing to Prevent Bad Translation: Brand Name Conversions
in ­Chinese–English
​­ Contexts’, Journal of Business Research, 64(6), ­ pp. 594–600.
­ ­ ​­
Laviosa, S. (2007) ‘Learning Creative Writing by Translating Witty Ads’, The Interpreter and Translator
­
Trainer (ITT), ­ pp. 197–222.
1(2), ­ ­ ​­
Li Wei (2018) ‘Translanguaging as a Practical Theory of Language’, Applied Linguistics, 39(1), ­ pp. 9–30.
­ ­ ​­
Ločmele, G. (2016) ‘Translator's Role in Advertisement Translation in Latvia of 1920s and 1930s’,
in Ilynska, L. and Platonova, M. (eds.), Meaning in Translation: Illusion of Precision. Newcastle upon
Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 81–97. ­ ­ ​­
Lotfollahi, B., Ketabi, S. and Barati, H. (2015) ‘English Print Advertisements for Cosmetic and
Hygienic Products and their Persian Translations: A Critical Discourse Analysis’, Translation and
Interpreting Studies, 10(2), ­ pp. 277–297.
­ ­ ​­
Maher, A. A. and Carter, L. L. (2011) ‘The Affective and Cognitive Components of Country Image:
Perceptions of American Products in Kuwait’, International Marketing Review, 28(6), ­ pp. 559–580.
­ ­ ​­
Mao Sihui (2009) ‘Translating the Other. Discursive Contradictions and New Orientalism in Contem-
porary Advertising in China’, The Translator, 15(2), ­ pp. 261–282.
­ ­ ​­
Martin, E. (2006) Marketing Identities through Language: English and Global Imagery in French Advertising.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mazzaferro, G. (2018) ‘Translanguaging as Everyday Practice. An Introduction’, in Mazzaferro, G.
(ed.),
­ Translanguaging as Everyday Practice. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature, pp. 1–12.
Mensah, H. A. (2018) ‘Communicative Repertoires in Advertising Space in Lesotho: The Translan-
guaging and Commodification Nexus’, in Mazzaferro, G. (ed.), Translanguaging as Everyday Practice.
Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature, pp. 174–194. ­ ­ ​­
Nemčoková, K. (2011) ‘Translating Slogans: Advertising Campaigns across Languages’, in Kujamäki,
P., Kemppanen, H., Kolehmainen, L. and Penttilä, E. (eds.), Beyond Borders: Translations Moving
Languages, Literatures and Cultures. Berlin: Frank & Timme, pp. 59–72. ­ ­ ​­
Oberecker, E. M. and Diamantopoulos, A. (2011) ‘Consumers’ Emotional Bonds with Foreign Coun-
tries: Does Consumer Affinity Affect Behavioral Intentions?’, Journal of International Marketing, 19(2), ­
­ ­ ​­
pp. 45–72.
Páez Rodríguez, A. (2013) ‘La (no) traducción como estrategia publicitaria: ¿qué se cuela entre las gri-
etas de la lengua con el (ab)uso de la “ lingua franca”?’, Estudios de Traducción, 3, pp. 57–70. ­ ­ ​­
Prieto del Pozo, L. (2009) ‘Les alioculturèmes et la publicité en Europe au XXIe siècle’, Meta, 54(3), ­
pp. 431–449.
­ ­ ​­
Qiong Wang (2003) ‘On the Artistic Characteristics in Translating Brand Names and Slogans’, Foreign
Language Education, 24(5), ­ pp. 47–51.
­ ­ ​­
Ray, R. and Kelly, N. (2010) ­ Reaching New Markets through Transcreation: When Translation Just Isn’t
Enough. Lowell: Common Sense Advisory.
Said, E. W. (1978) Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.
Sardar, Z. (1999) Orientalism. Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press.

361
Ira Torresi

Shimp, T. A. and Sharma, S. (1987) ‘Consumer Ethnocentrism: Construction and Validation of the
CETSCALE’, Journal of Marketing Research, 24(3), ­ pp. 280–289.
­ ­ ​­
Smith, K. (2010) The Translation of Advertising Texts: A Study of English-language Advertisements and Their
Translations in Russia. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag.
Smith, V. (2008) ‘Visual Persuasion: Issues in the Translation of the Visual in Advertising’, Meta, 53(1),­
pp. 44–61.
­ ­ ​­
­Snell-Hornby,
​­ M. (2006)
­ Turns of Translation Studies: New Paradigms or Shifting Viewpoints? Amsterdam
and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Sprung, R. C. (2000) ‘Introduction’, in Sprung, R. C. (ed.), Translating Into Success: Cutting Edge Strate-
gies for Going Multilingual in a Global Age. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. i x–xxii.
Torresi, I. (2004) ‘Women, Water and Cleaning Agents: What Advertisements Reveal about the Cultural
Stereotype of Cleanliness’, The Translator, 10(2), ­ pp. 269–289.
­ ­ ​­
Torresi, I. (2005) ‘Consigli per l’identità: uno sguardo alla pubblicità in una prospettiva di genere’, in
Baccolini, R. (ed.), Le prospettive di genere: Discipline Soglie Confini. Bologna: Bononia University
Press, pp. 211–234.
­ ­ ​­
Torresi, I. (2007) ‘Translating Dreams across Cultures: Advertising and the Localization of Consumer-
ist Values and Aspirations’, in Kelly S. and Johnston, D. (eds.), Betwixt and between: Place and Cultural
Translation. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 135–145.
Torresi, I. (2008) ‘Advertising: A Case for Intersemiotic Translation’, Meta, 53(1), ­ pp. 62–75.
­ ­ ​­
Torresi, I. (2012) ‘How Do “Man and Woman” Translate? Gender Images across Italian, British and
American Print Ads’, in Wilson, R. and Maher, B. (eds.), Words, Images and Performances in Transla-
tion. London: Continuum, pp. 158–175.
­ ­ ​­
Torresi, I. (2017) ‘Home and the Family in Mulino Bianco Advertising: Forty Years of (Gendered)
Italian Social History, Translated for the Consumer Market’, mediAzioni, 22, n.p. Available online:
http://mediazioni.sitlec.unibo.it/images/stories/PDF_folder/document-pdf/22-2017/2017_torresi.
­ ­ ­ ­ ­­ ​­ ­­ ​­ ­
pdf [Accessed 8 March 2019].
Torresi, I. (2021) Translating Promotional and Advertising Texts, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
Usunier, J. C. and Lee, J. A. (2013) Marketing across Cultures, 6th ed. Harlow: Pearson.
Valdés, C. (2008) ‘The Localization of Promotional Discourse on the Internet’, in Chiaro, D., Heiss,
C. and Bucaria, C. (eds.), Between Text and Image. Updating Research in Screen Translation. Amsterdam
and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 227–240.
­ ­ ​­
Valdés, C. (2016) ‘Globalization and Localization in Advertising Translation: A L ove-Hate Relation-
ship?’, Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos, 22(2),­ pp. 130–153.
­ ­ ​­
­

­ ­​­­ ​­ ­ ­ ​­
Vid, N. and Kučiš, V. (2015) ‘Discourse Analysis in Translation Courses: The Question of Ideology
and Culture’, in Ying Cui and Wei Zhao (eds.), Handbook of Research on Teaching Methods in Language
Translation and Interpretation. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, pp. 57– 68.
Weinbaum, A. E., Thomas, L. M., Ramamurthy, P., Poiger, U. G., Dong, Y. M. and Barlow, T. E.
aka The Modern Girl Around the World Research Group (eds.) (2008) The Modern Girl Around the
World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.
Wolf, M. (2007) ‘Introduction: The Emergence of a Sociology of Translation’, in Wolf, M. and Fukari,
A. (eds.),
­ Constructing a Sociology of Translation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins,
pp. 1–36.
­ ­ ​­
Wolf, M. (2010) ‘Translation “Going Social”? Challenges to the (Ivory) Tower of Babel’, ­MonTI  –​
Monografías de Traducción e Interpretación, 2, pp. 29–46.
­ ­ ​­
Xuechuan He (2018) ‘The Study of Chinese-English Trademark Translation’, Theory and Practice in
Language Studies, 8(5),­ pp. 503–508.
­ ­ ​­
Ying Cui (2017) ‘Rewriting in English- Chinese Translation of Brand Names: The Establishment of
Images’, Babel, 63(2),
­ pp. 251–270.
­ ­ ​­

362
 25
Language demand and supply
Donald A. DePalma

Introduction: the language industry enables

communication, commerce, and community
This chapter describes the demand driving the language services and technology market,
the supply chain that satisfies it, and the opportunities and challenges faced by the providers.
It references reports written by CSA Research, which are based on primary qualitative and
quantitative research conducted with buyers of language services, suppliers of these services
and technologies, mainstream IT and business providers, and investors in the industry.1
Most people don’t recognize the value of translation until they can’t read the language in
which something they need or want is available – and they can’t find a version in their lan-
guage. That lack of language support is a very common occurrence at websites. CSA Research
annually measures enterprise and government support and their commitment to multilingual-
ism, using website analysis as a proxy to gauge year-over-year changes in language support. Its
2019 annual analysis studied more than 2,700 high-traffic commercial websites across a range
of industries such as retail, travel, gaming, and consumer electronics ( Lommel 2019).
CSA Research found that many of these websites in that study support only a handful of
languages and thus can reach only a fraction of the world’s online economic opportunity.
The average heavily trafficked site in this analysis supports about five languages or locales and
most offer just a fraction – 15% or less – of the source-language content ( Lommel and Sargent
2018). However, our research shows that it takes 14 languages to reach 90% of the world’s
online economic opportunity (Sargent and Lommel 2019).
And because most companies on the planet provide just a small fraction of content from
their headquarters’ country website in other languages, they jeopardize or simply block the
customer experience (CX) in other countries ( DePalma and Ray 2020). It’s often the result
of business analysis showing limited revenue potential that causes companies not to translate
their websites. What that means is that for many less economically interesting countries,
there’s no localized information at all at many business-to- consumer ( B2C) and business-
to-business ( B2B) websites. When there’s no content in a given language, most visitors who
speak that language leave while some turn to machine translation (MT) at sites such as Ali-
baba, Google, and Yandex.

363
Donald A. DePalma

Why is multilingual communications such an important issue for business or government?

For business, it’s a question of revenue and CX. Not supporting the right languages excludes
many prospects from starting the customer journey because they have a huge but not surpris-
ing preference for consuming information in their native language ( DePalma and O’Mara
2020). This isn’t just a multinational issue – many companies have large domestic populations
that use languages other than the majority or official ones (Sargent 2015).
For governments it means ensuring rights and equal opportunity for citizens that choose
to communicate in languages other than the official or majority ones. Supporting languages
of lesser distribution such as those favored by immigrant or indigenous people means that
government agencies and civil servants can better interact with and serve all of their constit-
uents ( DePalma, April 2004). Without government content available to them in a form they
can easily understand, citizens reliant on those languages are underserved.
And during times of natural disaster, pandemics, war, recessions, and other disruptions,
having timely information available for everyone in your company’s or government’s com-
munity becomes even more important to keep people informed and safe.

Most buyers rely on language service outsourcers

How commercial organizations and the public sector respond to and support multilingual
needs varies. Some businesses have corporate strategies for market entry, choosing which
languages make the most sense and money for their shareholders. Many add language sup-
port reactively in response to rising market demand or economic analysis ( Lommel and Ray
2020). Governments are less driven by economics and more by constituent need, but just a
few nations worldwide actively advocate minority and indigenous languages across all of
their agencies, and decisions about what to translate may be subject to political pressures such
as nativism, desire to appeal to voters, or competing budgetary pressures.
When they add language or locale support, some companies employ internal resources,
asking bilingual staff to do the work. A few bring in translators or interpreters as full-t ime
employees. However, the vast majority of companies and governments contract language
support to third-party language service providers ( LSPs).2
This business process outsourcing ( BPO) or knowledge process outsourcing ( KPO) model
makes sense because translation and interpreting divert businesses and governments from their
mission. Commercial enterprises are in the business of marketing, selling, and supporting
goods and services. The resources required for providing language support add much business
overhead. The infrastructure needed to support the production of language services involves
staff to translate or interpret, people to manage them, technology, human resources, and more.
Taking the BPO or KPO route lets businesses and governments offload this management
and production overhead to suppliers and convert the fixed cost of language services to a
variable cost. In turn, language-focused BPOs and KPOs – we call them “ language service
providers” or L SPs – have fixed costs for their project managers ( PMs) and other staff mem-
bers, but most turn to freelance contractors or smaller firms to do the majority of the work
( Pielmeier and O’Mara January 2020).

The ecosystem of demand and supply for language services

The language service and technology sectors as they exist today are the product of a global
ecosystem of demand generators and suppliers ( Figure  25.1). At the top of that chart is a
simplified depiction of the demand chain with information consumers – the ultimate users

364
 Language demand and supply

­Figure 25.1 The ecosystem of language services and technology.

Source: CSA Research.

and readers of multilingual content – a nd the organizations that publish this content for their
customers and constituents. Below them we see the supply chain with humans at the center –
linguists and LSPs  – a long with the technology foundation that supports their work, the
educational system that trains them, and the research organizations and media that inform
them. And supporting the service and technology providers is the financial foundation of any
commercial activity – the capital that funds the businesses.

The demand for language originates in multiple places

Demand for information in other languages is unending. Every day, several quintillion bytes
of digitized data come into being – a quintillion is 1,000 trillions (that’s 3 × 10 to the 18th)
( DePalma 2016). This daily infusion of content supports interactions and transactions across
the entire spectrum of human activity and industry – a nd localizing some portion of it is
essential for many international business, governmental, and humanitarian activities. This
number does not include spoken language that needs to be presented in other languages, in
person or remotely, transcribed, or via sign language.
Demand for having this content translated, interpreted, localized, or otherwise linguis-
tically or culturally transformed comes from billions of people around the world who need

365
Donald A. DePalma

written and spoken content in their languages. Commercial firms, non-profits, or govern-
ment agencies pay to have it adapted for domestic multicultural or international consumption.
The suppliers and consumers of this multilingual content range from information consumers
to commercial buyers to machines to public sector and non-profit organizations ( NPOs).
The typical point of consumption for translated or interpreted content is information con-
sumers. They could be anywhere – someone buying a product with multilingual packaging
at a retailer, a witness in a courtroom using an interpreter, an assembly line worker reading a
service bulletin, or an employee messaging a team member, colleague, or supplier in another
country. In all these cases, the ultimate beneficiaries of language services are end- consumers
who expect immediate access to information in their languages.
Those consumers often don’t typically pay to have content translated. Instead, businesses
in every sector of the global economy produce written or verbal information to market, sell,
and support their products and services in multiple languages. Individual consumers may also
have their own requirements for translated birth certificates, foreign-language research for a
thesis, communication while traveling abroad, or for purchases on a foreign website.
Looking beyond the consumer and commercial sectors, we see demand from govern-
ments and NPOs. In the public sector, we find that local, municipal, state and provincial,
and national governments, as well as non-governmental organizations, and international
and multilateral organizations such as the European Union and United Nations, all require
language services. Multilingual needs may be within the scope of constituent services, public
safety, courts, diplomacy, military, intelligence, and operations.
On the non-profit front, we see that NPOs serve domestic multicultural, regional, and
global venues. They often deliver services in multiple languages and communicate with do-
nors, government agencies, and partners. This is not a huge sector, but it accounts for very
visible activity, especially during disasters when non-profits such as Translators without Bor-
ders provide services to relief agencies, governments, and other NPOs such as Action Against
Hunger, UN Global Health, the Praekelt Foundation, and Partners in Health.
In addition to people consuming information, machines require it as well  – they re-
ceive and interpret language. Everyday computing and communication devices are driven
by conversational assistants such as Alexa or Siri lock screens, mice, trackpads, keyboards,
buttons, and other traditional input- output apparatuses. Today these headless devices support
a handful of languages, but to succeed they will need access to hundreds or even thousands
of tongues – m any of which are spoken by less-l iterate or even illiterate audiences. This real-
ity will require smarter conversational interfaces, robust MT, and the extension of semantic
networks to a hitherto unseen scale. Machines will converse with humans and each other and
then act upon this dialogue. Enabling localization processes for these devices will be vital to
extending the benefits of information access for commerce, communication, and community
to several billion more people.
Looking to the near future, we see several factors driving more demand for language
services – new business requirements for more translation into more languages, a changing
buyer population, and access to information anywhere ( Table 25.1). As the nature of their
work changes, providers face new challenges. For example, they must deal with client expec-
tations for delivery – what was once a long- duration project has morphed into the continu-
ous delivery model of Agile development methodologies. Along with that shift, translation
projects that once had several large deliverables are being replaced by much smaller projects
in higher volumes.
Whatever the tempo and volume of translation demand and delivery, the mission is to reach
vast new audiences of information consumers with new language and content requirements

366
 Language demand and supply

­Table 25.1 Changing ecosystem demographics that will drive language industry growth

Changing demand-side demographics that will drive language industry growth

Phenomenon What it means

More content in Global enterprises face growing content volumes and an increasing number of
more languages languages to meet or generate global demand. Today’s four or five languages
in new functions have the potential to become 40, 50, and even 100 over time. That growth will
affect other business functions that will require translation for their markets,
drive more companies to localize in order to be competitive, and with omni-
channel outreach increase the number of written and spoken ways they use to
communicate.
Business Enterprises are globalizing programs that originated in their headquarters
initiatives country with the goal of improving the customer experience for their
international customers, as well as bring other digitalization projects to their top
markets.
Changing Growing middle classes in many countries and the economic coming- of-age of
demographics the millennial generation (one-third of the world’s population) mean responding
to new market demands in multiple languages on multiple spoken and written
means.
Any device A few billion people are already digitally connected via the web and
anywhere in any mobile devices. Economic benefit will come from getting the rest of the
language world’s population connected. Governments will realize the importance of
communicating with all their citizens in both their official and languages of
lesser demand.
Retail translation Many new decision-makers grew up buying everything on the web and through
their smartphones. Language service buyers are no different as they gravitate to
­Amazon-like
​­ providers with ­one-click
​­ ­
“translate ­ ​­
now” buttons for on-demand
access.
Dialect support Many countries share languages but are separated by the dialects that they use.
Smart marketers establish a policy for how and when to support them.
Remote Delivering spoken language poses a bigger challenge than delivering written
interpreting translation. Long in development and acceptance, remote interpreting via
smartphones and other commercial ­off-the-shelf
​­ technologies vastly increases
access for minority-language speakers, travelers, and hearing-impaired people. A
large portion of the demand remains untapped but will get a big boost from the
move away from ­face-to-face
​­ interpreting driven by the ­COVID-2019
​­ pandemic.
Looking to the future, widescale adoption of 5G communications technology will
further enhance cost and availability benefits of remote delivery.

Source: CSA Research.

in different socioeconomic, geographic, and generational strata than the typical LSP cus-
tomer. Globalizing CX and digital transformation ( DX) initiatives will drive mainstream
business awareness and visibility of the importance of spoken and written language services.

Suppliers range from freelancers to large providers to machines

Tens of thousands of LSPs and hundreds of thousands of freelancers serve the multilingual
written and spoken content needs of billions of people around the planet. LSPs contract with
freelancers and sometimes with each other, buying and selling services.

367
Donald A. DePalma

CSA Research defines LSPs as translation, interpreting, and localization suppliers consist-
ing of two or more f ull-t ime employees. Commercial organizations are focused on providing
outsourced language services. There are three traditional types: (1) single-language ven-
dors (SLVs) that specialize in translation to or from a single language, (2) regional-language
vendors ( RLVs) that deal with a geographic or linguistic cluster of language pairs, and (3)
multi-language vendors (MLVs) that transcend such boundaries. Some offer a limited range
of services and languages, while others provide a one- stop solution for multilingual services
and many languages.
Freelancer contractors make up the largest single group of industry stakeholders, with
hundreds of thousands throughout the world. Freelancers usually sit at the very end of the
supply chain. Some work for direct clients, a seemingly increasing trend among newer buyers
that sometimes bypass LSPs in favor of freelancers. As such, they represent competition for
SLVs and RLVs in offering their services to both MLVs and end clients. Traditional freelancers
today are joined by gig workers. CSA Research surveyed more than 7,000 linguists in 2019,
both employees and contractors, and found expectations of growing productivity, increased
pressure on pricing and turnaround times, as well as a sense of feeling like cogs in a machine
( Pielmeier and O’Mara, January 2020). These issues raise concerns with the supply chain.

Services span written and spoken language

The market for language services in 2019 was US$49.6 billion, split among four categories
that CSA Research uses for analysis and market sizing – translation, interpreting, localization
and engineering, and supporting services.
Translation is the biggest of these four categories. It refers to plain translation, MT post
editing, and transcreation. It remains the dominant service accounting for two-thirds of LSP
language service revenue. Since it began its annual analysis of the market in 2010, CSA Research
has found that most LSPs don’t track the linguistic services they provide with pinpoint precision.
Instead, they often lump all work on a project into one category such as translation – for ex-
ample, a complex website globalization project may have required integration with a customer
relationship management system and other localization engineering work, but since the project
description was initially “website translation” it becomes simply a “translation” project.
Interpreting entails face-to-face and remote delivery modes. More than one- sixth of the
overall LSP service revenue comes from spoken language. Such services are often deliv-
ered by specialist providers that focus on one or multiple interpreting modalities, although
translation- centric providers often provide the service too, if the opportunity arises. The
dominant delivery method for years has been on- site for healthcare, public safety, judicial,
and for business meetings and conferences. On the rise have been on-the-phone, video re-
mote, and remote simultaneous modalities, all of which have grown in usage during the
2020 coronavirus pandemic. With suppliers offering more remote access and users becoming
accustomed to it, we expect it to become a more widely accepted approach to delivering
­spoken-language
​­ services.
The third sector is localization and engineering services, which cover development and
operational functions. These include internationalization and localization for software, mo-
bile, multimedia, game, and websites. With nearly one-tenth of the LSP language service
revenue share, such services remain a strong offering from specialist LSPs and translation-
centric providers that evolved their service portfolio to handle more complex projects.
Finally, LSPs and specialty outsourcers offer other language-related and supporting ser-
vices to meet business requirements. They combine digital marketing functions such as search

368
 Language demand and supply

engine optimization (SEO) ­ and pay-per-click

­ ­​­­ ​­ (PPC)
­ advice, testing, transcription, DTP,
project management, dubbing, narration, subtitling, and voiceover. Such services account for
less than one-tenth of the overall language service revenue. Most LSPs provide multiple of
these services and some specialize in individual ones such as multilingual transcriptions or
multilingual ­desktop-publishing.
​­
Along with the industry drivers, plain old translation and face-to-face interpreting are
very difficult to differentiate and thus very competitive. Providers that have invested in
technology and training to manage, monitor, and analyze the content and data they collect
in the course of their work will have an advantage over less d ata- savvy competitors. Their
understanding of data flows, what the data means, and understanding of cultural and other
locale-based nuance position them to assist with an array of corporate initiatives ranging
from digital marketing programs to big data and machine learning to environmental, social,
and corporate governance ( ESG) projects ( Table 25.2).

Associations, educators, investors, and researchers support industry efforts

The language service industry calls on additional constituents to be successful. These part-
ners in education include industry and trade associations, academic and institutions devoted
to research and development, investors both public and private, and analysts and journalists.
Industry associations such as American Translators Association (ATA), Bundesverband der
Dolmetscher und Übersetzer ( BDÜ), Globalization and Localization Association (GALA),

­Table 25.2 Technology platform changes that will drive language industry growth

Technology platform changes that will drive language industry growth

Phenomenon What it means

Big data and The late 1990s embrace of “big data” led to the statistics- driven machine
neural ­network-​ translation and analytics of the first decade of the twenty-first century. On the
­driven software back of that technology evolution came a resurgence in artificial intelligence
along with machine learning and predictive analytics, all of which is being
built into an increasing array of mainstream and translation software. Good-
enough machine translation will spawn more development in spoken-language
machine interpreting.
Rapid Agile and continuous development has become standard practice and
development expectation for a wide range of disciplines, including translation and
interpreting. For example, the need for continuous translation revolves around
ad hoc teams, small volumes, lots of files, an increasing number of content
types, and immediate demands.
Ubiquitous The rollout of 5G communications will supercharge smartphones and other
communication devices, raising new localization challenges for organizations that thought they
were close to solving the multilingual web problems. Growing demand for a
rich customer experience on any device will drive more translation and content
adaptation. The expectation will be that everything we touch or interact with
will be marketed, documented, and supported in every language where it’s
used. Video content will be a big part of that, so organizations will have to
process new file types and work with their LSPs to adapt production models to
support multilingual versions.

Source: CSA Research.

369
Donald A. DePalma

International Federation of Translators ( FIT), and Translators Association of China ( TAC)

provide venues for networking, information sharing, and development of best practices and
standards for their LSPs and technology vendor members.
Among investors, private equity groups and venture capitalists and angel investors fund indi-
vidual companies either to grow on their own or to consolidate this fragmented service market.
In addition, some independent software vendors (ISVs) have received grants from the European
Commission’s Framework Programmes, while others are working on other EC priorities.
Finally, like any important market sector, the language industry has attracted the atten-
tion of market researchers such as CSA Research, specialized newsletters such as The Tool
Box Newsletters, news outlets, and innumerable blogs published by LSPs, technology ven-
dors, freelancers, and other observers.

Technology enables translation scalability to huge volumes

Both buyers of language services and their outsourcers – direct and subcontracted – rely on
specialized language technologies to do their work. That software, in turn, complements
corporate systems of record such as content management systems, social engagement soft-
ware such as marketing systems, and productivity tools for content creation and adaptation.
On the interpreting front, software vendors and interpreting- centric LSPs are developing
management tools to optimize matching of jobs with talent, scheduling, payment, and other
operational aspects of delivering spoken-language content.

­
Big data and artificial intelligence (AI) technology are disrupting the language sector on
two fronts: (1) automation decreases the number of human touches required for language
operations – for example, LSPs have taken advantage of r ule-based and expert-system automa-
tion to remove unnecessary project manager activity from workflows ( Pielmeier and Lommel
2017); and (2) data-driven language technology changes the content playing field.
Besides automating project management activities, innovative LSPs and ISVs benefit from
their troves of data and content – they apply it to machine-learning projects such as identifying
and tagging the grammatical gender of strings for translation more accurately than humans
can. These small applications of AI lessen the cognitive load on linguists and project managers,
letting them instead concentrate on higher value and hopefully more meaningful tasks.
MT ubiquity underlies an existential threat to LSPs, but already powers the workflow of
many ( Pielmeier and Lommel 2019). Looking forward, other natural language processing
( NLP) solutions such as augmented translation (which combines human workflows with
MT that learns in real time) ( Lommel 2017), semantic enrichment (which links content to
information about it) ( Lommel and DePalma 2018), and conversational interfaces offer more
service possibilities for LSPs and in-house capabilities for organizations that do their own
translation and global content management.

Specialized software supports service delivery at large volumes

Technology for language services comes from a few sources: language technology develop-
ers, hybrid technology and service solution providers, and mainstream technology vendors.
Language technology developers are ISVs that provide solutions to support transla-
tion activity (such as translation memory, MT, translation management, and terminology

370
 Language demand and supply

management), localization (engineering, visual localization aids, proxy servers, and website
tools), and interpreting (interpreter scheduling and management and mobile apps). These
tools typically work in conjunction with enterprise solutions for creating and managing con-
tent, customer and vendor relationships, and employees. Many of these ISVs are building in
support for machine learning and predictive analytics as they apply AI technology to transla-
tion, interpretation, localization, and supporting services.
In addition to these ISVs, the language sector is served by a hybrid group of LSPs that
sells their own software along with services. Some of these LSPs earn substantial revenue
from the technology that they sell to end-buyers and to their competitors. SDL, Smartling,
STAR, and TransPerfect are examples of such hybrids that provide full- service solutions –
translation services by themselves or with all the supporting technology such as translation
management, terminology, MT, and quality checkers. All are taking advantage of the mas-
sive amounts of content they process to build in smarter, d ata- driven capabilities enabled by
neural networks.
Besides ISVs and hybrid LSPs, mainstream technology vendors provide enabling software
to the language sector. LSPs, freelancers, and corporate and governmental teams responsible
for translation use a variety of commercial content, database, enterprise resource planning
( ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and AI and machine learning
software provided by commercial ISVs such as Adobe, Marketo, and SAP. They also use
search, marketing, publishing, and operating systems from suppliers such as Apple and Mic-
rosoft to get their work done.
All developers – commercial, in-house, LSP, and mainstream – h ave been iterating their
products in response to ever- changing technology. Over the last few years the momen-
tum has shifted to cloud-based solutions, micro- services, and d ata- driven statistical and
then neural platforms for development (Sargent and DePalma 2018). At the same time
consumers and business users have embraced smartphones, tablets, and specialized devices
empowered by faster communication networks and ubiquitous WIFI. Planners see new
opportunities tied to vast cadres of device-toting and - obsessed smartphone users, the rapid
growth of video as a content type, and the vast interconnectivity of the internet of things
( IoT) ( Table 25.2). Each platform shift opens up new opportunities for spoken and written
language services.

Displacement and expansion drive the language market

Despite CSA Research’s projections for market growth and the growing demand, service
needs, and technology foundation, nothing is ever certain as market disruptions such as
recession and pandemics can attest. The language service market is in a constantly evolving
state, forcing its various stakeholders to adapt to the flow. Two business factors push the ser-
vices and technology sectors in different directions: displacement and expansion.
Entrepreneurs pushing technology and business model innovations seek to disrupt the
current market by replacing traditional tools and suppliers with alternatives such as trans-
lation buttons, marketplaces, and MT – and an array of competitors such as software from
mainstream developers, business process outsourcers, and business and IT consultancies. They
could displace substantial volumes of current demand, especially when we factor in changing
requirements for quality. Disruptive innovators aim to convince buyers that currently do
business with traditional LSPs to use their services or software to eliminate overhead.
In relation to expansion, content and language growth are like the big bang – there’s a
constant enlargement due to the increasing amount of information desired in ever more

371
Donald A. DePalma

languages, dialects, and even idiolects (that is, personal modes of speaking). Theoretically,
it could increase demand by orders of magnitude, but the physics of the market – cost and
complexity – inevitably limit the scope of the expansion.
With those forces at work, CSA Research forecasts both opportunities and challenges for
the language services and technology sectors. In many cases, an opportunity for one LSP may
pose a challenge to others ( Table 25.3). As business process outsourcers, LSPs suffer from the
same challenge as any service provider – identifying new trends and requirements, fending
off competition, and dealing with fundamental changes to both the demand and supply
chains. Because it’s a global industry, rivals can be anywhere in the world.

­Table 25.3  Challenges faced by the language sector

Challenges faced by language service providers

Challenge Examples

Business Business model • The global online economy has spawned an array of low-
cost, quick-turnaround language services, replacements for
traditional tools and services, and innovators not bound by the
usual models
• LSPs need the funds to invest in competitive new services and
solutions while servicing their current clients and managing
today’s operations
• Buyers may turn to gig workers, freelancers, and machine
translation
Business • Many executives lack the business management background to
direction grow their business and innovate
• It’s difficult to differentiate from the masses of competitors,
including MT, freelancers, SLVs, RLVs, and MLVs
• Competitors from other sectors threaten to displace LSPs
Business • Client budgets are shrinking, and timelines are getting shorter
development • Buyers are adopting a portfolio approach to quality, requiring
various grades based on audience, timing, and market needs
• On- demand capability is becoming increasingly important
to buyers, and sales reps are superfluous on one-touch
translation sites
Service Client services • Clients expect their vendors to customize client service
delivery approaches to their way of working
Production • LSPs have to sustain top performance in terms of services that
match buyer expectations in the right time span and for the
right price
• Building scalability and production capacity requires investment
in time and resources.
• Waste occurs in the process, and providers need to continuously
improve their production models.
• Buyers expect ­post-edited
​­ MT as a cost-
­ ​­ and ­time-saving
​­ option
• Short time-frames require ruthless optimization, automation, and
elimination of waste
Vendor • Smart sourcing and negotiations are necessary to find qualified
management resources at the right rates

372
 Language demand and supply

Challenge Examples

Resources Technology • LSPs need to offer a broad range of technology solutions and
integrations and deliver a seamless environment to order a variety
of language needs
• Clients take control of the basic infrastructure for translation,
interpreting, and localization
Human capital • Staffing models evolve, and LSPs have to provide round-the- clock
coverage and source workers in low- cost countries
• Human resource management is energy- consuming from filling
positions, getting new employees operational fast, increasing
staff retention, or aligning staff to company goals
• Decreasing numbers of language graduates threaten long-term
viability
Business • Buyers take ever longer to pay; yet LSPs have to pay their vendors
processes sooner
• Providers juggle various currencies for client payments and
vendor invoices with the relevant foreign exchange fluctuations
and funds transfer issues
• LSPs need to build risk management into their disaster recovery,
data security, and privacy protection plans in order to limit
liability

Source: CSA Research.

Conclusion
The language industry plays a vital, if often under-appreciated, role in international busi-
ness and in the daily function of governmental and non-governmental organizations. LSPs
have evolved from simple “translation bureaus” to complex, technology- driven providers of
outsourced business processes. They face many challenges – from intense pressure to lower
prices to MT to long-term threats to their supply chain – yet consistently rise to the need
to process ever-increasing volumes of digital and non- d igital content. Increasing customer
expectation that companies and governments will communicate with them in their own
languages in real time will ensure that demand for their services will continue to increase.
Temporary setbacks, such as disasters, pandemics, or recessions, may blunt some demand,
but the long-term trajectory is clear. LSPs that can adapt to new technologies, develop new
services, and assist their clients in anticipating and meeting new demands will succeed and
thrive despite these headwinds.

Notes

­ ­ ​­

373
Donald A. DePalma

References
DePalma, D. A. (2004) ‘Translation: It’s the Law.’ (April). CSA Research. Out of print.
DePalma, D. A. (2016) ‘The Calculus of Global Content.’ (May) CSA Research. Available online:
­ ­ ​­
https://insights.csa-research.com/reportaction/36512/Toc ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 8 May 2020].
DePalma, D. A. and Pielmeier, H. (2020), ‘Market Segmentation Primer.’ (August) CSA Research.
Available online: https://insights.csa-research.com/reportaction/305013163/Toc
­ ­ ​­ ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 26
August 2020].
DePalma, D. A. (2020) ‘Small AI for Language Technology.’ ( June) CSA Research. Available online:
­ ­ ​­
https://insights.csa-research.com/reportaction/305013134/Toc ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 26 August 2020].
DePalma, D. A. and O’Mara, P. (2020) ‘Can’t Read, Won’t Buy – B2C.’ ( June) CSA Research. Avail-
able online: https://insights.csa-research.com/reportaction/305013126/Toc
­ ­ ​­ ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 26 August
2020].
DePalma, D. A. and Ray, R. (2020) ‘The ROI of Customer Engagement.’ (May) CSA Research. Avail-
able online: https://insights.csa-research.com/reportaction/47238/Toc
­ ­ ​­ ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 8 May 2020].
Lommel, A. (2017) ‘How AI Will Augment Human Translation.’ (October) CSA Research. Available
online: https://insights.csa-research.com/reportaction/47867/Toc
­ ­ ​­ ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 8 May 2020].
Lommel, A. and DePalma, D. A. (2018) ‘Four Futures for Intelligent Content.’ (September) CSA
Research. Available online: https://insights.csa-research.com/reportaction/48636/Toc ­ ­ ​­ ­ ­ ­ [Accessed
8 May 2020].
Lommel, A. and Sargent, B. B. (2018) ‘Localization Depth and Language Choice.’ (September) CSA
Research. Available online: https://insights.csa-research.com/reportaction/48657/Toc ­ ­ ​­ ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 8
May 2020].
Lommel, A. (2019) ‘Multilingual Digital Opportunity 2019.’ (September) CSA Research. Available
online: https://insights.csa-research.com/reportaction/305013073/Toc
­ ­ ​­ ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 8 May 2020].
Lommel, A. and Ray, R. (2020) ‘Calculating the ROI of Localization.’ ( January) CSA Research.
Available online: https://insights.csa-research.com/reportaction/305013102/Toc
­ ­ ​­ ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 8 May
2020].
Pielmeier, H. (2016) ‘The Paths to Differentiation.’ ( June) CSA Research. Available online: https://
insights.csa-research.com/reportaction/36537/Toc
­ ​­ ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 8 May 2020].
Pielmeier, H. and Lommel, A. (2017) ‘Will AI Eliminate the Need for Project Managers?’ ( December)
CSA Research. Available online: https://insights.csa-research.com/reportaction/48488/Toc ­ ­ ​­ ­ ­ ­
[Accessed 8 May 2020].
Pielmeier, H. (2019) ‘LSP Growth Factors.’ CSA Research. ( February) Available online: https://
­ ​­
insights.csa-research.com/reportaction/305013015/Toc ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 8 May 2020].
Pielmeier, H. and Lommel, A. (2019) ‘M achine Translation Use at LSPs.’ (May) CSA Research.
Available online: https://insights.csa-research.com/reportaction/305013037/Toc
­ ­ ​­ ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 8 May
2020].
Pielmeier, H. and O’Mara, P. (2020) ‘The State of the Linguist Supply Chain.’ ( January) CSA Research.
Available online: https://insights.csa-research.com/reportaction/305013106/Toc
­ ­ ​­ ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 8 May
2020].
Sargent, B. B. (2015) ‘Making the Switch from Neutral to Regional Spanish.’ (April) CSA Research.
Available online: https://insights.csa-research.com/reportaction/24122/Toc
­ ­ ​­ ­ ­ ­ [Accessed DD (8­ May
2020].
Sargent, B. B. and DePalma, D. A. (2018) ‘Translation Management at the Crossroads.’ (August) CSA
Research. Available online: https://insights.csa-research.com/reportaction/48620/Toc ­ ­ ​­ ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 8
May 2020].
Sargent, B. B. and Lommel, A. (2019) ‘Global Website Assessment Index 2019.’ ( January) CSA
Research. Available online: https://insights.csa-research.com/reportaction/48682/Toc ­ ­ ​­ ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 8
May 2020].

374
 26
Localization
Miguel A. ­Jiménez-Crespo
​­

Introduction
Technological advances have enabled the ever-increasing transnational movement of goods,
services and people across the globe. They have also enabled the flow of digital texts across the
world at lightning speeds, a paradigm change similar to invention of the press in the fifteenth
century ( Lockwood and Scott 1999). This ‘digital revolution’ has resulted in radical and im-
pactful changes in modern societies, with landmarks such as the emergence of the Internet
in the 1970s, personal computing in the 1980s, World Wide Web ( WWW) in the 1990s or
the social network revolution in the 2000s. The impact of this revolution has also reached the
world of translation and Translation and Interpreting Studies ( TIS). In the age of globaliza-
tion, the need to deliver information quickly and efficiently has ‘put translation at the heart
of diverse international cultural, economic, and military enterprises’ ( Tymoczko 2014: 4).
Nowadays translation plays a key role in the development of this ‘global village’, primarily be-
cause ‘translation has substantially grown in importance in the globalized, de-territorialized
space’ (House 2015: 5). Nevertheless, their relationship is not as straightforward as it might
seem. Translation cannot simply be considered as a simple ‘ byproduct of this globalization,
but an integral part of it’ (ibid.: 5). In fact, these phenomena are closely intertwined and
mutually dependent, because as House indicates, without translation ‘the global capitalist
consumer-oriented and growth-fi xated economy would not be possible’ (ibid.: 102).
Among the many translational phenomena at the heart of globalization, it can be ar-
gued that ‘ localization’ of websites, apps, software or videogames is highly representative
of this intersection. The chapter delves into the symbiotic relationship between translation,
localization and globalization, critically analyzing the impact of globalization on TIS re-
search. The chapter starts by defining all key concepts in the literature such as ‘ localization’,
‘globalization’, ‘ internationalization’ or ‘glo-calization’. It then moves on to a brief historical
account of the emergence of localization and the so- called ‘Localization Studies’. The chap-
ter then describes the interdisciplinary connections between localization in TIS and Interna-
tional Business and Marketing ( Jiménez- Crespo and Singh 2017). It then revises one of the
most prolific research trends in TIS, quality in localization, as well as other research trends
of interest in the discipline. It ends with the conclusions and future outlook, including issues

375
Miguel A. ­Jiménez-­Crespo

such as impact of post- editing machine translation (MT) or the emergence of localization
crowdsourcing.

Defining localization, globalization, and ‘glocalization’

Localization in its broadest sense refers to a complex process by which goods or services
are adapted to specific local ‘markets’, ‘audiences’ or ‘sociocultural contexts of reception’.
It has over the years helped expand the reach of digital content across sociocultural and so-
ciolinguistic borders. This term emerged in the 1980s from the notion of ‘ locale’ ( Esselink
2006), the combination of sociocultural region and language for business, production and
marketing purposes. ‘Locales’ can include any information related to geographical regions
including cultural, legal, ethical, technical (i.e. keyboard layout), representational, ideologi-
cal or political elements ( Dunne 2014). The most popular definition of localization appeared
in a publication by the now extinct Localization and Internationalization Standardization
Association ( LISA): ‘[l]ocalization involves taking a product and making it linguistically
and culturally appropriate to the target locale (country/region and language) where it will
be used and sold’ ( LISA 2003: 13). This definition has been characterized as an attempt to
separate or differentiate localization, a process understood here as ‘more sophisticated than
translation’ ( Pym 2004: 25), from other translation practices. It has also been described as
an attempt to stress the added value component for the industry ( Jiménez- Crespo 2013a).
This definition shows that for the industry, the notion of ‘ language’ was too broad a con-
cept in the quest for global expansion, and therefore the m arket-based notion of ‘ locale’,
the combination of language/region, was more productive. It also shows how the focus on
cultural adaptation in International Business and Marketing (Singh 2011), as well as the focus
on technological and management processes in the language industry ( Esselink 2000), has
resulted in discourses that separate localization from translation understood as the transfer of
‘text’ ( Jiménez- Crespo 2013a, 2018). In a subsequent primer on globalization, LISA modified
this definition in an attempt to situate the localization paradigm within the broader context
of international and business circles. This definition highlights four key components of the
localization process: linguistic, cultural, physical and technical ones. It thus highlighted that
localization includes several physical and technical stages that cannot be accounted for if it is
described solely in terms of ‘ linguistic’ or ‘cultural’ interventions.
As a counterbalance to the predominant industry-based discourse on localization, TIS
scholars have also approached the definition of localization, either from a more ‘techno-
centric’ and industry approach (Schäler 2010; Dunne 2006, 2014) or from a theoretical
one (i.e. Pym 2004; Jiménez- Crespo 2013a, 2016; Achkasov 2016). ‘Localization’ has been
defined from a TIS perspective as a ‘complex technological, textual, communicative and
cognitive process’ that enables ‘ interactive digital texts’ for use or consumption in differ-
ent linguistic and sociocultural contexts from those of original production and ‘guided by
the expectations of the target audience’ ( Jiménez- Crespo 2013a: 20). It involves exclusively
‘digital genres’ (Mehler et al. 2011) such as word processing software, smartphone apps or
corporate websites.

The GILT process: globalization, internationalization,

localization and translation
The so- called GILT cycle (Globalization, Internationalization, Localization and Translation)
interrelates in the industry the different components of the overall cycle to deliver good

376
 Localization

and/or services across the world. ‘Globalization’ or ‘G11n’ is the wider component and it
represents a set of processes that restructure organizations to operate globally and/or multi-
lingually. Globalization can be defined as:

all of the business decisions and activities required to make an organization truly in-
ternational in scope and outlook. Globalization is the transformation of business and
processes to support customers around the world, in whatever language, country, or
culture they require.
(LISA 2007a: 1)

This notion entails the adaptation of organizations to cope with the demands of going
‘global’, both in terms of conducting business and offering services to diverse world markets.
These modifications cover aspects such as ‘technical, financial, managerial, personnel, mar-
keting, and other enterprise decisions’ ( LISA 2004: 14). Globalization is a cyclical process
that occurs both before and after the localization/translation process. It includes early stages
such as structuring organizations and products to operate globally, as well as post- stages such
as handling distribution or multilingual customer support after products or services are de-
livered. Therefore, the goals of this process range from supporting the localization process
to setting mechanisms to handle a multiplicity of bilateral or multilingual interactions. For
example, if a website is localized and the Japanese version indicates ‘please contact us if you
have any further questions at @…’, the organization should have mechanisms set in place
to efficiently respond to this email in this language. This can be considered as the narrower
approach to the notion of globalization within the language industry.
From a wider theoretical and epistemological standpoint, globalization has become a
‘ buzzword used to describe the flow of goods, people, capital, symbols and images around
the world, facilitated by modern technological advances in the media and in information and
communication technology’ ( House 2015: 96–97). Globalization can then be understood
as a process that results as personalization/uniformity or difference in global initiatives of
whichever kind. In some cases, it is understood as a means to achieve ‘personalization on a
global scale’ ( Bytelevel Research 2007), while in other cases it is considered as the opposite:
‘the Internet spells the end of localized collective identities in favour of a new planetary
internationalism’ (Cronin 2003: 58). Nevertheless, recent approaches incorporate both ends
of the continuum when discussing globalization. Coupland (2010: 5), for example, indicates
that globalization should be conceptualized as a ‘complex process through which difference
as well as uniformity is generated, but in relation to each other’. This duality between unifor-
mity and difference will be explored later in connection with web localization from the per-
spective of International Business and Marketing and the ‘standardization’ vs ‘ localization’
debate (Singh 2011).
Internationalization has been defined by the language industry as ‘the process of enabling
a product at a technical level for localization’ ( LISA 2007a: 17). It normally refers to a set of
processes to secure that the product does not need to be reengineered once the localization
process starts. This is achieved by developing the product independent of both the language
and culture of production. In this sense internationalization

…primarily consists of abstracting the functionality of a product away from any partic-
ular language so that language support can be added back in simply, without worry that
language- specific features will pose a problem when the product is localized.
(LISA 2004: 14)

377
Miguel A. ­Jiménez-­Crespo

This means, for example, that a software program or website can properly display during
localization different scripts or right-to-left languages such as Hebrew or Arabic. After a
successful internationalization process during the development stage, the localization process
starts. In the language industry literature it refers to preparation, management, engineering
and quality testing of digital products ( Jiménez- Crespo 2013a). The GILT process separates
localization from the translation stage, the translation or processing of textual elements.
Translation and localization providers often perform tasks related to management, quality
control and business-related issues ( Dunne and Dunne 2011), while the translation itself is
often outsourced to freelance translators or other language providers. Currently, the emer-
gence of cloud-based approaches to facilitate localization has widened the gap between the
management and the translation of the textual content (García 2015, 2017). These services
have also further helped globalize the localization market, with different stages of the process
often carried out in different countries. For example, in the case of Spanish it is common to
have localization management and engineering tasks carried out in the United States, while
the translation itself might be carried out in Argentina, Spain or a combination of multiple
locations.

Localization and glo-calization: conceptual overlaps

The emergence of new phenomena requires the integration of new realities into existing
conceptual systems. This process often results in the blurring of conceptual borders, often
leading to intradisciplinary discussions and debate (i.e. Dam et al. 2018). In the specific case
of localization, shifting conceptualizations have often been a topic of research in the industry
and in TIS ( Jiménez- Crespo 2013a, 2016, 2018; Achkasov 2016). For example, the notion of
‘ localization’ caused the most disagreement among participating subjects, professional trans-
lators, localizers and managers, in a study on how the industry perceived different translation
concepts ( Dam et al. 2018).­1 This was also one of the concepts where the most friction and
disagreement between subjects arose. In this context, the constellation of phenomena related
to the intersection of localization and globalization has resulted in the proposal of different
concepts and notions that deserve further analysis such as ‘glocalization’, ‘reverse localization’,
‘de-localized / internationalized texts’ or ‘website globalization’. The first one, the notion
of ‘g lo-calization’, is primarily used in marketing and business circles, but it is also used in
translation studies. Over the years, some different conceptualizations have emerged in the dis-
cipline. Anastasiou and Schäler (2009), for example, introduce the works of Wellman (2001:
13) that states that ‘glocal’ shows the human capacity to bridge scales (from local to global)
and to help overcome ‘ littlebox’ thinking. ‘Glocalization’ is a concept ‘that expresses the in-
teraction of globalizing and localizing shifts’ (Coupland 2010: 5). It is a notion that attempts to
reconcile the two ends of a continuum: in cultural studies, as well as international marketing
and business approaches, the notion of localization is seen as a top-bottom process to reach
the ‘ local’, while there is also a ‘globalization’ process that attempts to erase the local through
standardization or to localize for the global market ( Bernal-Merino 2016). This last process is
sometimes seen as the imposition of Western values (Tymoczko 2014). The focus here is there-
fore on the suppression of elements of the culture in which the product is developed in favor
of supposedly neutral ‘ international’ standard. Other scholars have used ‘globalization’ to refer
to the common use around the world of global English in localization processes to be used for
creating ‘ international’ versions targeted at a global audience. According to Musacchio and
Panizzon (2017) in their study of localization of software for global crises and emergencies,
English is often here used as a lingua franca to grant access to an international audience.

378
 Localization

‘Reverse localization’ refers in the literature to two distinct phenomena. For Schäler (2008)
this term is used to define products intended for specific locales that incorporate on purpose
foreign features. Here, the adaptation is not to a local context, but rather, products such as ad-
vertisements are adapted to purposefully include foreignizing elements. This would be the case
of an advertisement that would purposefully incorporate a foreign person or accent to denote
refinement or modernity. It is somewhat different from the ‘foreignization’ approach advocated
by Venuti (1995), in that it is not the elements of the source text that are maintained, but rather
non-local elements are intentionally inserted to create the intended effect. The second use
of the notion of ‘reverse localization’ is described in the context of videogames by O’Hagan
(2009b). It denotes instances of Japanese videogames that once adapted and localized for the
North American market, they are sold back in Japan in English, with Japanese subtitles. These
games let original Japanese users enjoy a version that includes adapted elements for foreign
markets, a common phenomenon that can be placed within the notion of ‘ fandom cultures’.
Another concept of interest was proposed by Pym (2004, 2010: 123–124), who discusses
the impact of ‘de-localization’ or ‘ internationalization’ in translation studies conceptualiza-
tion of localization. He argues that rather than the much-hyped move towards the ‘ local’, the
language industry often mediates the localization process through an intermediary version
referred to as the ‘ internationalized version’. The purposeful creation of a ‘de-localized’ or
‘glocalized’ source version intends to remove features that are language and culture depen-
dent. This is intended to facilitate the subsequent translation process, and ultimately, to speed
and facilitate the simultaneous translation of different language versions. This is known as
‘simship’, a common industry practice to ensure the simultaneous release of different language
versions of software or videogames. Pym even suggests that working with intermediary ver-
sions in translating might not be new in translation history: relay interpreters in international
organizations work using the English version as an interlingua. In the thirteenth century
Castile texts were translated from Arabic into Castilian, and subsequently the Castilian ver-
sion served as source text for Latin and French translations. Nevertheless, the author suggests
that source texts have never before been consciously prepared for translation/localization:
‘ internationalized texts’ are therefore thought of from the very beginning of the produc-
tion cycle. It is also thought of during the technical internationalization stage previously
described. Nevertheless, Pym at the same time criticizes the ideology of internationalization
and globalization behind this practice that supposedly creates the illusion of a culture-less
technical world. This view is also shared by Tymoczko (2014: 4), who, from a post-colonial
and cultural perspective, asks:

To what extent will cultural exchange be multidirectional in the age of globalization,

and to what extent will asymmetries of power, resources, and technologies mean that
‘cultural exchange’ will become a euphemism for the acculturation to Western or dom-
inant international standards of many peoples around the world who have heretofore led
their lives within local frameworks of knowledge, belief, and values?

All in all, internationalization intends to facilitate localization processes through technical,

cultural and/or linguistic perspectives. Industry discourses associate successful internation-
alization with the maximum possible cultural neutrality (Cronin 2003: 18). Nevertheless,
scholars agree that innumerable linguistic, cultural and discursive conventions or worldviews
remain in this ‘ intermediary’, ‘de-localized’ or ‘global’ version intended for subsequent lo-
calization. In fact, it has been shown that it is virtually impossible to make a text completely
culturally neutral both in translation ( House 2001) and localization ( Jiménez- Crespo 2009a).

379
Miguel A. ­Jiménez-­Crespo

The emergence of localization and localization studies

Localization processes, as understood in TIS, emerged in the United States in the context
of software for the first personal computers in the 1980s ( Esselink 2006). Companies such
as Microsoft or Adobe started their expansion to global markets, and the first processes
revolved around popular software and videogames that were localized into the so- called
FIGS-J (French, Italian, German, Spanish plus Japanese), the languages with the largest mar-
ket shares. A decade after, localization grew exponentially thanks to the Internet and the
WWW. For example, in Europe, Internet access is available to 85% of the population, while
the penetration rate in North America is 95%, and in Asia it is 48% (InternetWorldStats
2018). English, Chinese, Spanish and Arabic represent the languages with the most users in
the Internet (InternetWorldStats 2018), while the rest of languages represent 41.8%. In this
context, consumption of web content such as websites, tweets or apps and their associated
localization processes continue to increase, becoming the fastest growing sector in the lan-
guage industry ( DePalma et al. 2015). Overall, the language industry is estimated to amount
to $46.52 billion in 2017 according to CSA ( DePalma et  al. 2018). The current status of
English as the de facto lingua franca (House 2010, 2014) means that since the 1990s digital
content from around the world has also been localized or glo-calized into global English for
international audiences ( Jiménez- Crespo 2013a). This is the case of videogames (O’Hagan
2009a, b), software (Musacchio and Panizzon 2017) or websites ( Jiménez- Crespo 2013a).
Localization processes that emerged in the realm of software ( Esselink 2000) have pro-
gressively expanded over the years to include websites ( Jiménez- Crespo 2013a), videogames
(O’Hagan and Mangiron 2014), smartphone/tablet apps ( Roturier 2015; Serón- Ordoñez and
Martin-Mor 2017) and other small devices such as smart watches or intelligent appliances.
The study of all these interrelated areas within TIS makes up a subdiscipline that has been
referred to as ‘Localization Studies’ ( Remael 2010; Jiménez- Crespo 2013a), and it includes
the different subareas mentioned in Figure 26.1.
This subdiscipline represents an interdisciplinary field that interfaces with a range of dis-
tinct fields of study such as Media Studies, Web Usability, Web Accessibility, Cultural Stud-
ies, Internet Studies, Web Science and International Business and Marketing. It is part of
what Snell-Hornby referred to as the ‘globalization turn’ in translation studies, a process that
combines the unprecedented impact of technologies in translation processes with the pow-
erful influence of globalization. This new direction within the discipline is thus caused by:

[the] outside influence of globalization, along with the breath-taking developments in

information technology and hence worldwide communication, which have revolution-
ized many aspects of modern life and brought radical changes for language industries.
(Snell-Hornby
­­ ​­ 2010: 368)

­Figure 26.1 Different areas of research in localization studies.

Adapted from Jiménez-Crespo
­ ​­ (2011a:
­ 4).

380
 Localization

Localization thus represents a consolidated area within translation studies research with pub-
lications dating back to the late 1990s (i.e. Freigang 1996; Parra 1999), journals such as the
Journal of Internationalization and Localization ( JIAL) or Localization Focus devoted to research
in this field. In addition, several monographs have been devoted to the different subtypes of
localization ( Pym 2004; Dunne 2006; Jiménez- Crespo 2013a; O’Hagan and Mangiron 2014;
Roturier 2015).

Research topics
The nexus of globalization and localization appears in a number of research topics from
highly interdisciplinary approaches. Among others, these topics cover the intersection of
translation, localization and marketing/international business, the economics aspects of lo-
calization related to the notion of ‘degree of localization’ and localization and quality.

Localization and globalization: International Business and Marketing perspectives

The study of localization has stimulated fruitful interdisciplinary connections between TIS
and International Business and Marketing or Contrastive Cultural Studies ( Jiménez- Crespo
and Singh 2016). The most relevant topic in this context is the debate on ‘standardization’
vs ‘ localization’ to reach global markets. From the perspective of international business re-
search, it is acknowledged that the debate over ‘standardization versus adaptation (or localiza-
tion)’ is at its ‘very heart’ ( Yalcin et al. 2011: 97). Standardization is defined here as a ‘strategy
wherein marketers assume global homogeneous markets and in response offer standardized
products and services using a standardized marketing mix’ (Singh 2011: 85). The objective
of these standardized approaches is to minimize cultural distance through the encroach-
ment of technology around the world, ‘ leading to convergence of national cultures into a
homogenous global culture’ (Singh and Pereira 2005: 5). Nevertheless, research efforts and
international corporations have realized that proper localization and translation of marketing
communications, rather than standardization, can lead to significant cost savings, primarily
because translation and other localization blunders are avoided (Singh 2011). In addition,
even companies that are born to be global have shown that ‘standardization instead of local-
ization may not be effective in tapping global markets as they have global reach’ ( Yalcin et al.
2011: 97). This debate also resonates in translation studies when discussing globalization:
‘translation plays a central role in negotiating cultural difference and in shaping the dialectics
between homogeneity and diversity’ ( Bielsa 2005: 131).
In this context, website localization in globalization strategies emerged as a key area
through the work of international business scholars such as Singh (2011) and Pereira (Singh
and Pereira 2005). Website localization has become a necessary area of interest in global
marketing and business due to the above mentioned debate between localization vs stan-
dardization, This research trend departs from the premise that ‘the web is not a culturally
neutral medium; instead, websites from different countries are impregnated with the cultural
markers of that country’s culture’ (Singh 2011: 9). These cultural differences across nations/
regions can potentially impact the bottom line of companies engaged in global business,
and therefore, the efficient deployment of localization strategies for global success requires
careful consideration of the cultural dimension (Singh and Pereira 2005). All these studies
are based on an adaptation of the framework by cultural anthropologist Hofstede (1991)
to study culture. In his model, perception, symbolism and behavior are the key elements
that define any culture. They also help establish shared values and structured patterns of

381
Miguel A. ­Jiménez-­Crespo

behavior. The different dimensions under study are: individualism- collectivism, power dis-
tance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity-femininity, low-high context. Singh and Pereira’s
(2005) adopted and adapted these dimensions to research how cultural values are represented
on corporate websites, resulting in a framework to contrastively study original vs localized
sites. A number of subsequent qualitative and quantitative studies have been conducted to
study how consumers worldwide interact with different websites within the standardization/
globalization continuum. For example, Singh et  al. (2004) and Singh et  al. (2006) found
that online users from Brazil, Germany, Italy, India, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and
Taiwan preferred websites that were culturally customized to their locale- specific cultural
expectations. They found that consumers tend to express better ratings, ease of use attitudes
and, higher purchase intentions on websites that have been culturally customized to specific
locale targeted. They also show that users can spend up to double the time visiting the web-
site if it is properly localized into their native language, and they are three times more likely
to make a purchase or hire a service (Singh and Pereira 2005; Baack and Singh 2007). The
impact of this framework can be seen in the proliferation of studies in different regions span-
ning several countries around the world, from Western Europe and North America, to Arab
to Asian countries (i.e. Singh et al. 2003, 2005). They have also been instrumental to study
specific web genres such as tourism websites of World Heritage Site cities (Mele et al. 2015),
among others. The results of these studies have shown that successful cultural adaptations
in web localization relate to improvements in navigation, interaction and user evaluation of
localized websites, making them less cognitively texting and facilitating interaction ( Luna
et al. 2002; Singh et al. 2004). These contrastive studies have also been key to the study of lo-
calization from a translation studies perspective. They have been used to research localization
strategies adopted by multinationals in their deployment of Spanish versions of their websites
( Jiménez- Crespo 2010). They have also been instrumental to explain the differences identi-
fied between localized and non-localized websites through comparable and parallel corpora
( Jiménez- Crespo 2009a, 2011a; Medina Reguera and Ramírez Delgado 2015).

Localization levels and economic constraints

Despite the fact that cultural adaptations are the main focus of much of the industry-based
discourse, localization research also stresses the role of economic constrains. This is often
described in terms of Return on Investment ( ROI), a key factor on translation strategies
for initiators of translation projects. Industry best practices guides indicate that ‘a common
problem in planning for localization is the failure to consider the business context in which
localization occurs’ ( LISA 2007b). For its part, translation studies has recently been immersed
in the so- called ‘economic turn’ ( Biel and Sosoni 2017). This represents a new trend or
direction in order to include economic factors in theorizations and research of translation.
This approach owes its emergence to the fact that ‘economic and financial dimensions can
no longer be ignored. There are [economic] factors that orient, and even determine, specific
choices and decisions’ (Gambier 2014: 8). Research on localization has stressed economic
factors from the early days in the macro and micro level of analysis. Among others, one of
the main issues related to economic issues is the notion of ‘ localization level’ or ‘degree of
localization’. It has been defined in software localization as ‘the amount of translation and
customization necessary to create different language editions’ (Microsoft 2003: 15). It has
also been defined in regard to web localization as ‘the extent to which websites are localised
[that] varies according to the translation or commission, from a simple page with the contact
information to a fully localised site’ ( Jiménez- Crespo 2012: 140). In the first publication that

382
 Localization

mentioned the notion of localization level, Brooks (2000: 49–50) described the practices
of Microsoft, where the software products were localized according to three distinct levels
depending on ROI strategies:

In the case of web localization, Yunker (2004) and Singh and Pereira (2005: 10–15) proposed
complementary categorizations based on the degree of cultural adaptation:

To complement these proposals, Jiménez- Crespo (2012) also proposed a categorization of

degree of localization based on a study of web localization used in non-profit settings to reach
minority languages within any given country. This categorization includes a 0 level for those
websites that include localized PDF or .doc texts as well as a MT engine, given that at least
the need for translation is acknowledged by the organization.

­ ​­

In any case, it should be mentioned that levels 0 and 1 might not be considered web local-
ization per se as they might not represent a case of localized web content, but rather simply
posting a link to an existing document prepared for print or, in the case of Level 1, including
in an existing website the contact information. In these levels, a translator might not work
directly on any digital texts per se.
Studies have used these levels to study the localization strategies of companies in their inter-
national expansion. For example, the study by Singh and Pereira (2005), using their localization
level framework, analyzed the localization strategies of 307 multinationals. They found that

383
Miguel A. ­Jiménez-­Crespo

17% of the companies used their ‘standardized site’ strategies without any translation and none
of them were characterized as ‘culturally customized’ websites, even when they indicate that
the IKEA website comes close. A similar approach has been taken to study the localization of
websites of Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) in Spain by Medina Reguera and Ramírez
Delgado (2015). They analyzed 2,177 small companies and their corpus included 1,284 corpo-
rate websites. The ultimate objective of their project was to identify, after a multidimensional
analysis of their websites and their localization strategies, whether the adoption of each strategy
might have an impact on the overall volume of business abroad. The study has shown that
English is the language of choice to globalize small businesses, with 673 (52.4%) websites using
English as a lingua franca, while French (244, 19%) and German (197, 15.3%) were also common.

Globalization, localization and quality

The previous sections have reviewed the main m arket- d riven localization strategies in the
industry: cultural adaptation, localization levels, adequate textual translation, careful struc-
turing and staging of the GILT process. The final objectives is a ‘successful localization’,
since it is assumed that this correlates to objectives such as increase in the volume of sales,
the improvement of user satisfaction, usability, users’ time spent on the website. All these
different components are ultimately conceptualized in terms of ‘ localization quality’, one of
the most recurring research topics in the literature ( Bass 2006; Dunne 2006, 2009; Jiménez-
Crespo 2009a, 2011b, c, 2012; Medina Reguera and Ramírez Delgado 2015). Nevertheless,
translation quality as such, and by extension localization quality, represents a highly debated
issue, primarily because, to date, ‘translation quality assessment has always been and still is a
challenge for translation studies’ ( House 2013: 546). Localization encompasses a wide range
of processes, from software localization by large corporations such as Apple or Microsoft to
Free and Open Software, from videogame localization by the powerful Japanese industry to
the localization of apps or websites for humanitarian emergencies. This is why localization
quality ‘represents a dynamic abstract notion defined according to a wide range of parame-
ters, such as clients’ goals, end-users, perishability of the information, clarity, accuracy, etc.’
( Jiménez- Crespo 2013a: 104). This has also resulted in a wide range of approaches in the
localization industry, with experts indicating that the ‘ industry view on quality is highly
fragmented, in part because different kinds of translation projects require very different eval-
uation methods’ ( Lommel et  al. 2014: 455). In addition, new processes such as the emer-
gence of Human Assisted MT, the MT Post-Editing ( PT) paradigm or novel crowdsourcing
approaches add to the complexity of the issue, especially in localization: ‘the boundaries
between HT and MT […] are increasingly blurring: this is apparent, in particular, in soft-
ware and web localization […] where MT (often supported by PT) is becoming widely used’
(Castilho et al. 2018: 11).
Literature on the topic has explored different issues, both descriptive and theoretical, but
normally they tend to focus on different components that could improve quality. This is the
case of localization quality management ( Dunne 2009), the implementation of functionalist
perspectives ( Jiménez- Crespo 2009b) or the proposal of error typologies ( Jiménez- Crespo
2011b). In addition, specific quality models have been proposed for localization such as Dunne’s
model for software localization quality assessment (2009b) or Jiménez- Crespo’s dynamic
quality evaluation model (2013a: 127–131). Probably one of the most significant research ar-
eas in this context has been studies on web localization quality in different combinations of
web genres and languages such as the case of tourist websites in Italy ( Pierini 2007), Spain
(Suau Jiménez 2015) or China ( Jiangbo and Ying 2010), corporate websites of Spanish large

384
 Localization

corporations ( Jiménez- Crespo 2008; Diéguez Morales and Rodríguez 2011) or small compa-
nies websites (Sánchez-Nieto 2009; Medina Reguera and Ramírez Delgado 2015), non-profit
websites ( Jiménez- Crespo 2012), advertising/promotional sites ( Valdés 2009; Sidiropoulou
2018) or social networking sites ( Jiménez- Crespo 2013b). All these studies bear witness to
the kaleidoscope of practices and approaches associated to the study of quality in localization.

Conclusion
The development of localization and globalization go hand in hand in our interconnected
digital world. Two basic features of ‘globalisation are the overcoming of spatial barriers and
the centrality of knowledge and information’ ( Bielsa 2005: 131). In this context, there is
‘ increased mobility of people and objects and a heightened contact between different lin-
guistic communities’, and an ‘exponential growth of the importance of translation’ as a ‘ key
mediator in a globalized world’ ( Bielsa 2005: 131). Localization has emerged as a key trans-
lational phenomenon to enable globalization, since the adaptation of products and services
to the specifics of end-users is key in achieving global success. This chapter has reviewed the
different areas of research at the intersection of localization and globalization, definitions, the
interdisciplinary connections between TIS and International Business and Marketing, eco-
nomic considerations that result in the notion of ‘degree of localization’, quality, localization
crowdsourcing and a small review of other significant topics in localization research.
As previously mentioned, the so-called ‘economic turn’ attempts to bring business con-
siderations into the theorization and empirical research into translation in general, and into
localization in particular. This will continue to be part of the research agenda in TIS, as
economic constraints play a key role in basic issues such as localization quality. The need
for instant communication across the globe, together with new developments such as MT,
Human Assisted MT, Interactive MT will continue to push the limits of localization quality
and the dynamic set of components it is dependent on. Research into the implementation
of MT approaches will continue to be part of the research agenda (i.e. Bowker and Buitrago
2018), especially in combination with human post- editing to account for the role of culture
and globalization strategies in this area. Similarly, as previously mentioned, the so- called
‘economic turn’ attempts to bring business considerations into the theorization and empirical
research into translation in general, and into localization in particular. This will continue
to be part of future research, as economic constraints play a key role in basic issues such as
localization quality, ‘a time, resource and financially constrained process’ ( Jiménez- Crespo
2018: 78–79). Similarly, some issues that require further studies are cultural ( Dong and Man-
giron 2018) political (i.e. Wu 2017; McDonough-Dolmaya 2018) or social (i.e. Austermühl
and Mirwald 2010) aspects of localization. Humanitarian issues will continue to be part of
the research agenda (Schäler 2010; Federici 2016), including the need for ‘development’ or
‘nonmarket localization’ (Schäler 2010).
Finally, a special mention should be made of the intersection of localization and crowd-
sourcing in the age of globalization. The flattening of the world now allows tapping on the
cognitive capital of volunteers for the translation and globalization of digital content. Nor-
mally, in the age of globalization and global instant interconnectedness the members of the
targeted crowd can be spread throughout the world. This crowd completes collaboratively ‘a
job traditionally performed by a designated agent’ that is outsourced ‘ in the form of an open
call’ ( Howe 2006: np). Crowdsourcing has been successfully applied to translation and lo-
calization tasks since the m id-2000s, and it would not have been possible without the global
reach of the Internet and the communicative capabilities attached to it. It is often argued that

385
Miguel A. ­Jiménez-­Crespo

it ‘ has far reaching consequences for the profession of the translator in an age of globalization’
(Cronin 2013: 99). In this new paradigm, global users have moved beyond the passive con-
sumption of all types of content mediated through the web, partaking in content creation and
translation ( Jiménez- Crespo 2017). The success of crowdsourcing in localization and other
translation tasks highlights a key issue in a globalized world: nowadays, professional and vol-
unteers that operate in global networks around the world ( Risku et al. 2016) have created a
globalized translation marketplace. This, to sum it all up, represents the future of translation
and localization: a global collaboration for a global audience.

Further reading
Bernal-Merino, M. A. (2016) ‘Glocalization and Co- Creation: Trends in International Game Produc-
tion’, in Esser, A., Smith, I. R. and Bernal-Merino, M. A. (eds.), Media across Borders: Localising TV,
Film and Video Games. London: Routledge, pp. 202–220.
­ ­ ​­
This chapter discusses the notion of localization in the light of ‘glocalization’ in videogame localiza-
tion. It argues that ‘glocalization’, or the development and co- creation of videogames from the start
with in- country partners, offers global and local gamers a more immersive experience than those
games that are developed in one country/region and then localized for others.
Cronin, M. (2013) Translation and Globalization. London: Routledge.
Theoretical monograph on the challenges faced by translation and translation studies in the era of
globalization.
­Jiménez-Crespo,
​­ ­
M. A. (2013) Translation and Web Localization. London: Routledge.
The first monograph exclusively dedicated to web localization. It offers a comprehensive approach to
this phenomenon and a foundation for students and researchers interested in researching web localiza-
tion. It includes a dynamic framework to assess quality in web localization and a didactic proposal for
web localization training.
­Jiménez-Crespo,
​­ ­
M. A. (2017a) Crowdsourcing and Online Collaborative Translations: Expanding the Limits
of Translation Studies. ­Amsterdam-Philadelphia:
​­ John Benjamins.
The first monograph dedicated to crowdsourcing and online collaborative translation. Since the first
object of crowdsourcing practices were websites, software and videogame localization, this publication
offers a comprehensive theoretical framework to study collaborative localization processes.

Note
1 The other notion that sparked the most intense debate and was perceived as the most fuzzy notion
among professionals was ‘transcreation’ ( Pedersen 2014).

References
Achkasov, A. (2016) ‘Rethinking the Scope of Localization’, Journal of Siberian Federal University.
Humanities and Social Sciences, 3(10),
­ pp. 288–297.
­ ­ ​­
Anastasiou, D. and Reinhard, S. (2009) ‘Translating Vital Information: Localisation, Internationalisation,
and Globalisation’, Synthèses, 3, pp. 11–25.
­ ­ ​­
Austermühl, F. and Mirwald, C. (2010) ‘Images of Translators in Localization Discourse’, in Auster-
mühl, F. and Kornelius, J. (eds.), Learning Theories and Practice in Translation Studies. Trier: WVT
Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, pp. 99–138.
­ ­ ​­
Baack, D. W. and Singh, N. (2007) ‘Culture and Web Communications’, Journal of Business Research,
60(3),
­ pp. 181–188.
­ ­ ​­
Bass, S. (2006) ‘Quality in the Real World’, in Dunne, K. (ed.), Perspectives on Localization. Amsterdam
and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 69– 84.
Bernal-Merino, M. A. (2016) ‘Glocalization and Co- Creation: Trends in International Game Produc-
tion’, in Esser, A., Smith, I. R. and Bernal-Merino, M. A. (eds.), Media across Borders: Localising TV,
Film and Video Games. New York: Routledge, pp. 202–220.
­ ­ ​­

386
 Localization

Biel, Ł. and Sosoni, V. (2017) ‘The Translation of Economics and the Economics of Translation’, Target,
25(3),
­ pp. 351–361.
­ ­ ​­
Bielsa, E. (2005) ‘Globalisation and Translation: A Theoretical Approach’, Language and Intercultural
Communication, 5(2), ­ pp. 131–144.
­ ­ ​­
Bowker, L. and Buitrago, J. (2018) ‘Localizing Websites Using Machine Translation: Exploring Con-
nections between User Experience and Translatability’, in Chan, S. (ed.), The Human Factor in
Machine Translation. London: Routledge, pp. 7–29. ­ ­ ​­
Brooks, D. (2000) ‘What Price Globalization? Managing Costs at Microsoft’, in Sprung, R. C. (ed.),
Translating into Success. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 42–59.
Bytelevel Research (2007) Website Globalization Research 2007. San Diego: Bytelevel Research.
Castilho, S. et  al. (2018) ‘Approaches to Machine and Human Translation Quality Assessment’, in
Moorkens, J., Castilho, S., Gaspari, F. and Doherty, S. (eds.), Translation Quality Assessment. Cham:
Springer, pp. 9–38.
­ ­ ​­
Coupland, N. (2010) ‘Introduction’, in Coupland, N. (ed.), The Handbook of Language and Globalization.
London: Routledge, pp. 1–27. ­ ­ ​­
Cronin, M. (2003) Translation and Globalization. London: Routledge.
Dam, H. V., Brøgger, M. N. and Zethsen, K. K. (2018) Moving Boundaries in Translation Studies. ­London:
Routledge.
DePalma, D. et al. (2015) ‘The Language Service Market: 2015’, Common Sense Advisory. Available on-
line: http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/AbstractView/tabid/74/ArticleID/26590/Title/The
­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­
LanguageServicesMarket2015/ Default.aspx [Accessed 18 April 2020].
DePalma, D., Pielmeier, H. and Stewart, R. G. (2018) The Language Services Market: 2018. Com-
­
mon Sense Advisory. http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/AbstractView/tabid/74/ArticleID/­ ­ ­ ­ ­
48585/Title/TheLanguageServicesMarket2018/ Default.aspx. [Accessed 18 April 2020].
Diéguez Morales, M. I. and Lazo Rodríguez, R. M. (2011) ‘El español en Internet: aciertos y errores
en sitios web localizados del ingles’, Onomázein, 24, pp. 299–326. ­ ­ ​­
Dong, L. and Mangiron, C. (2018) ‘Journey to the East: Cultural Adaptation of Video Games for the
Chinese Market’, Jostrans: The Journal of Specialised Translation, 29, pp. 149–168. ­ ­ ​­
Dunne, K. (2006) Perspectives on Localization. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Dunne, K. (2009) ‘Assessing Software Localization: For a Valid Approach’, in Angelelli, C. and Jacob-
son, H. (eds.), Testing and Assessment in Translation and Interpreting Studies. Amsterdam and Philadel-
phia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 185–222. ­ ­ ​­
Dunne, K. and Dunne, E. (eds.) (2011) Translation and Localization Management: The Art of the Possible.
Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Dunne, K. (2014). ‘Localization’, in Chan, S. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Translation Technology. London:
Routledge, pp. 550–562.
­ ­ ​­
Esselink, B. (2000) A Practical Guide to Localization. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Esselink, B. (2006) ‘The Evolution of Localization’, in Pym, A., Perekstenko, A. and Starink, B. (eds.),
Translation Technology and its Teaching. Tarragona: Intercultural Studies Group, pp. 21–30.
Federici, F. (ed.) (2016) Mediating Emergencies and Conflicts: Frontline Translating and Interpreting. London:
Palgrave MacMillan.
Freigang, K. H. (1996) ‘Zum Stellenwert von Lokalisierungsprojekten in der Übersetzerausbildung’, in
Fleischmann, E. et al. (eds.), Translationsdidaktik. Grundfragen der Übersetzungswissenschaft. Tübingen:
Gunter Narr, pp. 122–132.
­ ­ ​­
Gambier, Y. (2014) ‘Changing Landscape in Translation’, International Journal of Society, Culture and
Language, 22, pp. 1–12.
­ ­ ​­ Available online: http://ijscl.net/pdf_4638_8301154b3bfe303a6e1c541f62c
­ ­
4e18a.html [Accessed 18 April 2020].
García, I. (2015) ‘Cloud Marketplaces: Procurement of Translators in the Age of Social Media’, Journal of
Specialized Translation, 23, pp. 18–38. ­ ­ ​­ ­ ­ ­
Available online: http://www.jostrans.org/issue23/art_garcia.
pdf [Accessed 18 April 2020].
García, I. (2017) ‘Translating in the Cloud Age: Online Marketplaces’, Journal of Language and Commu-
nication in Business, 56, pp. 59–70. ­ ­ ​­
Hofstede, G. (1991) Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. London: McGraw-Hill. ­ ​­
House, J. (2001) ‘Translation Quality Assessment: Linguistic Description versus Social Evaluation’,
Meta, 46(2)­ pp. 243–257.
­ ­ ​­
House, J. (2010) ‘The Pragmatics of English as a Lingua Franca’, in Trosborg, A. (ed.), Handbook of
Pragmatics. Vol. 7: Across Languages and Cultures. Berlin: Mouton, pp. 363–387. ­ ­ ​­

387
Miguel A. ­Jiménez-­Crespo

House, J. (2013) ‘Quality in Translation Studies’, in Millan, C. and Batrina, F. (eds.), Routledge Hand-
book of Translation Studies. London: Routledge, pp. 534–547. ­ ­ ​­
House, J. (2014) ‘English as a Global Lingua Franca: A Threat to Multilingual Communication and
Translation?’, Language Teaching, 47(3), ­ pp. 363–376.
­ ­ ​­
House, J. (2015) Translation Quality Assessment: Past and Present. London: Routledge.
Howe, J. (2006) Crowdsourcing: A Definition. Crowdsourcing: Tracking the Rise of the Amateur. Available
­
online: http://crowdsourcing.typepad.com/cs/2006/06/crowdsourcing_a.html. ­ ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 18 April
2020].
InternetWorldStats. (2018) ‘Internet Usage and Statistics’. Available online: https://www.internetworld
stats.com/stats.htm ­
Jiangbo, H. and Ying, T. (2010) ‘Study of the Translation Errors in the Light of the Skopostheorie.
Samples from the Websites of Some Tourist Attractions in China’, Babel, 56 (1): ­ ­35–46.
​­
­Jiménez-Crespo ​­ (2008)
­ ‘M.­ A. El proceso de localización web: estudio contrastivo de un corpus comparable del
género sitio web corporativo’, Doctoral Thesis, University of Granada, Spain. Available online: https://
hera.ugr.es/tesisugr/17515324.pdf­ ­
Jiménez- Crespo, M. A. (2009a). ‘Conventions in Localisation: A Corpus Study of Original vs. Trans-
lated Web Texts’, Journal of Specialised Translation, 12, pp. 79–102. ­ ­ ​­
Jiménez- Crespo, M. A. (2009b) ‘The Evaluation of Pragmatic and Functionalist Aspects in Local-
ization: Towards a Holistic Approach to Quality Assurance’, The Journal of Internationalization and
Localization, 1, pp. 60–93. ­ ­ ​­
Jiménez- Crespo, M. A. (2010) ‘Web Internationalization Strategies and Translation Quality: Research-
ing the Case of “International” Spanish’, Localization Focus—T he International Journal of Localization,
8, pp. 13–25.
­ ­ ​­
Jiménez- Crespo, M. A. (2011a) ‘To Adapt or not to Adapt in Web Localization: A Contrastive Genre-
based Study of Original and Localized Legal Sections in Corporate Websites’, Journal of Specialised
Translation, 15, pp. 2–27. ­ ­ ​­
Jiménez- Crespo, M. A. (2011b) “A Corpus-based Error Typology: Towards a More Objective Approach
to Measuring Quality in Localization’, Perspectives, Studies in Translatology, 19(4), ­ pp. 315–338.
­ ­ ​­
Jiménez- Crespo, M. A. (2011c) ‘From Many One: Novel Approaches to Translation Quality in a Social
Network Era’, Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series 10, pp. 131–152. ­ ­ ​­
Jiménez- Crespo, M. A. (2012) ‘Web Localization in US Non-Profit Websites: A Descriptive Study of
Localization Strategies’, in García, I. and Monzó, E. (eds.), Iberian Studies on Translation and Interpret-
ing. ­Oxford-Berlin: ​­ Peter Lang, pp. 243–268.
­ ­ ​­
­Jiménez-Crespo, ​­ M. A. (2013a) ­ Translation and Web Localization. London: Routledge.
Jiménez- Crespo, M. A. (2013b). ‘Crowdsourcing, Corpus Use, and the Search for Translation Natural-
ness: A Comparable Corpus Study of Facebook and Non-translated Social Networking Sites’, TIS:
Translation and Interpreting Studies, 8, pp. 23–49. ­ ­ ​­
Jiménez- Crespo, M. A. (2016) ‘What is (not) Web Localization in Translation Studies: A Prototype
Approach’, JIAL. Journal of Internationalization and Localization, 3(1), ­ pp. 38–60.
­ ­ ​­
Jiménez- Crespo, M. A. and Singh, N. (2016) ‘International Business, Marketing and Translation Stud-
ies: Impacting Research Into Web Localization’. in Gambier, Y. and van Doorslaer, L. (eds.), Border
Crossings. Translation Studies and Other Disciplines. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benja-
mins, pp. 245–262. ­ ­ ​­
­Jiménez-Crespo, ​­ M. A. (2017) ­ Crowdsourcing and Online Collaborative Translation: Expanding the Limits of
Translation Studies. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Jiménez- Crespo, M. A. (2018) ‘Localisation Research in Translation Studies: Expanding the Limits
or Blurring the Line’, in Dam, V. H., Brøgger, M. and Zethsen, K. K. (eds.), Moving Boundaries in
Translation Studies. London: Routledge, pp. 12–25. ­ ­ ​­
LISA. (2003)­ Localization Industry Primer. Fry, D. (ed.). Geneva: The Localization Industry Standards
Association.
LISA. (2004) ­ Localization Industry Primer, 2nd ed. Geneva: The Localization Industry Standards
Association.
LISA. (2007a) ­ LISA Globalization Industry Primer. Romainmôtier, Switzerland: Localization Industry
Standards Association.
LISA. (2007b)­ Best Practice Guide. Quality A ssurance – T he Client Perspective. Romainmôtier, Switzer-
land: Localization Industry Standards Association.
Lockwood, T. and Scott, K. (1999) A Writer’s Guide to the Internet. London: Allison and Busby.

388
 Localization

Lommel, A. et al. (2014) ‘Multidimensional Quality Metrics MQM: A Framework for Declaring and
Describing Translation Quality Metrics’, Tradumatica, 12, pp.  455– 463. Available online: http://
­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­
revistes.uab.cat/tradumatica/article/view/n12-lommel-uzskoreit-burchardt/pdf ​­ ­ [Accessed 18 April
2020].
Luna, D., Peracchio, L. A. and de Juan, M. D. (2002) ‘Cross- Cultural and Cognitive Aspects of Web
Site Navigation’, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 30(4), ­ pp. 397–410.
­ ­ ​­
McDonough-Dolmaya, J. (2018) ‘Localization’, in Fernandez, F. and Evans, J. (eds.), Handbook of Trans-
lation and Politics. London: Routledge, pp. 343–357.
­ ­ ​­
Medina Reguera, A. and Ramírez Delgado, C. (2015) ‘La localización de la “sección productos”
en sitios web de empresas exportadoras agroalimentarias’, InTRAlinea: Online Translation Journal,
­ ­293–319.
pp.  ​­ ­ ­
Available online: http://www.intralinea.org/print/article/2151 ­ ­ [Accessed 18 April
2020].
Mehler, A., Sharoff, S. and Santini, M. (2011) ‘Riding the Rough Waves of Genres on the Web: Con-
cepts and Research Questions’, in Mehler, A., Sharoff, S. and Santini, M. (eds.), Genres on the Web.
New York: Springer, pp. 3–29. ­ ­ ​­
Mele, E., De Ascaniis, S. and Cantoni, L. (2015) ‘Localization of National Tourism Organizations’
Websites: How are World Heritage Sites Portrayed Online by European Destinations for Different
Markets’, Heritage, Tourism  & Hospitality International Conference. Amsterdam: CLUE + Research
­ ­
Institute, pp. 123–132. ​­
Microsoft. (2003)
­ Developing International Software. Redmond: Microsoft Corporation.
Musacchio, M. T. and Panizzon, R. (2017) ‘Localising or Globalising? Multilingualism and Lingua
Franca in the Management of Emergencies from Natural Disasters’, Cultus, 10, pp. 92–107. ­ ­ ​­
O’Hagan, M. (2009a) ‘Evolution of User- Generated Translation: Fansubs, Translation Hacking and
Crowdsourcing’, The Journal of Internationalization and Localization, 1, pp. 94–121. ­ ­ ​­
O’Hagan, M. (2009b) ‘Putting Pleasure First: Localizing Japanese Videogames’, TTR: Traduction, Ter-
minologie, Rédaction, 22(1), ­ pp. 147–165.
­ ­ ​­
O’Hagan, M. and Mangiron, C. (2014) Videogame Localization. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John
Benjamins.
Parra, J. (1999) ‘Perspectivas de la investigación en localización de software’, Perspectives, 7, pp. 231–239. ­ ­ ​­
Pedersen, D. (2014) ‘Exploring the Concept of Transcreation – Transcreation as “more than transla-
tion”?’, Cultus, 7, pp. 57–71.
­ ­ ​­
Pierini, P. (2007) ‘Quality in Web Translation: An Investigation into UK and Italian Tourism Web
Sites’, Journal of Specialised Translation, 8, pp. 85–103.
­ ­ ​­
Pym, A. (2004) The Moving Text: Localization, Translation and Distribution. Amsterdam and Philadelphia,
PA: John Benjamins.
Pym, A. (2010) Translation Theories Explained. London: Routledge.
Remael, A. (2010) ‘Audiovisual Translation’, in Gambier, Y. and van Doorslaer, L. (eds.), Handbook of
Translation Studies, Vol 1. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 12–17.
Risku, H., Rogl, R. and Pein-Weber, C. (2016) ‘Mutual Dependencies: Centrality in Translation
Networks’, Journal of Specialised Translation, 25, pp.  ­ ­1–22.
​­ Available online: http://www.jostrans.
­
org/issue25/art_risku.pdf. [Accessed 18 April 2020].
Roturier, J. (2015) Localizing Apps: A Practical Guide for Translators and Translation Students. London:
Routledge.
Sánchez-Nieto, M. T. (2009) ‘El realce totalizador en español y en alemán. Un estudio retórico-
contrastivo y descriptivo de traducciones de sitios web corporativos de bodegas’, Viceversa. Revista
galega de traducción, 15, pp. 87–118.
­ ­ ​­
Serón-Ordoñez, I. and Martin-Mor, A. (2017) ‘Traducción y dispositivos mobiles’, Special Issue, Tradumat-
ica, 14. Available online http://revistes.uab.cat/tradumatica/issue/view/n14 [Accessed 18 April 2020].
Schäler, R. (2008) ‘Reverse Localization’, Localization Focus, The International Journal of Localisation, 6,
pp. 39–49.
­ ­ ​­
Schäler, R. (2010) ‘Localization and Translation’, in Gambier, Y. and van Doorslaer, L. (eds.), Handbook
of Translation Studies. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 9–14.
Sidiropoulou, M. (2018) ‘Markets and the Creative Paradigm: Identity Variability in English/Greek
Translated Promotional Material’, Journal of Specialised Translation, 29, pp. 102–125. ­ ­ ​­ Available on-
line: https://www.jostrans.org/issue29/art_sidiropoulou.php [Accessed 18 April 2020].
Singh, N., Zhao, H. and Hu, X. (2003) ‘Cultural Adaptation on the Web: A Study of American Com-
panies’ Domestic and Chinese Websites’, Journal of Global Information Management, 11(3), ­ pp. 63–80.
­ ­ ​­

389
Miguel A. ­Jiménez-­Crespo

Singh, N., Furrer, O. and Ostinelli, M. (2004) ‘To Localize or to Standardize on the Web: Empirical
Evidence from Italy, India, Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland’, Multinational Business Review,
­ pp. 69–88.
12(1), ­ ­ ​­
Singh, N. and Pereira, A. (2005) The Culturally Customized Web Site: Customizing Web Sites for the Global
Marketplace. Burlington: Elsevier ­Butterworth-Heinemann.
​­
Singh, N., Zhao, J. and Hu, X. (2005) ‘Analyzing Cultural Information on Web Sites: A Cross-national
Study of Web Site from China, India, Japan, and the U.S.’, International Marketing Review, 22(2), ­
­ ­ ​­
pp. 129–146.
Singh, N., Fassott, G., Zhao, H. and Boughton, P. D. (2006) ‘A Cross- cultural Analysis of German,
Chinese and Indian Consumers’ Perception of Web Site Adaptation’, Journal of Consumer Behaviour,
­ pp. 56–68.
5(1), ­ ­ ​­
Singh, N. (2011) Localization Strategies for Global E-business. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Snell-Hornby, M. (2010) ‘The Turns in Translation Studies’, in Gambier, Y. and van Doorslaer, L. (eds.),
Handbook of Translation Studies. Vol. I. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: Benjamins, pp. 366–370.
Suau Jiménez, F. (2015) ‘Traducción de calidad de webs hoteleras: discurso interpersonal e implicación
del cliente’, Onomazein, 32, pp. 152–170.
­ ­ ​­
Tymoczko, M. (2014) Enlarging Translation, Empowering Translators. London: Routledge.
Valdés, C. (2009) ‘The Localization of Promotional Discourse on the Internet’, in Chiaro, D., Heiss,
C. and Bucaria, C. (eds.), Between Text and Image. Updating Research in Screen Translation. Amsterdam
and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 229–243.
Venuti, L. (1995) The Translator’s Invisibility. London: Routledge.
Wellman, B. (2001) ‘Little Boxes, Glocalisation, and Networked Individualism’, in Makoto, T., van
den Besselaar, P. and Toru, I. (eds.), Digital Cities II. Berlin: ­Springer-Verlag,
​­ ­ ­ ​­
pp. 11–25.
Wu, Y. (2017) ‘Globalization, Translation and Soft Power: A Chinese Perspective’, Babel, 63(4), ­
­ ­
pp. 463–485. ​­
Yalcin, S. et al. (2011) ‘Culture and Localization on the Web: Evidence from Multinationals in Russia
and Turkey’, Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, 12(1),
­ pp. 94–114.
­ ­ ​­
Yunker, J. (2004) Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies. Indianapolis: New Riders.

390
 27
The impact of technology on
the role of the translator in
globalized production workflows
Elisa Alonso and Lucas Nunes Vieira

Introduction
Over the past decades, information and communication technologies have redefined the
limits of most human activities and translation has not been an exception. Globalization has
increased the demand for translations particularly in terms of volume and speed, and tech-
nology has been a crucial factor in attempts to cope with this. As a result of the mutual inter-
play between technology, globalization and translation, the latter has experienced significant
changes in the way it is carried out, managed, structured and delivered (Abdallah 2007).
Since the advent of computers, translation has been considered an activity where automa-
tion could yield fruitful results. As generic and translation- specific technologies are incorpo-
rated into translation production chains, the role played by translators is undergoing a series
of shifts. Technologies have triggered an intense technicalization of the translation profession
and altered the traditional concept of the translator’s habitus ( Biel and Sosoni 2017: 355–356),
which has become apparent even in literary translation ( Youdale 2020). Computer-a ssisted
(or aided) translation (CAT) tools and machine translation (MT) are now common compo-
nents of the translator’s workstation. MT’s goal is to produce a fully automated translated
output, whereas in the CAT paradigm human translators are assisted by machines, including
MT itself, in the process of crafting translations.
The origins of MT date to the late 1940s. Since then several developments have favoured
(and even pushed for) an increasing demand for translations (see Bowker 2015: 89):

• The shift to an information society with a knowledge-based economy

• The creation and expansion of political and economic unions and agreements (e.g. the
European Union)
• The development of new and increasingly sophisticated products (e.g. smart phones,
medical equipment)
• The globalization of commerce and the rise of e- commerce
• And the growth of the World Wide Web coupled with the desire for localized content

In this chapter, we will explore how globalization and technological development have been
shaping and re- shaping the role of the translator since the m id-twentieth century. First,
391
Elisa Alonso and Lucas Nunes Vieira

following a chronological outline of translation automation development, we will discuss

the impact of technology on human translators. We will then review different theories or
approaches that have been used to analyse the interface between translators and technology.
Next, two sections will examine the impact of technology on the translation profession and
on translator training, respectively. Finally, we conclude with final remarks and suggestions
for further reading.

The impact of technology on human translators: a historical account

The discussion of the human-m achine interface is often framed as a matter of humans and
machines being either allies or rivals. However, it is worth noting that technological prog-
ress cannot be decoupled from its human dimensions. The perception of what it means to
be human is itself in many ways shaped by technology ( Vázquez Medel 2003; Cronin 2017).
Indeed, in human evolution, the ability to create tools (extensions of human capacities) and
language development are correlated (Morgan et al. 2015).
Since ancient Greece, communication, technique and technology have been interlinked
and associated with the concept of techne, which stands for practical art and practical knowl-
edge (Sterne 2006: 97). The history of humankind largely relies on the feedback loop and the
creative dialogue established between humans and different forms of techne such as writing,
printing, computers, the Internet and modern telecommunications.
In the field of translation, MT and CAT are critical elements of the relationship between
translators and technology. However, the automation of translation has not been a linear
process. High expectations have been repeatedly followed by the realization that, due to
technological limitations or the complexity of languages, translation automation was more
challenging than originally envisaged ( Hutchins 2015). Nevertheless, technologies have
gradually and in varied ways been infiltrating the translation process.
Different phases have been identified in the history of MT ( Hutchins 2015; Qun and
Xiaojun 2015) and of CAT (Chan 2015a; Garcia 2015). The aforementioned works offer a
detailed account of the facts from the 1940s to 2015, their year of publication. Since then, a
new phase can be identified with the introduction of neural MT. We therefore structure the
chronology of this section as follows:

• 1949–1966:
­ ​­ MT Pioneers
• 1967 to the 1990s: MT and CAT Development
• 2000–2015: New trends in MT/Enhancement of CAT systems
• Since 2015: Neural MT

­1949–1966:
​­ MT pioneers
The pioneers’ period begins in 1949 with Warren Weaver’s memorandum – which estab-
lishes a research agenda for MT – a nd finishes in 1996 with the publication of the ALPAC
report (Hutchins 2015: 120). An atmosphere of optimism raised by the initial success of MT
prevailed in this period. Soon after the invention of computers and with the Cold War as a
background, translating natural languages was regarded as an automatable activity. Then and
now, in most dissemination contexts the output of MT systems requires human post- editing.
In fact, given the scarcity of bilingual translators, post- editing was often carried out by non-
professionals based just on the target text ( Bar-Hillel 1951: 230).

392
 The impact of technology on the translator

Indeed, according to Hutchins (2001: 6), the initial reluctance to regard translation as a
form of human- computer interaction led to failures in the deployment of translation systems,
and contributed to misconceptions about translation technology and its impact on the pro-
fessional translator.
In the way we structured the present overview, the pioneers’ period ends in 1966 with the
ALPAC report issued by the Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee of the
US government. The report pointed out that, since fully automatic high- quality MT would
not be achieved for a long time, efforts should shift from MT to the support of the human
translation process (ALPAC 1966). We discuss developments of this new phase below.

1967 to the 1990s: MT and CAT development

The ALPAC report had negative repercussions for MT, but research in this area gradually saw
an incipient revival. It was also during this period that CAT systems started to develop. More
MT systems were marketed, and the first computer-based translation aids were launched
(Hutchins 2015: 133–134). In addition, since the early 1990s, corpus-based technologies
(such as translation memories (TMs), example-based MT and statistical MT) acquired in-
creasing importance.
ALPAC’s recommendations called for greater efforts to speed up the human translation
process, to adapt the then mechanized translation editing and production processes, and to
produce adequate reference works (e.g. glossaries) for the translator (ALPAC 1966: 34). The
development of CAT tools and TM systems followed these recommendations. The function-
ing of these tools can be described as follows:

At its core, every CAT system divides a text into ‘segments’ (normally sentences, as de-
fined by punctuation marks) and searches a bilingual memory for identical (exact­ match)
or similar ( ­fuzzy match) source and translation segments. Search and recognition of ter-
minology in analogous bilingual glossaries are also standard. The corresponding search
results are then offered to the human translator as prompts for adaptation and reuse.
( Hutchins 2015: 68)

The article published in 1980 by Martin Kay ‘The Proper Place of Men [sic.] and Machines
in Language Translation’ is considered a key inspiration for CAT systems (Chan 2015a: 5).
However, hardware and software limitations of the time delayed the launch of a commercial
CAT tool.
In the 1990s, the use of commercially available CAT tools, including word processors,
TM systems, text aligners (see Garcia 2015 for details) and electronic dictionaries, increased
and this trend continued throughout the 2000s.

2000–2015: new trends in MT/enhancement of CAT systems

From the 2000s to 2015, translation technologies went through an intense phase of develop-
ment (Chan 2015a: 13–22). CAT tools became more sophisticated and incorporated server
components (web- or cloud-based) that helped to manage TMs and projects collaboratively.
This enhanced data sharing, which was also favoured by increasing efforts to facilitate inter-
operability with standard formats such as Translation Memory eXchange ( TMX), XML
Localization Interchange File format ( XLIFF) and Term-Base eXchange ( TBX).

393
Elisa Alonso and Lucas Nunes Vieira

As a result of the higher mobility, connectivity and immediacy of translation technology

( Enríquez Raído 2016), translation turned into a ubiquitous activity (Cronin 2013) that
could be carried out virtually anywhere.
Another sign of the times was the increasing importance of translation data. In the 15
years between 2000 and 2015, phrase-based statistical MT (a type of corpus-based MT) was
the main type of MT architecture. In the statistical MT paradigm, the key to developing suc-
cessful systems is the volume (number of words) and the quality of bilingual data for system
training. Consequently, in these 15 years it became increasingly common for large companies
and major language service providers to compile and curate their own TMs. In addition,
initiatives like Translation Automation User Society ( TAUS) and MyMemory emerged to
gather as much TM content as possible (Garcia 2015: 82).
In 2006, the first web-based CAT tool to integrate a mainframe MT system (Garcia 2015:
81) was launched. This path would soon be followed by other software manufacturers. For
decades, MT and CAT had offered separate functionalities. From the translator’s point of
view, the possibility of post-editing MT in their workstations marked the opening of a new
phase. The use of MT as a CAT feature brought MT technology to the centre of translators’
working environment ( Vieira et al. 2019: 3).
Just as translators embraced TM systems, MT would pose new challenges to human-
m achine integration (Garcia 2009). After decades of post- editing being treated as a mere step
in MT development, the use of MT in the human translation process acquired a negative rep-
utation among many translators (Moorkens and O’Brien 2015; Läubli and Orrego- Carmona
2017). Translators started to voice concerns about a likely connection between higher auto-
mation and decreasing rates or standards ( Vieira 2020).
For the general public, due to the increasing availability of free MT services on the Inter-
net during this period, the use of unedited MT content grew to the point of becoming the
‘principal form in which people encounter translation from any source’ ( Hutchins 2015: 132).

Since 2015: Neural MT

The emergence of neural MT ( Bahdanau et al. 2014), a corpus-based MT training method
based on artificial neural networks, has been a landmark in the history of translation technol-
ogy and of the translation industry (Forcada 2017). Since 2014, workspaces have incorporated
neural, adaptive and interactive MT ( Lilt n.d.). Despite the increased quality that neural MT
systems can offer, it still has limitations. Human post- editing is therefore still needed for
dissemination purposes ( Vieira et al. 2019: 2). MT is developed, fed, evaluated and trained by
humans, who, in turn, can use MT technology to increase productivity. MT performs well
in certain tasks (e.g. translation speed) but struggles with others, which tend to be precisely
those where humans excel (e.g. pragmatic translation, domain expertise and research skills)
( Lumeras and Way 2017: 25).
Growing price and time pressures on language service providers and on translators have
increased the demand for post- editing according to a Common Sense Advisory 2016 report
( DePalma et  al. 2016). A by-product of the adoption of MT as a professional tool is that
clients expect lower translation rates. As pointed out by Vieira (2020: 5– 6), this does not nec-
essarily mean a systematic reduction of translators’ income, possibly because lower rates are
compensated by higher volumes or because lower rates are more likely to affect just the less
professionalized sectors of the market. Whatever the case, any analysis of technology’s impact
on a profession or occupation should focus not just on the technology itself but also on the
economic practices attached to its implementation ( Leblanc 2017; Vieira 2020). Both in the

394
 The impact of technology on the translator

industry (O’Dowd 2019) and in the popular press (Marr 2019), there are high expectations for
neural MT and the new possibilities of deep learning. Computer processing capacity has in-
creased (McBride 2019) and deploying MT has become cheaper. Consequently, MT use has
been democratized and is now increasingly common among freelancers and small vendors
( Lommel and DePalma 2016: 6 –7). An important bottleneck to neural MT is the availability
and quality of multilingual data. However, it should be noted that high- quality data require
human effort and expertise. As expressed by Lumeras and Way (2017: 38), it is essential for
MT developers to foster collaboration with human translators to improve MT performance.

Technology and the epistemology of translation

Translation technology has affected translation practice, translation studies, translator train-
ing and the translation industry (Chan 2015b: xxvii). Its impact has been so profound that it is
largely accepted that from 2004 a ‘technological turn’ has dominated translation studies and
translation practice (Cronin 2010; O’Hagan 2013; Chan 2017: 262). Translation has also been
deeply influenced by teletranslation (i.e. Internet-based language services) (O’Hagan 1996;
O’Hagan and Ashworth 2002) and the use of generic tools such as Internet search engines
and spell checkers ( Biau- Gil and Pym 2006).
Given the current degree of automation in translation, it is undeniable that translation is
a form of human-computer interaction (O’Brien 2012). O’Brien addresses translation as a
­
‘significant global economic activity’ (102, emphasis in original) characterized by high vol-
umes, high incidence of repetitions and reliance on computer resources. Chan (2017: 269)
goes a step further and argues that, in the future, any definition of translation will invariably
have to incorporate a technological dimension.
According to Christensen et al. (2017: 8), translation technology has become so prominent
that its research should be addressed as a subdiscipline of translation studies. Conversely, the
omnipresence of technology in translation might provide sufficient reason to consider tech-
nology the pivot joint of the discipline’s research system. As expressed by Biau- Gil and Pym
(2006), even the term computer-aided translation seems redundant today, because virtually
all acts of translation are aided by computers. As a result, contemporary definitions of trans-
lation would not need to incorporate any technological dimension, as the use of technology
is taken for granted in translation like in other fields such as medicine or architecture.
For certain areas of specializations such as literary translation, technology is not as prom-
inent ( Katan and Spinzi 2014). There is evidence that this could rapidly change (e.g. Toral
et al. 2018) but, in any case, technology is an important sociological factor:

Translation is done not only by the brain, but also by complex systems, systems which
include people, their specific social and physical environments and all their cultural
artefacts.
(Risku 2002: 529)

In the paradigm of situated, embodied cognition ( Risku and Windhager 2013), translation
tools cannot be understood as isolated auxiliary artefacts. Rather, they should be considered
part of a complex network where computers are actual extensions of human memory and
knowledge. Elaborating on this same idea, Alonso and Calvo (2015) claim that the impact of
technology on translation has represented an epistemological transformation of the concept
of translation. The interplay between translators and machines has shaped the activity of
translating as ‘an extended cognitive, anthropological and social system or network, which

395
Elisa Alonso and Lucas Nunes Vieira

integrates human translators and technology, whether specific to translation or not, and
acknowledges the collective dimension of many translation workflows today’ (Alonso and
Calvo 2015: 158).
As expressed earlier, the term ­post-editing
​­ dates to the origins of MT, but the recent incor-
poration of MT into translation toolkits and workflows has brought post-editing to the fore.
Post-editing is today a fully-fledged service that has its own international standard (ISO 18587
2017). However, the way in which post-editing is carried out has changed. Translators can now
interact on the fly with MT systems, which can learn in real time from human edits. Therefore,
the use of MT in the human translation process can now be associated with different terms,
such as ‘augmented translation’ ( Lommel 2018), which expresses the idea that artificial intelli-
gence will augment human translation. Terminological considerations aside ( Vieira et al. 2019),
the use of MT in the human translation process is likely to become even more prominent.
Outside translation studies, economic and socio-political stakeholders are probably in-
terested in translation as an instrumental means to foster globalization, internationalization
and worldwide communication. There is increasing interest in initiatives that might help to
overcome language barriers with the purpose of contributing to a global economy, favouring
the circulation of goods and people. TAUS, for instance, an organization whose member-
ship includes buyers and providers of translation services, envisages that in the (near) future
translation will be a sort of utility, like electricity or water. With this aim in mind, they
support translation automation and multilingual data sharing ( TAUS 2014). For its part, the
European Union recognized since its foundation that translation was one of its pillars, and
for decades invested in the development of MT and CAT tools that could improve translation
quality and productivity in their internal translation processes. In 2017, it went a step further
putting its MT tool (eTranslation) at the disposal of any public administration of their mem-
ber states ( European Commission n.d.).

Different conceptualizations of the interface

between translators and technology
The relationship between translators and the techno- sphere (Austermühl 2001; Bowker
2002; Somers 2003) has been for years a productive field of research. There is also abundant
research focused on translators’ perceptions of and attitudes to the use of technology in the
form of surveys or ethnographic studies (e.g. Lagoudaki 2006; Leblanc 2013; Pérez Macías
2018, among others). Thanks to these studies, translators’ scepticism about the value of
translation- specific software (Fulford and Granell-Zafra 2005) has been documented, as well
as translators’ mixed opinions about how post- editing tasks were organized and remunerated
(Guerberof Arenas 2013). Conversely, positive perceptions of CAT have been documented
too, for example, in terms of increased productivity and consistency, and the elimination of
repetitive tasks ( Leblanc 2013).
More recently, in order to fully understand the complex implementation of human-
computer interaction in translation practice, translation studies has turned to other fields,
such as psychology, cognitive science and sociology, and often borrowed their theories and
concepts (O’Brien 2013). Some proposals from sociology, focusing on the translator’s habi-
tus (Chesterman 2007), argue that technology is present in the social context of translation
workflows as a non-human agent or artefact ( Buzelin 2005). Stemming from actor-network
theory ( Latour 1986) and situated and embodied cognition, extended translation theory
( Risku and Windhager 2013) stresses the importance of research on subjects and technolo-
gies in real-life
­ ​­ contexts.

396
 The impact of technology on the translator

Another concept borrowed from sociology has been that of the ‘dance of agency’ as de-
veloped by Pickering (1993), who explains the dynamics of resistance and accommodation
that humans experience in their interaction with non-human agents (machines). The impact
of technology on translators’ agency has been a popular topic and a matter of concern in
translation studies. Olohan (2011) drew on this construct to study, through discussion threads
posted on an online forum, the extent to which translators felt in control or offered resistance
when using the then recently launched SDL Trados Studio 2009. Relying on the same con-
cept, Ruokonen and Koskinen (2017) stress the importance of emotions and the narratives
that evidence translators’ experiences with technology.
In order to explore the physical, cognitive and organizational ergonomic issues related to
the activity of professional translators, several multidisciplinary studies have been conducted
in production settings ( Ehrensberger-Dow and O’Brien 2015). It has been demonstrated that
even after decades of refinement, CAT tools still irritate professional translators (O’Brien
et al. 2017).
Finally, post- editing has flourished as a professional activity and service closely related to
globalization demands for multilingual communication. Post- editing is also a sub-field of re-
search, where the effort necessary to bring the MT output up to the desired quality standard
is a key factor of interest. Studies on post-editing effort often involve cognitive and process-
based methods such as eye tracking, screen recording and keystroke logging (see Vieira et al.
2019). Translation quality – whether MT or t arget-text quality – is also a central variable in
this field given the ways in which quality is related to post- editing effort and productivity
(see Vieira 2019; O’Brien 2012).

Technology and the translation profession

Technology is also present in the debate about the consideration of translation as a profession,
an activity or an expertise (Séguinot 2007; Jääskeläinen 2010; Katan 2011; Pym et al. 2014).
Following Dam and Koskinen (2016), and in accordance with the current convention in
translation studies, we call it a profession, though we note it probably still does not have all the
features that a formally recognized profession would.
Work fragmentation has been one of the problems of translation as a profession ( Katan
2009; Dam and Zethsen 2010; Pym et al. 2014). From a general perspective, fragmentation
of any labour force – which among other things can be characterized by a narrowing of what
specific roles are perceived to comprise – is related to the advent of a global economy and the
diversification of forms of work and employment. As a result of this diversification, ‘standard’
forms of employment (full time, socially secure) are now complemented by less stable jobs
(part-time,
­­ ​­ temporary agency work, homeworking, self-employment)
­ ​­ (EurWORK
­ 2017).
Particularly in the case of translators, work is fragmented when tasks that were once carried
out by the same person are split into several stages and conducted across multiples roles.
While a combination of factors is behind these developments, information and communica-
tion technologies such as e-m ail and cloud servers cannot be ignored as important elements
of what translation as a profession is currently undergoing. Indeed, technology may be an
important factor of what can be referred to as a reductionist view of the occupation, that of ‘a
largely female, freelance, part-time, fragmented, unregulated cohort, who have an arguably
problematic, or at least fledging, status as “professionals”’ (Seddon 2019: 113). To research
the social complexities of translation, Seddon argues that we should resort to an ontological
approach where translators, along with non-human actors (not only texts but also technolo-
gies), are an assembled identity, ‘the product of distributed agency, processes and interactions

397
Elisa Alonso and Lucas Nunes Vieira

within specific contexts’ ( p. 114). With this in mind, technology itself, as strictly understood,
is not responsible for the fragmentation of translators’ profession, but rather how it is being
implemented, by whom and to what purposes.
In any case, the increasing technicalization of translation workflows has been considered
to have a negative impact both on the translator’s status ( Dam and Zethsen 2010: 206) and
on the translation process ( Pym 2011). Sometimes, this impact has been described as ‘market
disorder’, which results from several factors including globalization of translator- client in-
teractions, higher volumes of volunteer translation and free access to online MT ( Pym et al.
2016). Other authors stress that technology has devaluated the status of the translator to that
of a ‘fixer’ of machine-generated outputs (Christensen and Schjoldager 2016).
Conversely, translation tools have been used to embolden the identity of the translator as
a professional (Gouadec 2007). The present digital age demands an increasing moderniza-
tion of the translators’ role while translation shifts from profession to business (Chan 2017:
270–273). In Dam and Koskinen’s view (2016: 3), technology is an agent of the translation
profession that has moved from the periphery to the centre. Productivity is one of the reasons
behind the increasing centrality of technology in translation. According to Koponen (2016),
post- editing of MT is ‘worth the effort’, because not only does it increase productivity but, at
least in some scenarios and for certain genres and language pairs, also quality.
While technology has in many ways positively influenced translation, it is also linked to
factors that may negatively affect processual and affective aspects of translation tasks. Below
we discuss two such factors: segmentation and dehumanization.
At production level, segmentation is the process of splitting source texts into chunks or bits
of information ( like a sentence or shorter) that can be processed by translation technologies
such as TM systems ( Bowker 2002: 94). While this increases productivity, it also prevents
translators from having an overall grasp of the text ( Biau- Gil and Pym 2006: 12, 18, 40;
Leblanc 2013; Bundgaard et al. 2016). Moreover, segmentation might undermine the process
of identifying the text’s real-world purpose or skopos ( Vermeer 1996) by forcing translators to
adopt a sentence-by-sentence approach to the task. Indeed, the segment-focused interface of
most CAT tools arguably does not stimulate a holistic translation strategy. On the other hand,
segmentation may facilitate collaborative practices in some contexts, like volunteer translation,
where segments of human and machine-generated translations can be shared and distributed
across networks of translators (O’Brien 2012: 11). Segmentation practices have been particu-
larly evident in the localization industry, where documents are split into chunks of text that
are eventually reused by content management systems to produce different texts such as user
manuals, online help systems and websites (Sandrini 2005: 136; Biau- Gil and Pym 2006: 11).
Dehumanization is related to translators’ emotions and their self-perception. It is one of
the consequences of automation and fragmentation. Like Little Tramp, the character created
by Charlie Chaplin who feels alienated by having to perform a repetitive task and is even-
tually swallowed by the machinic assembly line in Modern Times (1936), technology might
negatively affect translators’ emotions and self-perception ( Pym 2003, 2011; O’Brien 2012;
Alonso and Calvo 2015).
According to O’Brien (2012: 10), the status of MT ‘fixer’ that translators might assume in
automated workflows, coupled with the fact that they may be paid lower rates, contributes to
negative feelings towards technology. In addition, she argues that translators perceive MT as
a black box (cf. Karamanis et al. 2011) with which they are not allowed to collaborate, which,
in turn, can lead to mistrust and rejection of the technology. Interestingly, this perception
might be changing thanks to initiatives that try to empower translators with the integration
of MT into their training ( Kenny and Doherty 2014).

398
 The impact of technology on the translator

There may also be a perception that, after years of training, translators are somehow un-
dermined by the fact that a machine can perform their task in a reasonably satisfactory manner
(O’Brien 2012: 11). According to Alonso and Calvo (2015: 148–151), following the initial de-
humanization tendencies translators have been subjected to over the last decades, we might wit-
ness a trans-humanization of the translation process. Translating will be driven by the creative
and learning dimensions that are inherent to technologies in so far that they are instruments
with the potential of creating a dialogue with their users. This might result in more versatile
roles for translators, who will be interacting with technology in a more creative manner.

Technology in translator training

In parallel to professional considerations, translator training is also influenced by technology.
A combination of factors is putting translators under enormous pressure and encouraging
them and their employers to embrace translation technologies ( Bowker 2015: 89–90). These
factors include: a) societal, economic and technological trends that are increasing the demand
for translations; b) the fact that the volume of text to be translated has grown significantly in
recent decades; c) tighter deadlines; and d) an increasing shortage of qualified workers (see
Introduction). As a result, most translator education programmes have incorporated some
form of technology training into their syllabus.
Indeed, technology skills are present in translation competence models. Most models
gravitate towards a central super-competence or strategic competence that orchestrates other
sub- competences such as the communicative sub- competence in two or more languages, or
domain or extra-linguistic sub-competence, among others (e.g. PACTE 2003; Kelly 2007;
Göpferich 2009; EMT Expert Group 2009; Kiraly 2013; EMT Board 2017). The ability to
manage tools and other technological resources is often placed under the instrumental heading
of said competence models. An example of the increasing presence of technology in transla-
tor training is the number and level of competences identified by the European Master’s in
Translation ( EMT) expert group. The EMT is a network of master’s degree programmes that
has agreed certain quality standards for translator training. The 2009 version of the EMT
competence framework had the following technological competences:

[…] being able to effectively use search engines, corpus analysis tools and term extractors
for information mining; knowing how to produce and prepare a translation in different
file formats and for different technical media; knowing how to use a range of CAT tools;
understanding the possibilities and limits of machine translation; and being able to learn
and adapt to new and emerging tools.
(Bowker 2015: 90)

Plaza Lara (2019: 264) has pointed out that the 2009 EMT skill set also included, under inter-
cultural competence, the need to draft, rephrase, restructure, condense and post- edit rapidly
and well ( EMT Expert Group 2009: 6). She has noted, however, that the 2017 version of the
EMT framework envisages a wider set of technological competences, particularly in the field
of MT and post- editing, and workflow software and support technologies ( Plaza Lara 2019:
264). Under the 2017 framework the translator is not a mere user of these technologies, but
rather an ‘ implementer’ and ‘consultant’ whose competences must include pre-editing source
material, applying different levels of post- editing to MT output, mastering the basics of MT,
assessing the relevance of MT systems and implementing the appropriate MT system where
relevant ( EMT Board 2017: 8–9 cit. Plaza Lara 264).

399
Elisa Alonso and Lucas Nunes Vieira

An interesting approach to the incorporation of MT into translator training takes as a

starting point the idea that MT is not a product but a process ( Rico 2017). Every step of the
process (data compilation, training and evaluation of MT engines, post- editing, recycling of
TM systems) requires human expertise. According to Rico (2017), if properly trained, trans-
lators would occupy the very heart of the process and would be able to control and master it
in all its facets.

Conclusion
This chapter provided an overview of how technology has influenced the work of transla-
tors in globalized production networks. It has discussed how technologies that are specific
to translation and those that concern information and communication more generally have
served to streamline processes and improve translators’ productivity. The chapter has also re-
viewed potentially negative consequences of translation technology use. These include ways
in which technologies can have a negative impact on the translation process as well as ways in
which it can exacerbate broader phenomena linked to how translation work is structured in
business supply chains.
The chapter has also shown that, despite its potentially negative consequences, technol-
ogy can also have a positive impact on translation as a practice and profession. Adaptive and
interactive MT can provide translators with more intelligent ways of leveraging automatic
suggestions and of avoiding or speeding up repetitive work. While MT can be perceived to
threaten translators’ standing and professional status, it is in a relationship of complementar-
ity with translators and not in one of exclusion. As shown by some of the studies reviewed
earlier, more serious issues can arise, however, in situations where the power of MT is mis-
interpreted, oversold or misused.
We therefore highlight two key issues that merit increased attention in the debate on
the future of translation and translation technology. First, human- computer interaction in
translation is likely to continue to evolve. Speech and the written text may interact in new
multimodal ways of producing translations, a process which, in turn, is likely to involve
more interactive technologies that blur the lines between tasks and practices. Second, issues
of ethics and economic fairness are increasingly important aspects of ensuring that translation
technology’s benefits are reaped in a positive and sustainable manner. Interest in these issues
will hopefully continue to grow as it becomes clearer that technological progress is not de-
tached from the social and economic context in which it comes about. A continued focus on
these areas, we believe, will help to ensure that MT and other translation technologies offer
new opportunities.

Further reading
Christensen, T. P., Flanagan, M. and Schjoldager, A. (2017) ‘Mapping Translation Technology
Research in Translation Studies’ [special issue], HERMES – Journal of Language and Communication
in Business, 56.
This special issue is a comprehensive review of state- of-the-art research in translation studies with a
­three-fold
​­ focus: ­technology-oriented
​­ (tools
­ and resources), ­workflow-oriented
​­ and industrial research,
and ­translation-theoretical
​­ approaches.
Lumeras, M. A. and Way, A. (2017) ‘On the Complementary between Human Translators and Machine
Translation’, HERMES – Journal of Languages and Communication Business, 56, pp. 21–42.
­ ­ ​­
In this paper, the authors clarify what MT can do well and what human translators find challenging
(terminology management, translation speed, translation scoring). Similarly, they also discuss areas

400
 The impact of technology on the translator

where human translators excel, as well as others where MT struggles ( language pragmatics, rephras-
ing, domain expertise). They argue that human and machine translation are – and will continue to
­be – ​­mutually complementary.
Vieira, L. N., Alonso, E. and Bywood, L. (2019) ‘Post-Editing in Practice: Process, Product and Net-
works’ [Special Issue], Journal of Specialised Translation, 31.
This special issue offers an updated panorama of post- editing practices in training and production set-
tings, as well as information on translators’ perceptions of post- editing and MT.

References
Abdallah, K. (2007) ‘Managing Trust: Translating and the Network Economy’, Meta: Journal des
Traducteurs/Meta: Translators’ Journal, 52(4), ­ pp. 673–687.
­ ­ ​­ ­
doi: 10.7202/017692ar.
Alonso, E. and Calvo, E. (2015) ‘Developing a Blueprint for a Technology-mediated Approach to
Translation Studies’, Meta: Journal des traducteurs/Meta: Translators’ Journal, 60(1), ­ pp. 135–157.
­ ­ ​­
ALPAC (1966) ­ Languages and Machines. Computers in Translation and Linguistics. Washington, DC:
National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council. Available online: www.mt-a rchive.
info/ALPAC-1966.pdf
­­ ​­ [Accessed 11 April 2020].
Austermühl, F. (2001) Electronic Tools for Translators. Manchester: St. Jerome.
Bahdanau, D., Cho, K. and Bengio, Y. (2014) ‘Neural Machine Translation by Jointly Learning to
Align and Translate’, arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.0473.
Bar-H illel, Y. (1951) ‘The Present State of Research on Mechanical Translation’, American Docu-
mentation, 2(4), ­ pp. 
­ ­229–237. ​­ Available online: http://www.mt-archive.info/Bar-Hillel-1951.pdf
­ ­ ​­ ­­ ­​­­ ​­
[Accessed 11 April 2020].
Biau- Gil, J. R. and Pym, A. (2006) ‘Technology and Translation’, in Pym, A., Perestrenko, A. and
Starink, B. (eds.), Translation Technology and Its Teaching. Tarragona: Intercultural Studies Group,
Universitat Rovira i Virgili, pp.  5–19. Available online: http://www.intercultural.urv.cat/media/
­ ­ ­ ­
upload/domain_317/arxius/Technology/translationtechnology.pdf#page=13 [Accessed 11 April
2020].
Biel, L. and Sosoni, V. (2017) ‘The Translation of Economics and the Economics of Translation. Per-
spectives, 25(3),­ pp. 351–361.
­ ­ ​­ doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2017.1313281.
­ ­ ­
Bowker, L. (2002) Computer-aided Translation Technology: A Practical Introduction. Ottawa: University of
Ottawa Press.
Bowker, L. (2015) ‘Computer-a ided Translation: Translator Training’, in Chan, S. (ed.), Routledge
Encyclopedia of Translation Technology. London: Routledge, pp. 88–104. ­ ­ ​­
Bundgaard, K., Christensen, T. P. and Schjoldager, A. (2016) ‘Translator- computer Interaction in
Action: An Observational Process Study of Computer-a ided Translation’, Journal of Specialised Trans-
lation, 25, pp. 106–130.
­ ­ ​­
Buzelin, H. (2005) ‘Unexpected Allies: How Latour’s Network Theory Could Complement Bourdie-
usian Analyses in Translation Studies’, The Translator, 11(2), ­ pp. 193–218.
­ ­ ​­
Chan, S. (2015a) ‘The Development of Translation Technology: 1967–2013’, in Chan, S. (ed.), Rout-
ledge Encyclopedia of Translation Technology. London: Routledge, pp. 3–31. ­ ­ ​­
Chan, S. (2015b) ‘Preface’, in Chan, S. (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Technology. London:
Routledge, pp. ­xxvii–xxiv. ​­
Chan, S. (2017) The Future of Translation Technology: Towards a World without Babel. London: Routledge.
Chesterman, A. (2007) ‘Bridge Concepts in Translation Sociology’, in Wolf, M. and Fukari, A. (eds.),
Constructing a Sociology of Translation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 171–186.
Christensen, T. P. and Schjoldager, A. (2016) ‘Computer-aided Translation Tools: The Uptake and Use
by Danish Translation Service Providers’, Journal of Specialised Transslation, 25, pp. 80–105. ­ ­ ​­
Christensen, T. P., Flanagan, M. and Schjoldager, A. (2017) ‘Mapping Translation Technology
Research in Translation Studies. An Introduction to the Thematic Section’, ­HERMES-Journal ​­ of
Language and Communication in Business, 56, pp. 7–20. ­ ­ ​­
Cronin, M. (2010) ‘The Translation Crowd’, Tradumàtica, 8, pp. 1–7. ­ ­ ​­ Available online: https://ddd.uab. ­
cat/pub/tradumatica/15787559n8/15787559n8a4.pdf
­ ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 11 April 2020].
Cronin, M. (2013) Translation in the Digital Age. London: Routledge.
Cronin, M. (2017) Eco-Translation. Translation and Ecology in the Age of the Anthropocene. London:
Routledge.

401
Elisa Alonso and Lucas Nunes Vieira

Dam, H. V. and Zethsen, K. K. (2010) ‘Translator Status: Helpers and Opponents in the Ongoing Bat-
tle of an Emerging Profession’, Target. International Journal of Translation Studies, 22(2), ­ pp. 194–211.
­ ­ ​­
Dam, H. V. and Koskinen, K. (2016) ‘The Translation Profession: Centres and Peripheries’, Journal of
Specialised Translation, 25, pp. 2–14. ­ ­ ​­
DePalma, D. A., Pielmeier, H., Henderson, S. and Stewart, R. G. (2016) The Language Service Market
2016. Cambridge: Common Sense Advisory.
Ehrensberger-Dow, M. and O’Brien, S. (2015) ‘Ergonomics of the Translation Workplace: Potential
for Cognitive Friction’, Translation Spaces, 4, pp. 98–118. ­ ­ ​­
EMT Expert Group (2009) ‘Competences for Professional Translators, Experts in Multilingual and
Multimedia Communication. European Master’s in Translation ( EMT). Available online: https://ec.
­ ­ ­ ­ ­
europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/emt_competences_translators_en.pdf [Accessed 11 April 2020].
EMT Board (2017) ‘European Master’s in Translation Competence Framework 2017’, European Mas-
ter’s in Translation ( EMT). Available online: https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/emt_compe-
­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­
tence_fwk_2017_en_web.pdf [Accessed 11 April 2020].
Enríquez Raído, V. (2016) ‘Translators as Adaptive Experts in a Flat World: From Globalization 1.0 to
Globalization 4.0?’, International Journal of Communication, 10, pp. 970–988. ­ ­ ​­
European Commission (n.d.) Machine Translation for Public Administrations – eTranslation. Available on-
line: https://ec.europa.eu/info/resources-partners/machine-translation-public-administrations-
­ ­ ­­ ​­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​
etranslation_en [Accessed 11 April 2020].
EurWORK ( European Observatory of Working Life) (2017) Fragmentation of the Labour Force. Available
­ ­
online: https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/eurwork/industrial-relations-dictionary/ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ​­ ­­
fragmentation-of-the-labour-force
­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 11 April 2020].
Forcada, M. L. (2017) ‘Making Sense of Neural Machine Translation’, Translation Spaces, 6(2), ­ pp. 291–309.
­ ­ ​­
Fulford, H. and Granell-Zafra, J (2005) ‘Translation and Technology: A Study of UK Freelance Trans-
lators’, Journal of Specialised Translation, 4, pp. 2–17. ­ ­ ​­
Garcia, I. (2009) ‘Beyond Translation Memory: Computers and the Professional Translator’, Journal of
Specialised Translation, 12(12), ­ ­ ­
pp. 199–214. ​­
Garcia, I. (2015) ‘Computer-aided Translation: Systems’, in Chan, S. (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of
Translation Technology. London: Routledge, pp. 78–87. ­ ­ ​­
Göpferich, S. (2009) ‘Towards a Model of Translation Competence and its Acquisition: The Longitu-
dinal Study TransComp’, in Göpferich, S., Jakobsen, A. L. and Mees, I. M. (eds.), Behind the Mind:
Methods, Models and Results in Translation Process Research. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur Press,
­ ­ ​­
pp. 11–37.
Gouadec, D. (2007) Translation as a Profession. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Guerberof Arenas, A. (2013) ‘What Do Professional Translators Think about Postediting?’, Journal of
Specialised Translation, 19, pp. 75–95. ­ ­ ​­
Hutchins, J. (2001) ‘M achine Translation and Human Translation: In Competition or in Complemen-
tation’, International Journal of Translation, 13(1–2), ­­ ​­ pp. 5–20.
­ ­ ​­
Hutchins, J. (2015) ‘Machine Translation: History of Research and Applications’, in Chan, S. (ed.),
Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Technology. London: Routledge, pp. 120–136. ­ ­ ​­
ISO 18587 (2017) Translation ­Services – ­​­­Post-editing ​­ of Machine Translation ­Output – ​­Requirements. Geneva:
International Organization for Standardization.
Jääskeläinen, R. (2010) ‘Are All Professionals Experts? Definitions of Expertise and Reinterpretation
of Research Evidence in Process Studies’, in Shreve, G. and Angelone, E. (eds.), Translation and
Cognition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 213–227. ­ ­ ​­
Karamanis, N., Luz, S. and Doherty, G. (2011) ‘Translation Practice in the Workplace: Contextual
Analysis and Implications for Machine Translation’, Machine Translation, 25(1), ­ pp. 35–52.­ ­ ​­
Katan, D. (2009) ‘Translation Theory and Professional Practice: A Global Survey of the Great Divide’,
HERMES-Journal of Language and Communication in Business, 42, pp. 111–153. ­ ­ ​­
Katan, D. (2011) ‘Status of Translators’, in Gambier, Y. and van Doorslaer, L. (eds.), Handbook of Trans-
lation Studies, Vol. 2. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. pp. 146–152.
Katan, D. and Spinzi, C. (eds.) (2014) ‘Transcreation and the Professions [Special Issue], Cultus: The
Journal of Intercultural Mediation and Communication, 7.
Kay, M (1980) The Proper Place of Men and Machines in Language Translation. Palo Alto, CA: Xerox Palo
Alto Research Center. [Reprinted in: Machine Translation (1997) ­ 12(1–2),
­­ ​­ pp. 3–23.] ­ ­ ​­ Available on-
line: http://www.mt-archive.info/70/Kay-1980.pdf
­ ­ ​­ ­ ­­ ​­ [Accessed 11 April 2020].

402
 The impact of technology on the translator

Kelly, D. (2007) ‘Translator Competence Contextualized. Translator Training in the Framework of

Higher Education Reform: In Search of Alignment in Curricular Design’, in Kenny, D. and Ryou,
K. (eds.), ­ Across Boundaries: International Perspectives on Translation Studies. Newcastle: Cambridge
Scholars Publishing, pp. 128–142. ­ ­ ​­
Kenny, D. and Doherty, S. (2014) ‘Statistical Machine Translation in the Translation Curriculum:
Overcoming Obstacles and Empowering Translators’, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 8(2), ­
­ ­
pp. 276–294. ​­ ­ ­
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1750399X.2014.936112. ­
Kiraly, D. (2013) ‘Towards a View of Translator Competence as an Emergent Phenomenon: Thinking Out-
side the Box(es) in Translator Education’, in Kiraly, D., Hansen-Schirra, S. and Maksymski, K. (eds.),
New Prospects and Perspectives for Educating Language Mediators. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, pp. 197–224.
Koponen, M. (2016) ‘Is Machine Translation Post- editing Worth the Effort? A Survey of Research into
Post-editing
­ ​­ and Effort’, Journal of Specialised Translation, 25, pp. 131–148. ­ ­ ​­
Lagoudaki, E. (2006) ‘Translation Memories Survey 2006. Users’ Perceptions around TM Use’,
Translation and the Computer, 28, pp.  ­ ­1–29. ​­ Available online: http://mt-archive.info/Aslib-2006-
­­ ​­ ­­ ­​­­ ​
Lagoudaki.pdf [Accessed 11 April 2020].
Latour, B. (1986) ‘Visualization and Cognition’, Knowledge and Society, 6, pp. 1–40. ­ ­ ​­
Läubli, S. and Orrego- Carmona, D. (2017) ‘W hen Google Translate is Better than Some Human Col-
leagues, Those People Are No Longer Colleagues’, in Esteves-Ferreira, J., Macan, J., Mitkov, R.
and Stefanov, O. M. (eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Conference on Translating and the Computer. London,
­16–17 ​­ November. Geneva: Tradulex, pp.  ­ ­59–69. ​­ Available online: https://www.asling.org/tc39/
­ ­ ­
­wp-content/uploads/TC39-proceedings-final-1Nov-4.20pm.pdf
​­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 11 April 2020].
LeBlanc, M. (2013) ‘Translators on Translation Memory (TM): Results of an Ethnographic Study in
Three Translation Services and Agencies’, Translation and Interpreting, 5(2), ­ pp. 1–13.
­ ­ ​­
LeBlanc, M. (2017) ‘“I Can’t Get no Satisfaction!” Should we Blame Translation Technologies or
Shifting Business Practices?’, in Kenny, D. (ed.), Human Issues in Translation Technology. London:
Routledge, pp. 63–80. ­ ­ ​­
Lilt (n.d.) Available online: https:// lilt.com/ [Accessed 11 April 2020].
Lommel, A. (2018) ‘Augmented Translation: A New Approach to Combining Human and Machine
Capabilities. Proceedings of the 13th Conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Amer-
icas, Volume 2: User Papers. Boston, March 17–21. Available online: http://www.aclweb.org/
anthology/W18-1905 ­­ ​­ [Accessed 11 April 2020].
Lommel, A. R. and DePalma, D. A. (2016) Europe’s Leading Role in Machine Translation. Boston: Com-
mon Sense Advisory.
Lumeras, M. A. and Way, A. (2017) ‘On the Complementarity between Human Translators and
Machine Translation’, HERMES-Journal of Language and Communication in Business, 56, pp. 21–42. ­ ­ ​­
Marr, B. (2019) The Amazing Ways eBay Is Using Artificial Intelligence to Boost Business Success. Forbes.
­
Available online: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/04/26/the-amazing-ways-ebay- ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​
­­is-using-artificial-intelligence-to-boost-business-success/#7715e4812c2e
­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 11 April 2020].
McBride, S. (2019) ‘These 3 Computing Technologies will Beat Moore's Law’, Forbes. Available online:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenmcbride1/2019/04/23/these-3-computing-technologies-
­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​
­­will-beat-moores-law/#518b731537b0
­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 11 April 2020].
Moorkens, J. and O’Brien, S. (2015) ‘Post- editing Evaluations: Trade- offs between Novice and Profes-
sional Participants’, in Durgar El-K ahlout, I., Özkan, M., Sánchez-Martínez, F., R amírez- Sánchez,
G., Hollowood, F. and Way, A. (eds.), Proceedings of European Association for Machine Translation
(EAMT)­ 2015. Antalya ( Turkey), May, pp.  75– 81. Available online: http://www.aclweb.org/
anthology/W15-4910 ­­ ​­ [Accessed 11 April 2020].
Morgan, T. J., Uomini, N. T., Rendell, L. E., Chouinard-Thuly, L., Street, S. E., Lewis, H. M., Cross, C.
P., Evans, C., Kearney, R., de la Torre, I. and Whiten, A. (2015) ‘Experimental Evidence for the Co-
evolution of Hominin Tool-making Teaching and Language’, Nature Communications, 6, article num-
ber 6029. Available online: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7029 [Accessed 11 April 2020].
O’Brien, S. (2012) ‘Translation as Hu man– computer Interaction’, Translation Spaces, 1(1), ­ pp. 101–122.
­ ­ ​­
O’Brien, S. (2013) ‘The Borrowers: Researching the Cognitive Aspects of Translation’, Target. Interna-
tional Journal of Translation Studies, 25(1), ­ pp. 5–17.­ ­ ​­
O’Brien, S., Ehrensberger-Dow, M., Hasler, M. and Connolly, M. (2017) ‘Irritating CAT Tool
Features that Matter to Translators’, HERMES-Journal of Language and Communication in Business, 56,
pp. 145–162.
­ ­ ​­

403
Elisa Alonso and Lucas Nunes Vieira

O’Dowd, T. (2019) ‘Localisation Tech Predictions for 2019. Multilingual Insights. Available online:
https://multilingual.com/localization-tech-predictions-2019/
­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 11 April 2020].
O’Hagan, M. (1996) The Coming Industry of Teletranslation: Overcoming Communication Barriers through
Telecommunication. Clevedon, Philadelphia, PA and Adelaide: Multilingual Matters.
O’Hagan, M. (2013) ‘The Impact of New Technologies on Translation Studies: A Technological
Turn?’, in Millán, C. and Bartrina, F. (eds.) Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London:
Routledge. pp. 503–518. ­ ­ ​­
O’Hagan, M. and Ashworth, D. (2002) Translation-mediated Communication in a Digital World: Facing the
Challenges of Globalization and Localization. Clevedon, Buffalo, Toronto, ON and Sydney: Multilin-
gual Matters.
Olohan, M. (2011) ‘Translators and Translation Technology: The Dance of Agency’, Translation Studies,
4(3),
­ pp. 342–357.
­ ­ ​­
PACTE (2003) ‘Building a Translation Competence Model’, in Alves, F. (ed.), Triangulating Translation.
Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 43– 66.
Pérez Macías, L. (2018) ‘Machine Translation Post- editing in the Professional Translation Min Spain:
A Case Study on the Experience and Opinion of Professional Translators’, in Pérez Ortiz, J. A.
et al. (eds.),
­ Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation.
Universitat d’Alacant (Spain), 28–30 May. EAMT 2018, p. 329. Available online: https://rua.ua.es/
dspace/bitstream/10045/76112/1/EAMT2018-Proceedings_40.pdf
­ ­ ­ ­ ­­ ​­ [Accessed 11 April 2020].
Pickering, A. (1993) The Mangle of Practice: Agency and Emergence in the Sociology of Science. The
American Journal of Sociology, 99(3), ­ pp. 559–589.
­ ­ ​­
Plaza Lara, C. (2019) ‘Análisis DAFO sobre la inclusión de la traducción automática y la posedición en
los másteres de la red EMT’, Journal of Specialised Translation, 31, pp. 260–280. ­ ­ ​­
Pym, A. (2003) ‘Translational Ethics and Electronic Technologies’, VI Seminário de Tradução Científica e Técnica
em Língua Portuguesa: A Profissionalização do Tradutor. Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, pp. 121–126.
Available online: https://usuaris.tinet.cat/apym/on-line/translation/lisbon_ethics.pdf,
­ ­ ­­ ​­ ­ ­ https://www.­
­ ­ ­ ­
tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13556509.2011.10798815?casa_token=Zn4sILLpwIAAAAAA:-
b- ­​­­ 2VmW htFQD601V6g fa151A ihf J0hiJ V X1l2wHt6VIJ9BLbp0p1pBuFfumjhQ6H4V Kg-​
­mHA17n4
Pym, A. (2011) ‘What Technology Does to Translating’, Translation & Interpreting, 3(1), ­ pp. 1–9.
­ ­ ​­
Pym, A., Grin, F., Sfreddo, Claudio, and Chan, A. L. J. (2014) The Status of the Translation Profession in
the European Union. London, New York and Delhi: Anthem Press.
Pym, A., Orrego- Carmona, D. and Torres- Simón, E. (2016) ‘Status and Technology in the Profession-
alization of Translators. Market Disorder and Return of Hierarchy’, Journal of Specialised Translation,
25, pp. 33–53.
­ ­ ​­
Qun, L. and Xiaojun, Z. (2015) ‘Machine Translation: General’, in Chan, S. (ed.), Routledge Encyclope-
dia of Translation Technology. London: Routledge. pp. 105–119. ­ ­ ​­
Rico, C. (2017) ‘La formación de traductores en traducción automática’, Tradumàtica, 15, pp. 75–96. ­ ­ ​­
doi: https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/tradumatica.200.
­ ­ ­ ­
Risku, H. (2002) ‘Situatedness in Translation Studies’, Cognitive Systems Research, 3(3), ­ pp. 523–533.
­ ­ ​­
Risku, H. and Windhager, F. (2013) Extended Translation: A Sociocognitive Research Agenda’, Target.
International Journal of Translation Studies, 25(1), ­ pp. 33–45.­ ­ ​­
Ruokonen, M. and Koskinen, K. (2017) ‘Love Letters or Hate Mail? Translators’ Technology Accep-
tance in the Light of their Emotional Narratives’, in Kenny, D. (ed.), Human Issues in Translation
Technology. London: Routledge, pp. 26–42. ­ ­ ​­
Sandrini, P. (2005) ‘Website Localization and Translation’, in Gerzymisch-A rbogast, H. and Nauert, S.
(eds.),
­ ­EU-High-Level
­​­­ ​­ Scientific Conference Series MuTra. Saarbrücken, 2–6 ­ ​­ May, pp. 131–138.
­ ­ ​­
Seddon, E. (2019) ‘Exploring the Social Complexity of Translation with Assemblage Thinking’, in
Marais, K. and Meylaerts, R. (eds.), Complexity Thinking in Translation Studies: Methodological Consid-
erations. London: Routledge, pp. 104–117. ­ ­ ​­
Séguinot, C. (2007) ‘Translation and the Changing Profession: A Cross- disciplinary Perspective’,
TTR: Traduction, Terminologie, Redaction, 20(1), ­ pp. 171–191.
­ ­ ​­
Somers, H. (ed.) (2003) Computers and Translation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Sterne, J. (2006) ‘Communication as Techné’, in Sheperd, G., St. John, J. and Striphas, T. (eds.),
Communication as … Perspectives on Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA, London and New Delhi: SAGE
Publications, pp. 91–98. ­ ­ ​­

404
 The impact of technology on the translator

TAUS (2014) ‘TAUS Launches online post- editing course’. Available online: https://www.taus.
net/think-tank/news/press-release/taus-launches-online-post-editing-course
­­ ​­ ­ ­­ ​­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 11 April
2020].
Toral, A., Wieling, M. and Way, A. (2018) ‘Post- editing Effort of a Novel with Statistical and Neural
Machine Translation’, Frontiers in Digital Humanities. doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fdigh.2018.00009.
­ ­ ­
Vázquez Medel, M. (2003) ‘El Gran Mediodía. Sobre la Transhumanización’, Pensar la Gestión Cultural
en Andalucía. Huelva: GECA, pp.26–44.
­ ​­
Vermeer, H. J. (1996) A Skopos Theory of Translation (Some Arguments for and against). Heidelberg:
Textcontext.
Vieira, L. N. (2020) ‘Automation Anxiety and Translators’, Translation Studies, 13(1), ­ pp. 
­ 1–21.
­ ​­ doi:
­ ­ ­
https://doi.org/10.1080/14781700.2018.1543613.
Vieira, L. N. (2019) ‘Post- editing of Machine Translation’, in O’Hagan, M. (ed.), The Routledge Hand-
book of Translation Technology. London: Routledge, pp. 319–335.
­ ­ ​­
Vieira, L. N., Alonso, E. and Bywood, L. (2019) ‘Introduction: Post- editing in Practice: Process, Prod-
uct and Networks’, Journal of Specialised Translation, 31, pp. 2–13.
­ ­ ​­
Youdale, R. (2020) Using Computers in the Translation of Literary Style. London: Routledge.

Filmography
Modern Times (1936) Charles Chaplin. IMDb entry https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027977/?ref_=
fn_al_tt_1

405
 28
Volunteerism in translation
Translators Without Borders and
the platform economy

Attila Piróth and Mona Baker

Introduction
Translators, whether professionally trained or otherwise, volunteer their time and skills in
many contexts, including humanitarian assistance and political activism. Volunteering for
humanitarian organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross ( ICRC)
and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ( UNHCR) has received very
little attention from scholars of translation but is partly addressed in a small number of recent
studies. Delgado Luchner and Kherbiche (2018: 418) confirm that ‘the overwhelming ma-
jority’ of interpreters working ‘ in refugee camps or UNHCR offices’ are incentive workers,
that is refugees who provide interpreting for very low payment, which may take the form of
cash vouchers or in-k ind goods.1 Moreno-R ivero (2018) features an interview with a former
Senior Project Officer with Translators without Borders ( TWB), the subject of the current
study. No critical questions are posed and the focus is on research the Officer undertook for
TWB and Save the Children during the Greek migration crisis, stressing, in the Officer’s
words, that ‘[t]hrough research TWB recognizes the gaps in the field, measures the effective-
ness of certain tools and formats, and acquires evidence, data and statistics to strengthen its
advocacy’ (ibid.: 154). Federici et al. (2019: 6) briefly refer to volunteering for humanitarian
organizations in order to stress the importance of investing in technological resources, ar-
guing that

the expansive demands of language access are likely to outstrip the internal resources of
most organizations in the humanitarian sector, and only those with the greatest bud-
getary resources will be able to contract translation services, or materially support key
volunteers in the translation domain.

Volunteering in the context of political activism has attracted more interest and has gener-
ally been approached more critically. Among others, Boéri (2008, 2009) offers a detailed,
critical analysis of the work of Babels, the international network of volunteer translators and
interpreters who cover the linguistic needs of the Social Forums, Baker (2013) examines
the political positioning of volunteer translators involved in collectives such as Tlaxcala and

406
 Volunteerism in translation

Translators Brigade and Baker (2016) provides a critical account of the ethos and output of
volunteer subtitlers who supported the work of two collectives of film makers involved in
reporting events during the Egyptian Revolution. Selim (2016) is a first-hand account of
the author’s personal experience as a volunteer subtitler for Mosireen, a collective of film
makers active during the Egyptian Revolution. These studies challenge the prevalent model
of treating volunteer translators as service providers by developing alternative discourses
and practices that empower translators and recognize their labour – paid or otherwise – a s a
valuable contribution to society rather than a cheap source of additional profit for the cor-
porate world. The term volunteer translation overlaps with but is broader than terms such as
crowdsourcing, which assumes that the unpaid translation work is undertaken in digital space
and is solicited by content owners such as Twitter and Facebook (McDonough Dolmaya
2020), and user-generated translation, which suggests that those producing the translations
are also its ultimate users. We opt for the broader term because despite the increased reliance
on digital platforms in soliciting and undertaking unpaid translation work in recent years,
most of the ethical issues we discuss are not limited to crowdsourcing in the strict sense. The
term ‘volunteer translation’ also allows us to engage specifically with the ethical and social
implications of unpaid translation work, whether offered as an act of charity or solidarity
with disadvantaged or threatened communities. At the same time, we will be highlighting
certain aspects of the widespread practice of crowdsourcing where relevant in order to situate
the examples of volunteer translation we discuss within the wider context of the platform
economy and the widespread exploitation of digital labour (Morozov 2013; Scholz 2014a).

Volunteer/crowdsourced translation and the platform economy

Lanier (2013: 53) warns that ‘digitizing economy and cultural activity will ultimately shrink
the economy while concentrating wealth and power in new ways that are not sustainable’,
citing translation as an example. ‘The act of cloud-based translation’, he explains, ‘shrinks the
economy by pretending the translators who provided the examples do not exist. With each
so-called automatic translation, the humans who were the sources of the data are inched away
from the world of compensation and employment’ (ibid.: 20). Given the centrality of transla-
tion in the information society and the growing interest in its social and political impact, it is
important to explore how these general industrial economy trends apply more broadly to the
field of translation – once considered as artisanal economy – and how alternatives to a platform-
based approach might help counter some of these trends and restore an element of parity to the
system. The relevance of this discussion thus extends beyond our immediate target audience
of translation scholars, raising issues that are pertinent to social theorists, scholars of political
economy and digital culture, as well as non-specialist audiences interested in the ethical ques-
tions it raises and the power relations underpinning the political economy of volunteer work.
The new platform economy that has replaced artisanal economies such as those of tradi-
tional translation is specifically directed at reducing the value of human labour ( Rushkoff
2016: 19), with technology playing a major role in the process. The impetus to devalue
human labour underpins the extension of ‘the extreme efficiencies of digital networks’ to new
areas ‘ in such a way that the sources of value, whatever they may be, are left more off-the-
books than they used to be’ ( Lanier 2013: 66). Rushkoff (2016: 7) adds that corporations in-
troducing new technologies ‘are free to disrupt almost any industry they choose – journalism,
television, music, manufacturing – as long as they don’t disrupt the financial operating system
churning beneath it all’.

407
Attila Piróth and Mona Baker

­Figure 28.1 Screenshot from TM town page ‘10 reasons to upload your prior work to TM town’.

Crowdsourcing, a practice that is widespread in the field of translation and whose ethics
have been rarely questioned,2 and then only from the perspective of its impact on the pro-
fession ( Baer 2010; McDonough Dolmaya 2011), is a major feature of the platform economy
and a prime example of the devaluation of human labour that it enables. As Rushkoff points
out, drawing on Scholz (2014b), ‘ in crowdsourcing there’s no minimum wage, no labor reg-
ulation, no governmental jurisdiction’ (2016: 50). With a high and increasing proportion of
translators working as freelancers, translation lends itself readily to crowdsourcing projects
initiated by the likes of Twitter and Facebook. The integration of linguistic assets such as
translation memories and the widespread use of word-based rather than hourly or project-
based pricing schemes have accelerated the commoditization of the sector to the point where
the platform TM Town, owned and operated by Proz.com 3 (a­ ­membership-based ​­ network
website targeting freelance translators), invites freelancers to upload their own resources,
including translation memories, in order to improve their ranking in the bidding process on
new translation projects, thus shifting the focus from skills to assets, and from value creation
to value extraction (Figure 28.1).
Scholars and practitioners of translation have rarely shown awareness of the cynical aspects
of such crowdsourcing practices, and so far have never examined the motives behind solic-
iting volunteer translation for humanitarian organizations. This is not surprising, given that
the humanitarian rhetoric is rarely questioned outside those areas of scholarship that are di-
rectly concerned with the study of humanitarian and non-governmental organizations. The
humanitarian rhetoric has been widely instrumentalized by the United States and United
Kingdom during their various invasions of the Middle East, with implications for NGOs,
described by Colin Powell in 2001 as ‘such a force multiplier for us, such an important part
of our combat team’ ( Krausse 2014: 18). The perception of NGOs as implicated in military
operations may be one of the reasons why ‘ humanitarian relief is a very reflexive and very
self-critical field’ (ibid.: 126). The same cannot be said of the field of translation, where this
rhetoric continues to be accepted at face value, and where volunteering for humanitarian
causes is typically couched in the language of charity rather than solidarity, as evident in
some of the quotes from volunteers cited on the TWB website, Volunteer section: ‘I’m well-
off in my world. Many others need help in theirs. That’s why I volunteer’; ‘This work is im-
mensely satisfying – particularly when I can see how I am helping to make a difference’; ‘The
sense that people are genuinely helped by my translation makes me happy’ ( Figure  28.2).
Construing volunteer translation as an act of charity rather than solidarity has consequences
for the level of critical awareness with which we are likely to approach it.
Unlike charity, solidarity is reflexive and is able to critique itself ( Rai 2018: 14). Khasnabish
(2021: 386) highlights two further characteristics whose relevance to the current discussion
will become clear. Solidarity, he explains, is ‘a transformative relationship for those involved
in forging it, not a thing to be achieved; second, it is grassroots in nature and often constructed

408
 Volunteerism in translation

IN THE WORDS OF OUR VOLUNTEERS

“Language can open doors to exhausted and

hopeless people.” Roya Khoshnevis, volunteer
on the TWB English to Farsi Rapid Response
Translation Team

“I’m well-off in my world. Many other need

help in theirs. That’s why l volunteer.” Markus
Meisl, sponsorship volunteer

“The last thing refugees should be facing is

more distress because of a lack of corret
information” Hanan Ben Nafa, member of the
TWB Arabic Rapid Response Translation Team

“As long as every one of us does something -

no matter how small - we can hope for a
better future.” Narges rasouli, TWB English
to Farsi Volunteer Translator

“This work is immensely satisfying -

particularly when I can see how I and helping
to make a difference.” Farideh Colthart, TWB
Farsi Interpreter

“The sense that people are genuinely helped

by my translation makes me happy.” Bashir
Baqi, TWB English to Farsi volunteer translator

­Figure 28.2 TWB – In the words of our volunteers (accessed 25 October 2019).

from the margins, not something imposed from above’. As such, many acts of solidarity are
not sanctioned by mainstream institutions and may attract critical attention. Charity, on the
other hand, is rarely treated as a potentially controversial act, and hence is more likely to escape
scrutiny. So far, for instance, the limited literature on crowdsourced translation has focused on
topics such as motivation (McDonough Dolmaya 2012; Olohan 2012, 2014) but has rarely en-
gaged with its ethics or situated it within wider critiques of the platform economy and digital
labour. Charity is also not a transformative relationship for those who offer it, as it is typically
restricted to helping those in need without expectation of material return. Nevertheless, reg-
istered charities are obliged to operate under formal and transparent guidelines to ensure that
all donations are properly allocated to the recipient community and stringently managed. This
requirement, as we will demonstrate, is absent in the case of some organizations that solicit
unpaid translation work as a form of charitable contribution.
Formal non-profit charities have long operated by appealing to governments, corporate
donors and the public for donations, which are used to cover expenses and pay suppliers
and skilled professionals adequately for their aid services. In some cases, the donation being
sought is not financial but actual k now-how, often embodied by reusable or codifiable solu-
tions. Seeking such donations by harnessing what Shirky (2010) refers to as the ‘cognitive
surplus’ through crowdsourcing has been facilitated by technological developments. With

409
Attila Piróth and Mona Baker

the accelerated consolidation of human knowledge into databases, this leads to a disruption
of professional practices ( Piróth 2016) and requires engagement with the ethical and social
implications of free labour. In addition to its local and discrete charitable effect in the form
of delivering translated material, for example, crowdsourcing may also create long-term
intangible assets: digital bilingual databases such as translation memories, glossaries and cor-
pora that are of intrinsic value to the translation market. These assets are not localized to the
charity recipients: they can be stored, managed, replicated and transferred by their curators.
The use of such assets is not regulated by any special regime, and there is no standard for
tracking their deployment in other contexts. In short, saleable intellectual property can be
generated, posing valid socio-economic questions in our increasingly d ata-based economy.
We demonstrate this issue in Section ‘Machine translation and the money trail: who benefits
from volunteer work?’ by exploring the close collaboration between the charity TWB – the
subject of the current research – and the for-profit tech giant Microsoft. We describe how,
in a Microsoft-funded project, TWB used the unpaid labour of its volunteer translators to
produce Swahili language assets that were subsequently integrated into Microsoft’s various
commercial tools in 2015.
In what follows, we contrast the practices of two organizations that aim to address hu-
manitarian needs and that have a history of making extensive use of volunteer translators
in order to highlight the ethical issues involved in offering free labour to different parties,
whether in digital or physical space, and to situate discussions of unpaid translation work
within the wider context of the platform economy.

Solidarités International and Translators without Borders

The two organizations we focus on offer two markedly different models of collaborating
with volunteer translators. Solidarités International (SI) runs a paid internship programme
that adopts a peer-based, horizontal model with a strong focus on early career translators.
TWB, on the other hand, adopts an a sset-centred, platform-based, top- down model that
offers massive scaling possibilities and reflects a corporate vision of the translation commu-
nity. SI’s internship model operates on a small scale and aims to integrate translators with the
rest of the organization’s staff. Linguistic assets created by translators within the internship
framework are managed in close collaboration with SI. On the other hand, TWB aims to
centralize outsourced translation tasks from many non-profits and to complete them using
a free crowdsourcing model through a scalable platform suitable for hundreds of potential
NGO clients and thousands of volunteer translators. Linguistic assets created through the
platform are managed by TWB’s leadership. An emerging strand of social movement studies
has begun to engage specifically with the effectiveness and positioning of volunteer transla-
tors in these two markedly different contexts – g rassroots vs top- down models of organiza-
tion ( Doerr 2018) – but much more still needs to be done.
Our account of SI’s internship programme is informed by first-hand involvement of the
first author ( Piróth) with the organization as a volunteer, initially in relation to terminology
coordination and project management, and later in training and tutoring, though we also
draw on publicly available information relating to the organization. Our account of TWB
practices, on the other hand, is undertaken from an external point of view, building on
earlier critique discussed in Baker (2006, 2010). Our critical analysis of TWB practices and
ethos also draws on publicly available data such as TWB’s own website, discussions on plat-
forms such as Proz.com in which TWB representatives and volunteer translators have been
involved, TWB declarations to the Internal Revenue Service as a tax exempt organization

410
 Volunteerism in translation

and published records of talks by TWB executives. We consider this t wo-pronged approach
fit for purpose in this case, since our primary aim is not to perform a point-by-point com-
parison but to explore whether probity, transparency and conflicts of interest meet the usual
requirements imposed by established charities, and to identify key issues that impact the
professionalization and stature of translators in various collaborative setups.
Founded in 1980 and based in Clichy, near Paris, SI currently operates aid programmes
in 18 countries devastated by political conflicts, epidemics and natural disasters. With almost
2,000 national and international staff, it helps around four million people worldwide. In
recent years, its annual budget has been around 70– 80 million euros, with over 90% con-
sistently allocated to its humanitarian programmes to assist populations in need. Its publicly
available annual reports quote the following figures:4

2013: 70.33 million €, 93.6%, over 5.8 million people helped;

2014: 72.5 million €, 93%, more than 5 million people helped;
2015: 69 million €, 91.3%, 3.8 million people helped;
2016: 71 million €, 91.5%, almost 4 million people helped;
2017: 79 million €, 92.1%, nearly 4 million people helped;
2018: 86 million €, 91.4%, nearly 4 million people helped.

The organization publishes its accounts transparently and undergoes external audits regularly
to ensure and demonstrate the proper use of resources. It is among the 91 French organiza-
tions that hold the Don en confiance ( Donate in Confidence) accreditation ( Don en confiance
2018), which requires NGOs to adopt stringent measures regarding transparency, efficiency
and potential conflicts of interest. The approval of a dedicated independent organization that
lists a French ministry among its partners, and another among its supporters, helps reinforce
donors’ confidence that SI’s aid programmes and avowed vision are supported by a robust
internal structure.
SI has over 50,000 active donors, including major international financial backers, and its
key communication materials have to be available in French and English. It does not employ
full-t ime in-house translators, since the demand for translation is insufficient and variable.
There is therefore a recurrent need for external French-to-English translation. Other trans-
lation needs, to and from the languages used in the countries where the NGO operates, are
usually handled locally by SI’s national staff. In terms of organizational structure and gover-
nance, full membership of SI can be obtained solely by first doing fieldwork or by spending
years in a logistics or administrative role. Only full members are eligible to join the board and
must first disclose any potential conflicts of interest. These requirements are standard practice
for humanitarian NGOs. For example, Doctors Without Borders (Médecins ­ Sans ­Frontières –​
­MSF) applies the same approach, as a colleague was informed during a telephone call to
MSF’s office in Sydney ( Vivian Stevenson, personal communication, November 2014). In
response to a specific question about possible exceptions for high-profile individuals, he was
told by an assistant to MSF Australia’s Board that even Bill Gates would not get an ordinary –
let alone a board – membership through monetary donations: he would have to toil at the
coalface first. Or as the MSF representative put it, ‘you earn your stripes’.
The non-profit TWB is often mentioned whenever translation for humanitarian causes
is discussed, and its agenda tends to be embraced uncritically by scholars of translation.
The Dublin City University led INTERACT project (INTERnAtional network on Crisis
Translation), for instance, lists TWB as a partner organization. Although its name may sug-
gest otherwise, TWB is not a front-line humanitarian NGO but an independent non-profit

411
Attila Piróth and Mona Baker

providing linguistic support to humanitarian and other organizations. Launched as Traduc-

teurs sans Frontières in Paris as an offshoot of the for-profit translation company Eurotexte,
the organization started to provide free translation to select NGOs in the mid-1990s, by
donating the work of Eurotexte’s paid, in-house translators. The conflict between humani-
tarian and commercial agendas and the resulting narrative incoherence were discussed over
a decade ago by Baker (2006: 157–162). TWB later adopted a large- scale crowdsourcing
approach that extended its pool of translators well beyond its in-house team, imposed pro-
fessional credentials as entry criteria and offered zero payment to volunteers. It has attracted
thousands of freelance contributors over the years through extensive marketing and PR, and
has become a household name. As of this writing, TWB has donated over 82 million words
(Figure 28.3) across all languages (over 190 language pairs) and projects; its website states that
it ‘translates more than ten million words per year for non-profit organizations’.
Unlike MSF or SI, TWB has a strong top- down corporate structure, as discussed in more
detail below. According to TWB’s own IRS 990 declarations ( TWB 990, 2015, 2016), the
organization has no written conflict-of-interest policy to date. TWB thus cannot meet the
requirements of Don en Confiance and similar independent bodies. Nonetheless, TWB has
received h igh-level recognition: for instance, in October 2017, in her contribution to the
House of Lords debate on Sierra Leone, Baroness Coussins ( Vice President of the Chartered
Institute of Linguists in the United Kingdom) drew attention to the important role played by
TWB volunteer translators in assisting recovery from Ebola in the region (Coussins 2017).
Just a year before, in October 2016, TWB’s chair Andrew Bredenkamp was the invited
keynote speaker at the European Commission’s Translating Europe Forum in Brussels. He
was warmly welcomed by Kristalina Georgieva, who had just resigned from her position as
the Commission’s Vice President to become the CEO of the World Bank. Mr. Bredenkamp
shared information on TWB’s involvement in the Ebola crisis and TWB’s work in Haiti
after Hurricane Matthew in 2015. We take a closer look at these flagship projects later in the
chapter, as we examine a range of issues that may serve as yardsticks by which to critique the
ethical practices of TWB, using SI as a potential alternative model for organizing volunteer
translation work for humanitarian purposes. These issues include the translators’ status and

­Figure 28.3 Words translated counter on TWB’s homepage (accessed 25 October 2019).

412
 Volunteerism in translation

ethos, the limits of unpaid work, the need to trace the money trail to establish who ultimately
benefits from volunteer work and the path of evolution followed by putative non-profits such
as TWB as opposed to that pursued by bona fide humanitarian organizations.

Translators’ status and ethos

As the high-level appreciation received in the House of Lords and in the European Commission
indicates, TWB successfully raised awareness of the importance of language and translation;
Federici et al. (2019: 5) make this point explicitly. But what of translators themselves? To an-
swer this question, it is worth looking more closely at how TWB addresses different audiences.
When targeting humanitarian organizations and the general public, the organization em-
phasizes the vital importance of translation; however, when targeting volunteer translators,
TWB depicts translation in the FAQ section of its Workspace ( TWB FAQ 2016) as an un-
budgeted afterthought.

4. Are translators paid?

No. Although there have been rare exceptions, most of the projects are done strictly on
a volunteer basis.
5. Does Translators without Borders charge its partners?
Yes, there is an annual subscription fee of $500. This is an initial fee introduced in Janu-
ary 2017 for the first 20,000 words, and it will cover their use of the Workspace, general
management of the Workspace and Translation Server, as well as the future development
of our community. The additional payments will be based on the partner’s annual ex-
penditure and the volume of translation/other work with TWB. We do ensure that very
small partners doing great strategic work are still supported.
6. If you get payments, why don’t you pay translators?
The management fee we are requesting from our partners only covers oversight of the
Workspace and Translation Server, allowing us to professionalize the Workspace for our
volunteers and our partners. With our current growth, we need a dedicated team to
properly oversee and support the Workspace going forward.
(https://twb.translationcenter.org/workspace/manuals/page/frequently_asked_questions)
­ ­ ­ ­ ­

Translation is thus presented as vital or incidental, depending on the audience. The disso-
nance between the two stances is worrisome in light of the emerging employment precariat
in society at large. Indeed, as one scholar of translation notes, ‘The low status that translators
are associated with stands in contrast to the volume of translation work that is carried out
worldwide, which has increased under the influence of globalization’ ( Tesseur 2014: 31).
Hence, while translation may be doing fine, translators apparently are not. This inversion
of benefit is a familiar historical theme and an inherent feature of the platform economy,
but there is no compelling reason why it should be accepted at face value. Demonetization,
commoditization and deprofessionalization are unlikely to boost the net worth of society’s
cognitive capital, whether in the field of translation or in other areas of the economy.
SI adopts a different approach to volunteer translation that contrasts markedly with
TWB’s practices. It set up an external pro bono network of freelance translators in 2007,5
with a dual aim: to provide free linguistic aid to the organization and to create a workspace
where qualified translators (including career starters) could collaborate, network and develop
their skills. Since previous experience was not a prerequisite, the team was, from the outset,
a mix of qualified professionals at the beginning of their career and experienced colleagues.

413
Attila Piróth and Mona Baker

The possibility of working with senior colleagues and receiving detailed feedback turned
out to be particularly attractive to young colleagues, who felt that it accelerated their tran-
sition from qualified but inexperienced newcomers to established professionals. Typically,
participants took on 1,500 to 3,000 words of translation per project – roughly a day’s work,
often with long gaps between projects. All translations were revised by a second professional.
Unlike the typical setting of a translation agency, the translator and the reviser were not
anonymous to each other, and communication between them and with other team members
was strongly encouraged. To ensure consistency of key terms, a glossary was developed right
from the first project. It was first published in 2009, then updated in 2017 ( Fowler et al. 2017),
with all contributors credited by name.
Some organizations emphasize the volume translated by their volunteers. For example,
volunteers for TWB have the number of translated words displayed on their ProZ.com pro-
file page ( ProZ 2011), and TWB itself welcomes website visitors with a counter that shows
in real time the ‘number of words donated’ (see Figure 28.3). This is very much in line with
the ‘alternative value systems’ created by social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook –
consisting of likes, views – which have become ‘a kind of new currency’ ( Rushkoff 2016: 31).
By contrast, translators in the SI network spend a considerable amount of time communicat-
ing with others, whereas in a more ‘streamlined’ setting they could presumably translate a
greater volume. High productivity has never been a priority for them; in fact, productivity-
maximizing strategies may easily reduce volunteers’ interest. The SI team, moreover, chose
not to prioritize productivity because emphasizing the sheer number of words contributes to
the commoditization of translation. Instead, translators’ names feature in printed brochures,
including the credits section in SI’s annual reports. This gives translators recognition, em-
phasizes the importance of translation to readers and gives SI the assurance that participants
will do their best, since their own reputation is at stake.
While many translators find that helping a humanitarian organization is rewarding in
itself, the benefits of collaboration should not be underestimated. Shared projects can be the
basis of future partnerships among translators. Experienced freelance professionals frequently
emphasize the importance of having a trusted business partner, as it alleviates isolation,
makes regular work less stressful, helps ensure a reliable backup for holidays and may open
new revenue streams by allowing modest scaling, i.e. handling projects that are too large for
one person. The SI network thus serves to create relational capital for freelance translators.
Shared pro bono projects for humanitarian NGOs may facilitate finding good network part-
ners, especially because the environment is less competitive than typical t ranslator-reviser-
translation agency settings, where financial interest may turn collaborators into competitors.

The limits of unpaid work

It is often considered bad taste to raise critical questions about charity and volunteering, as we
have already noted, but the potential contribution of pro bono work to precariousness in the
labour market is a pressing issue. NGOs in the international development field carefully con-
sider external factors so that their actions do not harm the physical or economic environment
in which they operate. This should include the community of translators who support their
services. Indeed, the International Federation of Translators’ position paper on internships
(FIT 2016) stresses that

If all other members of the staff of the non-profit organisation do their work on an un-
paid basis, then it is fair enough that the translator/interpreter intern is not paid either.

414
 Volunteerism in translation

But if other staff members are paid for their work, then there is no reason not to remu-
nerate the translator/interpreter intern.

Naturally, this argument does not apply to interns alone.

During the Ebola crisis, TWB volunteers translated 81,000 words across all languages
( Words of Relief 2015). This is valuated at roughly $16,000 using TWB’s usual conversion
factor ( USD 0.20/word), bearing in mind that the detailed program report ( HIF-TWB 2015)
reveals high organizational and Machine Translation/MT-training costs, whereas costs re-
lated to translation itself are well under the USD 0.20 reference value. It is worth noting that
the hypothetical per-word rate of USD 0.20/word, usually cited to tax authorities ( TWB
990, 2015, 2016), the general public ( Kelly 2011) and potential sponsors, is in fact several
times higher than what bulk-market translation companies – which have long been repre-
sented on TWB’s board of directors and advisory board – actually pay their freelance transla-
tors, raising questions about TWB’s motives for inflating the hypothetical value.
Nonetheless, a $16,000 budget would have comfortably allowed TWB to pay its trans-
lators handsomely during the Ebola crisis. An even smaller amount would have sufficed to
pay those whom TWB engaged in 2015 to ‘minimize the devastating effects of the Nepal
earthquake’ by translating, among others, ‘over 500 terms into Nepali, Newari and Hindi
for search and rescue people and for people monitoring messages coming from the affected
populations’ on a volunteer basis ( TWB 2015). Importantly, TWB’s approach here is clearly
at odds with the practices of humanitarian NGOs, which typically collect funds in Western
countries and employ paid national staff for their aid programmes, thus contributing to the
revitalization of the local economy. This is what donors expect after an earthquake that de-
stroyed about half the country’s annual GDP.
SI attempts to avoid this ethical black hole by pursuing a different model. In 2009, it set
aside a sum of €2,000 to pay its translators, consulting with them about how this amount
might be shared among them. The idea of rewarding past projects was quickly discarded, as
payment would have been far below professional levels and would have established an inap-
propriate baseline. After much discussion, a seemingly inequitable solution was agreed: to
pay some participants but not others. Looking at the question from the angle of peer-to-peer
solidarity led to a joint decision to reserve the limited funds available to pay colleagues with-
out a stable income: qualified early career translators for whom this could be the first career
step. They would probably have more time to devote to SI, so they could be expected to con-
tribute much more than those participating pro bono. The idea of a paid remote internship
was thus born. Over a period of three months, ‘ interns’ – who could be located anywhere,
and work from their home office – would devote 10–15 hours per week to SI and build their
freelance career in parallel. They would be paid €1,000 each in total – a modest sum on a
professional level but a decent one for the equivalent of a one-month full-time internship at
an NGO in France. The rest of the team would continue to help pro bono occasionally, as
their schedule would allow. Over the years, previous interns would take on more and more
of the pro bono revision and mentoring work; their commitment would thus extend beyond
the three-month internship period to ensure a self-perpetuating setup. These ideas were put
forward in a group discussion, since a decision that would affect the overall collaboration so
profoundly had to be decided collectively. The team’s unanimous approval opened the way
to the annual SI internship programme. To make the internship even more useful, a series of
ten two-hour webinars was created for the interns and the rest of the team on various aspects
of the profession such as translation tools, business issues and revision and quality assessment
protocols.

415
Attila Piróth and Mona Baker

Universities often require graduating students to complete internships. Unpaid intern-

ships have become standard across the board, facilitating the recruitment process at marginal
costs for companies and public institutions. Even UNICEF runs unpaid translation intern-
ship programmes – although, given the size and status of the organization, one would expect
them to offer paid traineeships, as does, for example, the European Parliament’s Terminology
Coordination Unit. Although SI’s paid internship programme is not a sustainable long-term
career option, it is a step in that direction. If other organizations followed suit and NGOs
working in the humanitarian and international development fields set similar internship
conditions, for-profits would be under more pressure to improve their offers. With these
considerations in mind, SI’s internship programme has been advertised at universities in the
United Kingdom, United States and Canada since 2016. In addition to their suitability for
the task, SI’s guiding principle of solidarity rather than charity meant that candidates were
also assessed in terms of how they would benefit from the internship programme.

Machine translation and the money trail: who benefits from

volunteer work?
As O’Donnell (2016) puts it, ‘[m]ake no mistake, there is big money in the international
volunteering industry’, and hence ‘[i]t is the volunteer’s responsibility to learn about the
ethical quandaries, issues, and attitudes within this industry’ ( bold in original). Volunteering
Grassroots, the site founded by O’Donnell in 2011 ‘as a way to decommodify the volunteer-
ism industry’, proposes a number of criteria for ‘assessing an organisation one is considering
volunteering with ethically’. Prominent among these criteria is ‘money trail’ – that is, estab-
lishing who ultimately benefits from the volunteering work.
TWB’s use of machine translation dates back to the 2010 Haiti Earthquake, when Carne-
gie Mellon University researchers released their data on Haitian Creole (CMU 2010). It was
around this time that TWB relocated from France to the United States and corporate heavy-
weights joined its boards en masse, expanding its management structure. President Obama’s
Strategy for American Innovation 2009 had included ‘automatic, highly accurate and real-t ime
translation between the major languages of the world – g reatly lowering the barriers to in-
ternational commerce and communication’ just a couple of months earlier (Obama 2011). In
addition to international commerce and communication, intelligence (military, police and
business) also remains a high priority field of application for this technology.
In 2014, TWB received a $250,000 ‘Technology for Good’ research grant from Microsoft
( TWB 2014) to fund a crowdsourcing application to help communicate with aid workers in
Swahili and Somali when disasters strike, and to build a corps of vetted translators and inter-
preters, plus machine translation capacity, in under-resourced world languages. In The Shock
Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein (2007) investigates how crisis situa-
tions are exploited to push through controversial policies while citizens are too distracted
by disasters or upheavals to mount effective resistance. Organizations like Movement Gen-
eration thus emphasize the importance of setting up a critical framework for ‘Just Recovery’
(Movement Generation 2017), to amplify collective efforts in the face of disaster situations
and make sure that they are not hijacked. Such a framework does not seem to have been con-
sidered by TWB, which used the Microsoft grant funds to verify the efficiency of the tech-
nology supplied by Microsoft itself – a company that was also represented on TWB’s advisory
board. Further, the entire initiative was undertaken in response to a recommendation by the
market-research firm Common Sense Advisory in its report on The Need for Translation in
Africa ( Kelly et al. 2012). Common Sense Advisory co-founder, Renato Beninatto, was also

416
 Volunteerism in translation

curiously on TWB’s advisory board at the time. In addition to the crowdsourcing applica-
tion it produced, the grant also helped to set up f ree-of- charge ‘ linguistic assets’ ( human and
machine), but did not, however, pay those who provided linguistic services. Acknowledging
TWB’s help, Microsoft launched its Swahili translation tool, integrated into Microsoft’s var-
ious commercial products, in 2015 (Microsoft 2015).
Similarly, speaking about the work of TWB in Haiti after Hurricane Matthew in 2015,
TWB’s chair highlighted the organization’s issuing of cholera prevention messages and post-
hurricane warnings in Haitian Creole with the help of 40 volunteer t ranslators – in close col-
laboration with Microsoft, with a view to improving Microsoft’s machine translation engine
for Haitian Creole. The participation of TWB volunteers in building machine translation
capacity for Microsoft is thus a specific example of the changing landscape of ‘charity’: here,
a linguistic asset created collectively by volunteers in a humanitarian context was transferred
to a for-profit project partner and turned into saleable intellectual property. This is in stark
contrast with the practices of MSF, which ‘distances itself from the pollution of political
capital and economic capital … [and] refuses to be driven by donors’ agendas in its choice of
projects’ ( Krausse 2014: 122).
Close examination of TWB’s structure confirms that the example of machine transla-
tion capacity-building for Microsoft by volunteers is not a one- off slip or oversight but an
intrinsic feature of the way the organization operates. TWB relies on thousands of freelance
translators who enthusiastically contribute on an unpaid basis, whereas TWB’s leadership
has long been composed primarily of major industry players, many of whom own or oper-
ate commercial concerns that have a strong and undisguised interest in exploiting machine
translation and unpaid crowdsourcing. Over the years, major users of machine translation
and crowdsourcing ( Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Symantec, Adobe, Oracle, MacroMedia,
dotSub, Paypal), some of the largest translation companies (such as Lionbridge, Moravia,
Textminded and Elanex), as well as agenda- setters of the bulk translation market (such as
ProZ.com, TAUS, Common Sense Advisory, Localization World and Multilingual Mag-
azine) have all been represented on TWB’s board of directors or advisory board, making
TWB look like the philanthropic arm of a massive business consortium.
The invocation of charity and humanitarianism makes objective commentary and critique
a minefield, as already noted. If Reporters without Borders had Arianna Huffington, Michael
Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch as board members, questioning their representation would
only be natural. But when perceptions of conflicts of interest within TWB were raised on
Kevin Lossner’s Translation Tribulations blog in October 2014, various people expressed their
‘[sadness and shock] by the unjustified, small-m inded and (what appears to be appallingly
poorly informed) attack on an organization that has a decades-long history of providing ur-
gently needed charity for people in dire health crises’ (comment on Lossner 2014) – ignoring
the actual issue of conflict of interest. No further comments were added by the same critics
of Lossner’s blog when specific details of the ACCEPT project were published ( Piróth 2014).
The avowed aim of ACCEPT (Automated Community Content Editing PorTal) was
to enable ‘machine translation for the emerging community content paradigm, allowing
citizens across the EU better access to communities in both commercial and non-profit en-
vironments’ (ACCEPT 2012). The project received an EU grant of 1.8 million euros, allow-
ing the participating for-profits – including the IT giant Symantec as well as two for-profit
companies, Acrolinx and Lexcelera/Eurotexte, run by board members of TWB6 – ​­to lower
their R&D costs for a disruptive technology that yields them high profit margins. In the
‘Exploitation Plan’ (no irony intended) of the ACCEPT project, Lexcelera committed itself
to ‘scaling up the operations of Translation [sic] Without Borders from millions of words per

417
Attila Piróth and Mona Baker

year to tens or even hundreds of millions of words’ (ACCEPT 2013). Piróth (2014) concludes
the following:

Using [TWB’s] unpaid participants in a project with an admitted commercial motive,

funded by and for the EU, appears – at very least – curious. From a distance, one might
ask whether TWB’s name and fame (derived from the idealistic and unremunerated con-
tributions of donor translators focused on developing nations) has helped profit-m aking
concerns – Acrolinx, Lexcelera, Symantec – obtain public monies for developing valu-
able digital media translation solutions. The ACCEPT project may yield results that jus-
tify its public funding, but they will be specifically for EU ( First World) nations. TWB
and other non-profits would doubtless receive some benefits, but the outcomes and assets
would be ripe for use in prime commercial settings far removed from developing nations
and the motivations of most volunteers.

A couple of days after the questions on conflicts of interests were raised, Lori Thicke (who
founded TWB as part of her Eurotexte translation company) stepped down, leaving TWB’s
chair, curiously, to Andrew Bredenkamp, the CEO of Acrolinx.
The ACCEPT project, with massively funded digital media companies using volunteer
contributors, reflects the general trend noted by Lanier (2013: 257), where ‘network- oriented
companies routinely raise huge amounts of money based precisely on placing a value on what
ordinary people do online’ while repositioning the same people ‘out of the loop of their own
commercial value’. The massive scaling promised in the exploitation plan was probably a key
to success; as Rushkoff (2016: 5) notes, ‘[g]rowth is the single, uncontested, core command
of the digital economy’ and ‘the logic driving the low-wage gig economy’ (ibid.: 4). Con-
sequently, he argues, platforms are optimized ‘not for people or even value but for growth’
(ibid.:
­ 6).

TWB vs humanitarian organizations: different paths of evolution

In her presentation at the 2012 TAUS European Summit, Lori Thicke emphasized the im-
portance of ‘disintermediation’, of ‘putting the crowd in direct touch with the NGO and
then getting out of the process’. Just as in the ACCEPT project, she recommended the same
approach in non-profit and for-profit settings: ‘This is the same kind of infrastructure that
I believe could be used to support other translations where there is no traditional budget,
like customer support’ ( Thicke 2012). But it is disingenuous to describe the aim of replac-
ing human intermediaries by an all-logging communication platform as disintermediation,
given that the idea here is to consolidate the intermediary’s role and to enable scaling and
lock-in, as the example of Uber clearly shows. This slippage of terminology is not new
or accidental. Morozov (2013) shows how digital media companies, under the banner of
‘disintermediation’, have introduced a growing number of mostly invisible intermediaries, a
situation that might more aptly be described as ‘ hypermediation’.
The emerging platform economy ( Lanier 2013) and ‘disruptive technology- d riven pro-
ductivity gains’ ( Kapur et al. 2005) are widely identified as key drivers of increasing inequality
but are central to the operation of corporate bodies. The translation industry, represented by
TWB, now offers potential investors free crowdsourcing combined with machine translation
technology – on a platform that is a potential treasure trove for HR managers. In his Brussels
talk, Mr. Bredenkamp mentioned that TWB would soon start collecting contributions from

418
 Volunteerism in translation

‘partner NGOs’ to sustain this platform. Today, subscription fees for NGOs start at USD 500
( TWB Kató 2017), while translators continue to contribute pro bono.
TWB is not the only large- scale collaborative volunteer translation platform adopting a
technology- d riven approach and a top- down management structure: The Rosetta Foun-
dation ( Translation Commons/Trommons) (The Rosetta Foundation 2017) is another
well-known example. For years, there has been a significant overlap between the major
stakeholders of TWB and The Rosetta Foundation, including members who served on the
advisory boards of both organizations simultaneously. It thus came as no surprise when the
two organizations merged in June 2017 ( TWB-TRF 2017). Mergers and acquisitions are
standard practice in the for-profit sector but are rare among humanitarian and international
development NGOs. This stage in TWB’s evolution can thus be more readily understood
in terms of the corporate vision of the translation industry reflected by TWB’s management
and practices than by TWB’s non-profit status or chosen position as an actor in the humani-
tarian field, providing support for its partner (client) NGOs. Human resource management,
technology and access to future EU funding are admitted key motivations: ‘the merger gives
Translators without Borders ( TWB) access to The Rosetta Foundation’s community model
and technology. It also gives TWB access to EU funding through the Irish registration’
( TWB Merger FAQ 2017).
Until the beginning of this century, humanitarian and international development organi-
zations often relied heavily on volunteers. In the past two decades, they have overwhelmingly
chosen the path of professionalization, employing qualified professionals. TWB’s evolution
has been quite different. As mentioned earlier, Traducteurs sans Frontières initially worked with
the paid in-house translators of Eurotexte. Through a system of skills sponsorship, French
companies can obtain a tax break for providing professional services to approved cultural and
humanitarian organizations. This way, the French state financially supports the professional-
ization of these organizations.7 Traducteurs sans Frontières did not make use of this benefit, and
its later transformation as the current TWB adopted a large- scale crowdsourcing approach.
It now imposed professional credentials as entry criteria, but dropped payment to zero  –
outdoing even Amazon’s notoriously poor-paying Mechanical Turk. Demonetization usually
goes hand in hand with deprofessionalization, making it particularly noteworthy that TWB
managed to set up a large- scale demonetized service using professionals. This development is
not in the interest of the thousands of translators who constitute the large base of the TWB
pyramid, especially when professional practices are quickly being eroded by TWB’s policy
of ignoring the ‘ four- eyes principle’ recommendation of industry standards and skipping
revision on grounds of urgency: ‘Since there is no time for reviewing and no room for errors
in the handling of emergencies, Translators Without Borders recruits only experienced and
solid professionals able to do a good job each time’ ( ProZ Blog 2011).
TWB’s activity in Kenya merits a separate detailed account. Shortly after setting up a
Healthcare Translation Centre in Nairobi, where hundreds of translators have been trained
to date, TWB launched a ‘Fund a translator’ program on ProZ.com, targeting professional
translators as potential donors. Upon inquiry ( ProZ 2012), it was clarified that the program
was not meant to fund translators but their training. Program director Rebecca Petras admitted
that the name of the program ‘could be deceiving’. As TWB’s form 990 declaration ( TWB
990, 2015, 2016) states, moreover, TWB provides financial support to TWB Kenya as ‘an in-
dependently registered non-profit’. Thus US-registered TWB could conveniently claim that
it ‘did not invest in, contribute assets to or participate in a joint venture or similar arrange-
ment with a taxable entity’ – which means it is none of IRS’s business whether Microsoft

419
Attila Piróth and Mona Baker

obtained any Swahili language assets in a joint venture (or similar agreement) with TWB
Kenya.
TWB actively participated in monitoring elections in Kenya in 2013 and 2017, through
translating communication on social media. A rapid response team of TWB provided trans-
lations into English ‘as quickly and accurately as possible’. A paid consultant was hired to
monitor the translation process ( NGOjobs 2017), ‘to help determine the effectiveness of [the]
approach’. This case is not unique: TWB has created some paid positions – including a paid
three-month ‘crisis response intern’ position with a monthly stipend of USD 400 ( TWB
2018), in which the intern’s role is to support ‘the team on a daily basis, with a focus on man-
aging TWB’s engagement with our community of volunteer translators during emergency
responses’. While this position is certainly an interesting opportunity for someone starting
out in community management, the ‘volunteer translator – paid manager’ model is highly
problematic. In its FAQ section, TWB argues that NGOs often do not have a budget for
translation because their core activities need to be prioritized. But how does the same argu-
ment apply to TWB itself? TWB found the necessary budget to cover substantial organiza-
tional, technical and other costs in the Word of Relief project ( HIF-TWB 2015), to monitor
and assess the translators in the Kenya elections, to manage the community of translators
during emergency responses and to ensure that the participating for-profits in the ACCEPT
project were handsomely paid – while those who undertook the core task, translation, were
systematically asked to work on a volunteer basis. This is not an unfortunate lack of budget
for translation: it is a policy decision from the top of TWB’s pyramid, which should not come
as a surprise given the undisguised interest some companies represented on TWB’s board
have in exploiting machine translation and unpaid crowdsourcing. It is hard to imagine that
TWB would adopt the same policy if its board were composed of translators who used to
‘work at the coalface’, as is the case in Doctors Without Borders or in SI.
TWB’s translators, through their laudable volunteer work, currently continue to serve
TWB’s ‘partner’ NGOs (now more accurately called ‘clients’), which are now required to fi-
nancially participate in the maintenance of TWB’s platform. In this setup, the top of TWB’s
pyramid continues to benefit from excellent exposure opportunities and exceptional disrup-
tive technology- driven productivity gains, furnished by the wide base of translators working
free of charge, making it a textbook example of socialized work for privatized profit. Such
a policy does not reflect the priorities of TWB’s partner NGOs (as their own policies are
diametrically opposite) or TWB’s in-kind donors: the thousands of volunteer translators who
continue to support the organization.

Concluding remarks
The fundamental guiding idea at SI has been that those who perform skilled work for hu-
manitarian organizations must not risk demonetization and deprofessionalization by doing
so. Rather, they should be able to make a living and grow professionally – a nd ultimately
proceed to organizational or governance roles, if they so wish.
This is not the pathway currently in evidence with the mass crowdsourcing of transla-
tion services for humanitarian ends. Translators who consider participating in such projects,
achievements notwithstanding, should be aware of how the growing focus on socialized work
for privatized profit can impact them and their profession. They will be right to demand the
same practices that are standard for any respected humanitarian NGO: increased account-
ability towards in-k ind donors, with exact accounts of where volunteer translations go, and
rigorous assurances that the donated or generated assets are allocated as the collaborators and

420
 Volunteerism in translation

public would rightfully expect. There should be conflict- of-interest policies  – as again is
standard for humanitarian NGOs – which should be rigorously applied to the composition
of the board. After all, board members of Doctors Without Borders do not come from big
pharmaceutical companies but are former fieldworkers, for very good reasons.
Meanwhile, the SI experience shows that it is possible to build collaborative communities
of translators capable of working directly with NGOs, bypassing the mass platforms alto-
gether in order not just to do good for the intended recipients, but also to enhance the train-
ing, professionalization and stature of translators themselves within an overall framework of
solidarity. Ultimately, as McDonough Dolmaya argues, given the ethical questions posed by
crowdsourcing and volunteerism, ‘ including corporate reliance on free labour and the poten-
tial devaluation of translation work by the general public’, we must now address the question
of how ‘the strengths of crowdsourcing could be leveraged to make information more widely
accessible while also ensuring that users who participate are doing so as part of a community-
d riven initiative rather than a corporate-run activity’ (2018: 354). What is needed, in other
words, is a model that combines the benevolence of charitable work with the reflexivity and
transformative potential of solidary action, for the benefit of both givers and recipients.

Further reading
Baker, Mona (2010) ‘Translation and Activism: Emerging Patterns of Narrative Community’, in
Maria Tymoczko (ed.) Translation, Resistance, Activism. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
pp. 23–41.
­ ­ ​­
This is a revised version of a 2006 article that appeared in the Massachusetts Review and reiterated
much of the argument outlined in Chapter 7 of Baker’s Translation and Conflict, published in the same
year. It offers the first critique of Translators without Borders, drawing on Walter Fisher’s narrative
paradigm.
Rushkoff, Douglas (2016) Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity.
Portfolio: Penguine.
Rushkoff argues that following the i ndustrial-age mandate for growth above all, the digital economy
has gone wrong: workers lose to automation, drivers lose to Uber, even tech developers lose their vi-
sions to the demands of the startup economy. This obsolete economic operating system needs to be
rebooted, he argues, by using the unique distributive power of the internet to break free of the w inner-
take-all game that defines business today.
Lanier, Jaron (2013) Who Owns the Future. New York: Simon & Schuster.
An award winning examination of the exploitative powers of big business in the age of the internet,
focusing on the ways in which different types of information provided online are used by various cor-
porations to generate capital without remunerating the sources of information.
Piróth, Attila (2016) Comments about FIT’s Position Statement on Crowdsourcing. Available online: http://
www.translationtribulations.com/2016/05/comments-about-fits-position-statement.html.
­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
This blog post on Kevin Lossner’s Translation Tribulations site makes reference to Translators without
Borders’ ACCEPT project to argue that crowdsourcing – combined with machine translation in the
case of ACCEPT – ‘does not enable a sustainable professional career for those who perform it’ and
‘ is fundamentally a winner-takes-all scheme, in which the only real winner possible is the entity that
owns or controls the platform’.

Notes
1 On a related topic, Crack (2018) and Crack et al. (2018) point out that NGO workers on the ground
rarely speak the local language and hence tend to rely on multilingual local staff, often resulting in
low quality translation.
2 With the exception of one critique by a professional translator who is also one of the authors of this
chapter ( Piróth 2016).
3 See https://www.proz.com/about/tm_town_acquisition/.
­ ­ ­

421
Attila Piróth and Mona Baker

4 Available at https://www.solidarites.org/en/publications/categories/annual-reports/.
­ ­ ­ ­ ­­ ​­
5 Piróth (the first author of this chapter) was involved in this initiative.
6 Acrolinx, represented by TWB board member Andrew Bredenkamp, received €312,399, while
Eurotexte/Lexcelera, represented by TWB’s founder and long-t ime chair Lori Thicke, received
€261,288 (ACCEPT 2012).
7 The same tax benefits are not available to those working as freelancers (‘profession liberale’) or solo
entrepreneurs (‘autoentrepreneur’). In 2016, Piróth drew the attention of his MP, Noël Mamère, to
this difference, who then raised the issue in the National Assembly (Mamère 2017). However, no
progress has been achieved to date.

References
ACCEPT (2012) ­ Automated Community Content Editing PorTal. Available online: https://cordis.europa.
eu/project/rcn/101285_en.html.
­ ­ ­
ACCEPT (2013) ­ ­ACCEPT  – ​­Exploitation Plan Update. Available online: http://www.accept.unige.
ch/Products/D_10_7_Exploitation_Plan_Update.pdf.
­ ­
Baer, N. (2010) ‘Crowdsourcing: Outrage or opportunity?’ Translorial: Journal of the Northern California
Translators Association. Available online: http://translorial.com/2010/02/01/crowdsourcing-outrage- ­ ­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­
­​­­or-opportunity/.
​­
Baker, M. (2006) Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account. London and New York: Routledge.
Baker, M. (2010) ‘Translation and Activism: Emerging Patterns of Narrative Community’, in Tymoczko
M. (ed.), ­ Translation, Resistance, Activism. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, pp. 23– 41.
Baker, M. (2013) ‘Translation as an Alternative Space for Political Action’, Social Movement Studies,
21(1),
­ pp. 23–47. ­ ­ ​­
Baker, M. (2016) ‘The Prefigurative Politics of Translation in Place-Based Movements of Protest: Sub-
titling in the Egyptian Revolution’, The Translator, 22(1), ­ pp. 1–21. ­ ­ ​­
Boéri, J. (2008) ‘A Narrative Account of the Babels vs. Naumann Controversy: Competing Perspec-
tives on Activism in Conference Interpreting’, The Translator, 14(1), ­ pp. 21–50.
­ ­ ​­
Boéri, J. (2009) Babels, the Social Forum and the Conference Interpreting Community: Overlapping and Com-
peting Narratives on Activism and Interpreting in the Era of Globalisation, PhD Thesis (Manchester: CTIS,
University of Manchester).
CMU. (2010) ­ Carnegie Mellon Releases Data on Haitian Creole to Hasten Development of Translation Tools,
­ ­
https://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2010/January/jan27_haitiancreoletranslation.shtml. ­ ­ ­ ­
Coussins (Baroness). ­ (2017)
­ Sierra Leone: Ebola; House of Lords Debate. Available online: http://hansard.
­ ­­
parliament.uk/Lords/2017-10-30/debates/C4811542-5F9C-4EF6-905E-4DCC458C6B44/Sierra ­​­­ ​­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ ­
LeoneEbola#contribution-74E5555C-59DD-458E-A9F5-02893D510AEB
­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
Crack, A. M. (2018) ‘Language, NGOs and Inclusion: The Donor Perspective’, Development in Practice
29(2),
­ pp. 159–169. ­ ­ ​­
Crack, A., Footitt H. and Tesseur W. (2018) ‘M any NGO Workers on the Ground Don’t Speak the Local
­Language – ​­New Research’, The Conversation, 8 August. Available online: https://theconversation.
com/many-ngo-workers-on-the-ground-dont-speak-the-local-language-new-research-100845.
­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
Delgado Luchner, C. and Kherbiche L. (2018) ‘Without Fear or Favour? The positionality of ICRC
and UNHCR interpreters in the humanitarian field’, Target, 30(3), ­ pp. 408–429.
­ ­ ​­
Doerr, N. (2018) Political Translation: How Social Movement Democracies Survive. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Don en confiance (2018) ­ Available online: http://www.donenconfiance.org/759_p_43852/les-
­ ­ ­­ ­​
­­organisations-labellisees.html. ​­
Federici, F.M., Gerber, B.J. O’Brien, S. and Cadwell P. (2019) The International Humanitarian Sector
and Language Translation in Crisis Situations. Assessment of Current Practices and Future Needs. London,
Dublin and Phoenix, AZ: INTERACT The International Network on Crisis Translation.
FIT (2016) ­ FIT Position Paper on Internships. Available online: http://www.fit-ift.org/fit-position-paper- ­ ­ ​­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­
­​­­on-internships/.
​­
Fowler, J., Gilchrist, S. Gutman, C. Piróth, A. et al. (2017) ­French-English ​­ Humanitarian Aid Glossary
for Solidarités International. 2nd edition. Available online: http://www.pirothattila.com/Sol_2017_
book.pdf.
Grassroots Volunteering. Available online: http:// blog.grassrootsvolunteering.org.

422
 Volunteerism in translation

­HIF-TWB ​­ (2015)­ Humanitarian Innovation Fund, Large Grant Final Report. Available online: https://
www.elrha.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/HIF-TWB-FINAL-REPORT.pdf.
­­ ​­ ­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
Kapur, A., Macleod N. and Singh N. (2005) Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances.
Citigroup, Equity Strategy, Industry Note: 16 October.
Kelly, N. (2011) Translators Without Borders Prepares to Bridge the Last Language Mile. Available online:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/nataly-kelly/translators-without-borde_b_1122452.html.
­ ­­ ​­ ­­ ­​­­ ​­
Kelly, N., Depalma, D. A. and Hedge, V. (2012) The Need for Translation in Africa. Common Sense
Advisory Report. Available online: http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/portals/0/downloads/ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­
africa.pdf.
Khasnabish, A. (2021) ‘Solidarity’, in Baker, M. Blaagaard, B. Jones, H. and Pérez- González, L. (eds),
Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 385-389.
Klein, N. (2007) The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Metropolitan Books.
Krausse, M. (2014) The Good Project – Humanitarian Relief NGOs and the Fragmentation of Reason. Chi-
cago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Lanier, J. (2013) Who Owns the Future. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Lossner, K. (2014) Translators Without Borders: cui bono? Available online: http://www.translationtrib-
­
ulations.com/2014/10/translators-without-borders-cui-bono.html ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ and Translators without Borders:
Some Projects. Available online: http://www.translationtribulations.com/2014/10/translators- ­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​
­­without-borders-some.html. ­​­­ ​­
Mamère, M. Noël (2017) Question N° 94281 de M. Noël Mamère. Available online: http://questions.
​­
assemblee-nationale.fr/q14/14-94281QE.htm. ­ ­­ ​­
McDonough Dolmaya, J. (2011) ‘The Ethics of Crowdsourcing’, Linguistica Antverpiensia, 10, pp. 97–111. ­ ­ ​­
McDonough Dolmaya, J. (2012) ‘Analyzing the Crowdsourcing Model and Its Impact on Public Per-
ceptions of Translation’, The Translator, 18(2), ­ pp. 167–91. ­ ­ ​­
McDonough Dolmaya, J. (2018) ‘The Politics of Localization’, in Fernández, F. and Evans, J. (eds.),
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Politics. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 343–357.
McDonough Dolmaya, J. (2020) ‘Crowdsourced Translation’, in Baker, M. and Saldanha, G.(eds) The
Routledge in Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 124–129.
Microsoft. (2015) ­ Introducing Kiswahili for Microsoft Translator. Available online: https:// blogs.msdn.mic-
rosoft.com/translation/2015/10/21/introducing-kiswahili-for-microsoft-translator/.
­ ­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
Moreno-R ivero, J. (2018) ‘Interdisciplinary multilingual practices in NGOs: Addressing Translation
and Interpreting at the “Human Rights Investigations Lab” and “Translators without Borders”’,
Translation Spaces, 7(1), ­ pp. 143–161. ­ ­ ​­
Morozov, E. (2013) To Save Everything, Click Here. London: Penguin.
Movement Generation (2017) ‘Transition is Inevitable, Justice Is Not: A Critical Framework for Just
Recovery’. Available online: http://movementgeneration.org/transition-is-inevitable-justice-is- ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­
­​­­not-a-critical-framework-for-just-recovery/.
­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
NGOjobs (2017) ­ Consultant – Real Time Monitoring Kenya Elections at Translators without Borders. Avail-
able online: https://ngojobsinafrica.com/job/consultant-real-time-monitoring-kenya-elections-
­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​
­­translators-without-borders/. ­​­­ ​­
Obama, B. (2011) Executive Office of the President: A Strategy for American Innovation: Driving Towards
Sustainable Growth and Quality Jobs, September 2009, DIANE Publishing.
O’Donnell, S. (2016) ‘The Psychology and Ethics of International Volunteering’, Grassroots Volunteer-
ing. Available online: http://blog.grassrootsvolunteering.org/ethics-of-international-volunteering/. ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
Olohan, M. (2012) ‘Altruism and Voluntarism in the Context of a Nineteenth- century Scientific Peri-
odical’, The Translator, 18(2), ­ pp. 193–215. ­ ­ ​­
Olohan, M. (2014) ‘Why Do You Translate? Motivation to Volunteer and TED Translation’, Translation
Studies, 7(1), ­ pp. 17–33. ­ ­ ​­
Piróth, A. (2014) Translators without Borders: The ACCEPT Project. Available online: http://www.trans-
lationtribulations.com/2014/11/translators-without-borders-accept.html. ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
Piróth, A. (2016) Comments about FIT’s Position Statement on Crowdsourcing. Available online: http://
www.translationtribulations.com/2016/05/comments-about-fits-position-statement.html. ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
ProZ (2011) ­ ProZ.com, A New Badge for Translators without Borders. Available online: https://www.proz.
com/topic/204463.
­ ­
ProZ Blog (2011) Translators without Borders and the ProZian Community Work Together in Large Humanitar-
ian Localization Project. Available online: https://prozcomblog.com/2011/03/28/translators-without- ­ ­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​
­­borders-and-the-prozian-community-work-together-in-large-humanitarian-localization-project/.
­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­

423
Attila Piróth and Mona Baker

ProZ (2012)
­ Thank you to the Translation Professionals Who Have Donated to Worthy Causes this Year. Available
online: https://www.proz.com/topic/239618. ­ ­ ­
Rai, S. M. (2018) ‘The Good Life and the Bad: Dialectics of Solidarity’, Social Politics, 25(1), ­ pp. 1–19. ­ ­ ​­
Rushkoff, D. (2016) Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity. Portfolio:
Penguine.
Scholz, T. (2014a) ‘Platform Cooperatism vs. The Sharing Economy’. Available online: https://
­­
medium.com/@trebors/platform-cooperativism-vs-the-sharing-economy-2ea737f1b5ad. ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
Scholz, T. (2014b) ‘Crowdmilking’, Collectivate. Available at http://cast.b-ap.net/wp-content/ ­ ­ ​­ ­­ ​­ ­
uploads/sites/40/2018/03/Trebor_Scholz_Crowdmilking.pdf.
­ ­ ­ ­ ­
Selim, S. (2016) ‘Text and Context: Translating in a State of Emergency’, in Baker M. (ed.), Translating
Dissent: Voices from and with the Egyptian Revolution. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 77– 87.
Shirky, C. (2010) Cognitive Surplus: How Technology Makes Consumers Into Collaborators. London: Pen-
guin Press.
Tesseur, W. (2014) Transformation through Translation: Translation Policies at Amnesty International, un-
published PhD Thesis, Birmingham: Aston University. Available online: http://publications.aston.
ac.uk/26207/1/Tesseur_Wine_2015.pdf.
­ ­ ­
The Rosetta Foundation (2017) Available online: https://www.therosettafoundation.org/.
Thicke, L. (2012) Technologies and Processes for Empowering Communities to Communicate Across the Web and
Across the World, talk at the TAUS European Summit 2012. Available online: http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=osy58OV_tZE
­
TWB (2014) ­ Translators without Borders Receives Grant from Microsoft. Available online: https://
translatorswithoutborders.org/translators-without-borders-receives-grant-from-microsoft-2/.
­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
TWB (2015) ­ Translators without Borders Response to the Nepal Earthquake. Available online: https://
translatorswithoutborders.org/translators-without-borders-response-to-the-nepal-earthquake/.
­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
TWB (2018) ­ Translators without Borders Job Description: Crisis Response Intern – Words of Relief Program.
Available online: https://translatorswithoutborders.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Crisis-
­ ­­ ​­ ­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​
­­Response-Intern.pdf. ​­
TWB 990 (2015) Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax, Translators without Borders. Available
­
online: https://translatorswithoutborders.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Form-990-for-2015.pdf. ­­ ​­ ­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
TWB 990 (2016) Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax, Translators without Borders. Available
­
online: https://translatorswithoutborders.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FY16-TWB-990.pdf. ­­ ​­ ­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ​­
TWB FAQ (2016) Frequently Asked Questions. Available online: https://twb.translationcenter.
­ ­
org/workspace/manuals/page/frequently_asked_questions ­ ­
TWB Kató (2017) TWB Kató Upgrade and Management Fee FAQ. Available online: https://
translatorswithoutborders.org/non-prof ­­ ​­ ­­
its/translation- ​­ services/TWB-workspace-upgrade- ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​
­­management-fee-faq/. ­​­­ ​­
TWB Merger FAQ (2017) The Merger between Translators without Borders and The Rosetta Foundation.
Available online: https://translatorswithoutborders.org/Merger_FAQ.
­ ­
­TWB-TRF ​­ (2017)
­ Translators without Borders and the Rosetta Foundation are Merging. Available online:
https://translatorswithoutborders.org/translators-without-borders-and-the-rosetta-foundation-
­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​
­­are-merging/
​­
Words of Relief (2015) Words of Relief  – Ebola Crisis Learning Review. Available online: https://
translatorswithoutborders.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/20150529-Ebola-Learning-Review_
­­ ​­ ­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
FINAL.pdf.

424
 Part V
Politics
 29
Translating democracy
Esperança Bielsa

Introduction1
Contemporary approaches to cosmopolitanism have brought attention to the significance of
multilingualism and translation in a global context, emphasizing a multiplicity of perspectives
and the interaction between different traditions rather than the world’s unicity or homogeniz-
ing trends towards the constitution of a global culture. Cosmopolitan competence has been
defined as the art of translation and bridge-building ( Beck 2006: 89), while cosmopolitan
processes are seen as taking the form of translations between things that are different, where
one culture interprets itself in light of the encounter with the other and constantly undergoes
change as a result ( Delanty 2006: 23, 2009: 193–198). On the other hand, there is a renewed
urgency to specify the conditions and principles of a cosmopolitan order that recognizes the
increasing interconnectedness of political communities and provides a democratic space at
local, national, regional and global levels in the face on new global threats (Held 2010).
This chapter examines how debates on language and democracy have been differently
framed within a multiculturalist and a cosmopolitan framework, questioning some of their
underlying assumptions and demonstrating a basic continuity with what is approached as the
monolingual vision. It then goes on to propose an alternative conception of the language of
democracy based on plurilingualism, linguistic hospitality and translation. Such a conception
is not ignorant of the social role of language in the constitution of individual selves and of
collective identities, nor does it avoid confronting the politics of language in a highly unequal
global space. It recognizes that the grounds of a cosmopolitan democracy can only be built
through generalized plurilingual exchanges and sees in the difficulties of understanding and
the productive confrontation with the opacity of others and of ourselves the very substance
of democracy among diversity. This approach also identifies different processes of political
translation as a key area of interdisciplinary interest for the humanities and social sciences.

The language of democracy

In view of the growing relevance of new forms of democratic politics beyond the state, as
well as challenges to still prevalent, t aken-for-g ranted notions of cultural homogeneity at

427
Esperança Bielsa

the national level, the question of linguistic diversity is increasingly becoming unavoidable.
Thus, in reflecting on the possibility of a multilingual democracy, Daniele Archibugi (2008:
256, 259) refers to Will Kymlicka’s renowned statement that a democratic politics is politics
in the vernacular ( Kymlicka 2001) as dangerous and even reactionary. With reference to new
demands for democratization not just on a national level but increasingly beyond, Archibugi
proposes instead a cosmopolitan approach that, from a normative standpoint, maintains that
‘democratic
­ politics must be in Esperanto’ (2008: 260).
For Kymlicka, a common language is not just a basic element of nation-building, through
which states have achieved institutional integration within a given territory, but also essen-
tial to democracy. A common language and social institutions provide cohesion to what is
otherwise characterized by diversity and plurality within modern liberal democracies (with
reference to religious and political beliefs, family customs or personal lifestyles) ( Kymlicka
2001: 25). Language is thus considered a basic and necessary constitutive element of national
identity; indeed, the only remaining principle that is left when older, more problematic
notions such as soil, faith or blood have been rejected. For Kymlicka, a common language
defines the very practices that are at the basis of democratic politics: ‘ how can “the people”
govern together if they cannot understand one another?’ (2001: 26). This is the reason why
he is fundamentally sceptic about the possibilities for a transnational democratic politics and
defends the nation- state as the basic unit through which politics at the supranational level can
take place. For instance, in the context of the EU, Kymlicka considers demands for democra-
tization through strengthening of the European parliament as inherently flawed, and remarks
that democracy can only be maintained through accountability to national governments and
the preservation of national veto powers, thus effectively taking his model of multinational
states as federations of peoples beyond the state level. Interestingly, linguistic diversity is pre-
sented as the central reason for defending such a model:

For Danish citizens to engage in a debate with other Danes, in Danish, about the Dan-
ish position ­vis-à-vis
­​­­ ​­ the EU is a familiar and manageable task. But for Danish citizens
to engage in a debate with Italians to try to develop a common European position is a
daunting prospect. In what language would such a debate occur, and in what forums?
(2001:
­ 326)

By contrast, Archibugi defends a passage from a language of identity to a language of com-

munication as a basic prerequisite for promoting democracy among diversity. However,
whereas Kymlicka falls prey to an essentialist view of language as the defining property of
a community or a nation, Archibugi instrumentalizes language as a vehicle of communi-
cation, ignoring the powerful connections between language and subjectivity and blinding
himself to the politics of language in the context of globalization. A more sociological ap-
proach is needed that retains a perspective on language as the basic means of socialization,
and not just as an instrument of communication, and that considers the implications of
going beyond one’s language in order to be able to communicate with others, both at the
individual and collective levels. Esperanto in Europe (Archibugi 2008: 265–266), English in
India (Sommer 2004: 96; Archibugi 2008: 267–268) or Spanish in the Philippines ( Rafael
2005) has helped to bring people together because it did not belong to any single group. But
the use of a lingua franca as a democratic means has many important implications that relate
to existing power asymmetries between languages and to the specific consequences derived
from adopting and promoting one particular language, which inevitably benefit some and
are detrimental to others.

428
 Translating democracy

Archibugi’s unwillingness to consider the politics of language is reflected in the choice

of the Esperanto metaphor as a normative principle, which in reality hides the promotion of
English as the de facto common democratic language, as his discussion of paradigmatic cases
at different local, national and supranational levels reveals. As Peter Ives has argued,

Archibugi’s position can be none other than an advocacy of global English for cosmo-
politan democracy. The reasons for obscuring this advocacy – or presenting it in very
abstract and metaphorical terms – a re telling of the political issues that Archibugi hopes
not to have to deal with.
(Ives 2009: 520)

Despite their apparent differences, Archibugi and Kymlicka share some fundamental ideas
about the language of democracy. On the one hand, both authors highlight that states cannot
be neutral towards language, unlike in matters concerning religion or race. This idea is at
the basis of Kymlicka’s emphasis on nation-building through the promotion of a common
language, which makes national democracies possible in the first place and provides, at the
same time, a rationale for the defence of minority rights ( Kymlicka 2001: 26–27; Archibugi
2008: 254, 257). On the other hand, like Kymlicka, Archibugi unquestioningly believes that
democracy is monolingual, in spite of the fact that he acknowledges that monolingual com-
munities are becoming increasingly rare (2008: 257). By adopting the prevailing linguistic
model for democracy at the national level to tackle the conditions for a democratic politics
outside the state, Archibugi is bound to amplify its paradoxes and unresolved contradictions,
falling into idealist notions of a universal language of communication that is detached both
from the social contexts from which it emanates and from the materiality of language itself.
It would seem that cosmopolitan designs are inextricably bound to fall upon an abstract
vindication of a universal language, implicitly conceiving language mainly as a vehicle for
conveying ideas (Ives 2009: 521; May 2014) and diluting the significance of a politics of lan-
guage to which multiculturalists have called attention. From this perspective, Archibugi’s
case for a democratic politics that, wherever possible, can and must be in Esperanto appears
as a contemporary exponent of a long standing tradition of cosmopolitan designs that goes
back to the Enlightenment. Thus, Kymlicka refers to Condorcet’s belief in the emergence of
a universal language as the culmination of a process of emancipation of individuals from the
ethnic, religious or linguistic communities in which they are born, as cultural membership
is replaced by a cosmopolitan identity (2001: 203). According to Kymlicka, this ideal of a
universal language was endorsed by cosmopolitans from Descartes and Liebniz to Franklin,
Voltaire, d’Alembert, and Turgot ( Kymlicka 2001: 205). In addition to Archibugi’s propos-
als, it also finds expression in contemporary notions about the creation of a universal digital
language of communication in the network society (Castells 2000: 2, 212).
However, the dichotomy between the essentialism of multiculturalist language politics and
the idealism of cosmopolitan designs that reduce language to an instrument of communica-
tion is questioned when one turns to the perspective of a critical cosmopolitanism that reveals
some of their key underlying assumptions about nation, culture and language. On the one
hand, nationalism and cosmopolitanism can be seen as mutually interrelated, rather than op-
posites, and different particularistic and universalistic moments identified in both nationalist
and cosmopolitan positions ( Rao 2010, 2012; Chernilo 2015). On the other hand, Eurocen-
tric cosmopolitan designs can be subjected to critical scrutiny from the perspective of border
thinking, pointing to a notion of critical cosmopolitanism that reconceptualizes cosmopol-
itanism from the perspective of coloniality (Mignolo 2000a, 2000b), or from a dialogical

429
Esperança Bielsa

cosmopolitanism that contextualizes universalism and finds in the processes through which
others reappropriate and reinterpret institutions and cultural traditions that initially excluded
them the source of cosmopolitan reflexivity and change ( Benhabib 2004; Mendieta 2009). Or,
closer to the approach that will be pursued in this chapter, a productive confrontation with
Eurocentrism can also be sought through radical engagement with different traditions in the
key but often neglected practices of interpreting otherness (Godrej 2009, 2011) or of cultural
translation ( Delanty 2014) as social processes that leave neither the interpreter/translator nor
their object unchanged. Rather than overcoming or dissolving Eurocentrism, this approach
points towards a post-Eurocentric space as a fertile ground for learning and transformation in
light of the difference of the other.
Framing its contribution within this tradition of critical cosmopolitanism, this chapter
seeks to articulate an alternative view of the language of democracy that does not renounce
the cosmopolitan ideal of a language beyond identity without reducing it to a language of
communication in a social void. In opposition to both multiculturalist views and the cosmo-
politan approach defended by Archibugi, my argument will be that cosmopolitan democ-
racy is necessarily plurilingual and takes place through the practice of translation. Although
explicitly conceived for a democratic politics outside the state, such a view on the language
of democracy is also relevant at the local and national levels because it breaks with multi-
culturalist’s essentialism in promoting a democratic politics in increasingly heterogeneous
communities, where assumptions of linguistic and cultural homogeneity can no longer be
sustained. This democratic politics is not based on the construction of a common culture
through the privileging of one language over others, but emerges from the negotiation of di-
versity and from the continued exposure of different languages to each other, opening them
up to the presence of others. Contrary to Kymlicka’s belief, this view can in fact be traced
back to Enlightenment cosmopolitan designs that are not formulated through the notion of
a universal language, most notably to Goethe. Moreover, such a conception of a plurilingual
democratic politics through the practice of translation recuperates an artistic cosmopolitan-
ism that has been systematically ignored in the cosmopolitanism literature, thus overcoming
the division between political and aesthetic cosmopolitanism ( Papastergiadis 2012; Bielsa
2014). But before such articulation is offered, it is necessary to critically examine the view
that profoundly permeates both Kymlicka’s and Archibugi’s approaches to the language of
democracy: the monolingual vision. This undertaking is offered in the next section.

The monolingual vision: a critique

Like nationalism, with which it is inextricably related, the monolingual vision that under-
lines the discussion about the language of democracy presented above has its origins in late
eighteenth- century Europe. It has constructed monolingualism as second nature and the
mother tongue as both the private property of individuals and collectivities and a key marker
of identity. The monolingual vision has entailed the promotion of one language over others
for the creation of monolingual populations, effectively marginalizing alternative languages
and dialects and already existing widespread plurilingual practices, both within and outside
Europe.2 Unquestioned assumptions regarding the necessary diffusion of a single language as
a basic element of nation-building and the impossibility of state neutrality towards language,
highlighted above, attest to its continued presence and pervasiveness.
Herder, who approached the distinctiveness of each language as emanating from the
­
character of a people or nation (Volk), is typically highlighted as initiator of a conception
that became highly influential in the nineteenth century (Anderson 1983: 66; Yildiz 2012:

430
Translating democracy

431
Esperança Bielsa

Like mother’s milk, the mother tongue seems so natural that it has taken an Algerian Jew
who was never able to call French ‘my mother tongue’ to remind us of the impossibility of
owning a language: ‘I only have one language; it is not mine’ ( Derrida 1998: 1, 34). It is only
from this questioning of language as a possession and a belonging, from the recognition of
every language as the language of the other, that a cosmopolitan politics of language can
emerge. In other words, just as a necessary, although not in itself sufficient, precondition of
cosmopolitan citizenship is the disaggregation of citizenship, through which the privileges
of political membership are no longer tied to national and cultural origins ( Benhabib 2004),
so too a cosmopolitan vision can only emerge from a conceptualization that disaggregates
linguistic origins, communal belongings and affective investments, from a critical multilin-
gualism where linguistic practices are not tied to ethnic identity ( Yildiz 2012: 29).
In addition to deconstructing the mirage of language as a possession through a vision of the
monolingualism of the other, it is necessary to destabilize the notion of a single mother tongue,
which is presupposed in common conceptions that have taken monolingual individuals and
communities as the norm. Part and parcel of the promotion of a shared language in processes
of nation-building (a process of enforced monolingualization) was the suppression of widely
extended plurilingual practices. Yet, in the context of increased connectivity and mobility,
and of the questioning of clearly defined borders and identities, the persistence and changing
forms of plurilingualism are becoming the object of considerable multidisciplinary interest. In
the field of sociolinguistics, notions of double talk, heteroglossia, language crossing and co-
demeshing have been used to approach plurilingualism and in-betweenness and to challenge
prevailing ideas of the distinctiveness of languages as bounded wholes ( Woolard 1989; Ramp-
ton 2005; Canagarajah 2013). A critical sociolinguistics of globalization that can account for
new linguistic patterns of mobility and diverse scales of plurilingual use has been proposed to
analyse emerging landscapes of superdiversity ( Blommaert 2010), while literary studies have
opened their conceptual apparatuses to literatures outside the nation (Seyhan 2001; Sommer
2004; Yildiz 2012; Walkowitz 2015). Translanguaging and flexible bilingual education are at
the centre of pedagogical approaches that break with monolingual instructional practices in or-
der to mobilize the overlapping of languages for learning and teaching (Creese and Blackledge
2010; García and Wei 2014). Attention is also turned to communication strategies that do not
necessarily involve shifting to a shared language, for instance, among diaspora Tamil families
and communities (Canagarajah 2013), or to how Kurds in Europe translate their political
movements and struggles for European audiences ( Demir 2017), or to widespread multilingual
workspaces and classrooms as sites of ordinary language crossing. In a variety of fields in the
social sciences and humanities the significance of multilingualism is being rediscovered, while
prevailing assumptions that reduce it to the simple aggregation of different languages with
reference to individuals or communities are increasingly challenged. Thus, notions of trans-
lingualism or plurilingualisn seek to emphasize the intermeshing of languages and identities
from a more dynamic perspective (Canagarajah 2013: 8), whereas the term postmonolingual
is proposed to designate the persistence of a monolingual paradigm even when the presence of
widely relevant forms of multilingualism is acknowledged ( Yildiz 2012).3
From these critical perspectives, Kymlicka’s recurring assumptions about language can
readily be revealed as the expression of the monolingual vision. For instance, he refers to
Condorcet’s proposition that everyone should learn a second universal language regardless of
social class as fundamentally unrealistic, arguing that

Various efforts have been made to encourage personal bilingualism, particularly in mul-
tination states, but they have failed. The goal was that Belgian citizens, for example,

432
 Translating democracy

would read a Flemish newspaper in the morning, and watch the French news on televi-
sion at night, and be equally conversant with, and feel comfortable contributing to, the
political debates in both languages. However, these efforts have been uniformly unsuc-
cessful. This sort of easy personal bilingualism is more or less restricted to intellectuals,
while the vast majority of the population clings stubbornly to their own tongue.
(Kymlicka 2001: 217)

Kymlicka’s assumptions about the impossibility of bilingualism for the majority of the popu-
lation would arguably not apply in non-Western contexts, where the monolingual practices
introduced by European colonization have not penetrated as deeply. But even within Europe
his vision can be refuted with reference to effective and widespread bilingualism in Catalo-
nia, for instance, which has been extended in the last decades to individuals of varying so-
cial, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, in addition to Catalan native speakers ( Woolard and
Frekko 2012; Woolard 2016).4 Further, and contrary to what Kymlicka suggests, linguistic
policies in Belgium have not been designed to promote personal bilingualism, but rather led
to divide the country into separate linguistic groups, effectively disavowing plurilingualism
and reaffirming distinct populations conceived in monolingual terms.5 It is also worth no-
ticing how, in Kymlicka’s view, only intellectuals are seemingly liberated from the identity-
trap of monolingualism, paradoxically becoming both heralds of the monolingual vision and
free-floating entities at the same time.
A different but equally puzzling disavowal of plurilingualism can be found in Benedict
Anderson’s approach to language use before the generalization of monolingualism in Europe:

The pre-bourgeois ruling classes generated their cohesions in some sense outside lan-
guage, or at least outside print-language. If the ruler of Siam took a Malay noblewoman
as a concubine, or if the King of England married a Spanish princess – did they ever talk
seriously together? Solidarities were the products of kinship, clientship, and personal
loyalties. ‘French’ nobles could assist ‘English’ kings against ‘French’ monarchs, not on
the basis of shared language or culture, but, Machiavellian calculations aside, of shared
kinsmen and friendships.
(Anderson 1983: 74)

Needless to say, the assumption that a shared language is needed for successful communi-
cation is itself the product of the monolingual vision through which the nation has been
imagined. This vision affirms, as we have seen, that most individuals cannot feel comfortable
using more than one language for ordinary exchange and that plurilingualism inevitably
leads to a deficiency in democratic terms because it disrupts the shared meanings that are
considered to make possible and facilitate collective decision-making.
Here, an alternative view is proposed that does not see linguistic diversity as an un-
necessary hurdle for the conduct of a democratic politics. Contrary to old assumptions
that relegate the competence of polyglots to the rare attribute of a privileged few in blind
ignorance of the widespread plurilingual practices in which the majority of the world’s
population are ordinarily involved 6, this view breaks with dominant conceptions of the
monolanguage of democracy in order to recuperate an already existing reality of cultural
mixing for cosmopolitics. In this approach, which rejects both the essentialism of identity
politics and the instrumentalism that conceives language merely as a medium of communi-
cation, the incongruities and discrepancies that appear at the interstices between languages
are not erased but turned into the substance of cosmopolitan reflexivity. Indeed, there is

433
Esperança Bielsa

scarcely a better source of cosmopolitan learning than confronting ourselves through the
language of the other, questioning our innermost beliefs and interrupting the fluidity that
gives our reality its rock-firm naturalness. Strangeness can be enrolled at the service of a
democratic politics through which the legitimacy of procedure is renewed and the scope of
democracy enlarged ( Honig 2001; Sommer 2004; Rumford 2008: Chapter 5). It is precisely
the difficulties of understanding that in Kymlicka’s view limit the scope of democracy be-
yond the nation that can generate new forms of cosmopolitan democracy, both at the local
and at the global level.

Cosmopolitanism, linguistic hospitality and translation

Unlike reified notions of culture as bounded and cohesive wholes, which have been the
object of considerable critical attention ( Waldron 2000; Benhabib 2002; Scholte 2014), the
monolingual assumptions of multiculturalists have not been significantly challenged within
mainstream cosmopolitan theorizing and, as we have seen, have even been unwittingly re-
produced in cosmopolitan designs. Nevertheless, cosmopolitanism’s emphasis on cultural in-
teraction and the negotiation of difference calls for an explicit approach to linguistic diversity
and translation as key aspects of the cultural contact zone. Just as attention to the changing
meaning of borders offers a new perspective on social phenomena that were previously con-
fined to the margins and a reconceptualization of global connectivity itself ( Balibar 2002,
2004; Rumford 2008; Mezzadra and Neilson 2013; Agier 2016), so too consideration of
linguistic exchange and translation reveals the central significance of what, according to the
monolingual vision, can only be considered as an anomaly. Indeed, as the pioneering work
of Étienne Balibar has consistently revealed, borders and translation are significantly related
( Balibar 2006, 2010). Balibar has described the border as the ambivalent site of two opposite
paradigms, the paradigm of war and the paradigm of translation, through which relations
with others are constructed and peoples, languages or races produced. What characterizes the
current epoch is precisely ‘a new intensity of this overlapping or indecision of the relationship
between war and translation, more generally power and discourse’ ( Balibar 2010: 317). In
fact, as Vincente Rafael has shown, translation is used as an instrument or, indeed, a weapon
by imperial and national powers, while wars of translation often become wars on translation
( Rafael 2016). Linguistic differences and hierarchies are always heavily politicized, and this is
why rather than avoiding these issues a cosmopolitan politics of language and of translation
becomes indispensable ( Bielsa and Aguilera 2017).
Like the border, translation offers a privileged vantage point for a discussion of cos-
mopolitics, but this requires us to challenge common definitions of translation as the transfer
of meaning from one language into another. Against this narrow definition that reduces
and depoliticizes translation, I have elsewhere called attention to a definition of translation
as the experience of the foreign ( Bielsa 2010, 2016), a social relation that mobilizes our re-
lationship to others as well as our conception of ourselves. Like the border that is itself the
origin of the territories it partitions, translation is what allows us to conceive the separate-
ness of languages that is posited as a natural fact by representing linguistic difference as a
difference between language unities (Sakai 1997: 14). Like the border, translation represents
both closeness and openness, or their permanent dialectical interplay ( Balibar 2010: 394).
Balibar shows how this essential ambiguity is resolved in current constructions of strangers
as enemies, which are aimed at their permanent exclusion (2006). Similarly, it is necessary

434
 Translating democracy

to examine different ways of translating the foreign in dealing with the strangeness of oth-
ers, the essential ambiguity of translation that has given origin to widespread views of its
inevitable treason.
The transparency and ease of communication that are presumed and celebrated by the
monolingual vision as basic characteristics of community and of democracy must be ques-
tioned in order to make space for heterogeneity. In this approach, difficulty of understanding
is not an obstacle for democratic debate but precisely the substance of the democratic process
itself, through which difference can be productively confronted, our horizons widened and
our convictions re-examined. As Balibar has already clearly perceived, translation is precisely
the basic medium for the creation of a transnational public space in a democratic sense, the
real ‘common’ idiom of its citizens ( Balibar 2006: 5 – 6).
When we consider translation as the non-transparent medium of democracy, a non-
instrumental means, the key is no longer communication but rather confronting the opacity
of meaning that results when diverse people attempt to communicate with each other. This
is why linguistic hospitality becomes in this context more important than the practical pos-
sibilities offered by the use of a common language of communication, for instance, inter-
national English, which in reality erases substantive issues of cultural difference and power
inequalities that bear on the democratic process. Linguistic hospitality has been called upon
to defend an ethical approach to translation in terms of the fundamental ambiguity between
openness and closeness highlighted above. The ambiguity of translation, which is said to
serve two masters at the same time  – the strangeness of a foreign author and the reader’s
demand for intelligibility – is expressed in the paradox of either bringing the author to the
reader or the reader to the author (Schleiermacher 1992; Ricoeur 2006: 23). Bringing the
author to the reader, in Schleiermacher’s terms, has the advantage of producing a transparent,
fluid translation that puts in the mouth of a foreign author the words that readers would use
themselves, thus minimizing the very foreignness that makes translation necessary in the first
place. Bringing the reader to the author preserves a notion of the author’s strangeness, of the
fact that she writes in a different language, but places unusual demands on readers and shakes
their unquestioned expectations.
Linguistic hospitality – the ethical objective of translation – clashes with the ethnocen-
trism that is present in any culture, and that is why there is a permanent pressure to resist
translation and to produce bad, ethnocentric translations that deny translation’s very aim – ‘to
open up in writing a certain relation with the Other, to fertilize what is one’s Own through
the mediation of what is Foreign’ ( Berman 1992: 4). The social and political significance of
linguistic hospitality emerges only when we recognize translation as approximation without
identity, as correspondence without adequacy, as continuity in discontinuity (Sakai 1997: 13;
Ricoeur 2006: 10, 22). This is precisely what is denied by those that insist in the importance
of communication, both in translation and in democracy.
At this point, one more voice needs to be called upon to complicate the false dichotomy
presented above between a democracy in the vernacular and a democracy in a language of
international currency. It is the voice of Goethe, a remarkable cosmopolitan polyglot who
reflects on the practical advantages of learning international languages without reducing
them to mere instruments of communication:

… young men do well to come to us and learn our language; for … no one can deny that
he who knows German well can dispense with many other languages. Of the French
I do not speak; it is the language of conversation, and is indispensable in travelling,

435
Esperança Bielsa

because everybody understands it, and in all countries we can get on with it instead of
a good interpreter. But as for Greek, Latin, Italian, and Spanish, we can read the best
works of those nations in such excellent German translations, that … we need not spend
much time upon the toilsome study of those languages. It is in the German nature duly
to honour after its kind, everything produced by other nations, and to accommodate
itself to foreign peculiarities. This, with the great flexibility of our language, makes
German translations thoroughly faithful and complete.
­
(Eckermann 1850: ­190–191)
​­

One could easily be led to doubt Goethe’s cosmopolitan intent in recommending what is,
after all, his mother tongue as a universal medium for a cosmopolitan culture. However,
Goethe’s argument is not principally related to German as such, but to what was then, and
still is, a relatively marginal type of translation that can serve as a vehicle for an experience
of the foreign potentially to all contemporaries, as opposed to a narcissistic experience of
recognition of dominant cultural values of one linguistic group. German thus becomes,
through a self- conscious form of translation that renounces full fluency and transparency,
demanding from readers some accommodation to the author’s strangeness, a privileged lan-
guage for the acquisition of a cosmopolitan culture, whereas French ( English today), as the
dominant language of transnational linguistic exchanges, merely represents a more prag-
matic choice for ordinary travel and interchange.7 This perspective is not just relevant to
literary translation, but also to a form of cosmopolitics that sees in deliberation between
diverse people the very substance of democracy, approaching democratic politics not as the
space for expedient, mostly unproblematic communication within homogeneous groups but
primarily as an arena where heterogeneous voices can be productively confronted. Goethe’s
approach also reminds us that, even if we resort to the use of a lingua franca, translation is
unavoidable, and it always implies taking a position with respect to the strangeness of others
and of ourselves.
A perspective on translation as the medium of democracy breaks with a view of language
as a vehicle of identity without resorting to an instrumental view of the lingua franca of de-
mocracy as a language of communication. Translation is not about identity, but about how
we deal with the strangeness of others. In preserving a degree of linguistic hospitality, a type
of non-transparent translation that does not succumb to demands for instantaneous commu-
nication can make space for the strangeness of others, obliging us to step outside ourselves
and look at ourselves as another. The stranger’s language, a language that does not belong
to us as a property, is key to cosmopolitan reflexivity and self-transformation in light of the
difference of the other. Just as democracy is a politics among strangers ( Honig 2001: 39– 40,
72), the stranger’s language is the language of democracy.

Conclusion
Generalizing a critique of the monolingual vision and replacing it with a plurilingual vi-
sion is one of the major challenges that awaits the cosmopolitan imagination. The pluri-
lingual vision makes us perceptive of the cultural mixing and absence of borders that Beck
discerned in a reality that has already been cosmopolitanized, of the cosmopolitanism of
ordinary migrants and world families who confront in their everyday and intimate lives
the contradictions of living in between, of lives lived in translation ( Beck 2006; Beck and
Beck- Gernsheim 2014). The plurilingual vision challenges the simplistic assumption that one
culture corresponds to one nation and to one identity, that we own a language that belongs

436
 Translating democracy

to us as a property and are its authentic bearers. It replaces a politics of belonging for a pol-
itics of translation in the cultural contact zone in a context of growing interconnectedness,
increasingly blurred borders and hybrid identities.
Plurilingualism and translation are today essential skills for individuals and communities,
enabling us to confront and productively address the tensions and conflicts that inevitably
emerge when heterogeneous people need to find ways of living together and of collectively
addressing common problems. However, the monolingual vision is still pervasive and mono-
lingualizing projects continue to shape democratic politics within the state and beyond, even
though the prevalence of monolingualism can no longer be taken for granted. Contrary to
what Kymlicka believes, plurilingualism and translation are not detrimental to democracy,
neither are they the reserve of a privileged intellectual elite, but rather the source of a much
needed reflexivity that allows us to distance ourselves from our unexamined beliefs in light
of the difference of others and to participate in democratic decision-m aking among strangers.
Cosmopolitan designs based on the use of a lingua franca among diverse people decouple
language from identity in order to find in language a vehicle for new democratic possibilities.
But, as Mignolo’s decolonial perspective has already made clear, an approach to languaging
rather than language is required in order to destabilize t aken-for-granted assumptions that
link language, culture, identity and territory to the nation (2000b). Furthermore, as Godrej
has suggested, we need to break with the tendency to relegate this undertaking to the mar-
gins in order to permeate our disciplines at large with a more genuine understanding of a
cosmopolitanism that is explicitly linked to dislocation, to an existential immersion in the
unfamiliar and to the theoretical illumination that this experience brings forth (2009: 138).
Only from a plurilingual vision that articulates forms of hospitable translation without
reducing language to an instrument of communication, from a plurilingual vision that is not
ignorant of the politics of language and translation in a highly unequal world, can we defend
the use of a lingua franca of democracy. As essentially an experience of the foreign, translation
can serve as a cosmopolitan democratic means not because it provides a common idiom that
we share with others or because it allows to communicate ideas from one language into an-
other, but because it can make us step outside ourselves and meet others in their strangeness,
creating new ways of existing and inhabiting a world that we share with strangers whom we
do not understand.

Further reading
Balibar, É. (2004) We, The People of Europe. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
An exploration of the possibilities of and obstacles to transnational citizenship from an European point
of view, where translation is approached as a laboratory or ‘worksite’ for democracy.
Bielsa, E. and Aguilera, A. (2017) ‘Politics of Translation: A Cosmopolitan Approach’, European Journal
of Cultural and Political Sociology, 4(1),
­ pp. 7–24.
­ ­ ​­
A theorization of the role of translation in a cosmopolitan context that presents translation as a social
relation with foreignness and argues for a politics of translation based on linguistic hospitality.
Doerr, N. (2018) Political Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
A social movement approach to democracy that highlights the role of political translation as a disrup-
tive and communicative practice developed by activists to address the inequities that hinder democratic
deliberation.
Honig, B. (2001) Democracy and the Foreigner. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
An investigation of how nations and democracies rely on foreignness through readings of popular and
high cultural texts about strangers, examining the lessons they might have for democratic theory.
Rafael, V. (2016) Motherless Tongues. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
A lucid exploration of the politics of language in postcolonial and imperial contexts, and of the ambig-
uous relationship between linguistic pluralism and translation.

437
Esperança Bielsa

Notes
1 This chapter is based on the article ‘Cosmopolitanism Beyond the Monolingual Vision’, published
in International Political Sociology, 2018, doi: 10.1093/ips/oly014.
2 For classical accounts of nationalism that trace its connection to processes of linguistic and cultural
homogenization see Anderson (1983) and Gellner (1983). Renaissance literature offers not only a
glimpse of a material bodily principle that was a strong component of medieval folk culture, but
also of an existing plurilingualism that crystallized in the new novelistic genre as a literary contact
zone ( Bakhtin 1981, 1984). For reflections of the role of translation in colonial relations with plu-
rilingual Others, see Cheyfitz (1997), Niranjana (1992) and Rafael (1993).
3 The preferred conceptual choice of plurilingualism in this chapter is to question views of multilin-
gualism as the coexistence of neatly defined distinct linguistic minorities within federal political
structures, identifying instead the simultaneous presence and use of different languages at both the
individual and group levels as an open challenge to enforced monolingualization that has been part
and parcel of the process of state formation.
4 This is not to suggest that a plurilingual vision has been promoted by the policies aimed at the
‘normalization’ of Catalan after Franco’s dictatorship. Rather, it can be seen as an unintended effect
of policies that could also threaten existing plurilingual practices, particularly among native Cata-
lan speakers.
5 This is reflected in the constitution of three separate cultural communities, Dutch speaking, French
speaking and German speaking, which only partially overlap with the three autonomous regions of
its federal system. The division of some of its main universities along linguistic lines ( Vrije Universi-
teit Brussel/Université libre de Bruxelles and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven/ Université catholique
de Louvain) is a clear example of these monolingualizing policies.
6 A recent Eurobarometer survey shows that over half of Europeans (54%) are able to hold a conver-
sation in at least one additional language to their mother tongue, while regular foreign language
use is widespread, particularly with reference to watching films/television or listening to the radio,
using the internet and communicating with friends. The proportion of Europeans who do not use
a foreign language regularly in any situation was only 9% in 2012 ( European Commission 2012).
David Crystal estimates that approximately one in four of the world’s population are now capable
of communication to a useful level in English (Crystal 2003: 69).
7 For a discussion of Goethe’s views on world literature and translation, see Bielsa (2014).

Bibliography
Agier, M. (2016) Borderlands. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities. London: Verso.
Archibugi, D. (2008) The Global Commonwealth of Citizens. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton Uni-
versity Press.
Bakhtin, M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Bakhtin, M. (1984) Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Balibar, E. (2002) Politics and the Other Scene. London and New York: Verso.
Balibar, E. (2004) We, The People of Europe. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Balibar, E. (2006) ‘Strangers as Enemies : Further Reflections on the Aporias of Transnational Citi-
zenship’, Globalization Working Papers. Université de Paris-X Nanterre and University of California, Irvine
(06/4).
­ ­
Balibar, E. (2010) ‘At the Borders of Citizenship: A Democracy in Translation?’, European Journal of
Social Theory, 13(3),
­ pp. 315–322.
­ ­ ​­
Beck, U. (2006) The Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Beck, U. and Beck- Gernsheim, E. (2014) Distant Love. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Benhabib, S. (2002) The Claims of Culture. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Benhabib, S. (2004) The Rights of Others. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Berman, A. (1992) The Experience of the Foreign. Culture and Translation in Romantic Germany. Albany:
State University of New York Press.
Bielsa, E. (2010) ‘Cosmopolitanism, Translation and the Experience of the Foreign’, Across Languages
and Cultures, 11(2),
­ pp. 161–174.
­ ­ ​­

438
 Translating democracy

Bielsa, E. (2014) ‘Cosmopolitanism as Translation’, Cultural Sociology, 8(4), ­ pp. 392–406.

­ ­ ​­
Bielsa, E. (2016) Cosmopolitanism and Translation. Investigations into the Experience of the Foreign. London
and New York: Routledge.
Bielsa, E. and Aguilera, A. (2017) ‘Politics of Translation: A Cosmopolitan Approach’, European Journal
of Cultural and Political Sociology, 4(1), ­ pp. 7–24.
­ ­ ​­
Blommaert, J. (2010) The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Blommaert, J. (2013) Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Blommaert, J. and Verschueren, J. (1992) ‘The Role of Language in European Nationalist Ideologies’,
Pragmatics 2(3), ­ pp. 355–375.
­ ­ ​­
Canagarajah, S. (2013) Translingual Practice. London and New York: Routledge.
Castells, M. (2000) The Rise of the Network Society, 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.
Chernilo, D. (2015) ‘Las relaciones entre nacionalismo y cosmopolitismo’, Papers. Revista de Sociologia,
­ pp. 303–324.
100(3), ­ ­ ​­
Cheyfitz, E. (1997) The Poetics of Imperialism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Creese, A. and Blackledge, A. (2010) ‘Translanguaging in a Bilingual Classroom: A Pedagogy for
Learning and Teaching?’ Modern Language Journal, 94(1), ­ pp. 103–115.
­ ­ ​­
Crystal, D. (2003) English as a Global Language, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Delanty, G. (2006) ‘The Cosmopolitan Imagination: Critical Cosmopolitanism and Social Theory’,
The British Journal of Sociology, 51(1), ­ pp. 25–47.
­ ­ ​­
Delanty, G. (2009) The Cosmopolitan Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Delanty, G. (2014) ‘Not All Is Lost in Translation: World Varieties of Cosmopolitanism’, Cultural
Sociology, 8(4), ­ pp. 374–391.
­ ­ ​­
Demir, I. (2017) ‘Rethinking Cosmopolitanism, Multiculturalism and Diaspora via the Diasporic
Cosmopolitanism of Europe’s Kurds’, in Bhambra, G. and Narayan, J. (eds), European Cosmopolitan-
ism. London and New York: Routledge.
Derrida, J. (1998) Monolingualism of the Other. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Eckermann, J. P. (1850) Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
European Commission (2012) ‘Europeans and their Languages’, Special Eurobarometer 386. Available
­ ­ ­ ­
online: http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_386_en.pdf.­
García, O. and Wei, L. (2014) Translanguaging. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gellner, E. (1983) Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Godrej, F. (2009) ‘Towards a Cosmopolitan Political Thought: The Hermeneutics of Interpreting the
Other’, Polity, 41(2), ­ pp. 135–165.
­ ­ ​­
Godrej, F. (2011) Cosmopolitan Political Thought. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Held, D. (2010) Cosmopolitanism. Ideals and Realities. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Honig, B. (2001) Democracy and the Foreigner. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Ives, P. (2009) ‘Cosmopolitanism and Global English: Language Politics in Globalisation Debates’,
Political Studies, 58(3), ­ pp. 516–535.
­ ­ ​­
Kristeva, J. (1991) Strangers to Ourselves. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kymlicka, W. (2001) Politics in the Vernacular. Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and Citizenship. Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press.
May, S. (2014) ‘Contesting Public Monolingualism and Diglossia: Rethinking Political Theory and
Language Policy for a Multilingual World’, Language Policy, 13(4), ­ pp. 371–393.
­ ­ ​­
Mendieta, E. (2009) ‘From Imperial to Dialogical Cosmopolitanism’, Ethics  & Global Politics, 2(3), ­
­ ­ ​­
pp. 241–258.
Mezzadra, S. and Neilson, B. (2013) Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor. Durham, NC and
London: Duke University Press.
Mignolo, W. (2000a) ‘The Many Faces of Cosmo-polis: Border Thinking and Critical Cosmopolitan-
ism’, Public Culture, 12(3), ­ pp. 721–748.
­ ­ ​­
Mignolo, W. (2000b) Local Histories/ Global Designs. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Niranjana, T. (1992) Siting Translation: History, Poststructuralism, and the Colonial Context. Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Papastergiadis, N. (2012) Cosmopolitanism and Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Rafael, V. L. (1993) Contracting Colonialism. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.
Rafael, V. L. (2005) The Promise of the Foreign. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.
Rafael, V. L. (2016) Motherless Tongues. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.
Rampton, B. (2005) Crossing, 2nd ed. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.

439
Esperança Bielsa

Rao, R. (2010) Third World Protest. Between Home and the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rao, R. (2012) ‘Postcolonial Cosmopolitanism: Making Place for Nationalism’, in Tripathy, J. and
Padmanabhan, S. (eds), The Democratic Predicament: Cultural Diversity in Europe and India. New Delhi:
­ ­
Routledge, pp. 165–187. ​­
Ricoeur, P. (2006) On Translation. London and New York: Routledge.
Rumford, C. (2008) Cosmopolitan Spaces. London and New York: Routledge.
Sakai, N. (1997) Translation and Subjectivity. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Schleiermacher, F. (1992) From ‘On the Different Methods of Translating’, in Schulte, R. and Biguenet,
J. (eds),
­ Theories of Translation. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Scholte, J. A. (2014) ‘A Transculturalist Path to Democratic Global Cooperation’, International Journal
of Cultural Research, 1(14),
­ ­ ­ ​­
pp. 82–87.
Sennett, R. (2011) The Foreigner. Two Essays on Exile. London: Notting Hill Editions.
Seyhan, A. (2001) Writing Outside the Nation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Sommer, D. (2004) Bilingual Aesthetics. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.
Velasco, P. and García, O. (2014) ‘Translanguaging and the Writing of Bilingual Learners’, Bilingual
Research Journal: The Journal of the National Association for Bilingual Education 37(1),
­ pp. 6–23.
­ ­ ​­
Waldron, J. (2000) ‘What Is Cosmopolitan?’, The Journal of Political Philosophy, 8(2), ­ pp. 227–243.
­ ­ ​­
Walkowitz, R. L. (2015) Born Translated. New York: Columbia University Press.
Woolard, K. A. (1989) Double Talk. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Woolard, K. A. and Frekko, S. E. (2012) ‘Catalan in the Twenty-fi rst Century: Romantic Publics
and Cosmopolitan Communities’, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 16(2),­
pp. 129–137.
­ ­ ​­
Woolard, K. A. (2016) Singular and Plural. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Yildiz, Y. (2012) Beyond the Mother Tongue. New York: Fordham University Press.

440
 30
The travel, translation
and transformation of
human rights norms
Tine Destrooper

Introduction
Human rights have become a dominant paradigm for framing issues of social justice. The
language of human rights is one adopted by a multitude of actors across the globe in their
struggle for more equality, justice and accountability. This, as the late Sally Merry (2018)
argued recently, is because framing social struggles in human rights terms offers several
important benefits to social justice activists engaged in ‘ local’ struggles. For one, it can add
legitimacy to a moral claim made by local actors: using the human rights language suggests
that these claims are not just the demands of a local community or even country, but that
they refer to norms that have been created and agreed upon by virtually all the countries of
the world. In addition, describing a particular issue as a human rights one renders this issue
understandable to a wider audience. Using the shared language of human rights allows activ-
ists to frame issues in ways that other justice activists can understand even if they might not
have encountered this particular problem themselves (also see White 2015). Furthermore,
and related to this, calling a social justice claim a human rights claim produces allies: it allows
activists from across the globe to engage in a shared struggle using the common language of
human rights.
Because of these advantages of using human rights language as a mobilizing discourse, the
group of actors invoking human rights language has been steadily growing and diversifying
(Moyn 2014; Vandenhole and Van Genugten 2015). Governments in the South, grassroots
activists in remote communities, members of transnational networks and country officers of
international organizations all refer to human rights in their attempts to create a sense of le-
gitimacy and recognition, remedy structural inequalities or seek redress for rights violations.
However, human rights norms are – necessarily  – interpreted in different ways in dif-
ferent localities and by different kinds of actors. Indeed, norms emerging in New York or
Geneva need to be translated to specific contexts in order to make sense there. However,
like all forms of translation, also the translation of human rights involves complex and nor-
mative decisions about what to include and what to exclude, and in which ways (Choudhury
2018). It is therefore crucial to pay specific attention to the dynamics through which this
process of translation takes place, since often this process of translation also entails some kind

441
Tine Destrooper

­ ​­ ­ ​­ ­ ​­

­ ​­
​­ ­ ​­

442
 Translation of human rights norms

New York and Geneva, and ( b) in crafting new norms and sharing these at a translocal level,
away from the alleged ‘centres’ of cultural production ( Desai 2015). Both types of agency
regarding human rights travel, translation and transformation are crucial if we want to un-
derstand how human rights norms affect the realities of rights users on the ground – which is
where these norms can act as a line of defence against injustice ( De Feyter 2007).
As several authors have previously demonstrated, rights users’ dynamic and decentralized
engagement with various aspects of human rights quickly proved that the assumption of a
more or less monolithic human rights understanding was, in practice, an illusion, and the
adoption of human rights discourses by a growing range of actors resulted in various partial,
innovative or biased articulations and translations of this discourse (see, e.g. Goodale and
Merry 2007; De Feyter et al. 2011).
As Halliday and Carruthers (2007) posit, in a globalized landscape it is not the author-
itative transnational and global bodies that create norms that they can then impose more
or less subtly upon a hapless world. The processes of norm setting, as well as that of norm
implementation, always and everywhere involves negotiation between various actors with
different interests and differential access to power, and therefore cannot be conceptualized as
top- down universalizing undertakings. Also, the groundbreaking work of Simmons (2009)
and Goodman and Jinks (2013) is crucial in this regard to understand the agency, both on the
side of individual and collective rights users as well as on the side of states, in the process of
disseminating human rights norms.
Notions like contextualization (Zeleza 2004), indigenization (Merry 2006a), plurality
(Falk 2000), vernacularization (Merry 2006b), inclusive universality ( Brems 2001) and al-
ternative manifestations of rights (Gready and Ensor 2005) all point out the importance of
considering the realities of local rights users and how they interact with global, regional and
national norms. Merry (2006b), for example, uses the notion of vernacularization to refer to
the adaptation of existing international human rights norms to local contexts by norm entre-
preneurs.2 She examines how and when a human rights idea or norm is redefined and repre-
sented in a way that is more or less compatible with the existing social world. She argues that
when specific struggles in non-Western societies utilize a Western liberal-legalist discourse,
local understandings, practices and symbolisms are applied to these global discourses and
lead to a reinterpretation of its core concepts and ideas. Scholars in this tradition (e.g. Zeleza
2004; Nyamu-Musembi 2005) analyse how rights users (and in particular norm entrepre-
neurs) transform the meaning of rights when they translate the – otherwise often legalistic –
human rights discourse into action, thereby shifting the parameters and symbolic forms of
the discourse. New ideas of gender equality coming from other parts of the world might, for
example, be presented through the conventional figures in a familiar genre of a street play
(Merry 2018). Merry posits that in such a case, the new idea is dressed in the clothes of the
old to render it more understandable, acceptable and relevant.
What several of these explorations of the interaction of human rights users with human
rights norms have in common is that they tend to take the pre-existing human rights system
as a starting point, from where local variations, iterations and translations become possible.
Even so- called ‘upstream approaches’ (e.g. Gledhill 2009; de Gaay Fortman 2011) that ex-
amine how spontaneous bottom-up action by marginalized rights users might bring about
changes at the international level, tend to still be deferential to formal human rights bodies –
with their capacity for drafting new declarations and treaties – as the primary norm setters.
Instead of these downstream or upstream conceptualizations, I am most interested in un-
derstanding how rights holders navigate and interact with – translocal and multi- directional –
processes of travel, translation and transformation to make claims and organize in ways that

443
Tine Destrooper

allow them to take greater direct control over the production of their own identities and
self-representation. Looking at this translocal level allows for a focus on the social practices of
translation and the involved networks of translation that compete for interpretive authority.
This translocal translation can be distinguished from hegemonic practices of transnational
translation (Canfield 2019). Also the abovementioned threefold understanding that distin-
guishes between the parallel processes of movement of human rights norms (travel) ­ and the
­
ensuing changes in substance (translation and transformation) allows for such a genuinely in-
teractional and multi- directional understanding, which does not require giving a privileged
status to international norm- setting bodies and which instead proposes a more explicit focus
on practices of everyday rights users.

Travel, translation and transformation

Human rights travel refers to the proliferation of existing human rights norms within and be-
tween groups of rights holders (who can invoke them as remedies in their specific situation),
transnational and translocal human rights communities (who can invoke the norms as indi-
rect users of human rights) and formal human rights norm setters (who often provide various
kinds of mechanisms to ensure that ‘voices from below’ can reach them).
I use the notion of human rights travel because it is a term more accurate than, for example,
the notion of human rights circulation, which connotes a level playing field and equality of
the actors involved, which renders it difficult to account for power differences. At the same
time, the notion of travel does not have the inherently hierarchical and verticalized connota-
tion of notions like upstreaming or downstreaming. Moreover, this notion foregrounds the
potential for agency more explicitly than notions like dispersal. This is important, because,
beyond this neutral process of movement, the notion of travel of human rights norms inev-
itably also entails a risk of norms becoming alienated from their original context and their
originators.
This is because when human rights norms travel, they need to be translated, not just in
a linguistic sense but also in a substantive or cultural sense. This translation process is by
no means a neutral or merely technical matter. While travelling through the dense human
rights architecture of courts, councils, counsellors, and communities of – international or
professionalized – activists, there is a constant competition over interpretive authority, and
specific and context-bound human rights claims are likely to become translated as more or
less unidimensional or technical debates that fit the existing narrative of powerful institutions
and groups ( Baxi 2007, 69; Canfield 2019). Therefore, when international human rights
practitioners adopt a certain strategy and language to defend rights holders’ interests, their
choice to use the frame of human rights entails the constant – and almost inevitable – danger
of narrowing social movement agendas in ways that fit the existing legalist imaginary of
human rights, sometimes at the cost of becoming incomprehensible or irrelevant to the rights
holders who were originally at the heart of the struggle.3
This brings us to the third dimension of this process, namely, transformation. I see trans-
lations and transformations as two sides of the same coin, in the sense that both relate to
the changes in substance, strategy and language that occur when human rights norms move
between – communities of – r ights users at various scales and localities. However, whereas
I use the notion of translation to refer to the act of rendering intelligible and acceptable for
other constituencies and audiences a discourse and practice that has its roots in one site ( be
it local, global or any of the intermediary or overlapping scales), I use the notion of transfor-
mation to refer to conscious or unconscious foregrounding of certain elements of the human

444
 Translation of human rights norms

rights discourse and the omission or adaptation of others, which leads to changes in the sub-
stance, strategy or language of certain components of the human rights system.
These transformations brought about through this process of translation and transfor-
mation have the potential to enrich our human rights understandings on the basis of rights
holders’ daily realities. For example, when rights users turn to human rights language and
methodologies to frame their struggles for social justice, thereby appropriating the human
rights discourse in a specific way that is relevant for their struggle, they may open up this
discourse and propose new concepts and readings. However, when intermediaries in var-
ious localities advance human rights claims or norms and translate them in ways that are
comprehensible – and acceptable – for other constituencies in the human rights edifice, this
does not necessarily adequately reflect these claims’ history and context of origin, and always
carries the potential for transformations or distortions of various kinds.
As Waldmüller (2018) argues, apparent translational paradoxes are often enrobed in hid-
den or open struggles for power, with more powerful actors being more likely to be able
to capitalize on these translation paradoxes by promoting – or obscuring – certain agendas
in the name of intelligibility and legibility (also see Vázquez 2011). Hence, while processes
of translation inevitably involve reductions, erasures, or reinterpretations, it is crucial to
acknowledge that the selective treatment of certain dimensions of a concept may be an inten-
tional strategy by more powerful actors seeking to shape the eventual understanding that is
likely to result from this translation. In this sense, transformations may be either intended or
unintended effects of translations and may either be beneficial or disadvantageous to certain
rights holders.
Thus, while none of these processes is inherently problematic, it is crucial for scholars,
activists and practitioners to improve their understanding of how the processes of travel,
translation and transformation relate to, and shape, one another. By unpacking the question
of precisely which elements are erased and which are added and by whom, we can start to
understand the dynamic and interactive dimensions of these processes of travel, translation,
and transformation. This undertaking is pertinent both from an empirical and from a norma-
tive point of view in that it helps us to better understand the power dynamics, imprecision,
uncertainty, and instability that characterize the international legal realm and the translations
of norms happening there. Rendering these more visible can, according to critical legal
scholars, be a means to return agency to various groups of rights holders ( Delmas-Marty
2006; Baumgaertel et al. 2014).

Translations and actors

To understand the outcome of travel, translation and transformation processes from an inter-
actional and actor- oriented perspective, it is crucial to highlight the role and agency of vari-
ous types of human rights users – a s norm entrepreneurs and intermediaries. When are these
actors most likely to play an active role in the processes of travel, translation and transforma-
tion, in which stages of the process and what determines whether and when grassroots actors
are likely to play this role? What happens to a social movement’s formulations of injustice
when these are reframed – sometimes by a small but influential section of that movement – a s
rights claims? How do movement leaders and external allies collaborate in identifying what
claims are to be given priority, and in deciding the mix of methods through which these
are to be pursued? Is juridification an inevitable consequence of travel and translation, and
does it inevitably entail a narrowing of social movement claims? And, if so, does such nar-
rowing signal a shift in movement agendas from socially transformative to reformist aims?

445
Tine Destrooper

How may the very content of social justice struggles change when community membership
organizations translate liberation agendas into legal terms with the aim of upstreaming them
or making them intelligible to other audiences, and does it sometimes make more sense to
pursue translations in more translocal ways? What is the role of grassroots work, and how
can we understand why some grassroots groups deliberately decide not to engage with the
human rights discourse?
To start answering these questions, the complex role and position of norm entrepreneurs
needs to be further unpacked. To understand who these norm entrepreneurs are, what their
position in (civil) society is, and how they themselves often travel between various audiences
and constituencies, we need to acknowledge that, because scientific, technical and organi-
zational knowledge is often required for long-term human rights activism, many grassroots
activists eventually become embedded to some extent in the systems of power they seek to
influence. This means that shifts in subjectivity may occur, which place these norm entre-
preneurs at a crossroads between various realms of which they are part and between various
subjectivities they can adopt interchangeably or sequentially. At the same time, those norm
entrepreneurs for whom this kind of insider positioning is not available (e.g. those working on
controversial, under-explored or taboo-laden issues) may sometimes find it difficult to have
their voices heard at all in certain forums. Equally, norm entrepreneurs who actually have in-
sider positioning but wish to work on issues deemed less relevant there, might find that their
struggles fall on deaf ears. Hence, there may be pressures for activists to focus on a limited
range of issues, to advocate within the bounds of the permissible, and to focus on building
networks with the international human rights community rather than with local partners.
This is so because influence on processes of travel, translation and transformation depends, to
no small extent, on the access – g rassroots – r ights users in one locality have to – grassroots –
rights users in other localities and to the formal human rights architecture.
As such, it is relevant to address the issue of norm entrepreneurs from two standpoints: a
more institutional one which foregrounds the norm- setting power of formal human rights
institutions, and a more interactional and multi- directional one foregrounding the agency
of rights users.
If the institutional perspective is the starting point, then seeking, demanding and granting
access to that international system becomes primordial, and the institutionalization of mobi-
lization and local ownership inevitable. It is important to acknowledge then that, first, this
may create tensions between grassroots organizations and national or international NGOs,
as well as among and within these grassroots organizations themselves. As Vandenbogaerde
(2018) argued recently, the Human Rights Council, for example, has a strong bias towards
Geneva-based professional NGOs, and despite its rhetoric about the participation of actors
from the Global South, organizations working at the grassroots level outside of Europe or
North America, especially, face multiple challenges in accessing the Human Rights Council.
These challenges are exacerbated in the standard- setting phase (as compared to the agenda-
setting phase), when the debates get more technical, political and structured, making it easy
to sideline actors that do not specialize in interest representation at the United Nations. This,
in combination with several institutional obstacles to free and open participation, means that
international NGOs can function as gatekeepers to the Human Rights Council, and the
influence of small grassroots organizations over processes of norm setting, translation and
transformation almost invariably becomes marginal.
Second, when further staying within this institutional perspective on process of travel,
translation and transformation, the prevailing focus on legal claim-m aking has led to what
Martínez (2018) calls a process of juridification. This means that conflicts travel from a local

446
 Translation of human rights norms

context to – (inter)national – legal forums where they encounter a specific set of pressures and
are moulded into a specific shape. This process tends to coincide with a process of profession-
alization (which can, in turn, lead to a tuning down of activism and a form of depoliticiza-
tion) when rights are turned into a matter exclusively for legal experts and rights claimants
become alienated from their own struggles (Madlingozi 2010). This juridification that occurs
during travel can have positive outcomes, of course, in the sense that the travel, translation
and transformation of social movement agendas into an internationally acknowledged legal
language can open avenues for subalterns to have their grievances heard and it can trans-
form international human rights professionals’ understandings of particular human rights
crises. At the same time, ‘the pressure to conform to the needs of international NGOs can
undermine the original goals of local movements… Unfashionable, complex, or intractable
conflicts fester in isolation, while those that… match international issues of the moment at-
tract disproportionate support’ ( Bob 2002: 44). This raises the question of whether grassroots
actors’ attempts at legal reformism can ever take the form of an ‘alter-insurgency’ through
which they can directly challenge power, or whether they are more likely to be co- opted by
the powers they seek to challenge.
Third, still staying within the institutionalized perspective on travel, translation and
transformation requires us to ponder on the role formal human rights norm setters can play
in facilitating the exchange of ideas and the extent to which subaltern voices have access to
the institutionalized human rights architecture. Arguably, these human rights bodies them-
selves also benefit from the participation of civil society in the sense that this participation
could facilitate a better understanding of local dynamics and that it enhances the democratic
legitimacy of these bodies. The information and legitimacy arguments regarding civil society
participation have led to an increased concern with participatory approaches, which can be
observed, among other things, in the emergence of organizations and procedures aimed at fa-
cilitating the participation of civil society through written and oral statements at the sessions
of the Human Rights Council special procedures. These participatory approaches can in
principle be conducive to travel. Yet, across the board, human rights institutions have often
been charged with being deaf to rights holders’ concerns and with advancing the interests
of the state or the international community instead (e.g. Nesiah 2018). Moreover, authors
like Nesiah ask how we should understand the role of formal human rights bodies in struc-
turing processes of human rights travel, translation and transformation. For one, offering –
g rassroots – civil society organizations a platform for having their voices heard may foreclose
these actors’ willingness and ability to ‘engage in confrontational contestation’, and instead
opt for negotiation – either with a human right-v iolating government or with international
institutions that have different priorities. How, one can then ask, do the allegedly inclusive
strategies of global actors affect rights users’ agency, their social structures, and their cost/
risk-benefit analysis? While institutional provisions can certainly facilitate some forms of
travel, translation and transformation of human rights norms across localities, we have to ex-
amine what happens to the ‘ local’, when certain laws, policies or procedures to amplify local
voices are adopted and institutionalized by international human rights bodies. More specif-
ically, we need to examine how local concepts alter in response to this institutionalization.
Can local struggles ever be accurately translated to be comprehensible in remote forums? As
Nesiah (2018) warns the irony at the heart of this question is that, through these kinds of
institutional provisions and the belief a technocratic and managerial approach towards the
upstreaming of local concepts, human rights issues become politically intelligible and re-
sponses democratically legitimate precisely because they are recast as technocratic issues and
thus stripped of politics and contestation.

447
Tine Destrooper

This brings us to the second relevant perspective on the role of norm entrepreneurs.
Whereas the three arguments above zoom in on formal human rights institutions as norm
entrepreneurs in the process of travel, translation and transformation, one of the main bene-
fits of this threefold conceptualization is that it also allows for a translocal actor- centred anal-
ysis of these processes that goes beyond the formal international human rights architecture,
i.e. one that allows for a focus on the practices of rights holders that does not consider New
York or Geneva as a necessary stopover.
This perspective sheds light on the agency of a broader range of norm entrepreneurs.
When human rights norms and claims chart a complex landscape within the human rights
field and travel in several directions simultaneously, more actors can be acknowledged to play
a role in this. These actors occupy a variety of positions and roles in the complex, multi-
layered and juxtaposed networks of rights users at what could be called the translocal level,
and beyond, in ways that defeat horizontal or vertical metaphors (e.g. Destrooper and Merry
2018). These are not characterized by the same vertical power relations that characterize the
­ ​­
oft-invoked ­local-global
​­ ­ ​­
or top-down ­
bottom-up​­ continuum.
If we refrain from adopting the kind of perspective that puts the formal human rights ar-
chitecture on a pedestal, then both the ways in which power manifests itself across, between
and within various localities, as well as the notion of ‘the local’ per se require further prob-
lematization (see, e.g. Hacking 1999). Various conceptions of ‘the local’ animate discussions
of human rights transformations, and often what is at stake is a debate over what constitutes
‘the most relevant local’ for human rights decision-making and who has access to ‘the people’
to better represent their voices (e.g. Nesiah 2018).
No definition of the local can ever be considered a silver bullet, and one has to always de-
fine and make explicit whether one uses the term to refer to grassroots place-based processes
that stand in contrast to the national and the international realm to which local actors may
have no easy access or of which they might have no direct experience; to national processes
that stand in contrast to the international processes and institutions of global governance; or to
yet other – potentially subaltern – dynamics and actors. While a sovereignty-based definition
of local would be most closely in line with mainstream human rights language of states as duty
bearers, and with the language of international law more generally, several authors have sug-
gested that, in order to understand the multi-layered and multiple ways in which human rights
norms travel, the local interests at stake should not merely be the nation-state register ­vis-à-vis
­​­­ ​­
the global, but should also include the grassroots community register ­vis-à-vis
­​­­ ​­ other grassroots,
provincial, national, regional and international actors. Therefore, rather than taking as a point
of reference the doctrinal recognition of the nation-state as the local level, elsewhere I have
acknowledged that different notions of local circulate alongside different understandings of
human rights norms and different norm setters (e.g. Destrooper 2018).
Moreover, if it is true that ‘ human rights claims originate from a local site’ ( De Feyter
et al. 2011: 14) and that the local is the primary site of struggle, more research is needed that
sheds light on the multiple power dynamics at both the local level and between the local,
global and any intermediate or translocal levels. Hence, if we acknowledge the complexity
of human rights travel and the extent to which actors at various levels have agency (within
and especially beyond the formal human rights system), it is crucial to account for the many
ways in which actors at various places within the – formal and informal – human rights ar-
chitecture do or do not have certain kinds of power at their disposition to steer this travel,
translation and transformation in one way or another.
Both perspectives on norm entrepreneurs are needed for a comprehensive analysis. As
Martinez (2018) puts it, human rights may travel through networked relations, but historical,

448
 Translation of human rights norms

economic and ideological power relations structure these relations and determine rights us-
ers’ relative access and influence. For example, how does unequal access shape local under-
standings that can then feed back into the discourse existing at the international level? Is the
travel of local understandings of human rights to formal human rights norm setters beneficial
per se, or has the human rights field configured translations and transformations in such a
way that the upstreaming of local concerns and the participation of local communities in the
norm- setting process has become internal to global governance rather than a locus for chal-
lenging transnational processes or global institutions? The focus on power dynamics means
that any analysis of the travel, translation and transformation of human rights norms nec-
essarily contemplates local, international and intermediate politics of rights, which involve
the establishment of hierarchies and the prioritization of values, actors, methods and claims.
These processes cannot be understood without the broader contexts and constellations within
which they take place (such as political interests and cycles, opportunity structures, strategic
alliances, media attention or donor agendas). As such, the political context co- determines the
outcomes of these processes in which a variety of norm entrepreneurs is involved.

Translations in practice
Limited political space as well as the d ifferential – political and other kinds of – power of
human rights users and norm entrepreneurs shape processes of travel, translation and trans-
formation (e.g. see Rottenburg 2009). This is clearly illustrated in a recent study by Johannes
Waldmüller (2018), which examines how the government of Ecuador invokes human rights
(translated, selectively reinterpreted and thus transformed) to push internationally for the reg-
ulation of transnational corporations by invoking notions of ecosocial and collective rights as
a matter of adapting the human rights language to the Ecuadorian context. Waldmüller crit-
ically analyses the ways in which the Ecuadorian government translates international human
rights norms to the national context on the basis of local frames of reference, and then seeks
to communicate these translations back to the international level, in order to promote a new
international standard that serves the State’s interests. The study shows that upstreaming a so-
called localized understanding of resistance-related human rights to the international level
does not necessarily further the interests of those most in need of the protection that human
rights can offer, and that, instead, it might actually have oft-overlooked potential disadvan-
tages: some genuinely local understandings may become reinterpreted or even erased when
powerful norm setters co-opt local understandings. The Ecuadorian case neatly illustrates
Vazquez’ (2011) argument that these kinds of erasures are seldom accidental, and that they
tend to play into existing balances of power. Indeed, as Randeria (2007) argues on a differ-
ent case, erasures could be considered strategic choices of a ‘cunning state’. The Ecuadorian
case raises the question whether it is ever possible to avoid these erasures completely? If not,
we should ask why power-contesting actors in different localities continue to adopt human
rights discourses despite the risk of ‘erasures’ that may fundamentally harm their cause?
This question is partly answered in a recent study on anti-torture activism in Vietnam. In
this study, Ken MacLean (2018) examines the pivotal moment in social movement activism
when activists decide – consciously or more organically – whether or not to adopt a translated
and transformed version of the human rights discourse. The study shows how activists weigh
the impact of several contextual factors (such as fear of retaliation, lack of material resources,
low level of human rights awareness, institutional obstacles and censorship) when shaping
their strategies in this regard. The study shows that there is a growing number of references
to the international human rights framework, as well as a growing number of campaigns that

449
Tine Destrooper

deliberately draw upon human rights treaties and mechanisms, such as the Universal Periodic
Review, to challenge the structures that perpetuate impunity nationally and to urge policy
reforms to increase police accountability. MacLean argues that this is indicative of activists’
growing awareness of these frameworks and of their relevance to human rights activism, and
that the frameworks are considered as a protection against the rights-v iolating state.
Other recent case studies, on the contrary, are indicative of rights holders’ and rights
users’ reluctance to engage with the existing human rights framework, and of their choice
for a strategy of nonengagement or of profound transformations of this framework. Activists
working in the context of a sweeping crackdown on civil society in China, for example, must
be skilled at managing political risks of many kinds. This can influence their strategic choices
with regard to the translation of human rights. A recent case study on the right to education
in China by Desmet (2018), for example, demonstrates that low perceptions of agency, risk
aversion and group pressure played an important role in keeping rights holders from engag-
ing in translations of the human rights discourse. Another case study on the right to health
in China similarly demonstrates that Chinese activists working on the right to health, for
example, showed pragmatism, sophistication and reasonable caution in the selection of their
advocacy tactics and discourse, and prioritized the opportunity to deliver real and measurable
gains for their communities. In concreto, this meant that many HIV/AIDS NGOs retreat to
service delivery programmes, rather than engaging in critical human rights activism. Davis
and Mohamed ponder the question of whether this type of engagement with service delivery
and with rights holders’ immediate and practical needs – under the banner of human rights
activism – a llows for a critical stance on government policy and, if not, what it means when
these organizations coin their strategy as a human r ights-based approach, while condoning
the actions of, and collaborating with, a human r ights-violating government ( Davis and
Mohamed 2018).

Concluding remarks
Human rights are often described as in crisis. But, as Merry (2018) asked, are human rights
really on the verge of disappearing? She argued that it is certainly the case that many formal
human rights institutions and organizations in many parts of the world are under threat, but
that the heart of human rights does not necessarily lie in these institutions, but precisely in
the ideal of justice, fairness, and equality that they represent. Recognizing this means that we
can acknowledge different interpretations and translations of existing human rights norms,
and that we can look for them in different places – not just the Human Rights Council or
the regular committee meetings, but also the offices of small NGOs, social media accounts of
activists, and the d ay-to- d ay conversations of people in the streets. Looking for human rights
in these places requires attention to the multi- directional multi-actor processes of travel,
translation and transformation.
In this chapter I argue that consciously conceptualizing and analysing the threefold pro-
cess of travel, translation and transformation can contribute to more progressive and locally
relevant human rights norms and allows us to acknowledge the extent to which the ideals
they promote have become part of everyday life for many people around the world. Thus,
as Merry (2018) argues, the focus on how human rights travel and how they are translated
and transformed offers an invaluable corrective to those perspectives locating human rights
only in formal institutions and laws. It foregrounds the so- called peripheries, acknowledges
these as dynamic spaces and sites of agency, sheds light on the constant competition over

450
 Translation of human rights norms

interpretive authority and shows how human rights are embedded in everyday social practice
and activism. By studying the travel of human rights in this way, we can acknowledge it as a
social justice ideology flexible enough to be translated to and transformed within a variety of
contexts and for a broad range of problems. This makes it possible to develop a more compre-
hensive and useful understanding of the way in which human rights work in the world today.
Yet, we should also acknowledge the challenges and complexities thereof. Some of the core
challenges are how to define core concepts underlying and shaping our discussion, how to fore-
ground the contested nature of current discourses, and how to bring power dynamics back into
the analysis of how human rights norms travel, become translated and transform in practice. If
human rights are to realize the socially transformative potential they are often claimed to have
(Gready and Vandenhole 2014; Haglund and Stryker 2015), power dynamics and their impact
need to be better understood ( Vázquez 2011). My aim in this chapter has precisely been to pro-
pose at a more textured and multidimensional understanding of how human rights norms travel
and become translated and transformed and how power dynamics play a role in this.
For this reason, this chapter has conceptualized translation as struggle, as a transformation
at the borders of human rights discourse and practice. This allows for a focus on erasure (of
issues that do not fit the ‘parameters of legibility’ and can therefore not be named or are ac-
tively omitted) as well as on processes of selection, classification and appropriation that are the
outcomes of what is inherently a struggle in which relative access, influence and power play
an important role ( Vázquez 2011). By conceptualizing translation this way, both institutional
power and actors’ agency can be accounted for and a more contextualized and emancipatory
analysis of these complex processes becomes possible.

Further reading
Destrooper, T. and Merry, S. (eds.) (2018) Human Rights Transformation in Practice. Pennsylvania: Penn-
sylvania University Press.
This volume is extensively cited in this chapter as it provides the empirical work on which this chap-
ter is built. Case studies from various localities shed light on what dynamics of travel, translation and
transformation look like in practice.
Goodale, M. and Merry, S. E. (2007) The Practice of Human Rights: Tracking Law between the Global and
the Local. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Drawing on anthropological studies of human rights work from around the world, this book examines
human rights in practice. It shows how actors mobilize human rights language in a variety of local
settings, often differently from those imagined by human rights law itself.
Gready, P. and Ensor, J. (2005) Reinventing Development? Translating Rights-Based Approaches from Theory
into Practice. London and New York: Zed Books.
Well-researched volume that shows how the proliferation of human rights language has been translated
in the context of development, and how it transformed this sector, as well as how it is being trans-
formed by it.
­Meckled-García,
​­ S. and Ҫali, B. (2006) ‘Lost in Translation: The Human Rights Ideal and Interna-
tional Human Rights Law’, in Meckled- García, S. and Ҫali, B. (eds.), The Legalization of Human
Rights: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Human Rights and Human Rights Law. London and New York:
Routledge, pp. 11–31.
­ ­ ​­
Whereas the present chapter offers a view on how human rights principles travel and are translated and
transformed in practice, Meckled- Garcia and Çali explore how the translation and transformations
between theoretical normative rights models and international law happen.
Vázquez, R. (2011) ‘Translation as Erasure: Thoughts on Modernity’s Epistemic Violence’, Journal of
Historical Sociology, 24(1),
­ pp. 27–44.
­ ­ ​­
This article maps how translation renders invisible everything that does not fit in the ‘parameters of leg-
ibility’ of modernity's epistemic territory and draws the attention to the politics of epistemic translation.

451
Tine Destrooper

Notes
1 One can be identified as a human rights user from the moment there is an explicit interaction with
human rights – or as a potential user if one could legitimately and logically invoke human rights but
chooses not to do this. This means that the term encompasses, for example, rights holders, human
rights practitioners and activists and legal duty bearers ( Desmet 2014).
2 Sunstein (1996) uses the notion of norm entrepreneurs to refer to those societal actors interested in
changing the substance of social norms.
3 Vázquez (2011) proposes the conceptualization of translation processes as processes of selection,
classification and appropriation that erase all that does not fit into the proper place of the already
established epistemic territory and its ‘parameters of legibility’.

References
Baumgaertel, M., Staes, D. and Mena Parras, F. (2014) ‘Hierarchy, Coordination, or Conflict? Global
Law Theories and the Question of Human Rights Integration’, European Journal of Human Rights,
3, pp. 326–53.
­ ­ ​­
Baxi, U. (2007) Human Rights in a Posthuman World: Critical Essays. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Bob, C. (2002) ‘Merchants of Morality’, Foreign Policy, 129, pp. 36–45. ­ ­ ​­
Brems, E. (2001) Human Rights: Universality and Diversity. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Canfield, M. (2019) ‘Banana Brokers. Communicative Labor, Translocal Translation, and Transna-
tional Law’, Public Culture, 31, pp. 69–92.
­ ­ ​­
Casla, K. (2014) ‘Dear Fellow Jurists, Human Rights Are About Politics, and That’s Perfectly Fine’, in
Lettinga, D. and van Troost, L. (eds.), Can Human Rights Bring Social Justice: Twelve Essays. Amster-
dam: Amnesty International Netherlands, pp. 35–40.­ ­ ​­
Choudhury, Z. A., Jensen, S. and Kelly, T. (2018) ‘Counting Torture: Towards the Translation of
Robust, Useful, and Inclusive Human Rights Indicators’, Nordic Journal of Human Rights, 36(2), ­
­ ­
pp. 132–150. ​­
Davis, S. L. M. and Charmain, M. (2018) ‘Global Rights, Local Risk: Community Advocacy on Right
to Health in China’, in Destrooper, T. and Merry, S. (eds.), Human Rights Transformation in Practice.
Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania University Press, pp. 229–250.
­ ­ ​­
De Feyter, K. (2007) ‘Localizing Human Rights’, in Benedek, W., De Feyter, K. and Marrella, F. (eds.),
Economic Globalization and Human Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 67–92.
De Feyter, K., Parmentier, S., Timmerman, C. and Ulrich, G. (eds.) (2011) The Local Relevance of
Human Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
De Gaay Fortman, B. (2011) Political Economy of Human Rights: The Quest for Relevance and Realization.
New York: Routledge.
­Delmas-Marty,
​­ M. (2006)
­ Le Pluralisme Ordonné. Paris: Seuil.
Desai, M. (2015) Subaltern Movements in India: Gendered Geographies of Struggle against Neoliberal Develop-
ment. London and New York: Routledge.
Desmet, E. (2014) ‘Analysing Users’ Trajectories in Human Rights ( Law): A Conceptual Exploration’,
Human Rights and International Legal Discourse, 8(2), ­ pp. 121–41.
­ ­ ​­
Desmet, E. (2018) ‘Rural-Urban Migration and Education in China: Unraveling Responses to Inju-
rious Experiences’, in Destrooper, T. and Merry, S. (eds.), Human Rights Transformation in Practice.
Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania University Press, pp. 183–207.
­ ­ ​­
Destrooper, T. and Merry, S. (eds.) (2018) Human Rights Transformation in Practice. Pennsylvania: Penn-
sylvania University Press.
Falk, R. (2000) Human Rights Horizons: The Pursuit of Justice in a Globalizing World. London: Routledge.
Gledhill, J. (2009) ‘The Rights of the Rich versus the Rights of the Poor’, in Hickey, S. and Mitlin, D.
(eds.),
­ Rights-Based Approaches to Development. Exploring the Potential and Pitfalls. Sterling: Kumarian
­ ­ ​­
Press, pp. 31–46.
Goodale, M. and Merry, S. E. (2007) The Practice of Human Rights: Tracking Law between the Global and
the Local. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goodman, R. and Jinks, D. (2013) Socializing States: Promoting Human Rights through International Law.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.

452
 Translation of human rights norms

Gready, P. and Ensor, J. (2005) Reinventing Development? Translating Rights-Based Approaches from Theory
Into Practice. London and New York: Zed Books.
Gready, P. and Vandenhole, W. (2014) Human Rights and Development in the New Millennium: Towards a
Theory of Change. London and New York: Routledge.
Hacking, I. (1999) The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Haglund, L. and Stryker, R. (eds.) (2015) Closing the Rights Gap. From Human Rights to Social Transfor-
mation. Oakland: University of California Press.
Halliday, T. and Carruthers, B. (2007) ‘The Recursivity of Law: Global Norm Making and National
Lawmaking in the Globalization of Corporate Insolvency Regimes’, American Journal of Sociology,
112(4),­ pp.1135–202.
­ ​­
MacLean, K. (2018) ‘New Visibilities: Challenging Torture and Impunity in Vietnam’, in Destrooper,
T. and Merry, S. (eds.), Human Rights Transformation in Practice. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvanie Univer-
sity Press, pp. 157–179.
­ ­ ​­
Madlingozi, T. (2010) ‘On Transitional Justice Entrepreneurs and the Production of Victims’, Journal of
Human Rights Practice, 2(2), ­ pp. 208–228.
­ ­ ​­
Martínez, S. (2018) ‘Upstreaming or Streamlining? Translating Social Movement Agendas into Legal
Claims in Nepal and the Dominican Republic’, in Destrooper, T. and Merry, S. (eds.), Human
Rights Transformation in Practice. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania University Press, pp. 128–56.
Merry, S. E. (2006a) ‘Transnational Human Rights and Local Activism: Mapping the Middle’, Ameri-
can Anthropologist, 108(1), ­ pp. 38–51.
­ ­ ​­
Merry, S. E. (2006b) Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law Into Local Justice.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Merry, S. E. (2013) ‘Human Rights Monitoring and the Question of Indicators’, in Goodale, M. (ed.),
Human Rights at the Crossroads. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 140–52.
Merry, S. (2018) ‘Foreword’, in Destrooper, T. and Merry, S. (eds.), Human Rights Transformation in
Practice. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania University Press, pp. vii–ix.
Moyn, S. (2014) ‘Human Rights and the Age of Inequality’, in Lettinga, D. and van Troost, L. (eds.),
Can Human Rights Bring Social Justice? Amsterdam: Amnesty International The Netherlands,
pp. 13–18.
­ ­ ​­
Nesiah, V. (2018) ‘Local Ownership of Global Governance’, in Destrooper, T. and Merry, S.
­
(eds.), Human Rights Transformation in Practice. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania University Press,
pp. 29–56.
­ ­ ​­
Nyamu-Musembi, C. (2005) ‘An Actor- Oriented Approach to Rights in Development’, IDS Bulletin,
36(1),­ pp. 41–52.
­ ­ ​­
Patel, S. and Mitlin, D. (2009) ‘Reinterpreting the Rights-Based Approach: A Grassroots Perspective
on Rights and Development’, in Hickey, S. and Mitlin, D. (eds.), Rights-Based
­ ​­ Approaches to Develop-
ment. Exploring the Potential and Pitfalls. Sterling: Kumarian Press, pp. 107–124.
­ ­ ​­
Randeria, S. (2007) ‘Cunning States and Unaccountable International Institutions: Legal Plurality,
Social Movements and Rights of Local Communities to Common Property Resources’, European
Journal for Sociology, 44(1),­ pp. 27–60.
­ ­ ​­
Rottenburg, R. (2009) Far-Fetched Facts. A Parable of Development Aid. Cambridge: Massachusetts Insti-
tute of Technology.
Simmons, B. (2009) Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Sunstein, C. R. (1996) ‘Social Norms and Social Roles’, Columbia Law Review, 96(4), ­ pp. 903–968.
­ ­ ​­
Vandenbogaerde, A. (2018) ‘Accommodating Local Human Rights Practice at the Un Human Rights
Council’, in Destrooper, T. and Merry, S. (eds.), Human Rights Transformation in Practice. Pennsylva-
nia: Pennsylvania University Press, pp. 57–76. ­ ­ ​­
Vandenhole, W. and Van Genugten, W. (2015) ‘Introduction: An Emerging Multi-Duty-Bearer
Human Rights Regime’, in Vandenhole, W. (ed.), Challenging Territoriality in Human Rights Law.
London and New York: Routledge, pp. 1–14.
Vázquez, R. (2011) ‘Translation as Erasure: Thoughts on Modernity’s Epistemic Violence’, Journal of
Historical Sociology, 24(1),
­ pp. 27–44.
­ ­ ​­
Waldmueller, J. (2018) ‘Lost through Translation: Political Dialectics of Eco- Social and Collective
Rights in Ecuador’, in Destrooper, T. and Merry, S. (eds.), Human Rights Transformation in Practice.
Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania University Press, pp. 101–127. ­ ­ ​­

453
Tine Destrooper

White, L. (2015) ‘Dialogue and Performance in Human Rights Practice’, Paper presented during The
Localization of Human Rights, Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, NYU School of Law,
6 November 2015.
Zeleza, P. (2004) ‘The Struggle for Human Rights in Africa’, in Zeleza, P. and McConnaughay, P.
(eds.),
­ Human Rights, the Rule of Law, and Development in Africa. Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl-
vania Press, pp. 1–18.
­ ­ ​­

454
 31
Nations in translation
Brian James Baer

Introduction
The relationship between nations and translation is complex and fraught. The transnational
nature of translated texts, which connect two different languages, cultures and often his-
torical periods, challenges deeply held Western concepts of originality and authenticity that
underpin the idea of autonomous sui generis national cultures. As Lawrence Venuti puts it,

Translation can be described as an act of violence against a nation only because national-
ist thinking tends to be premised on a metaphysical concept of identity as a homogenous
essence, usually given a biological grounding in an ethnicity or race and seen as mani-
fested in a particular language and culture.
(2005:
­ 177)

It is not surprising then that the rise of Romantic nationalism saw the systematic study of
national languages and literatures, seen as privileged bearers of the national ‘genius’, accom-
panied by the marginalization of translated texts as unoriginal, mediated and inauthentic.
Nevertheless, translation was central to the Romantic nationalist project, as will be discussed
below. Before discussing the relationship between translations and nations and the concept of
nations in translation, however, it might be helpful to review current conceptualizations of
the nations, given both the ubiquity of the term and its conceptual plasticity.

What is a nation?
There is a good deal of conceptual ambiguity in the popular use of the term nation. At times,
it is used to refer to an ethnic people and other times to refer to a nation- state. There is also
the distinction between an ethnic nation, founded on the basis of a particular ethnos, versus
a civic nation, where, in principle, no ethnic group is privileged over another. These two
models, however, often overlap. Many nations that were founded as ethnic nations today
aspire to be civic nations, while civic nations, such as the US or the Soviet Union, may be

455
Brian James Baer

haunted by the specter of ethnic nationalism, reflected in the privileging of ‘whiteness’ in the
former and the cultivation of Russian chauvinism in the latter.
Taking into account this conceptual slippage, scholars have articulated three conceptual
models of the nation and nationhood: the primordialist, the perennialist, and the modernist
( Blackledge and Creese 2010: 182). Primordialists situate the origins of the nation in the dis-
tant past and posit an enduring essence for the nation over time, through periods of occupation
and liberation, dormancy and revival, the latter often referred to as a rebirth or renaissance.
As Homi Bhabha puts it, primordial nations are like narratives in that they ‘ lose their origins
in the myths of time and only fully encounter their horizons in the mind’s eye’ (1990: 1).
Perennialists, on the other hand, believe that nations exist over time but that they undergo
change, while the modernists hold that the nation is a relatively modern phenomenon, made
possible by the emergence of modern technologies (e.g., a standardized ‘national’ language)
and institutions (e.g., a national system of mandatory public education and ‘national’ news-
papers and other publications meant to foster a national readership). One of the early texts of
the modernist school is Ernest Renan’s essay ‘What Is a Nation?’ (1887), in which he argues
that modern nations are built not only on shared memories but also on a shared forgetting
of those aspects of their history that would undermine the national narrative, such as the fact
that many modern nations began with invasion and conquest, that national boundaries shift
over time, and that a single national language is a recent phenomenon, made possible by the
suppression of competing idioms. Therefore, Renan concludes, nations are not the inevitable
product of a language, territory and ethnos but rather require a ‘ daily plebiscite’ (1990: 19),
that is, they must be constantly reaffirmed by the will of the people. More recently, Ernst
Gellner declared that ‘[n]ationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness:
it invents nations where they do not exist’ (1983: 7). Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger
(1992) studied manifestations of that invention in rituals, monuments and pageants, high-
lighting the specific role of ‘ invented traditions’ in obscuring the recent origins of modern
nations, lending them a primordialist air. Benedict Anderson (1991) made a major contribu-
tion to modernist thinking with his description of the modern nation as an ‘ imagined com-
munity’, imagined in the sense that one can never know every other member of the nation
although one senses a connection to them. Those perceived bonds of solidarity among the
members of a nation are fostered through rituals, practices and institutions, made possible by
the modern technologies and institutions mentioned above. Moreover, for modernists, na-
tional identity is shifting. As Blackledge and Creese argue, ‘ethnicity, and therefore national
identity is socially-constructed and fluid rather than fixed, and is constantly re-negotiated in
new settings’ ( Blackledge and Creese 2010: 182).
While a modernist perspective informs most of the scholarly writings on nations and na-
tionalism produced over the last 50 years, primordialist thinking remains firmly entrenched
in the popular imagination, and its affective power is routinely exploited by politicians and
pundits. Moreover, the recent rise of ethno-nationalist movements across the world challenges
developmental narratives that see global institutions and systems as inevitably displacing the
nation. This suggests the importance of understanding the national and the transnational or
global not as mutually exclusive but as thoroughly entangled and mutually constitutive, or
mutually enabling. In other words, the way we conceive of the nation implies a conception
of the transnational or global, and vice versa. It is important, therefore, to recognize how the
global is incorporated within nations (nations in translation) and how nations incorporate
the global (translation in nations). The latter has been addressed philosophically by a number
of scholars dealing with translation and hospitality (see Derrida 2000, Ricoeur 2006, and
Inghilleri 2017, among others). I will concentrate instead on the former, demonstrating how

456
 Nations in translation

‘critical and unrelenting attention to the very process of translation’ (Chakrabarty 2000: 17),
to use Chakrabarty’s phrase, can challenge the basic tenets of primordialist thinking, expos-
ing ‘the complex heteronomy that inheres in all of our constructed solidarities’ ( Bermann
2005: 3) while expanding modernist approaches to studying the national imaginary before
offering a case study of the ‘ imperial nation’ of Russia.

The primordial nation and/in translation

While it is a widely accepted truth that ‘the literature of most nations begins with transla-
tions’ ( Venclova 1979: 5), it is no less true that translation has been ignored or suppressed in
the literary and cultural histories of modern nations. As Heilbron notes, ‘Literary history
tends to ignore translation since it is commonly conceived as national history’ (2010: 316).
The idea that university departments of language and literature were created in order to
document and affirm the ‘national genius’ is supported by their traditional antipathy to-
ward t ranslation—regardless of the cultural significance of those t ranslations—in favor of
‘original’ writing. Indeed, literary historians adopted the model of national historiography,
with its preoccupation with origins. What is studied in such historiographies are works that
were created in the period under investigation, typically ignoring the ‘continuous recycling
of different texts from the past’ that occurs, often with the help of translation ( Lotman 2019:
141). The semiotician Juri Lotman rejects such national histories of literature and culture as
marred by a superficial developmentalism that ignores the whole question of a work’s ac-
tual relevance. Lotman goes on to reference the nineteenth- century Russian writer Nikolai
Gogol who, when asked to name the most important writers of his age, replied without
hesitation: Walter Scott and Homer (qtd. in Lotman 2019: 141). Incidentally, Gogol would
have read both of those authors in translation. In fact, the new relevance of Homer to Russian
culture of Gogol’s time was reflected in the appearance of two much- d iscussed retranslations
of the Iliad, by Nikolai Gnedich and Vasilii Zhukovskii (see Kalb 2017). Therefore, a focus
on the relevance of literary works as opposed to their origin undermines nationalist histo-
riography, making possible the full integration of translated texts.
The Romantic obsession with origins and originality presents one of the central paradoxes
or double binds of modern nationalism, namely, that nations are expected to assert their
originality as the basis for their claims of autonomy but, at the same time, they are expected
to follow general models for doing so. Hence, every nation must have its national poet, its
national epic, and so on. Consider, for example, the paintings of Welsh ‘national’ painters of
the Romantic Age. Many of them studied art in London and then used that imperial style to
paint pictures of Welsh peasants in traditional folk costumes and scenes from Welsh history
and legend. Such works of art could be described as imperial in form and national in content.
Borrowing, however, also took place in the other direction. And so, while the persecution
of the oral poet-storytellers known as bards was a classic theme in Welsh nationalist art of
the nineteenth century— see John Martin’s 1827 ‘The Bard’, based on the Welsh tradition
that Edward I of England, after conquering Wales, ordered all the bards be put to death—the
importation of bardic forms of authorship from the peripheries was a defining moment in the
creation of modern ‘English’ literature, underscoring the central role played by ‘the cultural
nationalism of the peripheries’ in the construction of modern English literature ( Trumpener
1997: xii). As Katie Trumpener argues in Bardic Nationalism, ‘English­ literature, ­so-called,
​­
constitutes itself in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries through the systematic
imitation, appropriation, and political neutralization of antiquarian and nationalist literary
developments in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales’ (1997: xi).

457
Brian James Baer

The compulsion to meet established criteria for nationhood also produced some of the
most high-profile scandals in literary history, involving the forging of ‘national’ epics, such
as James MacPherson’s The Songs of Ossian in Britain, The Lay of Igor’s Campaign, in Russia,
and the Dvůr Králové and Zelená Hora manuscripts in Czech- speaking lands. ( The Russian
manuscript is today largely considered to be authentic, although some doubt remains as the
original manuscript was lost in the burning of Moscow that preceded Napoleon’s capture of
the city.) The entangling of literary and political histories of nations is also highlighted by the
fact that Tomáš Masaryk, the first president of an independent Czechoslovakia, often referred
to as the President Liberator, was an accomplished philologist who played an instrumental
role is exposing the Dvůr Králové and Zelená Hora manuscripts as frauds ( Dobiáš 2019).
Such entanglements were inevitable given the fact that Romantic nationalism posited lan-
guage as the privileged expression of the distinct genius of a nation, its Volkgeist, manifested
in the literary works created in that language.
Translation is directly implicated in Scottish poet James MacPherson’s Songs of Ossian
(1760), which he claimed to be a translation, making one of the most popular— a nd most
widely translated—works of the eighteenth century Anglophone literature not just a forgery
but a pseudo-translation. Pseudo-translations, however, are the exceptions that prove the
rule of authentic national cultures. Far more common is the phenomenon of ‘pseudo orig-
inals’, such as Irish poet Thomas Moore’s ‘Evening Bells’, which he describes as a ‘Russian
Air’. The poem was translated into Russian by Ivan Kozlov and became extremely popular,
so much so that Russian literary scholars began to conjecture that Moore’s original was in
fact a translation of an ‘Eastern’ source text (see Baer 2017).
At the same time, nationalist literary projects, whether located at the periphery or in the
metropole, were typically led by educated elites and often involved the ‘translation’ of oral
folk culture into written texts (e.g., Ossian, Afanasiev, the Brothers Grimm). Insofar as these
written texts participated in the creation of a single national idiom, one could argue that
they altered in fundamental ways the folk culture they were attempting to ‘record’, another
of the paradoxes of the Romantic movement’s relationship to translation. To the extent that
modern nation-building is tied to such standardization of language, or what Andre Lefevere
refers to as the ‘monolingualization’ of cultures, it could be said to establish the conditions for
translation in the modern world order, which Naoki Sakai argues, assumes a ‘monolingual
address’ (1997). In this sense, translation between standardized (national) languages estab-
lishes the difference it purports to bridge. This is especially evident in the linguistic poli-
tics in the Balkan regions following the break-up of Yugoslavia, where translation is now
required for closely related, mutually comprehensible languages, and deliberate efforts are
being undertaken to further differentiate the languages from one another through the intro-
duction of lexical items (see Kuhiwczak 1999; Jones 2010).
Translation’s role in modern nation-building is associated in many nations of Europe with
the transformation of the vernacular into a national language, often enacted and symbolized
by the translation of the Bible. The cultural work achieved by the translation of the Bible
into the vernacular cannot be underestimated. It not only helped to promote a version of the
vernacular for an emerging national readership but also lent new dignity to the vernacular
as a worthy bearer of divine truth, thereby lending new authority to authors writing in it.
(As Thomas Greene [1982] argues, in pre-modern European cultures, only the ancients were
considered authores, so the translation of the Bible into modern languages can be seen as part
of a larger cultural project of ‘authorizing’ modern writers.) In Eastern Europe, the necessity
for the missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius to provide translations of the Bible and other
sacred texts for local populations led them to create the first alphabet in the region, which

458
 Nations in translation

is why the alphabet used by many Slavic peoples today is referred to as Cyrillic. In many
cultures outside the West, translation of the European novel in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries performed similar cultural work, importing a language, a mindset and
specific social (and gender) roles, as well as narratives of personal emancipation, associated
with Western modernity (see Levy 2006; Cho 2016).
The translation of the Bible, however, provided more than just a language for emerging or
consolidating nations; it also provided a compelling narrative of the nation in the story of the
Jewish people as recounted in the Old Testament. The idea of an ethnic people ordained by God,
then defeated and sent into exile, only to be liberated and returned to their historic homeland
has provided a template for many modern nations to follow, as evident in the nationalist ‘revivals’
that occurred across Europe in the early- to mid-nineteenth century. As David Aberbach notes,
‘In the two centuries after the invention of printing, the Hebrew Bible in vernacular translation
had a decisive influence on the evolution of nationalism’ (2005: 223). Indeed, the Old Testament
story of the Jewish people would also serve as the foundational narrative of the Black civil rights
movement in the US of the twentieth century. So, this nationalist model, which was spread to
many parts of the world via Western imperialism, then became the foundation of anti-imperialist
liberation movements. As Aberbach notes, ‘The Bible was essential in the culture of empires but
also, paradoxically, inspired defeated, suppressed and colonised people to seek freedom’ (2005:
223). At the same time, Western colonialism imposed national boundaries and institutions on
territories characterized by radical multi-lingualism and ethnic and cultural diversity.
In the nineteenth century, the story of the emancipation of nations was supported at a
societal, historical and individual level by the powerful concept of Bildung, or progressive
personality development The emancipation of nations and individuals were now informed
by the same notion of developmentalism, which many scholars argue is central to the his-
torical thinking of modern Western cultures. If, according to such thinking, the nation was
akin to the individual in its quest for liberty and autonomy from oppressive supra-national
or imperial configurations, then by the late twentieth century the treatment of subnational
groups (such as the Kurds in Turkey, the Catalans in Spain, the Puerto Ricans in the US,
the Palestinians in Israel, and the Bretons in France) have challenged that narrative, expos-
ing ‘ imperial’ elements within the modern nation- state—David Lloyd notes the tendency
of nations to ‘ape empires’ ( Lloyd 1993: 154)—t roubling any absolute separation of nation
and empire, as reflected in such hybrid designations as ‘ imperial nation’ (Clowes 2011: 70)
and ‘nation- centered imperialism’ ( Tageldin 2011: 199). A recent US documentary on the
­Spanish-American
​­ War titled Crucible of Empire makes this point:

Victorious over Spain in Cuba and the Philippines, the United States, a nation founded
in opposition to imperialism, grappled with its new role as an imperial power. More re-
cent events in Vietnam, Somalia, and Yugoslavia bear striking parallels to those of 1898.
(Crucible 1999: online)

The twentieth century also saw the emergence of what were believed to be post-national poli-
ties, such as the Soviet Union, in which the national designation Soviet was devoid of any associ-
ation with ethnic nationalism. By the late Soviet period, however, the reality was quite different;
the supra-national ideal of Soviet culture was marred by a distinct Russian chauvinism.
The Bible’s role in supporting the autonomy of nations is, however, complicated by the fact
that the Christian Bible contains the New Testament, as well as the Old, providing competing
models of nations and of translation, as Naomi Seidman discusses in Faithful Renderings (2006).
­
Whereas the Old Testament offers a primordialist vision of the nation, which is reflected in a

459
Brian James Baer

resistance to the translation of its sacred texts and to conversion, the New Testament puts for-
ward an opposing model, one that supports if not compels translation when Christ says to his
apostles: ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation’ (Mark 16:15); ‘Therefore
go and make disciples of all nations’ (Matthew 28:19); and ‘You will be My witnesses in Jeru-
salem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth’ (Acts 1:8). Later, in Acts,
the apostles hear a rushing wind after which tongues of fire appear above their heads and they
begin speaking in tongues: ‘And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in
other tongues as the Spirit enabled them’ (Acts 2:4). These two contradictory models, one of
nationalist consolidation and the other of imperialist expansion, together formed the basis of
the modern European imperial nation. The consolidation of nations, which began in Renais-
sance Europe and produced many of the canonical works of ‘national’ vernacular literature,
took place alongside imperialist exploration and conquest, or what Walter D. Mignolo refers
to as ‘the darker side of western modernity’ (2011). This is another way in which modern
nations are characterized by an ‘ impossible unity’ ( Bhabha 1990: 1).
The accommodation of these two opposing models required a great many acts of forget-
ting, often involving the fact of translation. Ngugi wa Thiong’o points this out in his memoir
In the House of the Interpreter (2012), when he recounts an incident that occurred in a class on
English composition at his school in Kenya. The teacher encourages the students to learn
composition ‘ from the Bible’. As his teacher explains, ‘It has the shortest sentence in English.
Jesus wept. So follow the example of Jesus. He spoke very simple English’ (2012: 23). This
leaves wa Thiong’o puzzled: ‘Not trying to be clever or correct him, I raised my hand and
said that Jesus did not speak English: the Bible was a translation’ (ibid.: 23). While his class-
mates tittered, the teacher reacted with annoyance, saying, ‘Remember, you have come here
to learn, not to teach. Or do you want to change places with me?’ (ibid.: 23). As wa Thiong’o
recalls, ‘Smith’s testy response froze questions and differing perspectives’ (ibid.: 23).
While translations of the Bible provided in many cases the foundations for a national lan-
guage and a national narrative, the proliferation of Bible translations challenged the self-evident
and transcendent nature of the national community and of religious truth. For this reason, the
Russian Bible Society, which was undertaking the first translation of the Bible into modern
Russian, was shut down by the government following the failed Decembrist uprising of 1825
(see Zacek 1966; Batalden 2013). In other parts of Europe, Catholics and Protestants produced
competing translations to support their beliefs, and the proliferation of translations among
Protestants reflected the splintering of Protestantism into a variety of sects, including funda-
mentalist ‘reactions to the modern world’ (Appiah 2018: 56). Hepzibah Israel goes further,
describing how different translations of the Bible in Ceylon served to indicate membership
not only in a certain faith community but also in a certain social group or class (Israel 2006).
Translation’s capacity to trouble the Romantic notions of origins and originality that
ground a primordial understanding of the nation is what allows translation to serve as a crit-
ical site from which to examine the modern national imaginary and specifically ‘the many
things that must be forgotten’ ( Renan [1887]1990) in order to sustain it. This is a point made
by an increasing number of scholars over the past 20 years. As Shaden Tageldin argues, trans-
lation can expose ‘the Eurocentrism that haunts current understandings of world literature
and the origins of literary comparison’ (Tageldin 2011: 29), or, as Emily Apter puts it, ‘the
politics of linguistic difference [can be] availed to unhorse language nationalisms’ (Apter
2013: 25). Only then, Michael Cronin argues, can we

mov[e] away from the Romantic notion of an ‘original’, sui generis national genius which
is transported unchanged through time (immutable mobile) to a notion of literature that

460
 Nations in translation

is networked beyond national borders through the intrinsic duality and mutability of
translation (mutable mobile).
(Cronin 2006: 32)

If the impetus for primordialists to forget translation is obvious, it is somewhat surprising

then that very few modernists in the field of nationality studies have acknowledged transla-
tion as among the technologies supporting the modern national imaginary; in other words,
translation functions not only as a techne of empire, as Vincent Rafael (1992) argues, but
also as a techne of nations. It is also either ignored or elided in much of the literature on
globalization and migration, treated largely as a metaphor, as Bhabha (‘cultural translation’),
Hall (‘translation’) and Wallerstein (‘ interpreter’) do. Despite the emphasis among modernist
scholars on the role of print capital in the rise of modern nations, translation has, at worst,
been largely ignored, and, at best, acknowledged but not in a systematic or comprehensive
way. So, while Anderson notes the importance of newspapers in creating the ‘ homogenous
empty time’ of the modern nation, he fails to note that a good deal of the content of those
early newspapers were translations (McLaughlin 2015).
There are, however, some notable exceptions, a result perhaps of the increasing interest
in a transnational perspective in fields across the Humanities and Social Sciences. For ex-
ample, Susan ­Buck-Morss
​­ in Hegel, Haiti and Universal History has argued for a transnational
perspective on modern Western philosophy, one that fully incorporates ‘ foreign’ texts that
circulated both in their original languages and in translation, often in newspapers and jour-
nals. In her study of the influence of periodicals on Hegel’s philosophy and, in particular, on
his conceptualization of the master and slave relationship, Buck-Morss pays special attention
to the German journal Minerva, which ‘ borrowed freely from English and French sources’
( Buck-Morss 2009: 42). When scholars ignore such ‘ephemeral’ sources, Buck-Morss argues,
they participate in the ‘scholarly blindness that silences the past’ (ibid.: 37n).
Heekyong Cho’s Translation’s Forgotten History provides another important model for un-
derstanding the role of translation in nation-building. Cho’s work highlights the role of
Korean writers, translators and editors in circulating works of Western literature, especially
Russian, which would become central to how Koreans imagined their nation. Paradoxically,
the translations were made from the Japanese, the language of their colonial overlord at the
time, which were themselves relay translations from the English or French. The fact that
these works were doubly or triply mediated, however, did little to lessen their relevance to
Korean society of the time. Moreover, the fact that the individuals who circulated these
narratives were simultaneously translators, journalists, writers and often publishers facilitated
the penetration of these texts deep into Korean culture.

An imperial nation in translation

Modern Russia offers especially fertile ground for the study of nations in translation for a
number of reasons. First, modern Russian culture was born in translation insofar as an alpha-
bet was created for the Slavs for evangelization through the translation of sacred texts. In fact,
sacred texts were the primary object of translation until the reign of Peter the Great. ( Before
then, the Russian Orthodox Church owned the only publishing house in Russia.) Following
Peter the Great’s policy of forced Westernization, translation of Western secular texts became
a central concern of both civil society and the state. In fact, Peter I issued a decree in 1724 ex-
plaining that knowledge of a domain was as important as knowledge of the source language
(2013: 3.) Catherine II, toward the end of the eighteenth century, took an active interest in

461
Brian James Baer

translation, founding the Society for the Translation of Foreign Books, which operated from
1768 to 1783, providing material support for translators. The Society translated ancient and
modern works, publishing an average of 11.5 volumes a year (Semennikov 1913: 10). At the
same time, independent journals began to appear, featuring translations alongside original
writing. Translation was also practiced within new transnational social movements, such as
Freemasonry, which was introduced into Russia by members of the Russian foreign service
in the early part of the eighteenth century. The spread of Pietism in late eighteenth- century
Russia led to the creation of the Russian Bible Society in 1813, which sought to create a
translation of the Bible into modern Russian. ( It was then available only in Old Church
Slavonic.) This interest in translation was a reflection of a broader ‘religious experimentation
and active striving for spiritual satisfaction’ among large segments of Russian educated soci-
ety at the time (Zacek 1966: 411). The literary groups that arose in this period also undertook
translations as a central part of their activity. Letters from Andrei Turgenev to his friend
Vasilii Zhukovskii frequently recount the former’s progress on various translation projects
(see Vatsuro and Virolainen 1987). It was at this time that some political (and cultural) con-
servatives, such as Admiral Shishkov (1811), warned that translations could serve as a vehicle
for introducing undesirable foreign words and forms into the Russian language. He advised
translators seeking new terms to refer to Slavic roots and word forms (2013: 8). (A similar
campaign against “ foreignisms” would be launched a century later under Stalin.)
The introduction of Romanticism into Russia in the early nineteenth century, with its
cult or originality, problematized this translation activity. This problem was especially acute
among those Russians who had adopted German Romantic notions of primordial nation-
hood to liberate themselves from the cultural imperialism of a cosmopolitan France. As the
Romantic Vil’khel’m Kiukhelbeker lamented: ‘No one translates translators’ ([1824]2013:
21)—intimating that translation was a cultural dead- end that would prevent Russia from
entering the international literary field. Others, like Kiukhelbeker’s contemporary, the poet
Alexander Pushkin, expressed a more nuanced view toward translating, coining the some-
what oxymoronic phrase ‘a genius of translation’ in reference to the poet-t ranslator Zhu-
kovskii, while elsewhere advising Zhukovskii to produce more ‘original’ writing.
The problem of adopting a primordial model of nationalism by a cultural elite that was
multi-lingual and multi- ethnic, for a ‘nation’ that had been since the fifteenth century a
vast multi-l ingual, multi-ethnic empire is a central theme of Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel War
and Peace, which opens with an entire paragraph in French, the prestige language of the
time throughout Europe. Tolstoy ultimately resolves the issue of the Russianness of Russia’s
elite in a scene where Natasha Rostova intuitively dances a Russian folk dance, mystifying
the distance between the elite and the people. So central is this scene in resolving the many
contradictions of the modern Russian nation that the historian Orlando Figes titles his mon-
umental cultural history of Russia Natasha’s Dance (2002). The existence of a Russian essence
is also confirmed when Natasha falls ill and the doctors attending her, who babble in a variety
of foreign languages, are unable to diagnose her affliction (Sirotkina 2002: 82).
While the nineteenth century saw the emergence of Russian writers who were them-
selves translated into other European languages, translation continued to be widely practiced
in all spheres of Russian society and, in fact, became central in radical circles. Translations
of American abolitionist poetry, for example, served as a vehicle for discussing serfdom,
which would have been impossible in ‘original’ writing. The radicalization of the Russian
left during the second half of the nineteenth century, a time of political conservatism in the
government following the assassination of the l iberal-leaning tsar Alexander II in 1856, led to
increasingly radical manipulation of texts in translation to serve political ends by translators

462
 Nations in translation

such as V. Kurochkin, D. Minaev, and M. Mikhailov. In the early twentieth century, the
conservative Count Kapnist would complain of Kurochkin’s translations of Pierre Béranger:

While often preserving the spirit of the original, he is able, very cleverly, to apply vari-
ous couplets of Béranger to our contemporary circumstances, so that Béranger is essen-
tially nothing more than an unwitting weapon, and under the protection of his name,
Mr. Kurochkin pursues his own purposes.
(Kapnist 2013: 28)

This period also saw the founding of the Woman’s Publishing Cooperative, which hired only
women and published mostly translations ( Barendaum 1965). This left-leaning women’s col-
lective produced the first Russian edition of the complete works of Hans Christian Anderson.
Another sign of Russian interest in translation is the founding of the journal Vestnik inost-
rannoi literatury [Messenger of Foreign Literature], which ran from 1891 to 1916. It published
translations from a wide range of languages, mostly European.
So, the rhetorical and material support provided for translation by the Soviet regime was
not entirely new, although it was unprecedented in terms of scale. Moreover, in the Soviet
period, translation assumed a symbolic significance it did not have in the last decades of
the empire, demonstrating the regime’s commitment to internationalism and establishing
itself as a post-national, cosmopolitan state. In its effort to eliminate illiteracy, for example,
new Russian readers would have access to all the great works of world literature produced
by the publishing house Vsemirnaia Literatura [World Literature], established by Maxim
Gorky in 1918. Moreover, because Lenin decided to allow ethno-nations to exist within the
Soviet polity as republics, the cultural (and political or diplomatic) work of translation was
directed both internationally and domestically, as evident in the creation of two journals
dedicated to the publication of translated works: Vestnik Inostrannoi Literatury (messenger of
International Literature, ­1928–1930),
​­ which became Literatura Mirovoi Revoliutsii (Literature
­
of World Revolution, 1930–1931) and then Internatsional’naia Literature (International Lit-
erature, 1933–1943), for translations of ‘ foreign’ works, and Druzhba Narodov (Friendship
­
of Peoples, 1939), for translations of ‘domestic works,’ e.g., works produced by the various
peoples of the Soviet Union.
The decision to allow nations to remain was problematic insofar as the regime was anti-
imperialist—Lenin famously described the Russian empire as a ‘prison house of nations’—
and considered nations to be a product of bourgeois capitalism designed to protect private
property. So, this produced what Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Martin refer to as ‘a prin-
cipal irony’ of Soviet history, ‘that a radical socialist elite that proclaimed an internationalist
agenda that was to transcend the bourgeois nationalist stage of history in fact ended up by
institutionalizing nations within its own political body’ (2001: 16). The regime negotiated
that relationship with greater and lesser success across the entire course of Soviet history, and
many scholars believe that its inability to juggle the two any longer was a major factor in the
eventual fall of the Soviet Union. In any case, what is interesting for our purposes is how this
problematic relationship between internationalism and nationalism, or empire and nation,
played itself out in the Soviet Union, as reflected in its translation projects and policies.
There were many ways the Soviet sought to accommodate nations with their post-national
state. First, they argued that, under conditions of socialism, nations were no longer oppres-
sive; so, Soviet nations were fundamentally different from capitalist or bourgeois nations.
Second, when it became clear that a world-wide communist revolution was not imminent,
it was argued that the Soviet Union could pursue ‘socialism in one country’ as this country

463
Brian James Baer

was itself international. This idea of the Soviet Union as always already international appears
in writings on translation of that time. As Andrei Fedorov writes:

Translation in Soviet literature stands at an extraordinarily high level and fulfills tasks
that are extraordinarily responsible. This is why analysis of examples from the work of
Soviet translators and the exploration of the problems that lie before them in particular
are of interest both for Soviet literature and for world literature. This is only natural as
Soviet literature is international.
(Fedorov 1941: 4, emphasis added)

At the same time, the view persisted that nations would eventually disappear as the Soviet
Union moved from socialism to communism: ‘The development of cultures national in form
and socialist in content is necessary for the purpose of their ultimate fusion into one Com-
mon Culture, socialist as to form and content, and expressed in one common language’
(Stalin 1934: 195). Supported by the theories of Stalin’s favorite linguist, Nikolai Marr, it
was believed that the soft borders between Soviet republics would facilitate a merging of the
various languages spoken, which the government encouraged over the course of the 1930s by
having republics switch from the Latin to the Cyrillic alphabet. Within such an ideological
regime, translation was a temporary measure before the emergence of what Stalin referred
to as a ‘Common Culture’. Moreover, Stalin’s formulation assumes the absolute primacy of
content over form, which was central to the official Soviet aesthetic of Socialist Realism.
The primacy of content was reflected in negative ways in the campaign against formalism
that raged throughout the 1930s and 1940s, and in positive ways in Ivan Kashkin’s theory of
‘realist translation’, which asserted that the translator’s allegiance was to the reality portrayed
not to the exact words of the author (see Witt 2016).
The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1942 represented a break in these policies,
with Stalin returning to traditional primordialist rhetoric to inspire Soviet citizens to defend
their motherland. Churches were opened and Communist Internationale was replaced as the
anthem of the Soviet Union by the jingoist anthem written by Sergei Mikhalkov invoking
‘Velikaia Rus’, or Great Rus, with Rus being a mytho-poetic designation for all the Russias
( Belorus, Russia and Ukraine, once known as Little Russia) as well as a reference to the Kie-
van state that adopted Christianity for the Eastern Slavs in 988. In 1943, the same year that
the Communist Internationale was replaced, the translation journal International Literature
was closed. Following the war, a new translation journal was founded with the title Foreign
Literature.
This shift in the journal’s conceptual framing from international to foreign was reflected in
greater tolerance for cultural differences, without essentializing them, as explained by the
editors in the introduction to the inaugural issue of Inostrannaia Literatura [Foreign Literature]:

Every people values the particular, unrepeatable features of its national culture. A love
for the particularities of a national culture, however, does not imply a cult of isolation:
all peoples have common aspirations, a common truth. Committed to the lofty princi-
ples of internationalism, the Soviet people respect the cultures of all peoples—big and
small. They know that all peoples make their contribution to the culture of humankind.
( Editorial Board 1955, I:3)

That increased tolerance for cultural particularity was even reflected in the visuals that ap-
peared in the journal, many of them featuring individuals in folk costume or peasant dress.

464
 Nations in translation

The preference for peasants as subjects had its formal equivalent in the journal’s preference for
­
woodcuts. (International Literature, on the other hand, featured relatively few visuals; mostly
photographs of authors or literary groups.)
There was also some distancing in those post-war years from the idea that Soviet nations
would fade away. Nations— and their languages—Fedorov would make clear in his 1953
Introduction to Translation Theory, were here to stay:

The Soviet Union is a ­multi-national

​­ state, where people speak, write, and create in a
multitude of languages, among which many acquired literacy only in the years of Soviet
rule. Translation is the most direct path by which peoples of the USSR can become
acquainted with the literary treasures of other peoples, and in this way serves as an
effective means for the continued development of Soviet culture. The period through
which we have l ived— a period marked by the victory of socialism in our country and by
the shift from socialism to communism—is one of growth and development of national
languages.
(Fedorov 1953: 87; emphasis added)

Note his use of ‘multi-national’ here instead of ‘ international.’

This greater tolerance for aesthetic particularity inaugurated the cultural flowering of the
so- called Thaw era, which peaked in the early 1960s. It was reflected in translation theory in
Kornei Chukovsky’s 1964 edition of A High Art, in which he abandoned the recommenda-
tion expressed in earlier editions that the translator ‘diminish his creative personality’ so as to
subordinate his or her ‘style’ with that of the source text author lest the translator become the
author’s ‘enemy’. Instead, he praises the stylistic particularities of Soviet translators:

And now the very number of brilliant artists of the word who have dedicated themselves
to this difficult work testifies to the fact that the unheard of has occurred. And it is a fact
that it has never happened that such talents have worked together, shoulder to shoulder,
within the span of a single century. Even the most original of our poets—those with a
strongly expressed, distinct style, with pronounced features of creative individuality—
are giving their energy to the art of translation.
(Chukovskii 1964: 3)

Here he is referring to those authors who were deemed antagonist toward the regime under
Stalin and so forced to translate in lieu of publishing original writing. He also goes on to
praise Tatyana Gnedich’s translation of Byron’s Don Juan, which she completed while serving
a ten-year sentence in the Soviet Gulag.
The relevance of translation in negotiating Russia’s complicated ‘national/imperial’ iden-
tity did not end with the Soviet Union, as evident in the number of autobiographies of trans-
lators and interpreters that appeared following with fall of the Soviet Union and the many
literary and cinematic works featuring a translator or interpreter as the protagonist. Consider
the documentary film about the translator of children’s literature, Lilianna Lungina, which
became a surprise hit on Russian tv in 2015 ( Rogatchevski 2010). All this, however, is not to
suggest that translation is uniquely relevant to Russia or to countries like it. When we rec-
ognize that nation and empire, or local and global, are not mutually defining opposites, but
are thoroughly entangled and mutually constitutive, and that ‘national’ identities are being
constantly re-negotiated, then translation’s capacity to capture the particular nature of that
negotiation is useful in studying every culture.

465
Brian James Baer

Conclusion
Writing from the vantage point of the early twenty-fi rst century, millennial predictions of
the death of the nation- state appear to have been premature. In fact, the incoherence of the
modern nation, characterized by an ‘ impossible unity’ Bhabha (1990: 1), may represent not
an inherent weakness in the nation as concept but rather the very thing that has allowed it to
morph and adapt to overcome threats and challenges by turning ‘ loss into metaphor’ ( Bhabha
1994: 139). At the same time, it is important to recognize the ways in which nationalist
thinking informs our models of translation—for example, the notion that the proper object
of Translation Studies are translations that takes place between discreet national languages—
so as better to understand the limits of those models. Tarek Shamma (2009: 65), for example,
argues that ‘attendant notions of “equivalence” and “ faithfulness” are conditioned by modern
constructs of authorship and of the nation- state that do not hold for Arabic translation during
[the early Abassid period], nor, probably, for premodern translation in general’. Only with
such self-reflection can translation serve as a site from which to interrogate the modern na-
tion rather than reflecting and reinforcing the exclusions that structure it and dehistoricizing
the distinct modernity that informs it.

Further reading
Bermann, S. and Wood, M. (eds.) (2005) Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
This collected volume represents one of the first and most comprehensive interrogations of the rela-
tionship between nations and translation. While the contributors are for the most part from the field of
Comparative Literature, the contributions are not restricted to analysis of translated literary texts, but
also deal with the translation of cinema ( Wood), as well as philosophical ( Eaglestone), legal ( Legrande)
and diplomatic ( Visson) texts. The overwhelming majority of the articles deal with Western European
languages and contexts.
Cho, H. (2016) Translation’s Forgotten History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
This monograph adds a sociological and postcolonial dimension to Even-Zohar’s polysytem’s theory
by examining the role of translation in the emergence of modern Korean literature. Korea’s status as
a colonial subject of Japan created a bilingual elite whose professional activity often involved transla-
tion, as well as fiction writing and journalism. Their multiple roles allowed for the deep penetration
plots and themes from n ineteenth- century Russian literature to penetrate deep into Korean culture
of the time.
Kumar, R. (ed.) (2012) Role of Translation in Nation Building. New Delhi: Modlingua.
This collected volume focuses on translation’s role in nation-building in the Global South, focusing
on multi-lingual societies mostly in India and Africa. Starting from the premise that nationalism is a
modern European phenomenon, the contributors examine how interlingual translation participated in
various and at times contradictory ways in the importation of nationalism as a byproduct of imperialist
domination.
Rogers, G. (2016) Incomparable Empires. Modernism and the Translation of Spanish and American Literature.
New York: Columbia University Press.
This study of cultural exchanges between US and Spanish writers and literary scholars following the
US victory in the Spanish-American War of 1898 demonstrates the thorough entangling of the na-
tional and the transnational, while highlighting translation’s role as a ‘versatile apparatus that facilitated
narratives and connections while covering over contradictions’ (2016: 7).

References
Aberbach, E. (2005) ‘Nationalism and the Hebrew Bible’, Nations and Nationalism, 11(2),­ pp. 223–242.
­ ­ ​­
Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. Revised
ed. London and New York: Verso.

466
 Nations in translation

Appiah, Anthony. 2018. The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity. London: W.W. Norton.
Apter, E. (2013) Against World Literature. On the Politics of Untranslatability. London and New York:
Verso.
Baer, B. J. (2017) ‘De- sacralizing the Original, or the Translational Future of Translation Studies’,
Perspectives, 25(2), ­ pp. 227–244.
­ ­ ​­
Barendaum, I. (1965) ‘Iz istorii russkikh progressivnykh izdatel’stv 60-ykh 70-ykh godov XIX veka’,
in Sikorskii, N. M. (ed.), Kniga i nauka o knige. Moscow: Kniga, pp. 223–241.
­ ­ ​­
Batalden, S. (2013) Russian Bible Wars: Modern Scriptural Translation and Cultural Authority. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Bermann, S. (2005) ‘Introduction’, in Bermann, S. and Wood, S. (eds.), Nation, Language, and the Ethics
of Translation. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, pp. 1–10.
Bhabha, H. (1990) ‘Introduction: Narrating the Nation’, in Bhabha, H. K. (ed.), Nation and Narration.
New York and London: Routledge, pp. 1–7.
Bhabha, H. (1994) The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge.
Blackledge, A. and Creese, A. (2010) Multilingualism. A Critical Perspective. London and New York:
Continuum.
­Buck-Morss,
​­ S. (2009)
­ Hegel, Haiti and Universal History. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Chakrabarty, D. (2000) Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton,
NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Cho, H. (2016) Translation’s Forgotten History. Russian Literature, Japanese Mediation, and the Formation of
Modern Korean Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Chukovskii, K. (1964) Vysokoe Iskusstvo [A high art]. Moscow and Leningrad: Academia.
Clowes, E. W. (2011) Russia on the Edge. Imagined Geographies and Post-Soviet Identity. Ithaca and London:
Cornell University Press.
Cronin, M. (2006) Translation and Identity. London and New York: Routledge.
Crucible of Empire: The Spanish American War. (1999) Official website of the film. New York: Great Proj-
ects Film. Available online: https://www.pbs.org/crucible/frames/_film.html. [Accessed 5 October
2019].
Derrida, J. (2000) Of Hospitality. Anne Dufourmontelle Invites Jacques Derrida to Respond. Trans. R.
Bowlby. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Dobiáš, D. (2019) The Forged Dvůr Králové and Zelená Hora Manuscripts. Prague: Czech Academy of
Sciences.
Editorial Board (1955) Introduction to inaugural issue. Inostrannaia Literature, 1, pp. 3–4.­ ­ ​­
Fedorov, A. V. (1941) O khudozhestvennom perevode [On Literary Translation]. Leningrad: Khudozhest-
vennaia Literatura.
Fedorov, A. V. (1953) Vvedenie v teoriiu perevoda [Introduction to Translation Theory]. Moscow: Liter-
atury na inostrannyikh iazykov.
Figes, O. (2002) Natasha’s Dance. London: Allen Lane.
Gellner, E. (1983) Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Heilbron, J. (2010) ‘Towards a Sociology of Translation: Book Translation as a Cultural World Sys-
tem’, in Baker, M. (ed.), Critical Readings in Translation Studies. London and New York: Routledge,
pp. 304–316.
­ ­ ​­
Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. O. (eds.) (1992) The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Inghilleri, M. (2017) Translation and Migration. London and New York: Routledge.
Israel, H. (2006) ‘Translating the Bible in Nineteenth- century India’, in Hermans, T. (ed.), Translating
Others, vol. 2. Manchester: St. Jerome, pp. 441– 459.
Jones, F. R. (2010) ‘Poetry Translation, Nationalism and the Wars of the Yugoslav Transition’, The
Translator, 16(2), ­ pp. 223–253.
­ ­ ​­
Kalb, J. (2017) ‘Homer in Russia’, in Torlone, Z. M., LaCourse Munteanu, D. and Dutsch, D. (eds.),
A Handbook to Classical Reception in Eastern and Central Europe. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell,
­ ​­
pp. 469–479.
­ ­ ​­
Kapnist, P. (2013) [1901] ‘On Nikitin’, in Baer, B. J. and Olshanskaya, N. (eds.), Russian Writers on
Translation. Manchester: St. Jerome, pp. 27–28.
­ ­ ​­
Kiukhelbeker, W. (2013) [1824] ‘On the Direction of Our Poetry, Especially Lyrical Poetry, Over the
Last Decade’, in Baer, B. J. and Olshanskaya, N. (eds.), Russian Writers on Translation. An Anthology.
Manchester: St. Jerome, pp. 21–23. ­ ­ ​­

467
Brian James Baer

Kuhiwczak, P. (1999) ‘Translation ­ and Language Games in the Balkans’, in Anderman, G. M. and
Rogers, M. (eds.), Word, Text, Translation: Liber Amicorum for Peter Newmark. Clevedon: Multilingual
­ ­
Matters, pp. 217–224. ​­
Levy, I. (2006) Sirens of the Western Shore: The Westernesque Femme Fatale, Translation, and Vernacular Style
in Modern Japanese Literature. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lotman, J. (2019) ‘Cultural Memory’, in Tamm, M. (ed.), Essays on Cultural Memory. London and New
­ ­
York: Palgrave, pp. 139–148. ​­
Lloyd, David. 1993. Anamolous States. Irish Writing and the Postcolonial Moment. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
McLaughlin, M. (2015) ‘Prolégomènes à l’étude des idéologies et attitudes linguistiques dans la presse
périodique sous l’Ancien Régime’, Circula: Revue d’idéologies linguistiques, 1, pp. 4–25.
­ ­ ​­
Mignolo, W. D. (2011) The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham,
NC and London: Duke University Press.
Peter, I. (2013) ‘Edict 4438. On the Preparation of Translators of Books for Instruction in the Sciences
(1724)’ in Baer, B. J. and Olshanskaya, N. (eds.), Russian Writers on Translation. Manchester: St.
Jerome.
Rafael, V. (1992) Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society under Early
Spanish Rule. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Renan, E. (1990) ‘What Is a Nation?’, in Bhabha, H. K. (ed.), Nation and Narration. New York and
London: Routledge, pp. 8–22. ­ ­ ​­
Ricoeur, P. (2006) On Translation. Trans. E. Brennan. London and New York: Routledge.
Rogatchevskii, A. (2010) ‘Review of Oleg Dorman: Word for Word Translation (Podstrochnik ­ 2009)’,
Kinokultura 30: online.
Sakai, N. (1997) Translation and Subjectivity: On Japan and Cultural Nationalism. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
Seidman, N. (2006) Faithful Renderings. Jewish-Christian Difference and the Politics of Translation. Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press.
Semennikov, V. P. (1913) Sobranie staraiushcheesia o perevode inostrannykh knig. St. Petersburg: Sirius.
Shamma, T. (2009) ‘Translating into the Empire. The Arabic Version of Kalila wa Dimna’, The Trans-
lator, 15(1),
­ pp. 65–86.
­ ​­
Shishkov, A. (2013) [1811] ‘A Conversation between Two Friends about Translating Words from One
Language into Another’, in Baer, B. J. and Olshanskaya, N. (eds.), Russian Writers on Translation.
Manchester: St. Jerome.
Sirotkina, I. (2002) Diagnosing Literary Genius: A Cultural History of Psychiatry in Russia, 1880–1930.
Baltimore, MD and London: The John Hopkins University Press.
Stalin, I. V. (1934) Markizm i national’ no-kolonial’nyi vopros. Moscow: Partizdat.
Suny, R. G. and Martin, T. (2001) ‘Introduction’, in Suny, R. G. and Martin, T. (eds.), A State of
Nations: Empire and Nation-making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin. Oxford, New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, pp. 3–20.
­ ­ ​­
Tageldin, S. (2011) Disarming Words: Empire and the Seduction of Translation in Egypt. Berkeley, Los Ange-
les and London: University of California Press.
Thiong’o, N. wa. (2012) In the House of the Interpreter. A Memoir. New York: Anchor Books.
Trumpener, K. (1997) Bardic Nationalism: The Romantic Novel and the British Empire. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Vatsuro, V. E. and Virolainen, M. N. (1987) ‘Pis’ma Andreia Turgeneva k Zhukovskomu’, in Likhachev,
D. S., Iezuitova, R. V. and Kanunova, F. Z. (eds.), Zhukovskii i russkaia kul’tura. Leningrad: Nauka,
pp. 350–430.
­ ­ ​­
Venclova, T. (1979) ‘Translations of World Literature and Political Censorship in Contemporary Lith-
uania’, Lituanus, 25(2), ­ pp. 5–26.
­ ­ ​­
Venuti, L. (2005) ‘Local Contingencies: Translation and National Idenities’, in Bermann, S. and Wood,
M. (eds.),
­ Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, pp. 177–202.
­ ­ ​­
Witt, S. (2016) ‘Socialist Realism in Translation: The Theory of a Practice.’ Baltic World 9(4), pp. 52–58.
Zacek, J. C. (1966) ‘The Russian Bible Society and the Russian Orthodox Church’, Church History,
35(4),
­ pp. 411–437.
­ ­ ​­

468
 32
Translation and borders
Mª Carmen África Vidal Claramonte

Introduction: what is a border?1

In a seminal essay entitled ‘What Is a Border?’ Étienne Balibar reflects on the ‘heterogeneity’
of borders, shifting zones which are ‘polysemic’ (1997/2011: 92) in the sense that they do not
have exactly the same functions and meaning for everyone: they are experienced in different
ways by individuals who come from different parts of the world, who do not have the same
social status. So, a simple answer to that question is not possible, because the border cannot
be attributed an essence that is valid in all places and at all times. In fact, trying to define
borders is in some sense absurd, since ‘to mark out a border is, precisely, to define a territory,
to delimit it, and so to register the identity of that territory’. Nevertheless, their ‘multiplicity,
their hypothetical and fictive nature, do not make them any less real’ ( Balibar 2002: 76).
Any attempt to define borders should take into account their ubiquity. Borders are no
longer static. Nor are they lines or demarcations of sovereignty and nation- state power en-
compassing a national territory and marking a clear separation between political, social and
economic spaces but something much more complex, since some borders are no longer situ-
ated at the borders, in the geographical, political and administrative sense. On the contrary,
they are wherever controls are to be found, such as in health (in Foucault’s sense of bio-
power) or security checks. That is why Walters (2006a: 153) argues that borders are privi-
leged sites that contribute to the production of population as a knowable, governable entity.
Borders are places of separation, contact and/or confrontation, thresholds that exert a
compelling hold on our lives (Mukherji 2011). They work as filters, as mechanisms to main-
tain official distinctions between people, allowing differential access to different individuals.
This is the well-known filtering function of the border control ( Kearney 1991: 58), one
that separates the unwanted from the wanted cross-border flows (Andreas 2000: 4). Borders
are ‘asymmetric membranes’ ( Rumford 2008a: 3), a ‘firewall’ that hits and selects ( Walters
2006b: 197).
The globalizing processes have not given way to a borderless world characterized by flows,
hybridization, and smooth spaces where the global/ local nexus is possible (Appadurai 2006).
Globalization has not led to a reduction of borders but rather to their proliferation ( Balibar
1997/2011: 92; Mezzadra and Neilson 2013: 62). Far from disappearing thanks to a global,

469
Mª Carmen África Vidal Claramonte

interconnected, universal world, borders are being reasserted, rebuilt and consolidated, from
Trump’s idea of constructing a wall along the US-Mexican border (which led to the cruel
physical separation of parents and their children, who were put into cages) to the political
and social consequences in Europe in the wake of the ‘summer migration’ of 2015. Or, most
recently, the huge migrant caravan of Hondurans making their way across Guatemala and
Mexico to reach the United States. These and many other examples prove that there is a re-
turn to national borders and to ethnic separation, to the blocking of access on the principle
of a perceived universal fear of the stranger.
In fact, there are also invisible, inner borders, located everywhere and nowhere ( Balibar
1997/2011: 78– 84). Contemporary borders can take many forms. They continue to be phys-
ical spaces, which regulate movement from outside threats, but they are also

radar- and computer- controlled, digital, intelligent border surveillance technologies that
establish network-like security spaces (integrating satellites, drones, and radar systems
with big data banks) such as Spain’s Integrated System for External Vigilance (SIVE),
introduced in 2002 […], the Maritime Surveillance (MARSUR) system, introduced in
2005; and the European Border Surveillance ( EUROSUR) system, introduced by the
EU in 2013 alongside databases like the fingerprint data bank Eurodac, the Schengen
Information System (SIS), and the Visa Information System ( VIS).

Traditional borders have given way to ‘smart’ borders, relying on high-tech biometric tech-
nology, ‘remote borders’ or those located at airports, in internet cafes or along the motor-
way (Amoore 2006: 337; Walters 2006a, b; Donnan and Wilson 2010; Dijstelbloem and
Meijer 2011; Rumford 2014: 79). Borders are now contentious zones, ongoing, dialectical
processes that generate multiple border zones, borderlands, borderscapes or networked bor-
ders ( Rumford 2006: 153), some of which are not located close to the official international
boundary itself.
Consequently, borders are not merely geographical edges, but also metaphorical walls,
complex territories marked by tensions between practices of border reinforcement and bor-
der crossing. Borders are metaphors of a newly emerging culture- space where displacement
is a daily reality for many people (Hicks 1991). They determine inclusion and exclusion.
They are ‘equally devices of inclusion that select and filter people. These different forms of
circulation are in ways no less violent than those deployed in exclusionary measures’. They
have a ‘world- configuring function’ and the power to lead one to a ‘differential inclusion’
(Mezzadra and Neilson 2013: 3–7). Borders are zones that separate ‘us’ from ‘them’, ‘ here’
from ‘there’: bordering is thus closely linked to ordering and othering (van Houtum and van
Naerssen 2002) but also to questions of race and gender ( Vieten 2012). They have the power
to remove the civic status of a person at the moment of crossing and turn her into an illegal,
undocumented person without citizenship rights. Borders are both markers of belonging and
places of becoming ( Brambilla 2015: 24). Geopolitical zones and social spaces of subaltern
encounters, a Janus-faced territory, as Saldívar (1997: 13–14) calls it in his study of the US-
­Mexico border.
The border is a ‘global frontier-land’ ( Bauman 2007: 37), a realm beyond the control of
states where

‘global outcasts’ like refugees, migrants or asylum seekers reside in a state of ‘permanent
transitoriness’ […] The global borderland can be appropriated by powerful nation- states
[…] to pursue forms of exclusion, create barriers to global mobility, and pursue a ‘politics

470
 Translation and borders

of pre-emption’ which would be unthinkable and unacceptable in conventional domes-

tic politics. Global borderlands are the ‘spaces of wonder’.
(Rumford 2008b: 639)

where ‘normal’ rules do not necessarily apply and, as a consequence, fear is institutionalized.
Within these spaces of wonder, Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib have become possible,
and they also allow ‘thousands of “ illegal” immigrants to perish in the Mediterranean and
Atlantic while undertaking journeys by sea or to be killed or injured attempting to cross
into the EU at the barbed wire fences erected in the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla
in North Africa’ ( Rumford 2014: 81). In this context, borders have an important role in the
construction of strangeness. Strangers are at our door ( Bauman 2016) and hybridity can fuel
reactionary politics and deep-seated xenophobia ( Beck 1997/2000; Held and McGrew 2000/
2003: 4; Robertson and White 2007; Elliot and Lemert 2014). S/he who lives in the border
is the contemporary homo sacer (Agamben 1995/1998). Borderlands are those topoi where
asymmetry between cultures and a globalization of fear ( Bauman 2006) and violence ( Bielsa
and Hughes 2009) is experienced. This has led to the rise of ‘the losers of globalization’ ( Beck
1997/2000) and of ‘wasted lives and outcasts’ ( Bauman 2004).
Borders are continually made and remade, rebordered and debordered ( Brambilla et al.
2015: 3). That is why some scholars have reflected on their complex nature and argue for
‘cosmopolitan borders’, which have a changing nature, in terms of their function, their loca-
tion and their ownership. Labelling some borders ‘cosmopolitan’ means that ‘they are no lon-
ger only a project of the nation- state […] borders are cosmopolitan because they are no longer
only under the control of the state; other actors and agencies may also be involved’ ( Rumford
2014: 2). From this perspective, borders are a prime site for cosmopolitan encounters, and
‘ borderwork’ identifies new meanings of the border not tied to the state since it encompasses
the role of ordinary people in making, shifting and removing borders, and in this sense they
can be a political resource for citizens ( Rumford 2006, 2008a: 59– 65, 2009, 2014: 3).
The centrality of borders to cosmopolitan thinking is fully understood when we see bor-
ders as zones of connectivity which not only divide but also connect individuals transnation-
ally, both to the other side of the border but sometimes far beyond, by creating ‘cosmopolitan
opportunities through the possibility of cultural encounters and negotiations of difference’
( Rumford 2014: 3). It is true that the growing interconnectedness among cultures creates
new animosities and conflicts, states of flux and turbulence ( Papastergiadis 2000/2007):
the flows and mobilities of globalization constitute a threat to the integrity of our familiar
communities ( Rumford 2013: xi). However, this connectivity also creates the potential for
translation networking and it turns borders into ‘political resources, offering routes to em-
powerment of ordinary people’ ( Rumford 2014: 20). In fact, contradicting one of the basic
tenets of border studies, multiperspectival studies of borders mean that some borders are not
meant to be seen by everyone. This idea links borders to cosmopolitanism, since the ability
‘to see like a border’ is an essential component of meaningful cosmopolitanism because it is
an alternative to ‘see[ing] like a state’ ( Rumford 2012: 8891; Rumford 2014: ­39–54).
​­
This new way to look at borders is linked to a more critical viewpoint according to
which globalization has yielded to cosmopolitanism ( Rovisko and Nowicka 2011; Holton 2009;
Kendall et al. 2009; Delanty 2012; Archibugi 2008). Cosmopolitanism offers ‘a critical ap-
proach to global issues and a way of looking at modernity beyond the limits of Eurocentrism’
( Delanty 2009: ix). For a critique of Eurocentric cosmopolitanism, see Derrida 1997/2010).
Cosmopolitanism concerns self-problematization. In effect, cosmopolitanism has managed to
reveal the danger of globalizing Western views (a real danger if we consider the hundreds of

471
Mª Carmen África Vidal Claramonte

thousands of people who have been seduced by a discourse as indescribable as that of Donald
Trump), and the risk of imposing only a binary logic that creates physical and metaphorical
borders. Instead, cosmopolitanism promotes a ‘plurality of worlds which are multiple, simul-
taneous, and perspectival’ ( Rumford 2014: 150), as well as a growing transnationalization,
multiple identities, cultural mix and recognition of otherness. So, the new perspectives on
borders underline the fact that a border is also a place, a situation or a moment that ritualizes
the relationship to the other (Agier 2016: 7). And this shift from globalization to cosmo-
politanism is very important in this chapter, because, as we shall see below, my proposal is
one of cosmopolitan translation, a cultural translation understood as a third culture which
incorporates the perspective of the Other, embraces diversity and tries to develop an ethical-
political relational model of planetary interaction that Rosi Braidotti dubs ‘ becoming world’
( Braidotti et al. 2013: 8–27). Critical cosmopolitanism occurs

whenever new relations between Self, Other and World develop in moments of open-
ness […] Cosmopolitanism cannot be explained in terms of a single, Western notion of
modernity or in terms of globalization. Cosmopolitanism refers to the multiplicity of
ways in which the social world is constructed through the articulation of a third culture.
( Delanty 2009: 53)

thus embodying, in its subversive potential, a transformative vision of an alternative reality

( Bielsa 2016) which will help us define our idea of a cosmopolitan translation.

Border languages
From the middle of the nineteenth century and through the first half of the twentieth century,
millions of people abandoned Europe for economic reasons and settled in Canada, the United
States, Latin America and Australia. Another wave of emigration began towards the end of
the twentieth century because of decolonization and recruitment on the part of the former
colonies of workers to cover the needs of growing European economies. On the other hand,
Western Europe was the destination chosen by those fleeing autocratic regimes in Africa,
Asia and Latin America. Finally, in the t wenty-fi rst century, we find a new migratory wave
in those trying to escape from Middle Eastern regimes long supported by the United States
and Europe (Inghilleri 2017: 6–7). Calais, Lampedusa, Lesbos, Idomeni and Melilla, rush to
strengthen their borders to stop the new pariahs from moving northwards. The exodus of
refugees fleeing war in Syria or the caravan of Hondurans heading for the United States are
perhaps the most recent ( but not the last) examples of a phenomenon which is forcing us to
rethink the concept of border almost daily. In all these cases, borderlands are those places in-
habited by nomads who have no rights to anything and not even the right to belong to a place.
These world events point to a clash between cosmopolitan desires and counter-cosmopolitan
­ Medeiros 2019: 61–62).
forces (De ­ ​­
In theory, the main aim of a border is to protect against mobility and disintegration. How-
ever, perhaps because the border is never only physical but also metaphorical, borders are
linked to the ‘mobility turn’ ( Urry 2000; Inghilleri 2017). The narrator of ‘The Great Wall of
China’ by Franz Kaf ka already discussed the idea that the wall designed to delimit and separate
never becomes a complete and firmly closed structure, because conjunction and disjunction
are inseparable in the points of contact and differentiation between two bodies ( De Certeau
1984/1988: 127). The human being always finds some crack in that separating space, and he
does so through language, creativity, imagination or literature and the arts (Gómez-Peña 1996,

472
 Translation and borders

2000; Welchman 1996; Muntadas in Davila and Roma 2002; Papastergiadis 2012; Soueif and
Hamilton 2017), participating actively in that middle space characterized by ‘a logic of ambi-
guity’ ( De Certeau 1984/1988: 127). Thus, the border becomes a threshold of unpredictable
dynamics, of variable spatial and temporal dimensions, a site characterized by asymmetry,
instability and a potential for disorder ( Benito and Manzanas 2006: 2–3).
Borders have transformed reality and identity. Migrants who inhabit borders are charac-
ters who ‘are always simultaneously influencing and being influenced by others, perceiving
the world and evolving within it even when they appear to be standing still’, identities ‘ in
movement, in constant transformation and continuous becoming’ ( Inghilleri 2017: 1). And
since language is often a reflection of the social and political context where it is found, bor-
ders have also resulted in a language which reflects these identities marked by asymmetries,
instability and hybridation. Border language is ‘an active site where the contours of inclusion
and exclusion become most visible’ ( Inghilleri 2017: 3). The site where people are led to live
in several places almost simultaneously, to live increasingly in mobility, in an in-between
(Agier
­ 2017: ­viii–ix).
​­
It is precisely this in-between state that is the most important characteristic of border
language. Those who live in a border live in a contact zone ( Pratt 1992), in the space in the
middle (Godayol 2000, 2001), in Nepantla, the land in the middle (Mora 1993). But what
is most important is that this in-between condition will never change, even if these people
reach their destination, because they will always be identities between two cultures, atravesa-
dos, the squint- eye, the queer, the troublesome, the half-breed, the half- dead. In short, they
are those who cross over the confines of the normal (Anzaldúa 1987: 3). They live at the
juncture, where univocal identities are never possible and languages mix because borders are
always present in their imaginary homelands ( Rushdie 1981/1991).
The dominant discourses of modernity promoted paradigms that assumed territorializa-
tion, structure and stability. From this perspective, language became a static system. But as
people move across borders, they are taking their languages with them and also appropri-
ating new semiotic resources for their identities and communication. Transnational contact
in diverse cultural and social domains has increased the interaction between languages and
language groups and migration has involved people taking their heritage languages to new
locales that were not traditionally part of their communities (Canagarajah 2013: 2). In these
circumstances, language ‘ is never simply an instrument of self-expression or communica-
tion, but a collective force […] a site of cultural and political asymmetries’ ( Venuti 1998b:
136), a territory of endless negotiations between the familiar and the unfamiliar ( Bhabha
1994). Home-m aking and place-m aking are now ongoing activities in mobility mediated
by language (Canagarajah 2017: 6–7), a language whose dismemberment makes us think of
Deleuze and Guattari’s (1974/1986) ‘deterritorialization’.
Border language rejects the colonizer’s language and transforms it into a different lan-
guage, reflecting its own way of seeing the world and its experience of the world (Grutman
2006; Grutman 2009) in translation ( Bertacco 2014: 6). That is why border thinking de-
mands a bilanguaging (Mignolo 2000: 251), which is a way of life ‘ between languages: a di-
alogical, ethic, aesthetic, and political process of social transformation’ (Mignolo 2000: 265).
For example, the language originating on the border between Mexico and the United States
reflects a way of living between two worlds, a way of life that refuses to accept being forced
to speak ‘correctly’, something that Gloria Anzaldúa (1987: ix), one of the first authors to re-
flect on border and language, calls a bastard language which ‘ is not approved by any society’.
And the reason this language is not accepted is that those who are in a permanent frontier
state deconstruct language, twist it and say words like marqueta (a blend of market and mercado),

473
Mª Carmen África Vidal Claramonte

watchear (a verb constructed using the Spanish system of the verb observar but based on the
English verb to watch) or ‘ incorrect’ expressions like late or early, because they are again a mix-
ture of peninsular Spanish grammar and English vocabulary. Thus, by replacing ‘English’
with their ‘English’ (Ashcroft et al. 1989) they show the asymmetries between languages,
which reflect the asymmetries of power between cultures.
This is something we find on all borders and is reflected in the literature of the so- called
‘ hyphenated writers’, who write ‘“diagraphic” works, written at least in the two languages
of the writer’ (Casanova 1999/2001: 345). Examples of Latin writers who feel ‘out of place’
(Said 1999) include Susana Chávez- Silverman, Junot Díaz, José María Arguedas, Alejan-
dro Morales, Julia Alvarez, Esmeralda Santiago, Ana Lydia Vega, Graciela Limón, Cristina
García, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Óscar Hijuelos, Tino Villanueva, Abelardo Delgado, Glo-
ria Anzaldúa, Sandra Cisneros, Cherríe Moraga, Ana Castillo, Gustavo Pérez-Firmat and
many others. Writers from many other contact zones are Pakistanis (Moniza Alvi), Indians
( Vikram Chandra, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Jumpa Laghiri, Manju Kapur, Shobha
Dé) or Chinese-Americans (Maxine Hong Kingston, David Wong Louie, Fae Myenne Ng)
who write in English, Maghrebis who write in French ( Tahar Ben Jelloun, Assia Djebar),
Turks who write in German ( Emine Sevgi Ozdamar, Jakob Arjouni), Iranians who write
in Dutch ( Kader Abdolah), Moroccans who write in Catalan ( Najat El Hachmi) or Afri-
cans who write in Spanish ( Donato Ndongo, Mohamed El Gheryb) or in English (Chinua
Achebe, Nuruddin Farah).
They are novelists who move across spaces. This is the case of the Chinese-American
novels of Maxine Hong Kingston or the stories of David Wong Louie. They also cross
other cultures, like Japanese and American culture in the novels of John Okada and Cynthia
Kadohata. These writers reflect the constant, literal and metaphorical border situation many
of their compatriots suffer. That is why they do not write in a ‘pure’ but rather in a hybrid
English or ub French, German, Dutch, Japanese or Chinese. Like Linton Kewsi Johnson,
Sam Selvon or Ken Saro-Wiwa they write in a ‘rotten English’, in altered forms of the colo-
nizer’s language ( Hall 1990; Hall and Du Gay 1996/2005).
Their use of language registers the arrogance of monolingualism ( Bennett and Queiroz
de Barros, 2017) and invents ‘strategies for incorporating the various languages, geographies,
and audiences in which they get their start’ ( Walkowitz 2015: 42). This language ‘exposes us
to difference, awakening deep-seated fears echoed in words such as invasion and contagion’
( Polezzi 2012: 346). It is a language that reflects critical and post-universalist cosmopolitan-
ism ( Delanty 2009: 52), which is critical and dialogic. It fosters openness, and the encounter
with the self, the other and the world, the encounter with the global and the local, in an
attempt to reconcile universal solidarity with individual solidarities and to expose a plurality
of cosmopolitan projects combining the global and the local. It is a political use of language
which turns the border into a literal and metaphorical place of recognition: ‘We speak a
patois, a forked tongue, a variation of two languages […] So, if you want to really hurt me,
talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity – I a m my
language’ (Anzaldúa 1987: 77, 81).

Translation and/in cosmopolitan borders

Étienne Balibar was one of the first sociologists to see the connection between borders and
translation. Following Walter Benjamin, he understood translation not as the transmission
of contents but as the production of a transnational space of translation which establishes a
relation with the foreign ( Bielsa and Aguilera 2017; Bielsa 2010, 2016). Border language is ‘a

474
 Translation and borders

shifting boundary’ ( Bhabha 1994), but also what Balibar (1997/2011: 84) suggests is taking
Bhabha’s argument a step further: a way for contemporary migrants not only to bear the mark
of changing lines but also to transform themselves into borders, thus turning the border into
a form of autotopography, an outer and inner landscape.
As we have seen in the previous sections, borders and migrations are continually present
in our contemporary world. That is why they are key concepts generating scholarly enquiry
in many disciplines, but especially in Translation Studies, a field interested in questions aris-
ing on the move, at the borders, in the cosmopolitan encounter with the other (Minh-ha
2011: 110). The new venues in translation studies are far from traditionalist views of the task
of the translator as impartial and invisible, and this has made possible a cosmopolitan ap-
proach to translating. After the ‘cultural turn’ ( Bassnett and Lefevere 1990), there was a shift
from an emphasis on sameness and normativeness to an acceptance of difference in translation.
Lefevere’s (1992) concept of rewriting took into account Foucault’s notion of power to show
that language is never neutral but an unavoidably ideological medium for describing experi-
ence, and thus that translation is never a simple and innocent semantic substitution (Álvarez
and Vidal 1996; Tymoczko and Gentzler 2002).
All these changes in translation theory reflect a global and also asymmetrical world, where
an ethical translation is understood as a political act, as an exploration of power relationships
( Vidal 2018). Translation is not simply

an act of faithful reproduction but, rather, a deliberate and conscious act of selection,
assemblage, structuration, and fabrication  – and even, in some cases, of falsification,
refusal of information, counterfeiting, and the creation of secret codes. In these ways,
translators, as much as creative writers and politicians, participate in the powerful acts
that create knowledge and shape culture
( Tymoczko and Gentzler 2002: xxi)

These powerful acts are what make translation a complex act because they have brought
about epistemological shifts that have contributed to a rethinking of such concepts as iden-
tity, nation, the local and the global (Mudimbe-Boyi 2002) and because they put aside old
unifying discourses about peoples and usher in the hybridity and wealth of difference: ‘The
transnational dimension, of cultural t ransformation- m igration, diaspora, displacement,
relocation- makes the process of cultural translation a complex form of signification’ ( Bhabha
1994: 172).
In borderlands, translation needs to possess a sociological and empirical aspect ( Beck
2004/2006) in order to deal with

a reality of multiple belonging or cultural hybridity, of translated lives and world fam-
ilies, a reality that escapes and can no longer be grasped by traditional conceptions of
identity, which assume a natural correlation between the identity of individuals and the
place they belong to.
(Bielsa and Aguilera 2017: 17)

That is why our proposal is that, bearing in mind the previous discussion regarding the progress
made in sociology to make the move from globalization to cosmopolitanism, in borderlands
an ethical translation is not a universalizing global translation but a cosmopolitan translation: a
translation that highlights ‘the multiplicity of languages within any single language’. In doing
so it ‘undermines the distinction between original and alien culture’ and gives the reader ‘the

475
Mª Carmen África Vidal Claramonte

opportunity to practice multidimensional perception and nonsynchronous memory […] the

ability to see not just from one side of a border, but from the other side as well’ (Hicks 1991:
xxiii). A cosmopolitan translator wants the cultural other to be manifested, since translating
should be here a form of resistance ( Venuti 1995; Venuti 1998b) against ethnocentrism, racism,
cultural narcissism and imperialism. The greatest scandal of translation ( Venuti 1998a) is the
fact that asymmetries, inequities, relations of domination and dependence exist in every act of
translating. That is why translators should not be complicit in the institutional exploitation of
foreign texts and cultures. Translation changes – should change – everything ( Venuti 2013).
The cosmopolitan translator deals with people who are, like the protagonist of Salman
Rushdie’s Shame, translated beings who live in a liminal state between worlds, between
realities, between systems of knowledge, between symbology systems ( León Portilla 1962;
Pratt 1992; Mora 1993; Bhabha 1994; Anzaldúa and Keating 2002). S/he deals with border
identities whose exile is ‘a discontinuous state of being’ (Said 1990: 357), who experience a
continuous sense of placelessness and uprootedness, a state of perplexity and indefinition, of
transition and concurrent positioning: ‘The exile therefore consists in a median state, neither
completely at one with the new setting nor fully disencumbered of the old, beset with half-
involvements and half- detachments’ (Said 1996: 49). This is what their language(s) reflect:
their coming from elsewhere and hence their experiencing of ‘ both their preliminary disper-
sal and their subsequent translation into new, more extensive, arrangements along emerging
routes’ (Chambers 1994: 6).
If ‘the condition of the migrant is the condition of the translated being’ (Cronin 2006:
45), in order to translate ethically in borderlands the translator must bear in mind that the
unity of language is fundamentally political ( Deleuze and Guattari 1975/1986, 1980/1987)
and that, as previously argued, migrants do not want their language to be a mirror-image
of the dominant language. A cosmopolitan translation is not translation as reflection but
translation as reflexion: translation as diversification and not as assimilation (Cronin 1998:
148). Translation as representation ( Tymoczko 2007: 112–113). Translation as a way to reflect
on the social conditions of the production of utterances: ‘what matters in talk, in discourse,
is not power inherent in language itself, but the kind of authority or legitimacy in which it
is backed’ ( Bourdieu 1991: 265).
If the translations of these border writings are not made from a cosmopolitan viewpoint
but from a globalizing one, then translating becomes a power exercise which brings with it
‘varying degrees of violence, especially when the culture being translated is constituted as
that of the “other”’ ( Dingwaney 1995: 4). This is what has happened on occasion when these
authors have been translated. For example, the first translation published in Spain of Sandra
Cisneros’s short stories Women Hollering Creek (1991) was made from a universalizing perspec-
tive which did not take into account the hybrid nature of the text, the idea that to speak a
language is to take on a world, a culture (Fanon 1967: 38). The result was a translation into
peninsular Spanish which, logically, did not meet Cisneros’s expectations. She immediately
demanded a second translation which was made by Liliana Valenzuela, herself a Chicana
poet, and the result was completely different: Valenzuela’s starting point was that in this case
her translation could not take place between monolingual cultures but rather between poly-
glot, asymmetrical and interconnected citizens and multilingual entities (Meylaerts 2013;
Meylaerts and Serban 2014). It therefore had to open up to spaces of difference, spaces of the
between in order to be in the world.
Writing back from the inside of dislocations, from the inside of and between borderlands also
derives from points at ‘centralities and monopolies of economic power, gender and ideology.
The migratory text may well be unanchored but its talking-back voice, dissident, confused or

476
 Translation and borders

suppressed is filtered through contesting layered hegemonies’ (Granqvist 2006: 8, 11). Valenzu-
ela’s translation points rightly to ‘a radical and reciprocal exchange between different forms of
being and existing, a questioning of self in light of the difference of the other, which is at the
basis of a cosmopolitan notion of genuine openness to others’ ( Bielsa and Aguilera 2017: 17).
We could mention many other examples of good and bad translations of border writings, but
we would like to point out here some of the many excellent translations that have changed the
state of things, such as Gayatri Spivak’s translations of Mahasweta Devi from Bengali to English,
Dora Sales’s translations of Vikram Chandra and Manju Kapur from English into Spanish,
Marta Sofía López Rodríguez’s of Chinua Achebe from English into Spanish, Elena Poniatows-
ka’s of Sandra Cisneros from English into non-peninsular Spanish or Pilar Godayol’s of various
Chicano authors (Cisneros, Viramontes, Mora, Castillo, Ponce) from Spanish into Catalan.
Borders give way to a ‘rich cultural mix of languages and lifestyles that most . . . [cosmo-
politans] celebrate and perpetuate in their vernacular existence’ ( Bhabha 2000: ix; see also
Taraborrelli 2015: 93ff ). Contrary to the simplicity of globalization, cosmopolitan languages
highlight the tensions and conflicts between the global and the local, between the universal
and the individual, ‘moving in-between cultural traditions, and revealing hybrid forms of
life and art that do not have a prior existence within the discrete world of any single culture
or language’ ( Bhabha 2000: xii). The language used in borders mirrors cosmopolitan spaces.
Every word in the borders is a paradigm of crossroads, cultural exchanges, a meeting of
voices, a contact zone. The role of the translator in these situations is crucial: ‘Yes, because
it is perhaps the first violence which the foreigner undergoes: to have to claim his rights in a
language he does not speak’ ( Derrida 2005: 7). In these circumstances, translation no longer
consists of transporting meaning from one language to another. It is

an operation of thought through which we must translate ourselves into the thought
of the other language, the forgotten thinking of the other language. We must translate
ourselves into it and not make it come into our language. It is necessary to go toward the
unthought thinking of the other language
(Derrida
­ 1982/1985:
­ 115)

Cosmopolitan translation as ‘relevant’ translation ( Derrida 2001), as a space for hospitality and
not for ‘ hostipitality’ ( Derrida 2000: 8). Not as a mere intellectual exercise but as an ethical
problem; a possibility for linguistic hospitality ( Ricoeur 2005).
In fact, Delanty’s views on cultural translation are based on the idea of hospitality when he
refers ‘to the need to translate between different world varieties of cosmopolitanism as a key
aspect of the construction of a critical, non-Eurocentric cosmopolitanism’ ( Bielsa and Agu-
ilera 2017: 15). Because one of the most obvious conditions which shows how the stranger is
invaded is the language s/he is obliged to use in physical and metaphorical borders. In this
context, hospitality ‘ is a principle that captures the substantive core of cosmopolitanism’
(Inghilleri 2017: 30). That is how hospitality is related to translation and border ( Derrida
1997/2000, 2000, 1997/2010). Hospitality inhabits, or should inhabit the border, and in real-
ity can only take place there ( Derrida 2000: 14). Within those borders, cosmopolitan transla-
tion turns out to be a means of relating to others and to ourselves ( Derrida 1997/2010: 16–17).

Conclusion
Edward Said (1993: 407) concludes in his seminal Culture and Imperialism that ‘No one today
is purely one thing’, and in a similar vein Appiah (2006: 113) argues that ‘cultural purity is

477
Mª Carmen África Vidal Claramonte

an oxymoron’. Language reflects life, and consequently, multilingualism is an inherent part

of our actual life experience. Cosmopolitan translation takes as its starting point that trans-
lation does not take place between monolingual cultures (Guido 2008) but rather within
and between polyglot, asymmetrical and interconnected citizens and multilingual entities
(Meylaerts 2013; Meylaerts and Serban 2014).
Translation Studies is a privileged territory for exploring contemporary conditions of
belonging, debates about identity and difference, citizenship, borders, and fear of the Other.
It addresses questions of culture and power reflected in language, since linguistic differences
are markers of cultural difference which are rarely if ever neutral and involve both ideolog-
ical and practical relations of subordination and dominance (Meylaerts 2006: 3). Translation
practices are today advocated in order to contribute to redressing geo-political and social
injustices ( Baker 2016). As we have seen, many scholars insist ‘on the importance and even
ethical imperative of researchers engaging with questions of power and injustice in regard to
translation. It is argued that translation is never a “neutral” activity but is always embedded
culturally and politically’ ( Brownlie 2010: 45).
In this context, future directions call for ethical engagement in migrant, multi- and trans-
cultural societies. Cosmopolitanism has encouraged activism in translation studies with the
creation in the twenty-fi rst century of communities of volunteer translators and interpreters
( ECOS, Babels, Traduttori per la Pace, Traductores sen Fronteiras, among others). Scholars
such as Mona Baker (2016, 2009), Moira Inghilleri (2017), Siobhan Brownlie (2010), Julie
Boérie (2011), Martha Cheung (2010) and Maria Tymoczko (2010, 2000), to name but a few,
advocate the work of activist interpreter and translator communities,

since this is a phenomenon which directly challenges the notion of translators as pas-
sive and non-interventionist […] signalling the increasing importance of translation and
translators in the world despite and because of globalization, promoting linguistic di-
versity, and pointing out injustices to which translators and interpreters are subjected.
(Brownlie 2010: 46, 48)

Borderlands imply permanent displacement, dialogue, not across difference, but dialogue
about difference (Inghilleri 2007: 23).

Further reading
Apter, E. (ed.) (2001) Translation in a Global Market. Special issue of Public Culture 13 (1).
One of the most interesting features of this special issue is that the authors come from different aca-
demic disciplines (including visual artists) from where they question the impact of certain translations
in non-Western languages and they claim to be in favour of shifting from global to transnational
literacy.
Bielsa, E. (2016) Cosmopolitanism and Translation. Investigations into the Experience of the Foreign. London
and New York: Routledge.
One of the few publications in existence on the subject of cosmopolitan translation. It is very clear and
has a solid theoretical base with regard to both sociology and translation. Food for thought.
Canagarajah, S. (ed.) (2017) Handbook of Migration and Language. London and New York: Routledge.
A key reference to explore the consequences of human mobility in the languages of today’s globalized
world, taking into account such concepts as identity, nation- state and social stratification.
Inghilleri, M. (2017) Translation and Migration. London and New York: Routledge.
A seminal book that studies the role of translation in situations of migratory movement through a rich
variety of literary, ethnographic, visual and historical materials.

478
 Translation and borders

Note
1 This paper is part of the research carried out within the project ‘Violencia simbólica y traducción:
retos en la representación de identidades fragmentadas en la sociedad global’, financed by the Min-
isterio de Economía y Competitividad ­FFI2015-66516-P.
­​­­ ​­

References
Agamben, G. (1995/1998)
­ ­ Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Heller-Roazen, D. Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press.
Agier, M. (2016) Borderlands. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Agier, M. (2017) Borderlands. Towards an Anthropology of the Cosmopolitan Condition, trans. Fernbach, D.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Álvarez Rodríguez, R. and Vidal Claramonte, M. C. A. (eds.) (1996) Translation, Power, Subversion.
Cleveland: Multilingual Matters.
Amoore, L. (2006) Biometric Borders: Governing Mobilities in the War on Terror’ Political Geography,
­ pp. 336–351.
25(3), ­ ­ ​­
Andreas, P. (2000) ‘Introduction: The Wall after the Wall’, in Andreas, P. and Snyder, T. (eds.), The
Wall around the West: State Borders and Immigration Controls in North American and Europe. Lanham,
MD, New York and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 1–14.
Anzaldúa, G. (1987) Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books.
Anzaldúa, G. and Keating, A. L. (eds.) (2002) This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transforma-
tion. London and New York: Routledge.
Appadurai, A. (2006) Fear of Small Numbers. An Essay on the Geography of Anger. Durham, NC and Lon-
don: Duke University Press.
Appiah, K. A. (2006) Cosmopolitanism. Ethics in a World of Strangers. London: Penguin.
Archibugi, D. (2008) The Global Commonwealth of Citizen: Toward Cosmopolitan Democracy. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G. and Tiffin, H. (1989) The Empire Writes Back. Theory and Practice in Post-
­Colonial Literatures. London and New York: Routledge.
Baker, M. (2009) ‘Resisting State Terror: Theorizing Communities of Activist Translators and Inter-
preters’, in Bielsa, E. and Hughes, C. W. (eds.), Globalization, Political Violence and Translation. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 222–242. ­ ­ ​­
Baker, M. (ed.) (2016) Translating Dissent. Voices from and with the Egyptian Revolution. New York and
London: Routledge.
Balibar, É. (1997/2011)
­ ­ Politics and the Other Scene, trans. Jones, C., Swenson, J. and Turner, C. London: Verso.
Bassnett, S. and Lefevere, A. (eds.) (1990) Translation, History and Culture. London: Pinter.
Bauman, Z. (2004) Wasted Lives. Modernity and Its Outcasts. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bauman, Z. (2006) Liquid Fear. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bauman, Z. (2007) Liquid Times. Living in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bauman, Z. (2016) Strangers at Our Door. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Beck, U. (1997/2000)
­ ­ What Is Globalization?, trans. Camiller, P. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Beck, U. (2004/2006)
­ ­ The Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Benito, J. and Manzanas, A. (eds.) (2006) The Dynamics of the Threshold. Essays on Liminal Negotiations.
Madrid: The Gateway Press.
Bennett, K. and Queiroz de Barros, R. (2017) ‘International English: Its Current Status and Implications
for Translation’, The Translator, 23(4), ­ pp. 363–370.
­ ­ ​­
Bertacco, S. (ed.) (2014) Language and Translation in Postcolonial Literatures. Multilingual Contexts, Transla-
tional Texts. London and New York: Routledge.
Bhabha, H. K. (1994) The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge.
Bhabha, H. K. (2000) Preface to the Routledge Classics Edition the Location of Culture. New York and Lon-
don: Routledge, pp. ­ix–xxvi. ​­
Bielsa, E. (2010) ‘Cosmopolitanism, Translation and the Experience of the Foreign’, Across Languages
and Cultures, 11(2), ­ pp. 161–174.
­ ­ ​­
Bielsa, E. (2016) Cosmopolitanism and Translation. Investigations into the Experience of the Foreign. London
and New York: Routledge.

479
Mª Carmen África Vidal Claramonte

Bielsa, E. and Aguilera, A. (2017) ‘Politics of Translation: A Cosmopolitan Approach’, European Journal
of Cultural and Political Sociology, 4(1), ­ pp. 7–24.
­ ­ ​­
Bielsa, E. and Hughes, C. (2009) Globalization, Political Violence and Translation. New York: Palgrave.
Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and Symbolic Power, trans. Raymond, G. and Adamson, M. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Braidotti, R. et al. (eds.) (2013) After Cosmopolitanism. New York and London: Routledge.
Brambilla, C. (2015) ‘Exploring the Critical Potential of the Borderscapes Concept’, Geopolitics, 20(1), ­
pp. 14–34.
­ ­ ​­
Brambilla, C. et al. (eds.) (2015) Borderscaping: Imaginations and Practices of Border Making. London and
New York: Routledge.
Brownlie, S. (2010) ‘Committed Approaches and Activism’, in Gambier, Y. and Doorslaer, L. van
(eds.),
­ Handbook of Translation Studies 1. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 45– 48.
Canagarajah, A. S. (2013) Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations. London and
New York: Routledge.
Canagarajah, A. S. (2017) ‘The Nexus of Migration and Language. The Emergence of a Disciplinary
Space’, in Canagarajah, S. (ed.), Handbook of Migration and Language. London and New York: Rout-
ledge, pp. 1–28.
­ ­ ​­
Casanova, P. (1999/2001) ­ ­ La République mondiale des Lettres. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
Chambers, I. (1994) Migrancy, Culture, Identity. London and New York: Routledge.
Cheung, M. (2010) ‘Rethinking Activism: The Power and Dynamics of Translation in China during
the Late Qing Period (1840–1911)’, in Baker, M., Calzada Pérez, M. and Olohan, M. (eds.), Text
and Context: Essays on Translation and Interpreting in Honour of Ian Mason. Manchester: St. Jerome
­ ­
Publishing, pp. 237–258. ​­
Cronin, M. (1998) ‘The Cracked Looking Glass of Servants: Translation and Minority in a Global
Age’, in Venuti, L. (ed.), ‘Translation and Minority’, The Translator, 4(2), ­ pp. 145–162.
­ ­ ​­
Cronin, M. (2006) Translation and Identity. London and New York: Routledge.
Davila, M. and Roma, V. (eds.) (2002) Muntadas. On Translation. Barcelona: ACTAR/MACBA.
De Certeau, M. (1984/1988) The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Rendall, S. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
De Medeiros, P. (2019) ‘Translation and Cosmopolitanism’, in Bassnett, S. (ed.), Translation and World
Literature. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 60–74.
Delanty, G. (2009) The Cosmopolitan Imagination. The Renewal of Critical Social Theory. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Delanty, G. (2012) Routledge Handbook of Cosmopolitan Studies. New York and London: Routledge.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1975/1986) Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, trans. Polan, D. Minneapolis
and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1980/1987) A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans.
Massumi, B. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Derrida, J. (1982/1985)
­ ­ The Ear of the Other. Otobiography, Transference, Translation, trans. Peggy Kamuf.
Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.
Derrida, J. (1997/2010)
­ ­ On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, trans. Dooley, M. and Hughes, M. London
and New York: Routledge.
Derrida, J. (1997/2000)­ ­ Of Hospitality, trans. Bowlby, R. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Derrida, J. (2000) ‘Hostipitality’, trans. Stocker, B. and Morlock, F. Angelaki. Journal of the Theoretical
Humanities, 5(3), ­ pp. 3–18.
­ ­ ​­
Derrida, J. (2001) ‘What Is a “Relevant” Translation?’, trans. Venuti, L. Critical Inquiry, 27(2), ­
pp. 174–200.
­ ­ ​­
Derrida, J. (2005) ‘The Principle of Hospitality’, Parallax, 11(1), ­ pp. 6–9.
­ ­ ​­
Dingwaney, A. (1995) ‘Introduction: Translating “Third World” Cultures’, in Dingwaney, A. and
Maier, C. (eds.), Between Languages and Cultures. Translation and Cross-Cultural Texts. Pittsburgh and
London: University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 3–15.
Dijstelbloem, H. and Meijer, A. (eds.) (2011) Migration and the New Technological Borders of Europe. Lon-
don: Palgrave Macmillan.
Donnan, H. and Wilson, T. M. (2010) Borderlands: Ethnographic Approaches to Security, Power, and Identity.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Elliot, A. and Lemert, C. (2014) Introduction to Contemporary Social Theory. New York: Routledge.
Fanon, F. (1967). Black Skin/White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Marmann. New York: Grove Press.

480
 Translation and borders

Godayol, P. (2000) Espais de frontera. Gènere i traducció. Victoria: Eumo.

Godayol, P. (2001) Veus Xicanes. Victoria: Eumo.
­Gómez-Peña, ​­ G. (1996)
­ The New World Border. San Francisco, CA: City Lights.
­Gómez-Peña, ​­ G. (2000)­ Dangerous Border Crosser. London and New York: Routledge.
Granqvist, R. J. (2006) ‘Introduction: Writing Back, False Obedience and Power’, in Granqvist, R.
(ed.),
­ Writing Back in/and Translation. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, pp. 7–18. ­ ­ ​­
Grutman, R. (2006) ‘Refraction and Recognition. Literary Multilingualism in Translation’, Target,
18(1),
­ pp. 17–47.
­ ­ ​­
Grutman, R. (2009) ‘La autotraducción en la galaxia de las lenguas’, Quaderns, 16, pp. 123–134. ­ ­ ​­
Guido, M. G. (2008) English as a Lingua Franca in Cross- cultural Immigration Domains. Frankfurt: Peter
Lang.
Hall, S. (1990) ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, in Rutherford, J. (ed.), Identity. London: Lawrence and
­ ­
Wishart, pp. 222–237. ​­
Hall, S. and Gay, P. du (eds.) (1996/2005) Questions of Cultural Identity. London: Sage.
Held, D. and McGrew, A. (2000/2003) ‘The Great Globalization Debate: An Introduction’, in Held,
D. and McGrew, A. (eds.), The Global Transformations Reader. An Introduction to the Globalization
Debate. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 1–50. ­ ­ ​­
Hicks, E. D. (1991) Border Writing. The Multidimensional Text. Minneapolis and Oxford: University of
Minnesota Press.
Holton, R. J. (2009) Cosmopolitanisms. New Thinking and New Directions. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Inghilleri, M. (2017) Translation and Migration. London and New York: Routledge.
Kearney, M. (1991) ‘Borders and Boundaries of State and Self at the End of Empire’, Journal of Historical
Sociology, 4(1), ­ pp. 52–74.
­ ­ ​­
Kendall, G. et al. (2009) ­ The Sociology of Cosmopolitanism. Globalization, Identity, Culture and Government.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lefevere, A. (1992) Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. New York and London:
Routledge.
León-Portilla, M. (1962) ‘Nepantla. La palabra clave de la tragedia de un pueblo’, México en la cultura,
672, 28, pp. 1–7. ­ ­ ​­
Meylaerts, R. (2006) ‘Heterolingualism in/and Translation’, Target, 18(1), ­ pp. 1–15.
­ ­ ​­
Meylaerts, R. (2013) ‘Multilingualism as a Challenge for Translation Studies’, in M illan-Varela, C.
and Bartrina, F. (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Translation Studies. London: Routledge, pp. 519–533. ­ ­ ​­
Meylaerts, R. and Serban, A. (2014) ‘Introduction. Multilingualism at the Cinema and on Stage:
A Translation Perspective’, Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series. Themes in Translation Studies, 13,
pp. 1–13.
­ ­ ​­
Mezzadra, S. and Neilson, B. (2013) Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor. Durham, NC and
London: Duke University Press.
Mignolo, W. D. (2000) Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border
Thinking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
­Minh-ha, ​­ T. T. (2011) ­ Elsewhere, within Here: Immigration, Refugeeism and the Boundary Event. New York
and London: Routledge.
Mora, P. (1993) Nepantla. Essays from the Land in the Middle. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press.
­Mudimbe-Boyi, ​­ E. (ed.) ­ (2002)
­ Beyond Dichotomies. Histories, Identities, Cultures, and the Challenge of
Civilization, trans. Saussy, H. New York: State University of New York Press, pp. 287–295.
Mukherji, S. (ed.) (2011) Thinking on Thresholds. The Poetics of Transitive Spaces. London, New York and
Delhi: Anthem Press.
Papastergiadis, N. (2000/2007) ­ ­ The Turbulence of Migration. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Papastergiadis, N. (2012) Cosmopolitanism and Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Polezzi, L. (2012) ‘Migration and Translation’ Translation Studies, 5(3), ­ pp. 345–356.
­ ­ ​­
Pratt, M. L. (1992) Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation. London and New York: Routledge.
Ricoeur, P. (2005) Sobre la traducción, trans. Willson, P. Barcelona: Paidós.
Robertson, R. and White, K. E. (2007) ‘What Is Globalization?’, in Ritzer, G. (ed.), The Blackwell
Companion to Globalization. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 54–66. ­ ­ ​­
Rovisko, M. and Nowicka, M. (2011) Ashgate Research Companion to Cosmopolitanism. Farnham and
Burlington: Ashgate.

481
Mª Carmen África Vidal Claramonte

Rumford, C. (2006) ‘Theorizing Borders’, European Journal of Social Theory, 9(2), ­ pp. 155–169.
­ ­ ​­
Rumford, C. (2008a) ‘Introduction: Citizens and Borderwork in Europe’, Space and Polity, 12(1), ­
­ ­ ​­
pp. 1–12.
Rumford, C. (2008b) ‘Social Policy Beyond Fear: The Globalization of Strangeness, the “War on Ter-
ror” and “Spaces of Wonder”’, Social Policy and Administration, 42(6), ­ pp. 630–44.
­ ­ ​­
Rumford, C. (2009) Cosmopolitan Spaces. Europe, Globalization, Theory. New York and London:
Routledge.
Rumford, C. (2012) ‘Toward a Multiperspectival Study of Borders’, Geopolitics, 17(4), ­ pp. 887–902.
­ ­ ​­
Rumford, C. (2013) The Globalization of Strangeness. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Rumford, C. (2014) Cosmopolitan Borders. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Rushdie, S. (1981/1991)
­ ­ Imaginary Homelands New Delhi: Penguin and Granta.
Said, E. (1996) Representations of the Intellectual. New York: Vintage.
Said, E. (1993) Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto and Windus.
Said, E. (1990) ‘Reflexions on Exile’, in Ferguson, R. et al. (eds.), Out There. Marginalization and Con-
temporary Cultures. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 357–363.
Said, E. (1999). Out of Place. New York: Vintage.
Saldívar, J. D. (1997) Border Matters. Remapping American Cultural Studies ( Berkeley: University of Cal-
ifornia Press.
Soueif, A. and Hamilton, O. R. (eds.) (2017) This Is Not a Border. London: Bloomsbury.
Taraborrelli, A. (2015) Contemporary Cosmopolitanism. London: Bloomsbury.
Tymoczko, M. (ed.) (2010) Translation, Resistance, Activism. Amherst and Boston: University of Massa-
chusetts Press.
Tymoczko, M. (2007) Enlarging Translation, Empowering Translators. Manchester: St. Jerome.
Tymoczko, M. and Gentzler, E. (eds.) (2002) Translation and Power. Amherst and Boston: University of
Massachusetts Press.
Tymoczko, M. (2000) ‘Translation and Political Engagement: Activism, Social Change and the Role
of Translation in Geopolitical Shifts’, The Translator, 6(1),­ pp. 23–47.
­ ­ ​­
Urry, J. (2000) Sociology Beyond Societies: Mobilities for the Twenty-First Century. New York: Routledge.
Van Houtum, H. and van Naerssen, T. (2002) ‘Bordering, Ordering and Othering’, Tijdschrift voor
economische en sociale geografie, 93(2),
­ pp. 125–136.
­ ­ ​­
Venuti, L. (1995) The Translator’s Invisibility. London and New York: Routledge.
Venuti, L. (1998a) The Scandals of Translation. London and New York: Routledge.
Venuti, L. (1998b) ‘Introduction’, The Translator. Translation & Minority, 4(2), ­ pp. 135–144.
­ ­ ​­
Venuti, L. (2013) Translation Changes Everything. London and New York: Routledge.
Vidal Claramonte, M. C. A. (2018) ‘Power’, in Harding, S. and Carbonell, O. (eds.), Routledge Hand-
book of Translation and Culture. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 79–96.
Vieten, U. M. (2012) Gender and Cosmopolitanism in Europe. A Feminist Perspective. Farnham and Burl-
ington: Ashgate.
Walkowitz, R. L. (2015) Born Translated. The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature. New
York: Columbia University Press.
Walters, W. (2006a) ‘Rethinking Borders Beyond the State’, Comparative European Politics, 4(2/3), ­ ­
pp. 141–159.
­ ­ ​­
Walters, W. (2006b)
­ ‘Border/Control’,
­ ­ European Journal of Social Theory, 9(2),
­ pp. 187–204.
­ ­ ​­
Welchman, J. (ed.) (1996) Rethinking Borders. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

482
 33
Multilingualism and translation
in the European Union
Alice Leal

Introduction
The European Union ( EU) is one of the most multilingual bodies of institutions in the world
as the unparalleled economic and political union of 27 countries and their 24 respective
languages ( Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French,
German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese,
Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and Swedish). Diversity constitutes one of the cor-
nerstones of the EU, as enshrined in its legislation and conveyed in its motto, ‘united in
diversity’. But how is linguistic diversity made viable in EU institutions? Mostly through
mammoth translation and interpreting services coupled with the ad hoc, unofficial use of
English as the EU’s lingua franca. Ironically, therefore, the EU's de jure multilingualism is
enabled by its de facto monolingualism or use of English. Is this paradox an obstacle to the
EU’s goal of equality among Member States and citizens? This is one of the main questions
that permeate this entry.
Another key issue in this chapter is the EU's translation culture. Although the major-
ity of EU documents in languages other than English are most likely translations from
English, these documents are not marked as ‘translations’ but as ‘originals’. This is known
as ‘authentication’, a process stipulated in EU law through which the boundaries between
originals and translations are effaced, thus granting translations original status. Is there a
parallel between the EU’s translation culture and the contemporary debate on the status of
translations versus originals? And to what extent does the EU’s translation culture reinforce
linguistic hierarchy?

EU languages and language policy

When the European Economic Community ( EEC), the forerunner of the EU, was founded
in 1957, Article 217 of the Treaty of Rome (today Article 342 of the Treaty on the function-
ing of the European Union [TFEU]) stated that the ‘rules governing the languages of the in-
stitutions of the Union shall (…) be determined by the Council [where all Members States are
represented], acting unanimously by means of regulations’.1 The very first EEC regulation

483
Alice Leal

(15 April 1958) ruled that ‘each of the four languages in which the Treaty is drafted is recog-
nized as an official language in one or more of the Member States of the Community’, and
went on to establish, in Article 1, that ‘[t]he official languages and the working languages of
the institutions of the Community shall be Dutch, French, German and Italian’ – a n article
which has been repeatedly updated after each accession. It is therefore up to the Member
States to appoint one official language which, upon admission to the Union, automatically
becomes an official and working language in all EU institutions.
The status ‘official language’ is crucial because, as stipulated in Article 24 of the TFEU,
‘[e]very citizen of the Union may write to any of the institutions or bodies (…) in one of the
languages mentioned in Article 55(1) of the Treaty on European Union [TEU] and have an
answer in the same language’. Article 55(1) lists the 24 official languages of the EU, whereas
Article 165(2) highlights the importance of ‘developing the European dimension in educa-
tion, particularly through the teaching and dissemination of the languages of the Member
States’. Further, Articles 2 and 3 emphasize the need to respect both human rights (and non-
discrimination) and the ‘rich cultural and linguistic diversity’ of its members. Article 21 of
The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU ( legally binding since the Treaty of Lisbon)
prohibits discrimination on grounds of language, and Article 22 obliges the Union to respect
linguistic diversity (see Arzoz 2008).
How do these EU articles translate into action? All EU treaties (which are known as
‘primary law’) are legally binding and set out the objectives and ground rules for the function-
ing of the Union. Their formulation is often vague, as we have seen in the previous paragraph.
The articles in these treaties then give rise to the body of legislation known as ‘secondary law’,
which lays specific actions for the goals of the treaties to be achieved. Secondary law comprises
regulations, directives, decisions, recommendations and opinions. Only ‘regulations’ are le-
gally binding and mandatory to all Member States, resulting in supranational actions – and
hence the most relevant in relation to language policy. They must be translated into national
law within a given deadline. Take, for instance, Regulation 2015/478 of 11 March 2015: it
comprises 27 articles which painstakingly lay out common safeguards regarding goods im-
ported into the EU. As far as language policy is concerned, we have several articles in EU
primary law that emphasize the importance of multilingualism without, however, leading to
specific language policies in secondary law. The only supranational, legally binding pieces of
secondary law currently in force listed in the EUR-Lex platform on language and culture are
Regulations 1295/2013 and 1288/2013, which established the Creative Europe Programme
and the Erasmus+ programme, respectively (more on these below).2
Yet statements univocally celebrating diversity abound in non-legally binding documents,
such as the following, taken from the language policy section of the European Parliament
(2019) website: ‘Languages are an integral part of European identity and the most direct
expression of culture’, ‘In an EU founded on the motto “United in diversity”, the ability to
communicate in several languages is an important asset…’, ‘Languages not only play a key
role in the everyday life of the European Union, but are also fundamental for respecting
cultural and linguistic diversity in the EU’.
The right to use one’s own language is thus seen as a basic right in the EU, one that dove-
tails with the notions of identity and democracy. This point raises the following questions:
(1) Are all EU official languages equal in terms of status? (2) What about languages that are
not official (such as Catalan or Turkish)? (3) And what does the EU do to foster and protect
multilingualism not only in its Member States but also within its institutions? The answer
to (1) is a straight ‘no’. Although officially all 24 languages enjoy the same status, informally
(and in clear breech of its own legislation) the EU makes a distinction between official and

484
 Multilingualism and translation in the EU

procedural languages, the latter being English, German and French, with English being by
far the most frequently used language across EU institutions (statistics in the section on EU
translation). This distinction, along with the special status of the English language, has not
been implemented by treaties or regulations and is often only mentioned in passing in differ-
ent EU sources, such as in the booklet ‘Translating for a multilingual community’ ( European
Commission 2009: 3), in which ‘procedural languages’ are defined as ‘English, French and
German – i.e. (…) those [languages] in which the Commission conducts its internal business’.
In the wake of Brexit, English is now spoken as a first language by less than 1% of the EU
population (Ginsburgh et al. 2018). As a second language, English is spoken by a mere 38% of
EU citizens, though ‘spoken’ does not mean spoken well, as only 21% of these EU speakers of
English as a second language rate their English proficiency as ‘very good’ ( European Com-
mission 2012: 6). Combining these two percentages, the number of competent non-native
speakers of English amounts to 8% of the EU’s population – roughly 9% if we include all
Irish and Maltese citizens (see also Barbier 2018: 339–340). The predominance of English in
EU institutions is hence controversial in terms of democratic representation as it is neither a
widely spoken language nor a neutral language that ‘ belongs’ to no one. I will come back to
the de facto monolingualism of the EU in the following section.
Even if we ignored the pecking order of the EU languages and concentrated on the legally
binding documents mentioned in the previous paragraphs, in which all 24 official languages
enjoy the same status, what about (2) all the other languages at use in the EU? It is estimated
that there are ‘more than 60 indigenous regional and minority languages, and many non-
indigenous languages spoken by migrant communities’ ( European Commission 2012, 2). And
although the EU may allow for translation and interpreting services to be allocated to some
of these languages (namely Galician, Catalan and Basque) sporadically, this is the exception
and costs have to be covered by the respective Member State, as these languages do not enjoy
the same status that working languages do. Due to space constraints, the issue of minority,
migrant and non-territorial languages (such as the Sámi and Romani languages) cannot be
addressed here. Suffice to say that, at first glance, what might look like an inclusive commu-
nity in which the boundaries are blurred and the notion of national, state-bound citizenship
is taken to the supranational level, can also be seen as a mechanism of internal exclusion on
historical and ethnic grounds ( Balibar 2004; Craith 2006; Shuibhne 2008).
Let us now turn to the last question asked above regarding (3) the EU’s concrete actions
to foster and protect multilingualism in its Member States and within its institutions. Can
it realistically achieve that and if so, how? Here the answer is not as clear- cut. The EU does
promote numerous programmes to encourage multilingualism and language learning, such
as the two mentioned above – the Creative Europe Programme and Erasmus+. These initia-
tives, coupled with the EU’s gargantuan translation and interpreting services, do contribute
to multilingualism. However, both the level on which they operate and their scope are mod-
est, chiefly for reasons of budget and jurisdiction. Let us take the 2018 budget as an example:
out of €157.9 billion, just under €400 million (0.25%) was allocated to the Commission’s
language services (Official Journal of the European Union 2018). Different estimates set the
total amount invested in language services across all EU institutions below 1% of the budget
( Phillipson 2003: 114; Kraus 2011: 123; European Commission 2013). Also, all programmes
under the umbrella ‘education and culture’ (such as Erasmus+ and Creative Europe) take up
just over 2% of the 2018 budget.
As for jurisdiction, ‘the EU (…) has limited influence because educational and language
policies are the responsibility of individual Member States’ ( European Commission 2012, 2).
In short, as stipulated in Article 5(2) of the TEU common provisions, ‘the Union shall act

485
Alice Leal

only within the limits of the competences conferred upon it by the Member States (…).
Competences not conferred upon the Union in the Treaties remain with the Member States’.
This is known as the ‘principle of conferral’, which hampers any supranational initiatives
on the part of the EU regarding language policy. However, this principle is complemented
by the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, also laid out in Article 5 of the TEU.
‘Subsidiarity’ means that the EU is only allowed to act in those areas that fall outside its ex-
clusive competence (such as language policy) when its action shall be more effective than ac-
tion taken locally. ‘Proportionality’ means that any such actions taken by the EU on grounds
of subsidiarity may not go beyond what is strictly necessary to achieve the objectives of the
treaties. This means that, by default, EU language policy is largely limited to the symbolic
level. Nevertheless, legally speaking, if it resorted to the principle of subsidiarity and con-
formed to the principle of proportionality, the EU could take ( legally binding) steps to en-
gender a more robust language policy.3 But should the EU do that? Let us investigate these
questions in the next section.

The EU’s paradox of language for communication

and language for identification
The EU’s de jure multilingualism and de facto monolingualism or use of English has be-
come the elephant in the room, so to speak: whereas most EU researchers mention it as a
hard fact (to be celebrated, accepted or regretted), the EU sweeps it under the rug ( Phillipson
2003, 2017, 2018; Frost 2004; Ives 2004; Craith 2006; Arzoz 2008 [entire volume]; Modiano
2009, 2017; Kraus 2011; Seidlhofer 2011; Leal 2012b, 2013, 2014, 2016; Gazzola and Grin
2013; Gazzola 2014; among many others). As we have seen in the previous section, the EU
sees language as a crucial element of one’s identity, culture and Weltanschauung, while at the
same time using language (mostly English) as a mere vehicle for communication. This is not
the place to explore the philosophical underpinnings of this paradox (see Ives 2004: 28–29;
Leal 2016: 5– 6, 2018; Leal forthcoming). In a nutshell, the view that language, culture and
identity are interconnected, as opposed to the notion of language as a neutral instrument
for communication, has come to form our contemporary concept of language (Macnamara
1991; Schlesinger 1991; Steiner 1998: 97–114; Wierzbicka 2013: 1–51; Leal 2018).
Here the following questions arise: What English has become the EU’s unofficial lingua
franca? Is there a paradox between the EU’s de jure multilingualism and de facto monolin-
gualism? And does this paradox need to be resolved? The first question – what English? –
would require an entire volume to be answered thoroughly, so I shall paint with a broad
brush here. There are various models that portray the spread of different Englishes across
the globe. Braj Kachru’s (1985) is one of the most widely used, despite its shortcomings
(Seidlhofer 2011: 81). It consists of three concentric circles in a fluid, dynamic framework:
the ‘ inner circle’, i.e. ‘norm-providing’ nations (Great Britain and Ireland, North America,
Australasia), the ‘outer circle’, i.e. ‘norm- developing’ countries (most former British colonies
in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia) and the ‘expanding circle’, i.e. those nations where English
is a foreign language and hence ‘norm- dependent’ ( Kachru et al. 2006: 1–270). The EU is
situated mostly in the expanding circle, and a case is being made for it to be moved inwards
to the outer circle as the use of English becomes more widespread and institutionalized – a nd
hence ‘norm- developing’ (Seidlhofer 2011: 60; Modiano 2017: 314). Unlike in the coun-
tries traditionally placed in the outer circle, in the EU English did not spread as a result of
colonialism (except for Ireland and Malta) but rather of globalization, and English is not an
official language in most EU Member States.

486
 Multilingualism and translation in the EU

So in the context of the EU, is English a ‘ foreign’ or a ‘second’ language? Shall we

call it ‘ international English’, ‘English as an international language’, ‘global English’, ‘world
English’, ‘Euro-English’ or ‘European English as a lingua franca?’ (see McArthur 2001; Raja-
gopalan 2012). Regardless of what we choose to call it, there has been a clear shift in applied
and sociolinguistics, since the latter half of the twentieth century, from a monocentric to a
pluricentric approach – i.e. English is no longer seen as belonging to and measured against
inner- circle speakers and norms ( Kachru et al. 2006; Modiano 2017).4 This shift led to what
is often referred to – positively and negatively – a s ‘ liberation linguistics’, which, in turn,
has resulted in the establishment of new paradigms in the study and teaching of English(es)
across the globe. Within the world Englishes paradigm, inaugurated by Kachru, the English
language used in EU institutions constitutes a variety in its own right, with its own norms.
Marko Modiano calls it ‘Euro-English’, and some of its features, which are now in the pro-
cess of being codified, include a preference for the present progressive instead of the simple
present (Modiano 2006, 2009, 2017). On Modiano’s account, Euro-English spans Kachru’s
three circles and facilitates communication among them.
A competing paradigm, which shares the core values of liberation linguistics, is that of
English as a Lingua Franca ( ELF). ELF, like Euro-English, is based on language use rather
than on inner- circle norms. Juliane House (2013: 287) also calls it ‘English as a vehicular
language’, a ‘mere tool bereft of collective cultural capital’ (House 2003: 560), as it is largely
restricted to non-native uses of English.5 ELF, a hybrid contact language not associated with any
national tongue, emerges wherever and whenever non-native speakers of English across the
globe need to communicate and their only shared language is English. Jennifer Jenkins and
Alessia Cogo (2010), for instance, call the ELF spoken in the EU ‘European ELF’.
In the context of the EU, the idea of a ‘ lingua franca’ seems pertinent – a shared language
among speakers of multiple tongues. It is indeed in this sense that I have used ‘ lingua franca’
in this paper – not in the sense proposed within the ELF paradigm in linguistics, in which
English is often taken quite apart from inner-circle contexts and celebrated for being both
ideologically neutral and a natural choice in multilingual settings ( Breiteneder 2009; House
2010: 364. 2013: ­282–283).
​­ 6
In this sense, Modiano’s notion of ‘Euro-English’ is more pro-
ductive for my purposes here, since it takes the hegemony of English more critically (Modiano
2009: 220). To come back to the question of ‘what English’, therefore, I propose we use
‘ lingua franca’ in its more mainstream sense, as ‘any language that is widely used as a means
of communication among speakers of other languages’ (Random House Webster’s electronic dic-
tionary), while at the same time understanding it as a continuum within the world Englishes
paradigm. Both ‘ELF’ and ‘Euro-English’ have become infused with connotations specific
to applied and sociolinguistics, particularly in the context of English language teaching – a
context distant from ours here. Also, research in both fields has focussed on spoken rather
than written English, more reasons why I would rather not adopt one or the other term (see
Leal forthcoming).
The second question proposed earlier about a possible paradox in the EU’s discourse on
versus its use of language can be linked with the terminological issue of ‘Euro-English’ and
‘ELF’ in linguistics. Both epithets tend to presuppose that the English spoken in interna-
tional settings is a vessel for communication. House, for example, distinguishes between
‘ languages for communication’ and ‘ languages for identification’, with ELF firmly in the
former field (2003: 559–562). In a similar vein, though from a different discipline, Catherine
Frost (2004: 52) proposes a distinction between ‘ language attachment’ and ‘ language use’,
quoting Irish as an example of high ‘ language attachment’ but low ‘ language use’. The EU
seems to subscribe to this dual view of language as well, as it celebrates linguistic diversity for

487
Alice Leal

its identity- shaping role on the one hand, while turning a blind eye to language use within
its institutions on the other, allowing it to unofficially default to English.
Is there a paradox between these v iews  – a n instrumental versus an identity- shaping
notion of language? Not at a practical level. Like the Irish example mentioned by Frost,
whereby English is the preferred language of the majority while Irish still retains high levels
of attachment, English fulfils a need for communication in the EU, at first sight quite apart
from cultural identification  – a role reserved to one’s mother tongue. A special Euroba-
rometer report confirms this trend: while 81% of respondents agree that all EU languages
‘should be treated equally’, 69% believe that Europeans should ‘ be able to speak a common
language’, with 53% suggesting that ‘a single language’ should be adopted by EU institutions
to facilitate communication. And although the question ‘what single language’ was not part
of the survey, 67% of respondents consider English ‘one of the two most useful languages
for themselves’, while 79% see English as ‘the most useful [language] for the future of their
children’ ( European Commission 2012, 141). These results unveil the duality encompassed
in the EU’s own paradoxical notion of language. Like the EU as a body of institutions, EU
citizens perceive language both as a vehicle for communication and as an important element
in one’s culture and identity.
At an epistemological level, however, this is a pernicious paradox which needs to be
addressed by the EU  – to move on to the last question suggested above, on whether this
paradox needs a resolution. If multilingualism is one of the pillars of the European project,
and if language equality is enshrined in EU law, the EU cannot allow it to be undermined in
its institutions by the ad hoc, seemingly unescapable and especially unofficial use of English.
And the strategies to tackle the paradox must be twofold, following the lines of its premises.
At a practical level, the EU must invest a more significant portion of its budget in language-
related services and programmes. Also, it must enact more legislation to ensure language
equality and language awareness within its Member States. We need a linguistic turn in the
EU: language services are not a vanity project, for every document drafting, every meet-
ing, every transaction takes place in and through language. At an epistemological level, the EU
needs to openly acknowledge both the special role that English plays in its institutions and
the implications of this superior status. English has not become the world’s lingua franca by
accident, nor is it simply a natural result of economic prowess. The role played in the spread
of English by Britain’s and America’s colonial past can never be overstated ( Phillipson 2003,
2017). Moreover, the idea that one can use a language purely for communication purposes
is an illusion. The fact that English is the global language in science, research, diplomacy,
entertainment, and so many other areas entails, at least to a certain extent, the imposition
of world views and thought modes ( Phillipson 2003; Wierzbicka 2013). And this imposition
happens to the detriment of other languages and cultures (more in Leal forthcoming).7
The last question on whether there is a need to resolve this epistemological paradox can
thus be answered with a ‘yes and no’ – the paradox needs to be addressed by the EU, even
though it cannot be resolved (more below). Let us now turn to translation in EU institutions
and investigate how it fits into the EU’s paradoxical approach to language.

EU translation: the tension between multiplicity and unity

As of 2018, the EU’s Directorate-General for Translation ( DG Translation) employs 1,600
translators and 700 support staff, producing an output of over 2 million translated pages ev-
ery year – a quarter of which are translated by external translators. The Directorate-General
for Interpretation ( DG Interpretation) relies on 530 staff interpreters along with freelance

488
 Multilingualism and translation in the EU

interpreters, who account for half of the interpreted output. Both the DG Translation and
Interpretation are part of the European Commission. In addition to these, there are numerous
other translation, interpretation and language service departments and directorates in other EU
institutions, agencies and bodies, which together count on just under 3,500 staff interpreters,
translators, terminologists and language assistants (Tcaciuc 2013: 95–99; European Commission
2018). A rough estimate of the total number of EU translators and interpreters thus surpasses
5,500, and the number of freelancers is probably just as high. Excluding external staff, never-
theless, 5,500 is still about 10% of the EU’s total staff. Therefore, the EU does strive to maintain
multilingualism in its institutions, and its language services play a pivotal role in this task.
Just how dominant is English in the context of the EU’s translation services? The use of
English as a source language rose from 45.4% in 1997 to 62% in 2007, 72.5% in 2008 and
then 85.5% in 2020 (European Commission 2009, 2020 - see also Sandrelli 2018, 64; Cliffe
2019), whereas the percentage of EU law originally drafted in English reaches 95% (Barbier
2018, 337). Regarding target languages, the output is more even, but English still has the
upper hand with over 185,000 pages in 2020, compared with average of 81,000 into each of
the non-procedural languages (European Commission 2020).
Turning specifically to translation at the DG Translation now (which is emblematic of
the EU’s general stance on translation), two issues are of particular interest to us here. First,
as EU translators Emma Wagner et al. (2014: 47) explain, any document translated by the
EU is ‘not (…) presented as a translation, but as an original, an authentic piece of Commu-
nity legislation, with a legal force identical to that of all the other language versions’. The
authentication of translations is stipulated in EU legislation, as already mentioned: Article
248 of the final provisions of the Treaty establishing the European Community (today
Article 55 of the final provisions of the TEU) states that the Treaty was ‘ drawn up in a
single original in the Dutch, French, German, and Italian languages, all four texts being
equally authentic’. This article has been updated with each accession, so that subsequent
versions of the Treaty produced in other languages are also ‘authentic’. As a result, if a text
has been translated into ten languages, one does not speak of ‘one original text and ten
translations’ but rather of ‘11 language versions’ or ‘11 originals’, for the ten translations
have been authenticated and are now on a par with their source-text and with each other
( Wagner et al. 2014: 8; Leal 2016: 7).
Except for the odd booklet in which broad EU translation statistics are disclosed, there is no
information on which texts are originals or translations, nor on source and target languages.
Hence, not presenting certain (mostly English) texts as originals and others as translations serves
both to circumvent legal questions arising from different interpretations of the ‘same’ document
(in different languages), and to erase linguistic hierarchy among official languages. But is the EU
instead not quietly maintaining linguistic hierarchy by sweeping it under the rug? And why is
the word ‘translation’ promptly associated with lack of authenticity? What does this say of the
EU’s underlying notion of translation? What does it say of the hierarchy between ‘originals’ and
‘translations’ and the role of translators in society? (Leal 2016: 8–9) We will come back to the
questions regarding translation in the next section. As for the pecking order of the EU’s lan-
guages, it seems clear that its current translation culture, coupled with its questionable stance on
multilingualism, strengthens rather than erases linguistic hierarchy in the EU. The EU bearing
its head in the sand does not make the problem disappear; on the contrary: it allows the problem
to grow surreptitiously.
The second issue that interests us here in relation to the EU’s translation culture concerns
the level of multilingualism achieved by translation. Wagner et  al. emphasize that not all
texts are translated into all official languages, and that it ‘may be sufficient to translate [them]

489
Alice Leal

into one language for information (usually English or French)’ (2014: 9). This volume was
first published in 2002 – French is still listed alongside English. Today we can find various
EU online sources that mention English only ( European Union 2019): ‘Legislation & key
political documents’ and ‘[g]eneral information’ are ‘[p]ublished in all EU official languages’,
whereas ‘[o]fficial documents’, ‘[u]rgent or short-l ived information’ and ‘[s]pecialised infor-
mation (technical info, campaigns, calls for tender) & news / events’, along with websites
are sometimes ‘only available in 2 or 3 languages – or even just one (usually English)’.8 The
current call for tenders, for instance, has been available solely in English at least since I started
monitoring in early 2018 ( European Commission n.d.). Is this not a violation of Articles 21
and 22 of The Charter of Fundamental Rights, which prohibit discrimination on grounds of
language and oblige the Union to respect linguistic diversity? Not to mention Regulation 1,
whereby all 24 languages enjoy the status of official and working languages? ( Phillipson 2003:
120) When information such as calls for tenders is only available in English, English speakers
have an unfair advantage and other applicants are discriminated on grounds of language (see
Leal forthcoming for examples of law cases brought to the Court of Justice of the EU).
These two issues – namely, the effacement of the boundaries between originals and trans-
lations together with a low level of multilingualism enabled by the unofficial use of English –
are in no way exclusive to the EU. A similar policy is in place in the United Nations, for
example. Unlike the EU, however, the UN only has six official languages, which are all
working languages as well – a s Rule 51 of the General Assembly Rules of Procedure states.
This means that not only do they enjoy the same status, but that all speeches must be inter-
preted into all working languages – a s stipulated in Rule 52 of the General Assembly Rules of
Procedure. But like the EU, the UN ‘ has always shown a tendency towards a clear predomi-
nance of English, the true working language of the Secretariat and the real official language
used in most negotiations’ (Baigorri-Jalón
­­ ​­ 2004: 30–31).
­ ​­ Jesús Baigorri-Jalón
­ ​­ (2004:
­ 34) fur-
ther asserts that for more than 50 years ‘(…) the UN has demonstrated the progressive ascent
of English to the rank of universal language of communication within the organisation’, and
contends that ‘[n]o country interested in taking part in any real negotiation would send to
Headquarters a representative who does not speak English’ (see also Leal 2016: 8–9).
The EU’s paradoxical stance on multilingualism, discussed above, manifests itself in its
translation culture, too. The tension between unity (monolingualism enabled by English)
and multiplicity (multilingualism) is relevant in relation to translation as well. The EU effaces
the boundaries between translations and originals to create both the (necessary, for obvious
legal reasons) illusion of equality of meaning among translations of the same document, and
the illusion of status equality among its official languages. These illusions of meaning and
status equality, along with the ad hoc use of English, ensure unity in an otherwise diverse
environment. Notwithstanding this push for unity, the EU’s mammoth translation service
represents and strengthens multiplicity. Does this tension between unity and multiplicity
require a resolution? Must the EU opt for pure unity or pure multiplicity? This and the other
questions asked above will be addressed below.

The EU’s double responsibility: a necessary aporia

The tension between unity and multiplicity has been at the heart of the EU from the out-
set. This tension manifests itself at every level – particularly clearly when it comes to lan-
guages and cultures. It is this tension that underpins the paradoxes mentioned in this chapter:
a single language and translations that are originals foster a sense of unity, ‘consensus’
and ‘transparency’, whereas multilingualism and translation remind us of the ineluctable

490
 Multilingualism and translation in the EU

multiplicity and ‘dispersion’ inherent in the EU ( Derrida 1992: 41, 54). Let us analyse two
reflections in contemporary thought here, one about unity versus multiplicity and one about
translations versus originals, to draw conclusions as to how the EU can tackle this tension.
Jacques Derrida’s recommendations for ‘today’s Europe’, made in 1991, sound surprisingly
contemporary. He calls for an ‘aporia’, ‘a double duty’ or a ‘double injunction’ to take Europe
beyond the paradox of unity versus multiplicity – a paradox which ‘[is taking] unprecedented
forms… today in Europe’ ( Derrida 1992: 80) and thus requires an unprecedented type of
responsibility:

Responsibility seems to consist today in renouncing neither of these contradictory im-

peratives [to maintain unity and multiplicity]. One must therefore try and invent ges-
tures, discourses, politico-institutional practices that inscribe the alliance of these two
imperatives (…). That is not easy. It is even impossible to conceive of a responsibility
that consists in being responsible for two laws, or that consists in responding to two con-
tradictory injunctions (…). But there is no responsibility that is not the experience and
experiment of the impossible (1992: 44– 45).

He goes on to defend that ‘ethics, politics, and responsibility (…) will only ever have begun
with the experience and experiment of the aporia’. In other words, ‘[w]hen the path is clear
and given, when a certain knowledge opens up the way in advance [and] the decision is
already made, it might as well be said that there is none to make’ (1992: 41). This aporia or
double responsibility can take numerous forms. In one of his last texts, for instance, Derrida
describes his ‘dream’ for Europe through several of these double injunctions: ‘A Europe
where we could criticize Israeli policy (…) without being accused of anti- Semitism or Judeo-
phobia’, or ‘[a] Europe where we could simultaneously be concerned about the rise of anti-
Semitism and Islamophobia’, among others (2006: 410– 411).
Regarding language and translation, we can understand this double responsibility as fol-
lows: ‘[f ]irst tension, first contradiction, double injunction: on the one hand European cul-
tural identity cannot be dispersed (…) into a myriad of provinces, into a multiplicity of
self-enclosed idioms or petty little nationalisms, each one jealous and untranslatable’ ( Derrida
1992: 38–39). However, to complete the double injunction, ‘[Europe] cannot and must not
accept the capital of a centralized authority that, by means of t rans-European cultural mech-
anisms (…) would control and standardize, subjecting (…) discourses and practices to (…)
channels of immediate and efficient communication…’ ( Derrida 1992: 39; Leal 2016: 16–17).
Further, he exhorts Europe to ‘avoid both the nationalistic tensions of linguistic difference
and the violent homogenization of languages through the neutrality of a translating medium
that would claim to be transparent, metalinguistic and universal…’ (1992: 58; Leal 2016: 11).
To come back to the questions asked above as to whether the tension between unity and
multiplicity requires a resolution and whether the EU must opt for pure unity or pure multi-
plicity, in a later work Derrida asserts that ‘pure unity or pure multiplicity (…) is a synonym of
death’ (Caputo and Derrida 2004: 106). In other words, we have to be capable of ‘non-binary
judgements’, as Derrida (2006: 410) cautions, and go beyond the principle of reversibility associ-
ated with binary oppositions – in the Latin sense of revertere, to turn or move in the opposite di-
rection. Gasché explains why Europe is ‘another term for – another figure of – deconstruction’
as follows:

in reversibility, the sphere (…) of the same remains fully intact, no opening to otherness
in all its unpredictability occurs there. (…) Reversibility is a function of, and a way of

491
Alice Leal

securing, sameness: a celebration of sameness (…) Reversibility is without risk, since the
other, or the foreign to and into which the self reverts, is only the opposite of oneself
(thus the self can always reassert itself in the other, or reappropriate it). (…) By contrast,
that which makes the new figure of Europe the figure of a passage or conversion into
the other (…) is precisely the fact that such transition and transformation is also charged
with danger.
­
(Gasché ­ ​­
2007: 16–17)

What does this mean for our unity-multiplicity paradox discussed here? Let us look at yet
another dichotomy, ‘originals versus translations’, before moving on to the conclusion. In
the previous section, we wondered why the word ‘translation’ is associated with lack of
authenticity in the EU and what this says of the EU’s underlying notion of translation, as
well as of the hierarchy between ‘originals’ and ‘translations’. The idea that original texts are
complete and perfect whereas translations are incomplete and imperfect has dominated both
the discourse on translation and the mainstream notion of translation and translators for over
two millennia (e.g. Steiner 1998: 251). This cliché has been questioned many times in these
2,000 years as well, of course; more systematically so since the latter half of the twentieth
century and within different traditions, from descriptive translation studies to the German
functional approach and, in a more systematic and incisive fashion, within poststructuralist
thought ( Leal 2012a, 2018)­9.
Today, even the more conservative translation thinker is unlikely to claim that transla-
tions are illegitimate or falsifications of a perfect original. Equally unlikely is the claim that
translations are equivocal, whereas originals are always univocal. Despite that, two areas re-
main taboo, namely, religious and legal translation (for religious translation, see Long 2005).
Regarding the latter, the process of authentication of translations is key. As Theo Hermans
explains, ‘authentication has a double effect. It makes two or more parallel texts equally
authentic; and in so doing it creates the presumption of sameness of meaning between these
texts’. In other words, it creates the presumption of equivalence, which in this context ‘ is not
a feature that can be extrapolated on the basis of textual comparison’; instead, equivalence ‘ is
imposed on [texts] through an external intervention’ (2014: 9, 12). Furthermore, as Hermans
posits,

if one or more versions of a treaty have come into being as a result of a process of trans-
lation from one initial version, authentication erases the memory of this process. Upon
authentication, translated texts become authentic texts and must forget that they used to
exist as translations. (…) If versions that were once translations are now parallel authentic
texts on a par with all other versions, then the version that once served as the original
is now also one authentic version among the other authentic versions that are its equals.
Where there are no translations there are no originals – unless all are agreed to be orig-
inals. Nor (…) are there translators.
(2014:
­ 9)

The EU’s translation culture thus reinforces the mainstream, logocentric notion of transla-
tions as inferior to their originals. ‘A translation’, Hermans asserts sarcastically, ‘simply can-
not have the same force of law as an authentic version’; after all, ‘any reminder that the text in
question is in fact a translation threatens the assumption of equivalence and tells the reader:
oh yes, this is only a translation, not quite the same thing as the original…’ (2014: 11, 24). It
follows that translators are not to be taken seriously either. In the context of international law

492
 Multilingualism and translation in the EU

discussed by Hermans, officially there are indeed no translators. Yet this stance on translation is
in no way exclusive to the EU, as noted above; in fact, it has a long history in various multi-
lingual settings in the West ( Hermans 2014: 7–17). Is there an alternative? Can the EU adapt
its translation culture, or its ‘philosophy of translation’, in Derrida’s words (1992: 58), to fit
more contemporary views while at the same time complying with the ‘double responsibility’
mentioned earlier? I will take up these questions in the conclusion.

Conclusion
The EU is torn between unity and multiplicity  – in terms of languages and cultures, its
discourse favours multiplicity, whereas its practices enforce unity. Pure unity or pure mul-
tiplicity would be unfeasible and undesirable. Derrida’s double responsibility hence entails
a double duty: ‘[this] duty dictates respecting differences, idioms, minorities, singularities,
but also the universality of formal law, the desire for translation, agreement and univocity…’
(1992: 78). The EU’s current language and translation regimes clearly strengthen unity at the
expense of multiplicity. To turn this around, in addition to a linguistic turn, i.e. an active
stance on multilingualism, more transparency regarding its internal language use and incre-
mented language services, what can the EU do regarding its translation culture?
The model of authentication of translations, albeit widespread, is not the only model of
translation of international law. The 1971 Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary
and Artistic Works and the 1955 Protocol Amending the Warsaw Convention of 1929, for
example, both available in several languages, state that the French version shall prevail in the
case of differences of opinion regarding the other versions (Hermans 2014: 14). As Hermans
puts it, ‘[a]uthenticating only one among several language versions privileges that version
and the speakers of its language’ (2014: 11). In these two examples, the French document is
clearly the original – hence it (along with its speakers) is privileged. At first glance, this model
might seem even more unjust because it lays bare the status chasm between originals and
translations – and their respective languages. However, at least in this model language hier-
archy is made transparent – more thorough translation statistics could be kept, for example.
Moreover, if the EU adopted this model and were to truly abide by its own treaties, it would
have to ensure that all official languages are equally represented as authentication languages,
i.e. that the proportion of original and translated documents (ideally) remains the same for all
languages. This would force the EU to keep its policy and lawmakers truly multilingual (and
not multilingual in English only); it would prevent the EU from privileging English speakers
when choosing staff or making information available.10 This, coupled with an increase in the
budget allocated to language services, proposed earlier, would bring about a translation turn
in the EU.
Of course it is unrealistic to expect, say, a new EU regulation concerning the use of pesti-
cides to be originally drafted in Bulgarian, because although there may be Bulgarian speakers
among the authors of the regulation, Bulgarian is unlikely to function as the link language
among all authors – but let us remember Derrida’s warning that ‘there is no responsibility
that is not the experience and experiment of the impossible’ (1992: 44– 45). Therein lies the
advantage of this model: the EU would be forced to seek alternatives if all or nearly all their
original texts were persistently in English after some time. This is already the case now, but
because of the effacement of translations, this fact goes unnoticed and the fiction of equality
among languages remains. However, by forcing itself to address its own language hierarchy,
the EU might find ways to mitigate this hierarchy – or in the very least it would be forced
to transparently report on their language bias. The linguistic and translation turns proposed

493
Alice Leal

here could be an interesting way both to enact Derrida’s double responsibility and to answer
­
his call to ‘invent gestures, discourses, politico-institutional practices that inscribe the alli-
ance of these two imperatives’ (1992: 44), without simply falling back on Gasché’s notion of
reversibility outlined in the previous section. Within this new translation culture, ‘ difficulty
of understanding [would] not [be] an obstacle for democratic debate but precisely the sub-
stance of the democratic process itself, through which difference [could] be productively
confronted, our horizons widened and our convictions re- examined’, as Esperança Bielsa ar-
gues in this volume regarding what she calls ‘the plurilingual vision’. This translation model
might even lead to a new dynamic between translations and originals, potentially affecting
the EU’s and the mainstream ( logocentric) notion of translation. Imagine what it would be
like if the original version of an important piece of EU legislation were, say, in Portuguese,
and the corresponding English version were a translation?

Further reading
Derrida, J. (1992) [1991] The Other Heading: Reflections on Today’s Europe, trans. Brault, P. A. and Naas,
M. B. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Arguably one of Jacques Derrida’s most political works, this volume includes an assessment of the main
challenges faced by Europe, along with possible solutions rooted in deconstruction.
Grin, F. and Kraus, P. (ed.) (2018) The Politics of Multilingualism: Linguistic Governance, Globalisation and
Europeanisation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
A multidisciplinary analysis of language policy and politics in multilingual settings with emphasis on
globalization and Europeanization.
Kachru, B. B., Kachru, Y. and Nelson, C. L. (eds.) (2006) The Handbook of World Englishes. Oxford:
Blackwell.
A comprehensive overview of the different Englishes spoken in the world today, their status and impact
on other languages.
Leal, A. (forthcoming) English and Translation in the EU after Brexit. London and New York: Routledge.
A transdisciplinary analysis of the status of the English language and the role of language services in
the EU in the wake of Brexit.

Notes
1 All EU legislation mentioned throughout this chapter was taken from the EUR-Lex portal: https://
­­eur-lex.europa.eu/.
​­
2 This is not to discredit the (modest) impact of the EU’s symbolic actions in this field (Schjerve 2003:
58; Craith 2006: 57– 80; Schjerve and Vetter 2010).
3 The legal mechanisms to introduce supranational language policy are thus in place, but as they
currently stand, they by no means facilitate any initiatives in this direction as they are extremely
cumbersome (see Leal forthcoming). The adoption of concrete EU-w ide language policies would
require not only a bold step on the part of the EU, potentially infringing upon one of the Member
States’ areas of competence, but also an almost utopian willingness to comply on the part of the
Member States.
4 This applies to other languages as well, of course. In Brazilian Portuguese, for instance, there has
been a growing movement since the 1980s to combat linguistic prejudice and celebrate the different
varieties of Portuguese ( Bagno 2002).
5 ‘Largely’ because English native- speakers may take part in ELF interactions but, according to ELF
proponents, these speakers cannot simply use English as they usually would, having instead to ac-
quire ELF as a new language system (see Jenkins and Cogo 2010, 275, 289–290; Leal forthcoming).
6 Barbara Seidlhofer (e.g. 2011), another proponent of ELF, is against the exclusion of inner- circle
speakers, the use of the word ‘variety’ in relation to ELF and the insistence on codifying the features
of ELF (more in Leal forthcoming).
7 Due to space constraints, I cannot go into the debate on the status of English in outer circle na-
tions as an identity- shaping, decolonized language that can very well be used to fight linguistic

494
 Multilingualism and translation in the EU

imperialism (e.g. Dissanayake 2006). Of course English can be used to destabilize, for example,
the very hegemony of English, as I hope this chapter shows. My point here is that English – or any
natural language – is not a mere tool for communication without f ar-reaching implications on the
speakers’ identity and ideology.
8 Interestingly, this information was adapted on 06 May 2019 and now, instead of ‘or even just one
(usually English)’, it says ‘or even just one – the choice depends on the target audience’.
9 See also Leal (forthcoming), Venuti (2016), Cassin (2004) for a recent debate on (un)translatability
that has taken translation studies by storm.

References
Arzoz, X. (2008) ‘The Protection of Linguistic Diversity through Article 22 of the Charter of Funda-
mental Rights’, in Arzoz, X. (ed.), Respecting Linguistic Diversity in the European Union. Amsterdam
and Philadelphia, PA: Benjamins, pp. 145–173. ­ ­ ​­
Bagno, M. (2002) Preconceito Linguístico: O que é, Como se Faz. São Paulo: Loyola.
­Baigorri-Jalón,
​­ J. (2004)
­ Interpreters at the United Nations: A History, trans. Barr, A. Salamanca: Ediciones
Universidad de Salamanca.
Balibar, É. (2004) We, the People of Europe: Reflections on Transnational Citizenship. Princeton, NJ and
Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Barbier, J. C. (2018) ‘European Integration and the Variety of Languages: An Awkward Co-Existence’,
in Kraus, P. A. and Grin, F. (eds.), The Politic of Multilingualism: Europeanisation, Globalisation and
Linguistic Governance. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 333–357.
Breiteneder, A. (2009) English as a Lingua Franca in Europe: A Natural Development. Saarbrücken: VDM
Verlag Dr. Müller.
Caputo, J. and Derrida, D. (2004) [1997] Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida.
New York: Fordham University Press.
Cassin, B. (ed.) (2004) Vocabulaire Européen des Philosophies: Dictionnaire des Intraduisibles. Paris: Seuil.
Cliffe, J. (2019) ‘Brexit Is the Ideal Moment to Make English the EU’s Common Language’, The Econ-
omist, 15 June.
Craith, M. N. (2006) Europe and the Politics of Language: Citizens, Migrants and Outsiders. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Derrida, J. (1992) [1991] The Other Heading: Reflections on Today’s Europe, trans. Brault, P. A. and Naas,
M. B. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Derrida, J. (2006) [2004] ‘A Europe of Hope’, trans. DeArmitt, P., Malle, J. and Saghafi, K. Epoché,
10(2),
­ pp. 407–412.
­ ­ ​­
Dissanayake, W. (2006) ‘Cultural Studies and Discursive Constructions of World Englishes’, in Kachru, B.
B., Kachru, Y. and Nelson, C. L. (eds.), The Handbook of World Englishes. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 545–566. ­ ­ ​­
European Commission (2009) ‘Translating for a Multilingual Community’. Available online:
https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/4dd2388f-db28-4629-abe4-
­ ­ ­­ ​­ ​­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​
26f2d4376cd9 [Accessed 31 July 2019].
European Commission (2012) ‘Special Eurobarometer 386: Europeans and Their Languages’. Available
online: https://data.europa.eu/euodp/en/data/dataset/S1049_77_1_EBS386
­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ [Accessed 31 July 2019].
European Commission (2013) ‘Frequently Asked Questions on Languages in Europe’. Available on-
­ ­ ­­ ­​­­
line: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-13-825_en.htm ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 31 July 2019].
European Commission (2018) ‘Interpreting and translating for Europe’. Available online: https://
publications.europa.eu/en/publication-
­ ­­ ​­ detail/-/publication/1c437dc0
​­ ­ ­­ - ­​­­ 49c5-11e8-
­​­­ ­​­­ be1d-​
01aa75ed71a1 [Accessed 31 July 2019].
European Commission (2020) ‘Translation in figures 2020’. Available online: https://op.europa.eu/en/
publication-detail/-/publication/c29be934-9588-11ea-aac4-01aa75ed71a1 [Accessed 21 September
2020].
European Commission (n.d.) ‘Calls for Tenders, Grants and Calls for Expression of Interest’. Available on-
line: https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/calls-tenders-grants-calls-expression-interest_de
­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed
31 July 2019].

495
Alice Leal

European Parliament (2019) ‘Language Policy’. Available online: http://www.europarl.europa.eu /fac

tsheets/en/sheet/142/language-policy
­ ­ ­ ­­ ​­ [Accessed 31 July 2019].
European Union (2019) ‘Language Policy’. Available online: https://europa.eu/european-
union/abouteuropa/language-policy_en
­ ­ ­­ ​­ [Accessed 31 July 2019].
Frost, C. (2004) ‘Getting to Yes: People, Practices and the Paradox of Multicultural Democracy’, in
Laycock, D. (ed.), Representation and Democratic Theory. Vancouver: UBC Press, pp. 48–64. ­ ­ ​­
Gasché, R. (2007) ‘“This Little Thing That Is Europe”’, The New Centennial Review, 7(2), ­ pp. 1–19.
­ ­ ​­
Gazzola, M. and Grin, F. (2013) ‘Is ELF More Effective and Fair Than Translation? An Evaluation of
the EU’s Multilingual Regime’, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 23, pp. 93–107.
­ ­ ​­
Gazzola, M. (2014) ‘Partecipazione, Esclusione Linguistica e Traduzione: Una Valutazione del
Regime Linguistico dell’Unione Europea’, Studi Italiani di Linguistica Teorica e Applicata, XLIII(2), ­
­ ­
pp. 227–264. ​­
Ginsburgh, V., Moreno-Ternero, J. and Weber, S. (2018) ‘The fate of English in the EU after Brexit:
Expected and Unexpected Twists’. VOX CEPR Policy Portal. Available online: https://voxeu.org/
article/english-language-eu-after-brexit
­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 31 July 2019].
Hermans, T. (2014) [2007] The Conference of the Tongues. Manchester: St. Jerome.
House, J. (2003) ‘English as a Lingua Franca: A Threat to Multilingualism?’, Journal of Sociolinguistics,
7(4), ­ pp. 556–578.
­ ­ ​­
House, J. (2010) ‘The Pragmatics of English as a Lingua Franca’, in Trosborg, A. (ed.), Pragmatics across
Languages and Cultures: Handbook of Pragmatics vol. 7. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton, pp. 363–390.
House, J. (2013) ‘English as a Lingua Franca and Translation’, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 7(2), ­
pp. 279–298.
­ ­ ​­
Ives, P. (2004) ‘Language, Representation and Suprastate Democracy: Questions Facing the EU’, in
Laycock, D. (ed.), Representation and Democratic Theory. Vancouver: UBC Press, pp. 23–47.­ ­ ​­
Jenkins, J. and Cogo, A. (2010) ‘English as a Lingua Franca in Europe: A Mismatch between Policy and
Practice’, European Journal of Language Policy, 2(2), ­ pp. 271–294.
­ ­ ​­
Kachru, B. B. (1985) ‘Standards, Codification and Sociolinguistic Realism: The English Language
in the Outer Circle’, in Quirk, R. and Widdowson, H. G. (eds.), English in the World: Teaching and
Learning the Language and Literatures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 11–30.
Kachru, B. B., Kachru, Y. and Nelson, C. L. (eds.) (2006) The Handbook of World Englishes. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Kraus, P. A. (2011) ‘Neither United Nor Diverse? The Language Issue and Political Legitimation in the
European Union’, in Kjær, A. L. and Adamo, S. (eds.), Linguistic Diversity and European Democracy.
England and USA: Ashgate, pp. 17–34. ­ ­ ​­
Leal, A. (2012a) ‘Equivalence’, in Gambier, Y. and van Doorslaer, L. (eds.), Handbook of Translation
Studies, vol. 3. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 39– 46.
Leal, A. (2012b) ‘Mehrsprachigkeit: Brasilien, Österreich und die Europäische Union’, in Snell-
Hornby, M. and Kadrić, M. (eds.), Die Multiminoritätengesellschaft. Berlin: SAXA, pp. 45–54. ­ ­ ​­
Leal, A. (2013) ‘The European Union and Translation Studies: Unity, Multiplicity and English as a
Lingua Franca ( ELF)’, Translation Spaces, 2, pp. 63–80. ­ ­ ​­
Leal, A. (2014) Is the Glass Half Empty or Half Full: Reflections on Translation Theory and Practice in Brazil.
Berlin: Frank and Timme.
Leal, A. (2016) ‘Translation at the European Union and English as a Lingua Franca: Can Erasing Lan-
guage Hierarchy Foster Multilingualism?’, New Voices in Translation Studies, 14, pp. 1–22. ­ ­ ​­
Leal, A. (2018) ‘Equivalence’, in Wilson, P. and Rawling, P. (eds.), The Handbook of Translation and
Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 224–242.
Leal, A. (forthcoming) English and Translation in the EU after Brexit. London and New York: Routledge.
Long, L. (ed.) (2005) Translation and Religion: Holy Untranslatable? Clevedon, Buffalo and Toronto, ON:
Multilingual Matters.
Macnamara, J. (1991) ‘Linguistic Relativity Revisited’, in Cooper, R. L. and Spolsky, B. (eds.), The
Influence of Language on Culture and Thought: Essays in Honor of Fishman’s Sixty-Fifth Birthday. Berlin
and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 45– 60.
McArthur, T. (2001) ‘World or International or Global English – and What Is It Anyway?’, in Alatis, J.
E. and Tan, A. (eds.), Georgetown University Round Table on Language and Linguistics 1999. Washington,
DC: Georgetown University Press, pp. 396–403. ­ ­ ​­
Modiano, M. (2006) ‘Euro-Englishes’, in Kachru, B. B., Kachru, Y. and Nelson, C. L. (eds.), The
Handbook of World Englishes. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 223–238. ­ ­ ​­

496
 Multilingualism and translation in the EU

Modiano, M. (2009) ‘Inclusive/exclusive? English as a Lingua Franca in the European Union’, World
Englishes, 28(2), ­ pp. 208–223.
­ ­ ​­
Modiano, M. (2017) ‘English in a Post-Brexit European Union’, World Englishes, 36(3), ­ pp. 313–327.
­ ­ ​­
Official Journal of the European Union (2018) ‘DEFINITIVE ADOPTION 2018/251 of the European
Union’s General Budget for the Financial Year 2018’, Available online: https://op.europa.eu/en/-
publication-detail/-/publication/3a0cb847-1c55-11e8-ac73-01aa75ed71a1/language-en
​­ ​­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­ ­­ ​­ [Accessed
31 July 2019].
Phillipson, R. (2003) ­English-only ​­ Europe? London and New York: Routledge.
Phillipson, R. (2017) ‘Myths and Realities of “Global” English’, Language Policy, 16(3), ­ pp. 313–331.
­ ­ ​­
Phillipson, R. (2018) ‘English, the Lingua Nullius of Global Hegemony’, in Grin, F. and Kraus, P.
­
(eds.), The Politics of Multilingualism: Linguistic Governance, Globalisation and Europeanisation. Amsterdam
and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 275–303.
Rajagopalan, K. (2012) ‘“World English” or “World Englishes”? Does It Make Any Difference?’, Inter-
national Journal of Applied Linguistics, 22(3), ­ pp. 374–391.
­ ­ ​­
Sandrelli, A. (2018) ‘Observing Eurolects: The Case of English’, in Mori, L. (ed.), Observing Eurolects:
Corpus Analysis of Linguistic Variation in EU law. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins,
pp. 63–92.
­ ­ ​­
Schjerve, R. R. (2003) ‘Europäische Sprachenpolitik und Minderheiten’, in Krumm, H-J. (ed.),
Sprachenvielfalt: Babylonische Sprachverwirrung oder Mehrsprachigkeit als Chance? Innsbruck: Studien
Verlag, pp. 49–60.
­ ­ ​­
Schjerve, R. R. and Vetter, E. (2010) ‘Europäische Mehrsprachigkeit zwischen politischer Gestaltung
und wissenschaftlicher Erforschung’, in Hinrichs, U. (ed.), Handbuch der Eurolinguistik. Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, pp. 805–819.
­ ­ ​­
Schlesinger, I. M. (1991) ‘The Wax and Wane of Whorfian Views’, in Cooper, R. L. and Spolsky, B.
­
(ed.), The Influence of Language on Culture and Thought: Essays in Honor of Fishman’s Sixty-Fifth Birthday.
Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 7– 44.
Seidlhofer, B. (2011) Understanding English as a Lingua Franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shuibhne, N. N. (2008) ‘EC Law and Minority Language Policy: Some Recent Developments’, in
Arzoz, Xabier (ed.), Respecting Linguistic Diversity in the European Union. Amsterdam and Philadel-
phia, PA: Benjamins, pp. 123–143. ­ ­ ​­
Steiner, G. (1998) [1975] After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tcaciuc, L. (2013) Translation Practices at the European Central Bank with Reference to Metaphors (doctoral ­
dissertation). Aston University, 288 p.
Venuti, L. (2016) ‘Hijacking Translation: How Comp Lit Continues to Suppress Translated Texts’.
boundary 2, 43(2), ­ pp. 179–204.
­ ­ ​­
Wagner, E., Bech, S. and Martínez, J. M. (2014) [2002] Translating for the European Union Institutions.
Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.
Wierzbicka, A. (2013) Imprisoned in English: The Hazards of English as a Default Language. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.

497
 34
The activist role of translators and
interpreters under globalization
Fruela Fernández

Introduction
The study of translation and interpreting has shown a keen awareness of the promotion of
dissent and the relevance of power inequalities upon linguistic practices for many decades.
Indeed, these issues were at work in several books that are now considered pivotal to the
evolution of discipline— such as Cheyfitz 1991, Lefevere 1992, Niranjana 1992, Rafael 1993,
Venuti 1995, to name just a few. However, interest in translation and interpreting as forms
of activism— a particular type of civic engagement against established powers—is relatively
recent and the available bibliography is modest, in comparison with other strands of research.
In this chapter, I will first outline the key characteristics of activism and how this form of
political intervention has evolved in the historical period known as ‘globalization’. Second, I
will present different approaches to activist translation and interpreting, before moving into
a survey of existing research that connects translation and interpreting with activism against
the negative effects of globalization.

Understanding activism in a globalized context

‘Activism’ is a concept that has gained traction in social parlance over recent decades. Its
meaning, however, is frequently ‘emotional and i ll- defined’ ( Baker 2018: 453), characterized
by ‘ its inherent slipperiness’. In the context of this chapter, it will be understood as a broad
set of activities undertaken by members of civil society— generally, although not exclusively
organized as a group or community—who aim to change the current state of affairs in the
name of a given cause. A key characteristic of activism is the fact that it ‘goes beyond con-
ventional politics’ (Martin 2003: 20), that is, it does not follow the standard channels for
political action, which in the case of democratic systems are generally assumed to be parties,
elections, unions, and similar procedures. As such, activist groups tend to be ‘set up outside
the mainstream institutions of society’, since their agendas ‘explicitly challenge the dominant
narratives of the time’ ( Baker 2006a: 462).
Activist goals can range from merely influencing public opinion by rising awareness
on a topic to more vocal actions, such as exposing an injustice, denouncing individuals or

498
 Activist role of translators

collectives, and even providing help and support to certain social groups. In this sense, there-
fore, activism is not a recent development, but it has rather ‘ been present throughout history,
in every sort of political system’ (Martin 2003: 19). As will be discussed in this chapter, the
study of translation has occasionally attempted to read back ‘activist’ endeavours in past pe-
riods on the basis of this commonality.
Since this chapter explicitly addresses activism under globalization, it is essential to define
the latter—which is, in fact, ‘a contested concept’ (Steger 2013: 1) for which multiple defi-
nitions coexist— a nd outline the ways in which it influences activism. Globalization will be
understood here as an advanced stage in the evolution of capitalism that began in the 1970s,
enabled by the evolution of technology, a transformation of regulatory practices, and the as-
cent of a series of political leaders—most notably Margaret Thatcher in the UK (1979–1990)
and Ronald Reagan in the US (1981–1989)—w ith strong pro-m arket ideologies. In this
historical period, exchanges and flows of capital, goods, and information have become the
cornerstone of the social and economic system. Key characteristics of globalization ( Went
2000: 8–10) are the increase in integrated global markets, the decisive growth of multi-
national companies, a loss of sovereignty on behalf of nation- states due to the expansion
of transnational governance, and the dissemination of macroeconomic policies, commonly
bundled together under the name of neoliberalism (Harvey 2005). Although some of these
changes might not be ‘ historically unprecedented’ ( Went 2000: 8), as global exchanges have
been common for several centuries, their ‘combination and scope’ is indeed new.
The ‘ boom in information and communications technologies’ ( Pieterse 2009: 9) and the
facilitation of commercial exchanges that has accompanied the implementation of several
common regulatory frameworks— such as the establishment of the European Common Mar-
ket (created in 1993), the North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA (1994), and
the World Trade Organization (1995)—have provided a completely new infrastructure for
‘finance, capital mobility and export-oriented business activity, transnational communica-
tion, migration, travel, and civil society interactions’. With its emphasis on exchanges, glo-
balization has also paved the way for what has been called the ‘network society’ (Castells
2000). Here, information technology is altering most aspects of human life, from the dissem-
ination of knowledge to the organization of society.
A major criticism of globalization revolves around the way in which it has resulted in
greater inequality; as the authors of the World Inequality Report 2018 have emphasized,
‘ income inequality has increased rapidly in North America, China, India, and Russia’ since
1980, while growing ‘moderately in Europe’ (Alvaredo et al. 2018: 5). In their view, ‘this
increase in inequality marks the end of a post-war egalitarian regime which took different
forms in these regions’. Second, globalization is also blamed for worsening the impact of
climate change on the planet ( Wenz and Levermann 2016), as ‘the pervasive and increasingly
systemic environmental impact of many economic activities’ (McMichael 2013)— such as ex-
tractive industries, urbanization, consumerism, globalized supply chains, and the increasing
need for travelling and transportation— a re leading to unforeseeable consequences at a plan-
etary scale. Finally, globalization also has ambiguous cultural effects, as the erosion of cul-
tural difference ‘coincides with a growing sensitivity’ towards it ( Pieterse 2009: 43); in other
words, while the diversity of local cultures seems to be threatened by global homogenization,
both individuals and societies show greater awareness and respect towards this difference.
On the basis of this brief outline, it is possible to highlight certain specificities of activ-
ism under globalization that will form the backbone of this chapter. In my understanding,
‘globalized’ activism is characterized, on the one hand, by opposition to the consequences of
globalization and, on the other, by greater interaction between activism and technology, fostered by

499
Fruela Fernández

the rapid evolution of the latter under globalization. First, one of the most defining activ-
ist movements under globalization is the so-called ‘alter-globalization’, ‘global justice’, or
‘anti-g lobalization’ movement (Hands 2010: 142), which developed at the end of the 1990s
and early 2000s ( Della Porta 2007; Reitan 2007). The activist platforms grouped under this
rubric found their origins in the denunciation of various aspects of globalization— such as
the signature of NAFTA, the activities of the International Monetary Fund, the piling up of
poor countries’ foreign debt, or rising inequality— emphasizing ‘a critique of the democratic
deficit of the supranational bodies and global institutions’ that have fostered globalization, as
well as a rejection ‘of the market- oriented policies of these institutions’ ( Wennerhag 2010:
28). To a great extent, the so- called ‘movement of the squares’ (Gerbaudo 2017) or ‘anti-
austerity and pro- democracy protests’ ( Flesher Fominaya 2017: 2– 4) that took to the streets
of many global cities in the years following the 2008 economic crisis can be understood as
being related to the global justice movement, despite their differences in terms of discourse
and conceptualization (Gerbaudo 2017: 19–25). In this sense, we may view the global justice
movement and the movement of the squares as two ‘waves’ of the same ‘epoch of contention’
( Wolfson and Funke 2016: 62).
A second salient aspect of activism under globalization is the defence of cultural, sex-
ual, racial, environmental, and linguistic diversity, which ties in with both the birth of
alter-g lobalization and the ascent of identity politics. Although the claims of oppressed and
minority groups had played an important role in traditional protests, they have acquired a
central role under globalization. This is due to the ongoing decline of the labour movement—
mostly centred upon the working class, from a generally ‘male’ and ‘white’ perspective— as
well as the increasing expansion of capitalism across the globe, with its associated threats to
traditional environments and ways of life. The concept of ‘ identity politics’ refers to ‘a wide
range of political activity and theorizing founded upon the shared experiences of injustice of
members of certain social groups’ (Heyes 2018). This came to the fore in the 1960s and 1970s
with ‘the emergence of large- scale political movements’ such as ‘second wave feminism,
Black Civil Rights in the US, gay and lesbian liberation, and the American Indian move-
ments’. The appearance of these groups demanding recognition of their difference would
later feed into anti-globalization concerns for the fate of indigenous and traditional peoples
across the world, who see their ways of life threatened in the name of capitalist expansion. In
fact, indigenous peoples have always been strongly represented in the World Social Forum,
an annual meeting of activists and civic organizations that started in 2001, which is strongly
linked to the global justice movement (Santos 2006). Based upon this double strand of dis-
sent, many among the most relevant activist movements that have taken place in recent de-
cades have espoused the claims of collectives that are oppressed, threatened, or discriminated
against. This is the case with numerous indigenous initiatives that are active across Latin
America ( Warren and Jackson 2003), demanding cultural and political autonomy; the global
feminist movement Ni Una Menos (‘Not even one [woman] less’), which started in Argentina
in 2015 (Gago and Cavallero 2017) to protest against violence and discrimination against
women and has later expanded to numerous Spanish- speaking countries; and Black Lives
Matter ( Lebron 2017), which campaigns against systemic racism and violence towards black
people in the US.
Finally, a third defining characteristic of activism under globalization is its relationship
with technology, a factor that cuts across a variety of campaigns and causes. Like any other
human endeavour, activism is conditioned to great certain extent by technology ( Hands
2010: 23), and technological change is a key determining factor for globalization. While pre-
vious generations of activists relied on means of communication that were strongly time and

500
 Activist role of translators

location dependent (e.g. letters, pamphlets, books, or newspapers), the advent of new media,
such as the internet, mobile phones, and social networking, has made communication quicker
and easier, enabling activists to coordinate with others in unprecedented ways. For instance,
a variety of social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, were paramount in the
organization and coordination of protests during the so- called ‘movement of the squares’
(Gerbaudo 2012), as well as for the international dissemination of these events ( Romanos
2016). However, the centrality of technological means for new protests has also been criti-
cized for its ‘cyberfetishism’, which equates media and network presence with tangible results
in everyday life ( Rendueles 2013). In this sense, the proven ability of governments to ban
access to certain sites ( Xiao 2011) and even to shut down the internet ( Ritzen 2018) as a
means of stifling dissent should serve as a cautionary tale against an excessive dependence on
technology. In fact, growing awareness of its potential abuses and misuses has generated an
important strand of activism that focusses specifically on technology. This includes data activ-
ism (Gutiérrez 2018), which utilizes data infrastructure as a way of denouncing an injustice
or raising awareness to a risk, and hacktivism ( Karagiannopoulos 2018), a rather loose set of
practices that puts traditional hacking (i.e. illicitly taking control of a computer, website, or
computing system) at the service of a given activist cause. The group Anonymous, which
has launched cyberattacks against a variety of corporations and governments, and the project
Wikileaks, which has leaked secret information on sensitive matters (such as the US-led wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq), can be seen as notable examples of this type of activism.

Translation, interpreting, and activism:

approaches and main areas of research
The conceptualization of translation and interpreting as forms of activism is relatively recent,
first taking place at the beginning of the twenty-fi rst century. Despite the relative paucity
of research on the topic, interest is clearly growing, as shown by an increasing number of
pieces ( Brownlie 2010; Baker 2018; Carcelén-Estrada 2018) aimed at charting the field, and
even a proposal to see an ‘activist turn’ ( Wolf 2012), in line with previous ‘turns’ in the his-
tory of the discipline. In this section, I will sketch two main approaches to activism within
the field, according to their focus on the individual or the collective, before reviewing the
existing bibliography on the contribution that translation and interpreting have made to ac-
tivist movements that oppose the consequences of globalization. These take the form of ‘two
waves’ of anti-globalization (the 1990s global justice movements and the 2010s movement of
the squares) and the promotion of linguistic diversity. Both areas are also frequently under-
pinned by technological change, one of the aforementioned characteristics of globalization.

Approaches to ‘activism’ in translation studies

As Brownlie (2010: 46) has argued, research on activism in translation studies can be divided
into two main groups: on the one hand, the study and reappraisal of ‘activist’ translators and
interpreters; on the other, the role of translation and interpreting in the advocacy of certain
political causes. This division involves, in turn, two further oppositions: the past vs the con-
temporary and the individual vs the collective.
A notable example of the first trend of study is a much- cited piece by Maria Tymoczko
(2000), which also constitutes the first explicit attempt—though at times a rather unclear
one—to discuss translation as a form of activism. By looking at how numerous Irish trans-
lators reworked the myth of the hero Cú Chulainn across several decades and put it at the

501
Fruela Fernández

service of various ideological projects, Tymoczko argues that activist and engaged translation
should be understood ‘as a sort of speech act’ (2000: 26), that is, a textual construction that
has effects upon external reality through its ‘ involvement in conflict or battle’ (2000: 31).
Other scholars (Milton 2006; Guo 2008; Cheung 2010) have shared her textual approach,
and have studied the ways in which past translators can be understood as activists through
the production of translations that are aimed at eliciting social change. Tymoczko would
later pursue her interest in activist translation by editing a special issue on ‘Translation and
Resistance’ ( Tymozcko 2006), which would also form the backbone to one of the first edited
volumes on the topic ( Tymoczko 2010).
The second strand of research on the topic has focussed strictly on contemporary activism,
placing greater significance on communities. A major reference in this area is Mona Baker’s
work and her ‘narrative’ approach. In her seminal book Translation and conflict (2006b), Baker
argues that narratives—’everyday stories we live by’ ( Baker 2006b: 3)— are paramount to the
functioning of societies, as they form the basis of exchange, mediation, and transmission of
knowledge, ideologies, and attitudes. At the same time, narratives are also ‘dynamic’, which
implies that at any given time it is possible to find ‘a variety of divergent, criss-crossing, often
vacillating narratives’ (3) that coexist. Since narratives are fundamental to the legitimacy of
the status quo, a central method in undermining a regime is to challenge ‘the stories that
sustain [it]’ through the articulation of ‘alternative stories’ (3)— a point at which, as Baker
shows, translation and interpreting can play a central role. In an article published in the same
year (2006a), Baker linked the notion of narrative with activism by looking at ‘narrative
communities’: communities of translators and interpreters who have been brought together
by a shared narrative that aims to transform social reality (2006a: 471– 472). In Baker’s view,
this ‘emerging pattern of communities’ is characterized by both a political commitment and
an awareness of the transnationality of struggles, since they understand that contemporary
conflicts ‘reverberate across the planet and, almost without exception, are played out in the
international arena’ (2006a: 472).
The existing bibliography on activist communities constitutes a major point of reference
in the field. Given its clear link to the problematic of globalization, it is used at various
points in the following sections. For the time being, it is important to highlight a main
divide between, on the one hand, those communities whose members identify themselves
professionally as translators and interpreters, and who put their skills at the service of a given
cause ( De Manuel Jerez et al. 2004; Baker 2006a, 2013; Boéri 2008, 2012) and, on the other,
communities formed by non-professional translators and interpreters, who nevertheless use
their linguistic abilities and their shared knowledge for political purposes ( Pérez- González
2010, 2016; Baker 2016b).

Translation, interpreting, and the alter-globalization movement

As discussed, the ‘a lter-g lobalization’ or ‘global justice movement’ was born in the 1990s in
opposition to the consequences of neoliberal globalization. Its truly transnational constitu-
tion and the variety of movements that came together implied, in turn, a great diversity of
languages and a need for mediation services. In fact, it could be argued that translation and
interpreting were essential for these movements, enabling communication between different
collectives and raising global awareness of local struggles.
A major strand of research on this aspect of the alter-globalization movement has focussed
on the work of an organization of voluntary interpreters, Babels, which was ‘set up in Septem-
ber 2002 by a group of activists linked to the French branch of the alternative globalization

502
 Activist role of translators

network, ATTAC’ ( Baker 2006a: 474). Babels constituted itself as ‘an international network
of volunteer interpreters and translators’ who had the goal of using ‘their skills and expertise
for the benefit of those social and citizens’ movements that adhere to the charter of principles
of the Social Forums’ ( Babels n.d.). As such, Babels coordinated interpreting services at var-
ious Social Forums—the main meeting of the global justice movement—between 2002 and
2014. Since 2014, however, Babels has ended this cooperation: in 2015 they refused to offer
their volunteer services at the World Social Forum ( WSF) due to the lack of consultation
and dialogue on behalf of the organization ( Babels 2015), while in 2016 they declined to
participate due to a controversial decision by the WSF organizing committee to offer inter-
pretation only into French, English, and Spanish—what Babels considered ‘three colonial
languages’— and to the lack of both sufficient equipment and funding ( Babels 2016).
In fact, Babels has been characterized by frequent conflict, both internal and external,
throughout their existence. In 2005, Peter Naumann, a German professional interpreter who
had worked at a number of WSFs before the arrival of Babels, heavily criticized the collective
for their interpretation services at the WSF 2005, which he characterized as lacking profes-
sionalism and showing poor quality. From a narrative perspective, Boéri (2008) analysed
this controversy and argued that each position was shaped by different understandings of
commitment, which, in turn, led to different conceptions of conference interpreting. While
Babels showed strong ‘[c]ommitment to participation and horizontality’, Naumann mani-
fested ‘commitment to expertise and rationality’ (2008: 43). The former leads to a vision of ‘a
horizontal world’ where interpreting is ‘the product of the collective participation of individ-
uals from a wide range of backgrounds’, while the latter espouses ‘an expertise-based hierar-
chical world’ in which ‘conference interpreters are portrayed as an elite of gifted individuals’
(2008: 44). In fact, these tensions between ‘ horizontality’ and ‘verticality’ —understood in
this context as non-h ierarchical vs hierarchical social structures—have plagued Babels on
more than one occasion ( Boéri 2012). At the London Social Forum in 2004, Babels released
a statement criticizing the organization of the Forum; yet this communiqué had only been
written and approved by certain members, which led to ‘dissatisfaction among volunteers’,
as some of them ‘ felt they had not been informed of the organizational process nor consulted
with respect to Babels’ statement’ (2012: 276), effectively contradicting the network’s com-
mitment to horizontality and member participation.
From a different perspective, Babels and, by extension, translation and interpreting have
been studied as a central factor for enhancing inclusion and fostering more democratic prac-
tices in political deliberation. Through the comparison of monolingual national activist
meetings with multilingual meetings at the European Social Forum ( ESF), Doerr (2012)
has argued that the presence of interpreters at the ESF created a more welcoming space for
newcomers and minorities. In this case, the need for a slower pace of deliberation caused
by linguistic and cultural differences fostered a more attentive and inclusive attitude among
participants (2012: 13–16); at the same time, monolingual deliberations were more strongly
characterized by ‘ hierarchical settings that reproduced inequalities of class, gender, and eth-
nicity’ (2012: 18). Moving beyond Babels, Doerr would later develop and expand this argu-
ment in her book Political Translation (2018), in which she analyses the work of a variety of
grassroots translators and interpreters at several Social Forums across numerous countries to
reaffirm her conclusion that ‘multilingual and culturally diverse situations’ involving transla-
tor activists ‘were more inclusive, democratic, and effective’ than monolingual and homog-
enous meetings ( Doerr 2018: 120).
Finally, the World Social Forum itself has been studied as a translational space. Portu-
guese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos has argued that t ranslation—understood here

503
Fruela Fernández

in a wider, conceptual sense, not in a strict interlingual one— can be ‘the procedure that
allows for mutual intelligibility’ among multiple experiences of the world, as the ones that
came together at the WSF, ‘without jeopardizing their identity and autonomy’ or ‘reducing
them to homogeneous entities’ (2006: 131–132). In this sense, Santos sees translation as the
element that can bring together a wide diversity of movements that would otherwise run the
risk of falling into atomization (2006: 132), ‘reinforcing what is common in the diversity of
­counter-hegemonic
​­ drive’ (133).
­
Along with the WSF, another central collective that can aid us in understanding the alter-
g lobalization movement was undoubtedly the Mexican Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional
( EZLN, ‘Zapatista Army of National Liberation’), commonly known as the ‘Zapatistas’ or
EZLN. Borne out of decades of collaboration between a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla and var-
ious indigenous movements ( Romero 2014), the EZLN came to the fore on 1 January 1994,
the day the North American Free Trade Agreement came into effect, issuing a declaration
against NAFTA and the Mexican government. The EZLN opposed NAFTA on the basis
of the threat it presented to the survival of traditional indigenous agriculture, as the agree-
ment would ease ‘the influx of cheap goods, particularly corn, from US-based agrobusiness’
( Wolfson and Funke 2016: 68). After a few days of armed- skirmishes against the Mexican
army, the Zapatistas retreated to the Lacandon Jungle in Chiapas, from where they have
continued to develop their struggle.
Along with its emphasis on direct democracy ( Wolfson and Funke 2016: 69), the EZLN
has played a central role in the alter-g lobalization movement through their involvement in
media and cyberspace activism. From an early stage, various networks of activists across the
world helped disseminating the message of the EZLN by uploading and translating their
comunicados (‘communiqués’) and related news. Even in 1994, an electronic book on the
Zapatistas (Autonomedia 1994) was put together by ‘an e-mail coordinated team translating
material largely gathered from The Net’ (Cleaver 1998), in what might have constituted
one of the very first examples of translation cyberactivism. Unfortunately, to the best of my
knowledge, there is very little research available on the different networks that developed
this collective work of translation. Moreover, the evolution of the internet over the last 20
years—w ith the arrival of new communication systems and the erasure of numerous mailing
lists and websites that are no longer in use—implies that much of this information is prob-
ably irretrievable. In an early piece, Shirley (2001: 8, 22) briefly touches upon the role of
The Groundwork Collective, a student organization at the University of California at San
Diego, and the National Commission for Democracy in Mexico—US in the maintenance
and translation of the first Zapatista website; neither of these groups appear to be active at
the moment. However, translation activism in support of the EZLN is still vigorous: the
website Enlace Zapatista (‘Zapatist Link’, http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/) regularly up-
loads Zapatista communiqués and related documents, which are translated into a variety of
languages ( English, Italian, German, French and, to a lesser extent, Greek and Arabic).

The movement of the squares and the second wave of activist translation
The global economic and social crisis of 2008 led to a period of turmoil that, rather than
being over, seems to have since evolved into two distinct phases. The first of these has
been characterized by an ‘array of popular and anti- establishment protest movements’ be-
tween 2011 and 2016 (Gerbaudo 2017: 32), which involved the occupation of public spaces
across a great variety of countries ( Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Greece, Spain, the US, Turkey and
France, to name just a few) to protest against the social consequences of the crisis. The second

504
 Activist role of translators

involves a series of reactions that partially overlap in time with the former and share some
of its anti- establishment concerns (criticisms of corruption and the economic inequalities of
globalization, political disaffection, uncertainty over the future) while reformulating them in
a nationalist and conservative framework (e.g. the xenophobic strand within the Brexit cam-
paign in the UK, the elections of Donald Trump in the US, and the increasing presence of
the far-right in European parliaments). In this section, I will focus on the role of translation
and interpreting within the first of these phases, commonly known as the ‘movement of the
squares’ (Gerbaudo 2017).
A salient characteristic of translation activism in this second wave of alter-globalization
protests is the enhanced role of cyberactivism. The expansion and growth of technology
over the last decade, particularly with the popularization of social media ( Facebook, Twit-
ter, Instagram), user-generated content sites (such as blogs), and instant messaging services
( WhatsApp, Instagram), has taken the possibilities of online activism over recent years to new
heights. In particular, the potential of activist networks to become fluid and no longer bound
to a shared place has increased exponentially. Pérez- González (2010), for instance, has shown
the emergence of what he calls ‘ad-hocracies of activist translators’, that is, groups of individ-
ual users who start cooperating online through translation without any previous knowledge
of each other. Nevertheless, as will be discussed below, this trend has not meant the end of
activist communities in a more traditional sense, including those that are location-based.
The Egyptian uprisings of 2011 and their aftermath, which played a key role in the birth
and evolution of the movement of the squares, is the only movement that has generated a
remarkable body of research on translation activism so far. In 2012, an edited collection
(Mehrez 2012) was published following a collective project at the American University of
Cairo, compiling translations made by university students of chants, slogans, poems, in-
terviews, and communiqués, as well as reflections on the difficulties and nuances of the
translational process. In 2016, another edited collection ( Baker 2016a) took a more complex
angle, bringing together a series of reflections on the translation of the Egyptian revolution
across multiple media, including poetry, documentary film, street art, and comics. Within
this strand, the activist video collective Mosireen, which has incorporated the work of ac-
tivist subtitlers, has attracted significant attention. One of those volunteer subtitlers (Selim
2016) has reflected on the influence of political commitment upon the task of the translator,
emphasizing how activists at Mosireen worked ‘with the intention of building international
solidarity networks’ and ‘always with one eye to other uprisings’ (2016: 84– 85). Meanwhile,
Baker (2016b) has studied the work of Mosireen and Words of Women from the Egyptian
Revolution to analyse to what extent subtitling enhances or, on the contrary, undermines
these projects’ political commitment. Through sustained fieldwork and textual analysis,
Baker analyses the secondary and passive role played by volunteer translators, and how their
translations frequently fail to adhere to the principles of solidarity and diversity that underpin
the movements. For instance, Baker shows how the choice of languages for the subtitles, with
a strong prevalence of English, has limited the expressions of solidarity that the collectives
received (2016b: 9–10). However, collectives are not systematic in their use of translation
practices in a way that can reflect the diversity of the speakers interviewed, and subtitlers
show a tendency to erase linguistic diversity in favour of coherence and semantic meaning.
For the time being, the remaining protest movements in this wave remain largely un-
studied from the perspective of translation. In an early piece, Mowbray (2010) analysed the
importance of blogs in the international dissemination of information on the Greek riots of
2008, and briefly noted the presence of translation as part of their activity, although there
is no reflection on their production and reception. From a different angle, activist Mark

505
Fruela Fernández

Bray (2013) has proposed an understanding of Occupy Wall Street in terms of intralingual
translation, arguing that the movement aimed at translating anarchist ideas into a language
that could overcome the ideological prejudices that American audiences might have towards
anarchism.
Finally, my own work (Fernández 2018, 2021) constitutes the only attempt so far to high-
light the strong translational components of the political cycle that opened in Spain with the
popular protests of 2011, popularly known as the ‘ indignados’ or ‘15M’. First, I address how
the conceptual framework and language that underpins Spanish political activism across a
wide variety of fields (e.g. feminism, environmentalism, new leftist movements) is strongly
indebted to an important work of translation, undertaken by a wide variety of politically
committed publishers, but also by non-professionals who use blogging and social media to
share translated materials with an activist component. Second, ‘translation’ has a strong pres-
ence as a political concept, used by various thinkers and activist-politicians to reflect on the
processes of communication between the different constituencies of society.

Translation, interpreting, and the promotion of diversity

As discussed at different points in this chapter, globalization is characterized by tensions be-
tween unity and diversity; these can arise, for instance, out of the need to provide a unitary
front of action for multiple groups espousing a diversity of causes. Nevertheless, this tension
can also emerge out of a contrary move, when this unity becomes so imposing and over-
whelming that it threatens to erase diversity. This is certainly the case of linguistic diversity
and translation. As various studies have shown (Heilbron 1999; Sapiro 2009), the world
system of translation in which linguistic exchanges take place is strongly hierarchical, which
means that a very reduced number of languages provide the source texts of the majority of
the books translated globally. In this system, English enjoys a highly dominant position,
which has been reinforced by globalization (Sapiro 2010: 423– 425) as more than 50% of the
translations published around the world come from this language.
The strong correlation between globalization and the increasing dominance of English
certainly poses a threat to the various languages spoken across the world— and not only to the
so- called minority languages. In a perceptive piece, Cronin (1998) argued that the condition
of a ‘minority’ language is not static or fixed, but rather dynamic; in other words, any lan-
guage can potentially become a ‘minority’ language under certain conditions. Therefore, the
hyperdominant role of global English has consequences for virtually any language across the
world ( Bennett and Queiroz de Barros 2017), such as the increase in linguistic interferences
or the blurring of boundaries between translator and user.
As a reaction against this pre-eminence of English, certain collectives of activist transla-
tors and interpreters have made a commitment to defend linguistic diversity as part of their
political engagement. As noted above, Babels would be one such example, through their
pledge ‘[t]o affirm the right of everybody to express themselves in the language of their
choice’ ( Babels n.d.), and their refusal to volunteer at the 2016 World Social Forum, as inter-
preting services were only offered in the ‘three colonial languages’. A similar endeavour led
to the foundation in 2005 of Tlaxcala (www.tlaxcala-int.org/), an international network of
translators for linguistic diversity. Its manifesto, which is available in 14 languages, states that
Tlaxcala’s founders shared the aim of

de-i mperializing the English language by publishing in all possible languages (including
English) the voices of writers, thinkers, cartoonists and activists who nowadays write

506
 Activist role of translators

­
their original texts in languages that the domineering empire’s influence do (sic) not
allow to be heard.
­
(Tlaxcala 2005)

In this sense, Tlaxcala’s website functions as a publishing site for both authors and translators,
as both can submit proposals for publication and requests to become members of the transla-
tion community. Across the website, menus offer users the possibility of searching for mate-
rials following thematic, geographic, or linguistic criteria, as well as browsing the library of
authors, translators, and editors.
Finally, the promotion and recognition of indigenous, lesser- spoken, and endangered lan-
guages across the world also connects with civic engagement. Generally, this issue tends to
fall within the realm of institutional policy (in the case of the protection of a language within
a multilingual state) or cultural diplomacy (for programmes promoting the translation of
works written in these languages through economic subsidies), which places it within the
traditional channels of governance that activism seeks to avoid. However, in certain cases
there is an interesting overlap between both. For instance, indigenous activism in the Andean
region of Latin America has been paramount in the protection of their languages—which
have historically been threatened by the dominance of Spanish— and their enshrinement in
governmental policy ( De Pedro et al. 2018a). In the specific case of Peru ( De Pedro et al.
2018b), this linguistic activism has led to the passing of the Prior Consultation Act in 2011,
which gives indigenous peoples the right to be consulted in their own languages before the
State can adopt an administrative or legislative measure that affects their collective rights. In
turn, this has led to the creation of interpreter training programmes by the Peruvian State
in order to ensure adequate communication during these consultations. In this way, activism
has influenced the provision of translation and interpreting services, even if these are not
necessarily activist in nature.
At the same time, the expansion of technology has opened new paths for the promotion of
endangered languages, as grassroots communities of speakers have resorted to new media as
a way of increasing the presence and visibility of their language in the digital world. For in-
stance, Scanell (2012) has shown how users on the social media network Facebook have been
able to request and generate volunteer-translated versions of the network in languages such as
Basque, Welsh, Cherokee, Northern Sámi, or Rumantsch. An example of such a community
is the Bolivian Jaqi Aru (2018), which is promoting online use of the Aymara with a variety
of projects, including a translation of Facebook into their indigenous language. However, the
fact that Facebook is a for-profit corporation raises a number of doubts, especially regarding
how this volunteer work by activists contributes to increasing Facebook’s online presence
and its economic profits. In fact, Scanell (2012) also highlights how translations can only take
place if Facebook previously agrees to add a new language to its interface, which has led lan-
guage activists— such as Scanell himself, or the late Neskie Manuel (2010)—to explore short-
cuts in order to generate partial, ‘unofficial’ translations of the site. It is evident, therefore,
that future forms of community activism will need to go hand in hand with developments in
community- centred and - owned technology in order to fully empower users.

Conclusion
Despite its recent emergence as a field of research, the study of translation and interpreting as
forms of activism seems to be gaining momentum, due to growing interest in the political as-
pects of the discipline and the increase in activist engagement across the world. Nevertheless,

507
Fruela Fernández

certain problematic issues arise and many areas are still under-researched, as will be argued
in this conclusion.
A first key issue is the volatility and instability of digital archives. As mentioned briefly in
the case of Zapatista online activism, the rapid evolution of technology implies that certain
data can become obsolete (i.e. generated by or stored in a system or media that is no longer
in use) or even disappear altogether, as is the case with tweets, sites, comments, or recordings
that have been deleted. Therefore, any scholar wishing to embark in a study of activism that
involves an online media component should be careful enough to start building their own
archive from the very beginning, storing and categorizing any relevant materials for future
uses. In relation to this, a second key issue is building trust between researcher and activists.
Although this is certainly a characteristic of any kind of research involving social groups, es-
pecially when these are undertaking activities that can potentially threaten established pow-
ers, the fluid and shapeless character of many activist communities implies that the researcher
might find difficulty in accessing them and, in the case of being granted access, might only
be able to establish contact with a limited number of activists.
In terms of the potential areas for future research, it is evident that the field is immense
and constantly expanding, as activism has acquired a truly global character, due to both an
interest in reaching wider audiences and the formation of alliances between activist groups
across countries. However, it is worth noting a few relevant absences. First, as already high-
lighted, there is little ‘ historical’ perspective on the long wave of alter-globalization move-
ments: little is known, for instance, about the translational processes, practices, and groups
that enabled the birth of the global justice movement in the 1990s. Second, although there
is abundant research on individual translators that have shown a commitment to a given
cause or identity through their translation practices—notably in the fields of gender and
sexuality ( Baer and Kaindl 2017; Castro and Ergün 2017)—there is still ample room to
explore how onsite and online communities of activist translators (such as the one studied
in Baldo 2018) are contributing to the dissemination of identity politics and the visibility,
defence, and recognition of stigmatized and oppressed groups. At the time of writing, a
special issue on ‘Translation and LGBT+/Queer activism’ had recently launched its call for
papers, which might provide a first point of interest on the topic ( Baldo et al. 2018). Finally,
our generalized understanding of activism from a progressive perspective seems to be ob-
scuring the possibility of analysing and understanding r ight-wing activism. This absence is
even more controversial in the light of ongoing transnational exchanges between far-right
movements and increasing evidence of their use of the internet and related media ( Daniels
2018). Therefore, it would certainly be relevant to know whether translational practices are
at work in the evolution and expansion of these movements that, in many cases, also oppose
the consequences of globalization. This knowledge would not only enable us to refine our
knowledge of translational activism, but also to denounce and counteract groups within
these movements that contribute to the dissemination of xenophobic, homophobic, and su-
premacist contents that violate human dignity.

Further reading
Baker, M. (2016b) ‘The Prefigurative Politics of Translation in Place-based Movements of Protest:
Subtitling in the Egyptian Revolution’, The Translator, 22(1),
­ pp. 1–21.
­ ­ ​­
An in- depth study of subtitling practices within two activist collectives, Mosireen and Words of
Women from the Egyptian Revolution, and the ways in which subtitling enhances or undermines
their political principles.

508
 Activist role of translators

Boéri, J. (2012) ‘Translation/Interpreting Politics and Praxis. The Impact of Political Principles on
Babels’ Interpreting Practice’, The Translator, 18(2),­ pp. 269–290.
­ ­ ​­
An analysis of the activist interpreting network Babels, which was strongly connected with the birth
and evolution of the global justice movement. It pays special attention to the frequently conflictive
relationship between their political principles and interpreting practice.
Doerr, N. (2018) Political Translation. How Social Movement Democracies Survive. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Based on substantial fieldwork across a variety of countries, this text studies the importance of trans-
lation and interpreting as a way to ensure diversity, fight inequality, and increase democracy within
activist groups.
Fernández, F. (2021) Translating the Crisis. Politics and Culture in Spain after the 15M. Abingdon: Routledge.
Analyses the importance of translation in Spanish left-w ing politics after the emergence of the 15M
or ‘ indignados’ movement in 2011, showing how translation has contributed to the dissemination of
ideas and concepts, produced new intellectual and political figures, and provided support to emerging
political projects.

References
Alvaredo, F. Chance, L., Piketty, T., Saez, E. and Zucman, G. (2018) ‘World Inequality Report 2018:
Executive Summary’, World Inequality Lab. Available online: https://wir2018.wid.world/files/
download/wir2018-summary-english.pdf
­­ ­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 27 November 2018].
Autonomedia (1994) ­ Zapatistas! Documents of the New Mexican Revolution. New York: Autonomedia.
Babels (2015) ‘Communiqué : Babels ne participera pas au FSM 2015’, Babels. Available online: http://
www.babels.org/spip.php?article565 [Accessed 3 December 2018].
Babels (2016) ‘Babels Will Not Participate in WSF 2016: Notification Letter to IC & OC of WSF 2016’,
Babels. Available online: http://www.babels.org/spip.php?article568 [Accessed 3 December 2018].
Babels (n.d.) ‘Babels Founding Charter’, Babels. Available online: www.babels.org/IMG/pdf/charter_
­ ­ ­
en.pdf [Accessed 3 December 2018].
Baer, B. and Kaindl, K. (eds.) (2017) Queering Translation, Translating the Queer. Theory, Practice, Activism.
New York and London: Routledge.
Baker, M. (2006a) ‘Translation and Activism. Emerging Patterns of Narrative Community’. The Mas-
sachusetts Review, 47(3),
­ pp. 462–484.
­ ​­
Baker, M. (2006b) Translation and Conflict. A Narrative Account. Abingdon: Routledge.
Baker, M. (2013) ‘Translation as an Alternative Space for Political Action’, Social Movement Studies,
­ pp. 23–47.
12(1), ­ ­ ​­
Baker, M. (ed.) (2016a) Translating Dissent: Voices from and with the Egyptian Revolution. London: Routledge.
Baker, M. (2016b) ‘The Prefigurative Politics of Translation in Place-based Movements of Protest:
Subtitling in the Egyptian Revolution’, The Translator, 22(1), ­ pp. 1–21.
­ ­ ​­
Baker, M. (2018) ‘Audiovisual Translation and Activism’, in Pérez- González, L. (ed.), The Routledge
Handbook of Audiovisual Translation. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 453– 467.
Baldo, M. (2018) ‘Translating Affect, Redeeming Life. The Case of the Italian Queer Transfeminist
Group Ideadestroyingmuros’, The Translator, DOI: 10.1080/13556509.2018.1542929.
Baldo, M., Evans, J., Guo, T. (2018) ‘Cfp: Translation and LGBT+/Queer Activism’, Mona Baker, 29
October. Available online: www.monabaker.org/?p=6918 [Accessed 7 December 2018].
Bennett, K. and Queiroz de Barros, R. (2017) ‘International English: Its Current Status and Implica-
tions for Translation’, The Translator, 23(4),
­ pp. 363–370.
­ ­ ​­
Boéri, J. (2008) ‘A Narrative Account of the Babels vs. Naumann Controversy’, The Translator, 14(1), ­
pp. 21–50.
­ ­ ​­
Boéri, J. (2012) ‘Translation/Interpreting Politics and Praxis. The Impact of Political Principles on
Babels’ Interpreting Practice’, The Translator, 18(2),­ pp. 269–290.
­ ­ ​­
Bray, M. (2013) Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street. London: Zero Books.
Brownlie, S. (2010). ‘Committed Approaches and Activism in Translation Studies Research’, in Gam-
bier, Y. and van Doorslaer, L. (eds.), Handbook of Translation Studies, Vol. I. Amsterdam and Philadel-
phia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 45– 48.
Carcelén-Estrada, A. (2018) ‘Translation and Activism’, in Fernández, F. and Evans, J. (eds.), The Rout-
ledge Handbook of Translation and Politics. London: Routledge, pp. 254–269.
­ ­ ​­

509
Fruela Fernández

Castells, M. (2000) The Rise of the Network Society. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Castro, O. and Ergün, E. (eds.) (2017). Feminist Translation Studies: Local and Transnational Perspectives.
New York: Routledge.
Cheung, M. (2010) ‘Rethinking Activism: The Power and Dynamics of Translation in China during
the Late Qing Period (1840–1911)’, in Baker, M., Olohan, M. and Calzada Pérez, M. (eds.), Text
and Context: Essays on Translation and Interpreting in Honour of Ian Mason. Manchester: St. Jerome,
pp. 237–258.
­ ­ ​­
Cheyfitz, E. (1991) The Poetics of Imperialism: Translation and Colonization from The Tempest to Tarzan.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cleaver, H. (1998) ‘The Zapatistas and the Electronic Fabric of Struggle’, Texas Liberal Arts. Available
online: https:// la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/zaps.html#29 [Accessed 4 December 2018].
Cronin, M. (1998) ‘The Cracked Looking Glass of Servants’, The Translator, 4(2), ­ pp. 145–162.
­ ­ ​­
Daniels, J. (2018) ‘The Algorithmic Rise of the “Alt-Right”‘, Contexts, 17(1), ­ pp. 60–65.
­ ­ ​­
De Manuel Jerez, J., Cortés, J. L. and Brander de la Iglesia, M. (2004) ‘Traducción e interpretación,
voluntariado y compromiso social’, Puentes, 4, pp. 65–72. ­ ­ ​­
De Pedro, R. Howard, R., and Andrade, L. (2018a) ‘Translation Policy and Minority Languages in
Hispanic Latin America’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 251, pp. 19–36. ­ ­ ​­
De Pedro, R., Howard, R. and Andrade, L. (2018b) ‘Walking the Tightrope: The Role of Peruvian
Indigenous Interpreters in Prior Consultation Processes’, Target, 30(2), ­ pp. 187–211.
­ ­ ​­
Della Porta, D. (ed.) (2007) The Global Justice Movement: Cross-national and Transnational Perspectives.
Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.
Doerr, N. (2012) ‘Translating Democracy: How Activists in the European Social Forum Practice Mul-
tilingual Deliberation’, European Political Science Review, 4(3), ­ pp. 361–384.
­ ­ ​­
Doerr, N. (2018) Political Translation. How Social Movement Democracies Survive. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Fernández, F. (2018) ‘Podemos: Politics as a “Task of Translation”‘, Translation Studies, 11(1), ­ pp. 1–16.
­ ­ ​­
Fernández, F. (forthcoming) Translating the Crisis. Politics and Culture in Spain after the 15M. London:
Routledge.
Flesher Fominaya, C. (2017) ‘European Anti-austerity and Pro- democracy Protests in the Wake of the
Global Financial Crisis’, Social Movement Studies, 16(1), ­ pp. 1–20. ­ ­ ​­
Gago, V. and Cavallero, L. (2017) ­ ‘Argentina’s
­ ­Life-or-Death
­​­­ ​­ Women’’s Movement’, Jacobin, 7
March 2017. Available online: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/03/argentina-ni-una-menos-
­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​
­­femicides-women-strike/
­​­­ ​­ [Accessed on 28 November 2018].
Gerbaudo, P. (2012) Tweets and The Streets. Social Media and Contemporary Activism. London: Pluto Press.
Gerbaudo, P. (2017) The Mask and the Flag. Populism, Citizenism, and Global Protest. London: Hurst & Co.
Guo, T. (2008) ‘Translation and Activism: Translators in the Chinese Communist Movement in the
­1920s–30s’,
​­ ­
in Boulogne, P. (ed.), Translation and Its Others. Selected Papers of the CETRA Research
Seminar in Translation Studies 2007. Available online: https://www.arts.kuleuven.be/cetra/papers/
­ ­ ­ ­
files/guo.pdf [Accessed 30 November 2018].
Gutiérrez, M. (2018) Data Activism and Social Change. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hands, J. (2010) @ is for Activism. London: Pluto Press.
Harvey, D. (2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heilbron, J. (1999) ‘Toward a Sociology of Translation: Book Translations as a Cultural World–System’,
European Journal of Social Theory, 2(4), ­ pp. 429–444.
­ ­ ​­
Heyes, C. (2018) ‘Identity Politics’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available online: https://
plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/identity-politics/
­ ­ ­ ­­ ​­ [Accessed 10 December 2018].
Jaqi Aru (2018) ‘Jaqi Arxata/Acerca de’. Jaqi Aru. Available online: http://en.jaqi-a ru.org/ [Accessed 7
December 2018].
Karagiannopoulos, V. (2018) Living with Hacktivism: From Conflict to Symbiosis. London: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Lebron, C. (2017) The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of An Idea. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Lefevere, A. (1992) Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. London and New York:
Routledge.
Manuel, N. (2010) ‘Secwepemc Facebook: A Greasemonkey Userscript to Alter Facebook to Display Words
in Secwepemctsin’. GitHub, October 28. https://github.com/neskie/secwepemc-facebook/blob/
­ ­ ­­ ​­ ­
master/README.textile [Accessed 7 December 2018].

510
 Activist role of translators

Martin, B. (2003) ‘Activism, Social and Political’, in Anderson, G. L. and Herr, K. G. (eds.), Encyclope-
dia of Activism and Social Justice, vol. 1. Thousand Oaks, CA and London: Sage, pp. 19–27.
McMichael, A. (2013) ‘Globalization, Climate Change, and Human Health’, The New England Journal
of Medicine, 368, pp. 1335–1343.
­ ­ ​­
Mehrez, S. (ed.) (2012) Translating Egypt’s Revolution: The Language of Tahrir. Cairo: American Univer-
sity Press.
Milton, J. (2006) ‘The Resistant Political Translations of Monteiro Lobato’, The Massachusetts Review,
­ pp. 486–509.
47(3), ­ ­ ​­
Mowbray, M. (2010) ‘Blogging the Greek Riots: Between Aftermath and Ongoing Engagement’, The
Resistance Studies Magazine, 1, pp. 4–15.­ ­ ​­
Niranajana, T. (1992) Siting Translation. History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Pérez-González, L. (2010) ‘Ad-hocracies’ of Translation Activism in the Blogosphere a Genealogical
Case Study’, in Baker, M., Olohan, M. and Calzada Pérez, M. (eds.), Text and Context: Essays on
Translation and Interpreting in Honour of Ian Mason. Manchester: St. Jerome, pp. 259–287. ­ ­ ​­
Pérez- González, L. (2016) ‘The Politics of Affect in Activist Amateur Subtitling: A Biopolitical Per-
spective’, in Baker, M. and Blaagaard, B. (eds.), Citizen Media and Public Spaces: Diverse Expressions of
Citizenship and Dissent. London: Routledge, pp. 118–135.
­ ­ ​­
Pieterse, J. (2009) Globalization and Culture: Global Melange. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Rafael, V. L. (1993) Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society under
Early Spanish Rule. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Reitan, R. (2007) Global Activism. Abingdon: Routledge.
Rendueles, C. (2013) Sociofobia. El cambio político en la era de la utopía digital. Barcelona: Capitán Swing.
Ritzen, Y. (2018) ‘Rising Internet Shutdowns aimed at silencing dissent’, Al Jazeera, 29 January 2018.
Available online: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/01/rising-internet-shutdowns-aimed-
­ ­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​
­­silencing-dissent-180128202743672.html
­​­­ ​­ [Accessed 10 December 2018].
Romanos, E. (2016) ‘De Tahrir a Wall Street por la Puerta del Sol: la difusión transnacional de los
movimientos sociales en perspectiva comparada’, Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 154,
­ ­
pp. 103–118.​­
Romero, R. (2014) ‘A Brief History of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation’, ROAR Mag-
azine, January 1, 2014. Available online: https://roarmag.org/essays/brief-history-ezln-uprising/
­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
[Accessed 4 December 2018].
Santos, B. de S. (2006) The Rise of the Global Left: The World Social Forum and Beyond. London: Zed
Books.
Sapiro, G. (2009) ‘Mondialisation et diversité culturelle : les enjeux de la circulation transnationale
des livres’, in Sapiro, G. (ed.), Les Contradictions de la globalisation éditoriale. Paris: Nouveau Monde,
­ ­
pp. 275–301. ​­
Sapiro, G. (2010) ‘Globalization and Cultural Diversity in the Book Market: The Case of Literary
Translations in the US and in France’, Poetics, 38, pp. 419–439.
­ ­ ​­
Scanell, K. (2012) ‘Translating Facebook into Endangered Languages.’ Paper Given at the 16th
Foundation for Endangered Languages Conference, Auckland. Available online: http://cs.slu.
edu/~scanell/pub/fel12.pdf [Accessed 10 December 2018].
Selim, S. (2016) ‘Text and Context: Translating in a State of Emergency’, in Baker, M. (ed.), Translating
Dissent: Voices from and with the Egyptian Revolution. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 77– 87.
Shirley, S. (2001) ‘Zapatista Organizing In Cyberspace: Winning Hearts and Minds?’, Latin American
Studies Association. Available online: http://lasa.international.pitt.edu/Lasa2001/ShirleySheryl.pdf
­ ­ ­
[Accessed 3 December 2018].
Steger, M. (2013) Globalization: A Very Short Introduction, 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Tlaxcala (20 05) ‘Tlaxcala’s Manifesto’, Tlaxcala. Available online: http://www.tlaxcala-int.org/
­ ­ ​­ ­
manifeste.asp?lg_aff=en [Accessed 6 December 2018].
Tymoczko, M. (2000) ‘Translation and Political Engagement: Activism, Social Change and the Role
of Translation in Geopolitical Shifts’, The Translator, 6(1), ­ pp. 23–47.
­ ­ ​­
Tymozcko, M. (2006) ‘Translation: Ethics, Ideology, Action’, The Massachusetts Review, 47(3), ­
pp. 442–461.
­ ­ ​­
Tymoczko, M. (ed.) (2010) Translation, Resistance, Activism. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Venuti, L. (1995) The Translator’’s Invisibility. London and New York: Routledge.

511
Fruela Fernández

Warren, K. B. and Jackson, J. (2003) Indigenous Movements, Self-Representation, and the State in Latin
America. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Wennerhag, M. (2010) ‘Another Modernity is Possible? The Global Justice Movement and the Trans-
formations of Politics’, Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory, 11(2),
­ pp. 25–49
­ ­ ​­
Went, R. (2000) Globalization. London: Pluto Press.
Wenz, L., Levermann, A. (2016) ‘Enhanced Economic Connectivity to Foster Heat Stress-related
Losses’, Science Advances, 2(6), e150102, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1501026.
Wolf, M. (2012) ‘The Sociology of Translation and Its “activist turn”‘, Translation and Interpreting Stud-
ies, 7(2),
­ pp. 129–143.
­ ­ ​­
Wolfson, T. and Funke, P. (2016) ‘The Contemporary Epoch of Struggle. Anti-austerity Protests, the
Arab Uprisings and Occupy Wall Street’, in Baker, M. (ed.), Translating Dissent: Voices from and with
the Egyptian Revolution. London: Routledge, pp. 60–73.
­ ­ ​­
Xiao, Q. (2011) ‘The Battle for the Chinese Internet’, Journal of Democracy, 22(2), ­ pp. 47–61.
­ ­ ​­

512
 35
Further on the politics
of translation
Rada Iveković

Introduction
One of the patterns of the splitting/sharing of reason, traversing all fields, is the sex divide,
where translation either stops at a bifurcation, or proceeds. Gender is a fundamental figure
of the mechanism of partage de la raison1 (Iveković
­ 2003c: ­259–278,
​­ 2007: ­45–55,
​­ 2017: ­259–​
278), functioning by analogy in all other binaries. Gender inequality, hammered as ‘natural’,
‘ justifies’ other hierarchies whether racial, class or other, which are gendered through such
approximations. Today this also targets migrants.
Globalization makes cultural/ethnic fragmentation the flipside of uniformity. Essential-
ized culture is now perceived as nature. We therefore need to be wary of the dichotomic
dynamics of reason. In her critique of Kalidas Bhattacharyya’s philosophy, Shefali Moitra
writes, ending with a quotation:

His later philosophy does not ignore but rejects the logic of alternatives (...). In his Alter-
native Standpoints in Philosophy [Bhattacharyya] (...) comes to the conclusion that, ‘ in Phi-
losophy (…) one has to identify himself with one or the other of the different alternative
ideologies – for all of them cannot be accepted’.
(Moitra
­ 1988: ­1–14)
​­

But thoughts often come to us in binaries (gender, ‘we’ vs. ‘others’, ‘nationals’ vs. ‘ foreigners’,
‘citizens’ vs. ‘migrants’...). Françoise Héritier (Héritier 1996) thinks this is because our spe-
cies is sexed. The concern should be to take reasoning/thinking beyond the dichotomies in
a permanent translation process, a double-bind activity. The translator is ‘translated’ in the
process. Naoki Sakai’s work (Sakai 2010: 441– 464, 2011, 2013), linking (colonial) history,
linguistics, humanities, is most instructive here in that he manages to overcome mere oppo-
sitions and reductive positionalities. ‘Cultural differences’ between citizens and migrants (the
decisive dichotomy today), genders, inequalities, conflict, violence, ‘ identities’ all happen
in community and in language, well within ‘culture’ which in itself is no guarantee against
violence. In a crisis, society is depoliticized as shown in Konstantinović’s concept palanka 2

513
Rada Ivekovic ´

­
(Konstantinović 1981), whereby brutality and indifference reveal an incapacity for desire.
The failed, divided ‘subject’ can’t negotiate subject-positions.
In this we must reconsider the concept of universal and its relationship to the particular.
Eleni Varikas writes:

(...) state universalism acts as if all were indeed free and equal. When seen from the state’s
point of view, ‘differences’ produced by social antagonisms, impeding the effective ex-
ercise of the universality of rights, are bereft of political content. (...) This dissociation
­ politique) to mere politics (la
reduces the political (le ­ politique), to the science of government,
to the functioning of the state and of its institutions.
(Varikas 2006: 85, emphasis in original)

If the universal is seen as a plural rapport rather than as the supreme office, the subject’s au-
tonomy appears as complex, contextual, relational and relative. The dominant subject has to give
up some of its authority and normativity in order to share the universal, for the move to be effective.
This involves de-identification as an alternative option, a neglected complement to any iden-
tification. In this sense, translating between the particular and the universal levels, which can take
various directions especially considering the character of the universal (whether inclusive
or exclusive, the latter being the usual, though not obligatory, form), is a highly political act.
Renewed forms of partition, of political, emotional disbandment and of division are pro-
jected on, identified with, and made to be supported by the founding rift of reason (which
they reinforce). From separating reasons (reason against madness; ‘my’ reason against ‘yours’;
also, ‘theory’ against ‘practice’), different forms of partition gather their divisive, normative
and exclusive efficiency. It is therefore crucial to imagine political subjects that outgrow both
the reductive language of citizenship, and the depoliticized concept of governmentality. We
need to rethink popular movements that are not recognized as political, such as migrations,
women’s life stories ( Lalita et  al. 1990; Meer 2001), suburbia riots, the ‘Yellow vests’ in
France in 2018–19, and others ( Laclau 2005; Mouffe 2018).

Feminist ethics and translation

The work of translation helps switching between political, economic, cultural, social, psy-
chological discourses, reducing their ethnicization (fragmentation, balkanization through
disciplines), and moving between different epistemes. This epistemological and theoretical
challenge is also a practical-political problem. In such dovetailing of two senses, the split
(of ) reason should be overcome. This often means dealing with personal as well as historical,
political defeat, with loss, disgrace (Coetzee 1998, 2000, 2003) and divided reason, and recon-
sidering the way in which loss is constitutive (Spivak 2004; Iveković 2010: ­43–50).
​­
Reason is divided into dominant reason and that of the subservient in each hierarchy, injus-
tice, inequality or domination; each time someone is found subordinated, and may negotiate
hegemony. Prevailing reason knows nothing of the reasons of the defeated, of alternative his-
tories, as patriarchal reason ignores that of women, of the young, of the enslaved. The reason
of citizenship ignores that of non-citizens, of mere ‘migrants’, whose reasons appear as incon-
gruities, madness, non-language, as inarticulate and wild. It is thus that Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak and others ( Kofman 1982, 2000; Schott 2004) build an efficient critique of Kant’s di-
vided reason. Spivak shows the local, European, German origin of posing reason’s universality,
its geographical roots, its ignorance of colonization and of the conquests accompanying and
extending it. The modern subject and the citizen are born split, Spivak shows (Spivak 1999).

514
 Further on the politics of translation

They are differentiated in terms of property, gender and ‘civilization’ (Said 1979, Said 1994),
the latter being a euphemism for ‘race’.
History and society have introduced, and political configurations, patriarchal and race
regimes, class divides, have maintained inequalities, presenting them as natural. ‘Respect’
was due to women ( Kofman 1982), or to ‘others’, as a mark of civilization, implying ethni-
cization. Therefore respect is now theorized and claimed for mending the injustice in cases
of racialized minorities ( Balibar 2018). As Kofman underscored remarkably, respect to fe-
males actually meant distancing oneself from them for one’s own benefit and for separating
‘women’ (on pedestal) from ‘whores’. Respect was due to the first (the mother figure) and
not to the ‘whore’. Kofman shows how respect for women is, in Kant, a law before other laws.
It thus remains with women in the realm of the ‘natural’. ‘The education of man to reason
and to morality ends therefore up’, Kofman writes, ‘ in liberation from mother nature, from
women and from inclinations, yet all education passes through them’ ( Kofman 1982: 38).3
This is Kant’s basic paradox of practical reason. ‘From a subjective viewpoint, the [(virile)
power of impulsive force] is called respect. Respect is what eschews reason’s emasculation
in setting into motion transcendental imagination’ ( Kofman 1982: 48). Keeping women,
sublime or fallen beings, at a distance (‘respect’), clearly from a male position, is the price of
reason. Its price is self- d isciplining, producing a raft in reason and in its objects. The ‘respect
­ ​­
for women’ as morality’s precondition confirms that the wrongs they suffer are also pre-given
as a ­pre-condition.
​­ They are ‘natural’, and women are naturalized.
Gender, naturalization and ‘ethnic’ determination fare together in the construction of
inequalities. Spivak introduces however an important difference between women and native
informants of their mother-tongue in colonies. If the latter remain invisible, if the ‘subaltern
cannot speak’ (Spivak 1999), women are not always muted. There may be a difference of
degree in how women and migrants are subalternized. But we may doubt the utility of
separating and positioning women outside the imprecise category designated as ‘subaltern’.
Divisions are the dynamics of reasoning (Nāgārjuna). Fluid bifurcations of reason imply
transitory ( Vega 2003: 49– 60), uncertain and ‘soft’ identities. ‘Heteronormativity’ ( Nivedita
Menon 2004) as developed in Queer theory is here most interesting because it shifts from
identification to utter de-identification. Judith Butler gradually moved from gendered cat-
egories towards overcoming divisions, while nevertheless recognizing an ethical horizon in
conceptualizing. Such non-normative ethics is distinguished by a margin of freedom in any
relation (within a framework). Those are instances of sharing: here, Butler distinguishes self- ­ ​
­control from sovereignty ( Butler 2004: 193–214). But the relational, though not necessarily nor-
mative, does not exclude the hegemonic aspect of power! ( Laclau 1999/2000: 82ff; Sangari
2001). In our terms, Butler refuses compartmentalized reasons but accepts the process of rea-
­
son’s divisions, its becoming (devenir), as its constant displacement through splitting up. This
corresponds to partage de la raison (sharing/splitting of reason, as a process) as opposed to raison
partagée (separated reason(s), as definitive). She sees in it an open ethics inducing responsibility
at every step, but exposing to risks, of which there is no zero degree. We face then constitu-
tive exclusion, or exception, as a question of (un)divided rationality. A ‘weak’, non-normative
ethics of decentring the subject, de-identifying, and of partage in the best sense. Something
­
like Simone Weil’s ‘de-creation’ or ‘inachèvement’ (state of incompleteness), a negative or
‘decreasing’ spiritual progress towards grace? Like Buddhist ‘ethics’ both ontological and
epistemological ( Weil 1947)? In several schools of Buddhism indeed the subject is decentred
or willingly decreasing in an ontological process accompanied by an epistemological one
­
(Iveković 2014). No equitable reciprocity seems to be readily available, and Spivak warns that
an attempt to tame the receiving end may not be innocent (Spivak 1999: 130). Can we reverse

515
Rada Ivekovic ´

the action by becoming (an)other? This seems to be the only viable way left, as some kind of self-
­translation (Milčinski
­ 2017: ­583–595).
​­
Is Ewa Płonowska Ziarek’s project of An Ethics of Dissensus (Płonowska
­ Ziarek 2001)
distant from Butler’s? She deals with dialogues between discourses ranging from feminism, to
‘postmodernity’, theories of emancipation of the Blacks,4 postcolonial theories or radical
democracy. Recognizing all instable alterities is here required. The exercise displays and
critiques a wide range of theoretical approaches and distils the latter down to an anticipated
project of postmodern plural harmony. The core remains the paradox of hegemony, of dis-
sensus, of différend. Feminist scholars have tried to find a ‘ feminist logic’ in ethics, or a femi-
nist ethics as a distinct engagement (Schott 2003; Schott and Klercke 2007).
The unconventional philosopher Chantal Maillard attracts our attention by her ease in
moving between western and Indian philosophies, remarkable in her personal rigorous intel-
lectual ethics that transforms her own engaged ­self-decentring
​­ into a discreet project. She poses
a ‘rationality whose first instance would be a receptive openness and the second a communi-
cative construction. Turning reason into an art and the world into a piece of art (…)’ where
the ethical and the aesthetic meet. She writes to this author in a 2007 mail: ‘I cannot write
an affirmative sentence without thinking that the opposite could also be defended’. She prac-
tises sharp, inventive translating between the inner and the outer dimensions, oneself and the
reader, ‘India’ and the ‘west’, between ‘cultures’, between different epistemes, codes or dispo-
sitions. She shows the vital risk of thinking, and takes it (‘to value the possible rather than the
certain’) while demonstrating the advantage of putting oneself into question (Maillard 1993,
1998, 2001). Particularly impressive is her mediation between the political and the aesthetic.
Freedom requires aesthetics too. According to her, separated reasons (one could say: balkan-
ized reason, Iveković 1995) have been our ruin, where ‘to think’ and ‘to love’ have become
different things. A line of contemplative, therapeutical, incisive philosophy can be detected
in the unusual work of Maillard, philosophe sans frontières.
The historic gap Maillard senses between loving and thinking is a politically and socially
foundational one in hierarchical societies. The division travels from the imagined origin to
the core of the political body and of social institutions, established upon a constitutive subor-
dination or exclusion, a subaltern inclusion, an inclusive outside: that of women and others, as
Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin or Urvashi Butalia show in the case of independent India and
Pakistan ( Butalia 1998; Menon and Bhasin 1998; Moitra 2002; Bagchi and Dasgupta 2003).
The foundational moment of partition and of nation-building demanded retrieving universality
and citizenship from women and thus building into the heart of the political institution as
such – its paradoxical but basic incompleteness. The latter is symbolically ‘ deduced’ from
women, as shown by Nicole Loraux (1990, 1997), and also by Butalia (1998) or by Menon
and Bhasin (1998). The ‘universal’ rule, by which ‘all’ could choose the country they would
live in at partition ( Pakistan or India), didn’t apply to women.
Loraux explains how, according to the Athenian foundation myth, only men have already
been there ‘at the beginning’. Women, an element difficult to fit,5 a necessary evil, had been
introduced later. They are not ‘autochthonous’, and are unfit for citizenship ( Loraux 1990,
1997; Andreani 2005: ­85–94). ​­ 6
Masculine self-generation and autochthony are evidenced as
a foundational dream right in the first written accounts. Female non-authenticity, the idea
that women are an incongruous artefact and an addition to male universal normality rather
than present from the origin or, worse, that their inauthenticity is original, will be used in
order to despoil women of parental rights, of adult status and of citizenship. Evidence of
women as non-citizens and as originally displaced shows their kinship and shared interests
­
with migrants/refugees ­
(Iveković 2015). Autochthony, according to Loraux, means that men

516
 Further on the politics of translation

were all born from a common mother, Athens’ soil, but have patrilineage through different
fathers. Women don’t enjoy it themselves, but partly transmit autochthony (to full-fledged
citizen sons) on condition that their own fathers be of a ‘high’ lineage. There is no denying –
and this is a digression from Loraux  – that for such an amount of androcentrism, you need
some anthropocentrism in the first place. It is women that disrupt the old law and order so as to
maintain a community of sharing. The fantasy of masculine self-generation has been generalized in
the construction of the nation. Self-generation and self-foundation, as an impossible dream
of self-sufficiency and absolute autonomy, is not only murderous, it is also suicidal, as i have
shown in my work (Iveković 2003a, 2003b).
Men will be self-born.
­ ​­

The constitutive and foundational condition

The aim of the self-born(e) and autochthonous is to bridge sexual duality: a dream of self-
generation. The mythical preference evidenced by Loraux shows that, a unique autochtho-
nous only-male lineage would be far preferred. This dream reorganizes the origin in order to
eliminate the others or any due to others in maintaining privileges and dominance. Myths
immobilize time, no historicity is accorded to the other: women are all ‘the same’, descending
from a ready-made woman ( but neither Athenian, nor citizen). Girls resemble their mothers
( boys are after their fathers) and belong to the female species. Loraux shows not only the
political role of partitioned reason, but also how one binary can be translated into another
through a ‘chain of equivalence’. The original couple ‘mother and father’ is replaced by
‘ father and fatherland’ in a territorial imaginary anticipating the ‘national’. The imaginary of
a masculine origin and essential male symbolic connection and claim to the land is a ­self-referential,
​­
self-founding and self-establishing universalization of the wild dream of self-origination: the
dominant can only descend of the same ( here, masculine). When it is revealed that the same
(the masculine) is born from the different (the feminine), this scandalous paradox is covered
by a different regime of discourse, a command. There are two divisive mythical events in Greek
self-representation according to Loraux: first, the separation of man( kind) and gods; second,
that of men and women – their becoming different species. In a digression from Loraux, may
i add that it also entails the separation between theory and practice? It is probable that the
latter separation starts from the Ancient Greeks, but my concern is that generally the sep-
aration between theory and practice, pertaining to the ‘western’ knowledge paradigm, is a
mechanism of policing and constraint exercised by epistemological elites more often than
not at the service of political elites too. There is a permanent process of differentiation and of
inferiorization of women and other subordinates. This requires a heavy politics of translation
­
(Iveković 2019). The second step is on-going and complex. It reconstructs a universe free of
women, linking up autochthony to procreative sexuality in a gender regime. Whoever comes
‘after the beginning’ is included as subordinate. The creation of women is part of the process
of taking distance from the origin, of separation, differentiation and evolution. For their so-
ciability, in patriarchal societies (in the case of India, this is all the more true of brahmanical
society), men have to separate from the other and join the same; while women are expected to
separate from the same (the mother and female company) – and join the other as subservient, if at all
they are to exist (Iveković 1993: 113–126). It can be concluded from Loraux but also from
other authors that it is women who finally separate men and gods. ‘Separating men from gods’ is a
patriarchal synonym for decadence and disaster, no conclusion of ours. It denotes the end of
unity of men and gods or, in monotheisms, the end of Paradise. According to Loraux, Athens
reconstructs in retrospect an a priori unquestionable prohibition of women’s citizenship.

517
Rada Ivekovic ´

Is this different from women’s condition in politics in general and in partition as brought
to light by Indian feminist scholars? Here too, the foundation of institutions inhabits the
move that excludes/subordinates women. In her book, Butalia shows the complex intersec-
tions of conditioning, re-foundational exclusions in the partition of ( British) India ( Butalia
1998): partition itself was foundational of the new nation(s). The price for a ll- encompassing
nationhood in the case of India was its double amputation of the feminine: the ejection of
territories and of parts of the population seen as feminine; as well as the deletion of women-
folk. The hunt on women in partition is well documented in Butalia’s as well as in Menon’s-
Bhasin’s (1998) books. The aim of the nation ‘ justifies’ massacres of women, retaliating for
‘ lost’ territories seen as feminine, as motherland.
The ‘masculinization’ of the world has gone a step further since the contemporary turn
of globalization: the ‘ feminine’ is now perceived as a concentration of poverty, insufficiency,
insecurity, destabilization, as a threat to defuse or eliminate in advance. Brutal, militarized
and masculinized ‘civilizations’ in warfare, have now cut themselves from any ‘ feminine’ el-
ement involving asylum or alternative (Zajović et al. 2015), and have condemned themselves
to suicide through the elimination of others (women, immigrants), in some cases elimination
even from sight (women under burqa; remote shantytowns). Eliminating others nowadays tar-
gets migrants too.
According to Esther Cohen (Cohen 2004), women’s ancient healing and caring expertise –
in Europe principally at Renaissance – was seen as dangerous power and as a lower kind of
knowledge ( Ehrenreich and English 1985). This is a division of reason, whereby the (male)
philosopher’s reason is associated with power. Witches were persecuted in Europe and in
the colonies (notwithstanding Enlightenment and Rationalism). With other debased groups,
they were seen as irrational, domesticated at best.

Translating gender, ethnic or national violence

Making patriarchy foundational is not an affair of the past ‘once for all’, or one that concerns
women only. It is a (re-)foundational
­­ ​­ ­ process persisting in time, adaptable to changing con-
ditions. ‘Migrants’
­ (Iveković
­ 2016), ‘ foreigners’, ‘Muslims’, etc., will follow suit and track
exclusion pattern or the subordinate inclusion of women. This process involves a ‘ justifying’
translation of the constructed hierarchies, addressed to different publics but also of different
political narratives.
The debate about the ‘Moslem Scarf ’ worn by some girls in French schools produced
much confusion around the French concept of secularism, which is historically at the core of
the construction of the nation and of the state. It concerns gender, ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’, class. In
patriarchy, secularism has a hidden agenda on sexuality because the inequality of women is
constitutive (women, children, the dependent and groups considered as inassimilable or not
corresponding to the universal pattern). In order to avoid a split of reason ( partage de la raison)
it is useful seeing the link between religion and politics, and the theological origin of state
secularism (and of laïcité)7 inasmuch they are the secularization of a divine concept – sovereignty
​­
itself ( Bhargava 1998; Esposito 1998; Agamben 2002; Schmitt 2002). The sphere of this is
law itself. Through it the state and its elites self-establish themselves as sovereign exceptions
to the very law they proclaim. It is also they who provide the prevailing translation proto-
col, namely, ‘Sovereignty as the creation of law, i.e. its non-legal origin, and the law as a
legitimating a posteriori of the illegality that constituted it: the law of exception’ ( Esposito
2002: 86). There is indeed no law without exceptions. This is why ‘ laïcization’ fails: whereas
universal projects such as the ‘republic’, ‘democracy’ have been de-legitimized together with

518
 Further on the politics of translation

utopias, insistent particularistic/identitarian/communitarian claims are supported by a gen-

eral condescendence to cultural or religious essentialisms (Menon 2004). Here comes the
confusion about the ‘Islamic veil’: the veil is a universal sign of the subordination of women
( Nasrin 2007: 62– 63), but it may also claim ‘recognition’ and agency, personal or collective.
It is used for opposite arguments, as has been the case in Turkey, Iran or France. The mis-
understanding lies in bad translation and bad negotiation of the relationship between the uni-
versal and the particular, and not in the particular (‘culture’, ‘religion’, ‘race’) itself, or even
in the universal(s) ( Balibar 1997: 419– 454, 2016). Religion may attempt to animate all those
excluded from political agency and from effective citizenship. This prevails where active
citizenship is fading away (through a general depoliticization) and where an important part
of the economically active population is without political rights because foreign: it is now
citizens (nationals)
­ vs. foreigners (non-nationals).
­­ ​­
As in the Yugoslav conflict over the 1990s, gender issues in France are now often instru-
mentalized in public discourse for other political purposes, but are otherwise neglected. The
scarf issue, regarding democracy and equality, concerns the immigrants or their descendants.
Secularism and sexuality are difficult to link, although their connection defines the nation.
For Balibar, gender is the missing link in the relationship between cosmopolitanism and
secularism in view of democracy ( Balibar 2011: 6–25, 2012). I call that missing link a political
operator. As from a 2004 law, no one under 18 was to be admitted to a public school wearing
an ‘ostentatious religious sign’: practically, it concerned mainly Muslim girls. Many were
withdrawn from public schools.8 Everyone is right here, with opposite arguments.9 The mat-
ter concerns ‘migrants’ and populations of foreign origin too.
The scarf is worn for diverse reasons. Reshuffling a ‘new tradition’ doesn’t represent a
breach with modernity ( Urvoy 2006). Some of those girls who often face everyday racism
would be looking for their cultural ‘roots’ (often, daughters, not the mothers, wear scarves).
French universalism makes it difficult to identify explicit discrimination. It also makes im-
possible the disentanglement of conflicting patriarchies that cooperate in infantilizing girls and
women and subordinate them to the family, the community, the religion and the state.
The 1905 ‘Law of separation between the State and the Churches’, known in France as
‘the law on laïcité’, was the end of a long struggle between the state and the Church over
land property and political power. Education had been the first to be secularized in ending
the ancien régime. Religion was relegated to the private sphere for everyone because of the
presence of Protestants and Jews among Catholics, ending a long series of religious wars. Sec-
ularization followed different courses elsewhere. The national state, secular within Europe, is
colonial elsewhere ( Kristeva 1991; Bessis 2002). Laïcité, which is not atheism, allows for the
nation’s unification regardless of religious, class or other differences because it keeps religious
or ethnic manifestations private and separate from the state and the nation, and invisible in
the sphere of the latter in the case of France. It is therefore thanks to laïcité and in its name that
geographical conquests were possible, as a promise of equality to all regardless of their faith
or gender. Needless to say that it never kept its promise. Laïcité was meant as the equal right
to religious cult and its protection by the state when practised in private. Catholicism gave
much of its colouring to such secularism: state celebrations are mainly Christian holidays.
Laïcité is only possible as the flipside of monotheism, as shown by Jean-Luc Nancy ( Nancy
2004, 2005).
The opposition ­citizens-non-citizens
­​­­ ​­ is established. The inscription into the system requires
the previous ethnicization and atomization of particular interests, claimed by the nation. It necessitates
a good amount of recasting women according to community, state and other political in-
terest (Sangari 2001; Sangari and Vaid 1990). How to inscribe into the nation a population whose

519
Rada Ivekovic ´

exclusion from it was the very condition of its integration? That was the case in the Americas.
Settlers’ nations were paradoxically formed without the people as political agency (the local
indigenous population), either exterminated or because they were surviving as subdued.
The problem seems at first glance easier in the case of contemporary France – as the ex-
clusion of the population to be now included in the nation was not the direct condition of
the constitution of the nation at the French Revolution. There were no Maghrebian, colonial
immigrants in mainland France then. But it is wealth from the colonies that fed European
capitalism and prosperity, nurtured the Revolution and the nation state.
There is no reversal of history: the only way to include this population, whose presence in
Europe is a fait accompli, is to open borders and a public debate. This is starting very painfully.
France has not benefited, like the UK, from a globalized language to export this debate while
leaving it low-key within its own space.10 This debate has to relate not only to the definition
of the French nation, but also to the integration of Europe, and the future of immigration.
The pact of secularism needs to be reconsidered. The laïcité law prohibiting ‘ostentatious
religious signs’ in order to forbid the veil worn by Muslim girls merely stops the debate and
transforms a historic political problem into a false religious question. Gender is politically
central here, though unrecognized.
At a time (2018) when both France and Europe need to be redefined, gender and the rela-
tionship to ‘others’ will have to be reconsidered. This requires a definite politics of translation.
It is a possible new beginning for a new foundation (Iveković 2005a: ­81–95) ​­ ­11. In bad trans-
lation, women are usually made instrumental to someone else’s stake in power politics. Due
proportion being observed, the French condition of women is comparable to other examples
that we randomly picture hereafter.
Mukhtar Mai was gang raped in a Pakistani village allegedly upon the ruling of the lo-
cal jirga in punishment… to her brother who had been seen in the company of a woman he
‘shouldn’t have been approaching’. His sister was the instrument of a verdict aiming him (Mai
2006; Sidwa 2006: 28). Public, state, national or regional politics, all have one basic common
pattern ( however diversely declined ( Passerini 1999)). Families, communities and states over-
look sexual and gendered violence, constitutive of their power, except when they can use it
towards their aims. In that sense, Mai’s case is neither exceptional nor regional.
Guriya’s is an Indian example: she found herself with two husbands, having been married
to a relative of the first by her family, after the first spouse was thought to either have been
killed in the Kargil War or to have deserted to Pakistan. Having been released, he returned
in 2004 a local hero. The village panchayat facing TV cameras ordered her back to her first
husband against her will, although already pregnant with the second. Private drama became
public humiliation. She died of that trauma, probed for patriotic and communal feelings,
symbolizing a larger social row.12
Another case: Imrana (India) was raped by her father-in-law in the absence of her husband.
The panchayat invalidated her marriage, because the father’s reason must prevail over the son’s.13
Once again, the concerned person wasn’t consulted. Meanwhile, since the well-known case
of the multiple rape with killing of a medical student in 2012 in Delhi, many more depressing
narratives have come to be known about all pervasive depreciation of women and violence to
them. Different patriarchies reach mutual understanding and translation.
Still another case of extreme violence happened in France: actress and a public figure,
Marie Trintignant was murdered in 2003 by her partner, singer Bertrand Cantat ( popular
rock band ‘Noir Désir’), in a hotel room in Lithuania. He was convicted in Vilnius to eight
years in prison, but was transferred to a French prison after one year. His penalty alleviated,
he was released on parole in 2007. A sort of holy discretion developed around him. The

520
 Further on the politics of translation

murder is presented in public discourse as his tragedy. A journalist titles his editorial ‘Elegy’
(Sabatier 2005: 4). Some kind of public compassion for the assassin is maintained. Articles
wrote about how much he must have loved her for hitting her so hard as to have killed her,
or how she must have provoked him. He lost her, they said, in a tragic incident. One would
have wished this outstanding case, which covers so much ignored domestic violence against
women ( Jaspard & ENVEFF 2003) and children, to have resulted in a thorough debate and
radical legal measures. In Spain, for example, Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s
government, on comparable matters, had made it into a nationwide issue and violence against
women has since become publicly denounced. Under the ‘tragedy’ label sympathetic to the
assassin minimizing general violence against women and against Trintignant in particular,
the victim’s and the murderer’s families suddenly gained the same level of respectability.
There are demands that Cantat should be left alone from the public gaze. The undeniable
right to be left alone,14 however, was not an issue when, after the transfer to a French prison,
the group Noir Désir got permission to work together again. The aim was now quick reha-
bilitation, burying and overlooking the facts. That the crime is symbolic of what happens
to many women every day is no concern to the rehabilitation party. The band functions as a
fraternity against all odds. His friends give an idealized picture of Cantat:

We are not allowed to bring him anything. (…) His life is that of a normal detainee, not
at all that of political crooks. Last time we saw him he said he could concentrate again
on a book, on a bit of writing.
(Sabatier 2005: 4)

It is tragedy, not a crime, and the culprit is a victim! Then his wife (there is a wife), who
supported him all along, commits suicide while he sleeps unaware. Even that is depicted as
a blow to him in the media. About the ‘tragedy’, his companions declare: ‘All sorts of things
have been said about how Bertrand never came out of his hotel room in Vilnius during the
shooting of the TV movie in which Marie Trintignant played. In fact, he was working’
( Barthe 2005: 27). Diluting proceeds: ‘Bertrand is like anyone else, capable of the best and of the
worst. That never put into question what we had achieved before’ (Ibid., ­ emphasis added,
Barthe 2005: 27). Are we all potential murderers, capable of beating up a woman to death?
Any human is entitled to a chance. What seems revolting here is – how little is thought
of violence against women, of murders on a daily basis of which Trintignant’s tragedy (not ­
Cantat’s) is an emblematic example. The case, though it became a popular feuilleton, never
became symbolic, in France, of the plight of battered and assassinated women, of sexual or
gendered violence. Indignation was not raised to the political level it deserves. Violence
towards women needs translating into some meaningful language. Only the #MeToo and
#BalanceTonPorc movements are now bringing up that issue in public, with all the ambiva-
lence they carry. All these cases became public feuilletons.
Such examples draw on an ancient patriarchal culture’s sacrificial pattern, and specifically on
the ‘western’ idea of a necessary aesthetic sacrifice. Aesthetics sublimates ethics. Artistic creation
supposedly requires sacrificing the other or, more exactly, the third, i.e. the one who is not
even a co- subject in interaction, as the art recipient would be. Property and propriety of a
man is damaged when his woman is hurt. The paradigmatic western example is the Orpheus
myth. In loosing Eurydice, Orpheus suffered a terrible tragedy that however allowed him to
sing for posterity and to become famous. He honoured Eurydice, obviously best when dead, in
singing. But there is no narration of her loss. A loss of life ( Theweleit 1977/78). The universal
rewards through its confirmation of sameness, the hegemonic group.

521
Rada Ivekovic ´

An example of twisted logic of this kind is that of male/community ‘ honour’ embodied

in women, where the latter represent the negative and damaged bodily frontier between
two opposed communities or ‘ identities’. It was seen in the partition of British India or of
Yugoslavia, where the bodily integrity of ‘our’ women (Mostov 1995, 2000), independently
of their will, is made to represent the integrity and the ‘ honour’ of the family, community,
nation. Sometimes the injured portion of the group felt as ‘own’ by those who are subjects
and agents in it (men) – has to be amputated. In renewal through self- sacrifice, the collec-
tivity removes its spoilt part ( kills its women). Exit the women’s suffering. Men, directly
identifiable with the community – by sacrificing their ‘own flesh and blood’ – invest into
it at the highest (universal) level. That investment rewards them in return. The sacrificed
(women), who aren’t subjects in this, will completely disappear absorbed by that ‘ higher’
office, transcendence. Meanwhile, men will suffer sacrifice symbolically in the name of the
whole community that they alone represent. For the sacrifice to be rewarding, there must be
a direct connection between the particular and the universal interest that, in the case of the
dominant, are identical. There is no such thing for the subordinate (Iveković 2005b). That
similar examples are not unbelievable and do happen in the West too, is obvious from the
fact that the rejection of ‘others’ (refugees, immigrants, ( post)colonial populations, the poor,
the other nation or ethnic groups, Muslims, other religions etc.) is operated according to the
historically efficient mechanism of subordinating, disciplining or rejecting women in patri-
archies. Subordinating women is part of the mechanisms subordinating other groups too.

Violence against women and the asymmetry of gender

The above were individual cases. But cases of mass violence to women confirm this logic, and
show the link between the violence of individuals and the systemic, foundational violence
to women, that is constitutive of the body political; between ‘small’ and ‘ big scale’ violence.
Violence is efficient through its symbolic power, directed to the enemy (to its meritorious,
male, community), more than through its physical effects, considered collateral. The di-
lemma violence/non-violence remains foundational. This is why, as was visible in the case
of Bosnia-and-Herzegovina during the 1990s’ war, the discourse on rape is as important a
war weapon as rape itself. The conflict continues through rape narratives. Victims were not
heard, in clear cases of différend ( Lyotard 1983), when the sense of the one has no wording in
the language of the other who also pre-establishes the framework ( Nāgārjuna 2002).
The same, identical to itself, will not yield and cannot loose. It will remove others from
its own origin and recognize no debt. Absolute solitude is the cost of absolute sovereignty,
which ultimately proves suicidal. Translated politically, as a minimum the citizenship of
women is impeded in patriarchal societies regardless of universalistic views. It implies the
complicity in violence against women at all levels. Between physical violence against women
and not allowing them full citizenship in spite of declarations, there is a gradation. Democ-
racy can be structured with that inequality, gender or caste, inherent and even conditional
to it. The intrinsic connection between ‘small scale’ domestic violence and ‘ big scale’ war violence
makes sense if gender is understood as foundational, and gender inequality as its variety adopted
historically ( Falquet 1997: 129–160). Loraux described its formidable mechanism. The cases
of working single women ostracized, abused, attacked or killed in Algeria, described by
Dalila ­Iamarene-Djerbal
​­ ­­ ​­
in an Algerian journal (Iamerene-Djerbal 2006: ­11–40)​­ are ex-
amples,15 but it happens in many places. The lurid case of professor Papiya Ghosh savagely
murdered in Patna ( India) in December 2006 may well be illustrating this. According to
Amrit Srinivasan:

522
 Further on the politics of translation

‘If, as he [Manu, the mythical lawmaker] argues, the burden of feminine transgression falls
on the collective, then in Ambedkar’s India, the justice system must work hard to protect
women as citizens, not just family members. (…) An authentic whistle-blower to tradition
and its inherent anti-democratic intention, the single woman remains a soft target for enemies
of the Constitution’. (Srinivasan 2006: 28; see Moitra 1996). Women are less protected by the
state even as there are more protectionist laws concerning them. Other groups are similarly
excluded from the practice of democracy and civility, beyond the universalistic mantra.16
There is a real and symbolic asymmetry of genders. Women’s weakness in law is constitu-
tive of the legal system. The law bears the stamp of the dominant group (under the gender
aspect, elite men), and women are exceptions within it. When some claim that women are
always victims (which is often true, but logically fallacious), we claim the status of excep-
tion for them, thus maintaining the universal system subordinating them. That ‘women are
“always”’ (or often) victims is inbuilt into the legal system and into the imaginary of which the
subordinate inclusion (not the exclusion) is the condition, and the law can’t deal with that. The
status and condition of women has improved by the twenty-first century in many ways. But
being constitutive, the inequality of and violence to women encounters staunch support from
masculinist mainstream establishments, and much of the progress is followed by backlashes
and high prices paid by women around the world.
A hunt on women has been unleashed, in concordant domestic and international impunity
­
(Kovačević et al. 2011: 10–182). The appropriation of women by men is not the ‘privilege’ of
a country, it is part of patriarchal cultures to various degrees. In 2014, 276 schoolgirls were
kidnapped in Nigeria. Weeks later, another 60 or so women and girls were abducted. The
kidnapping of children and women has been a practice not only in war-ridden societies.
Feminicide in Mexico is a murky chapter in women’s history ( Falquet 2014). Rape is a regular
aspect of war (among other techniques), but rape is also tolerated in peacetime everywhere.
In western/northern countries that see themselves as civilized, parallel to the improvement
of women’s human rights, there is erosion of civic behaviour and of solidarity to women,
but also to immigrants, to the poor, to ‘Moslems’, especially since the gradual dismantle-
ment of the welfare state. The highest price for this undeniable global tendency is paid
by women, migrant populations, the marginalized, subalternized, racialized and excluded
groups (ethnic, religious, racial, or others). This is not a side- effect of social or political life,
but its core.

Conclusion
Every state privileges the system of rule and exception it is based on codifying its translation
into public narratives. But translation can help deconstruct the exception- sovereignty para-
digm. Women practise it daily through their mediation in welcoming associations.
After the Yugoslav or Rwandan 1990s wars, women ( Kovačević et al. 2011) have trans-
lated the relationship between domestic, state violence and war (Stojanović et  al. 2013).
But nationalisms resulting from such wars are now mushrooming everywhere. Against
the fragmentation of globalization, universality is more easily associated with power, and
women aren’t its co-carriers. Yet they are often the best negotiators/translators in view of
­
peace (Women’s Feminist ­Anti-militarist
​­ activity 1991). From ‘ inner displaced’, women became
also outer displaced, refugees, participating in migrating labour, war and eco- system exiles.
To understand the connection between women (who run the welcoming associations) and
migrants – a relation needing further exploring that we recommend – one needs to see how
violence is constitutive. Violence to migrants, asylum seekers and refugees is also derived

523
Rada Ivekovic ´

from the gender pattern. Little translation is needed between women and migrants, but much
more will be needed to include both within a construct that was established upon their omis-
sion. It will depend on the politics of translation involved.

Further reading
Balibar, E. (2016) Des universels. Paris: Galilée.
Balibar sees universalisms as multiple, competing and alternative to each other.
Schott, R. M. and Klercke, K. (eds.) (2007) Philosophy on the Border. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum.
The border being a place of translation par excellence, this book deals with translation between philos-
ophy and other disciplines, citizens and non- citizens, ethics and politics, responsibility and war within
the global order.
Kofman, S. (1982) Le respect des femmes (Kant et Rousseau). Paris: Galilée.
Kofman disclosed and criticized the gender aspect, besides the ethnic one, of the subject in Kant.
Konstantinović, R. (1981) Filosofija palanke. Belgrade: Nolit.
‘Philosophy of the Periphery’, important book theorizing the prematurely arrested and univocally
translated narratives of (im)mature Modernity (national, etc.) producing violence.
Sakai, N. and Solomon, J. (eds.) (2006) Translation, Biopolitics, Colonial Difference ( Traces 4). Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press.
The book addresses problems and dynamics of translation related to diverse political configurations
within globalization.

Notes
1 The translation of the term partage de la raison, ‘the “partage” of reason’, is one of those ‘untranslatables’
in English, so i prefer to keep the French original. ‘Partage’ means two opposite things in French,
both sharing ( putting in common) and separating. It is this simultaneous double edge in ­one-and-the-
­​­­ ­​­­ ​
same meaning that gives it its force. Reason is that which is largely shared by all (albeit unequally),
but reasons are also plural and separate, for different purposes and held by distinct agencies.
2 Palanka denotes a spiritual and political condition of an interstice or undecided situation, in Kon-
stantinović’s examples often somewhere between preindustrial rurality and urban modernity.
Palanka being a point zero, it is potentiality itself. In a period of palanka, we can fear violence but
we can also avoid it, since nothing is decided yet. Palanka is replete with possibilities.
3 My translation ( R.I.) in all citations.
4 ‘Black’: in the French language i have usually been writing in, ‘noir’ is ethically and politically
correct, including to the concerned. I don’t have in mind the USA.
5 My comments on Loraux can also be found as ‘Gender as a Form of Divided Reason’ in Schott and
Klercke (2007).
­
6 In La cité divisée (1997) Loraux shows how the city, in its political dimension, is established upon –
and on the condition of – the exclusion of women from the political sphere.
7 For the purpose of this paper we shall take laïcité and secularism as near- synonyms, which historically
they are not.
8 Private and religious schools are exempt from this requirement.
9 In 2010 a law was passed prohibiting the veiling of one’s face. There have been hardly a few cases
in France, but the debate became highly exasperated. Always showing openly one’s face in public
had previously been merely self-u nderstood. Once spelled out, given the historic context, it now
concerns mainly Muslim women and fuels the postcolonial social conflict.

11 The segment on the scarf episode in France is drawn on my paper ‘Nationhood and Women’
(Iveković
­ 2005a); a version was published as ‘The Veil in France: Secularism, Nation, Women’
(Iveković
­ 2004), here somewhat adapted.
12 ‘Gudiya’,
­ ‘Kargil
­ War victim’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gudiya,_Kargil_war_victim
­ ­ ­ (Wikipedia)
­

524
 Further on the politics of translation

References
Agamben, G. (2002) Homo sacer, trans. into French by Raiola, M. Paris: Seuil.
Andreani, M. (2005) ‘The Body as a Borderline Phenomenon. A Re-reading of the Pandora Myth’,
in ­Lorek-Jezińska
​­ E. and Więckowska, K. (eds.), Corporeal Inscriptions: Representations of the Body in
Cultural and Literary Texts and Practices. Toruń: Uniwerzytet Mikołaja Kopernika, pp. 85–94. ­ ­ ​­
Bagchi, J. and Dasgupta, S. (eds.) (2003) The Trauma and the Triumph. Kolkata: Stree Publ.
Balibar, E. (1997) ‘Les universels’, in Balibar, E. (ed.), La crainte des masses. Paris: Galilée, pp. 419–454. ­ ­ ​­
Balibar, E. (2011) ‘Cosmopolitanism and Secularism: Controversial Legacies and Prospective Interro-
gations’, Grey Room, 44, pp. 6–25.
­ ­ ​­
Balibar, E. (2012) Saeculum. Culture, religion, idéologie. Paris: Galilée.
Balibar, E. (2016) Des universels. Paris: Galilée.
Balibar, E. (2018) ‘Avec les “Rosa Parks”, contre le racisme d’Etat’. Available online: https://www.liberation.
fr/debats/2018/11/25/avec-les-rosa-parks-contre-le-racisme-d-etat_1694192.
­ ­ ­ ­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ​­
Barthe, D. (2005) ‘L’éphémère résurrection de Noir Désir’, Le Monde, 16 September.
Bessis, S. (2002) L’Occident et les autres. Paris: La Découverte.
Bhargava, R. (ed.) (1998), Secularism and Its Critics. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Butalia, U. (1998) The Other Side of Silence. Voices from the Partition of India. New Delhi: Viking.
Butler, J. (2004) ‘Contre la violence éthique/Against Ethical Violence’, Rue Descartes, 2004(3–4), ­­ ​­ ­45–46. ​­
Coetzee, J. M. (1998) Boyhood: A Memoir. New York City: Vintage.
Coetzee, J. M. (2000) Disgrace. New York City: Vintage.
Coetzee, J. M. (2003) Youth. New York City: Vintage.
Cohen, E. (2004) Le corps du diable: Philosophes et sorcières à la Renaissance, trans. Bradu, F., preface Tra-
verso, E. Paris: Léo Scheer-Lignes.
Ehrenrajch, B. and English, D. (1985) Witches, Midwives and Nurses: History of Women Healers. New
York: The Feminist Press.
Esposito, R. (1998) Communitas. Origine e destino della comunità. Torino: Einaudi.
Esposito, R. (2002) Immunitas. Protezione e negazione della vita. Torino: Einaudi.
Falquet, J. (1997) ‘Guerre de basse intensité contre les femmes? La violence domestique comme torture,
réflexions sur la violence comme système à partir du cas salvadorien’, Nouvelles Questions Féministes,
­ ­ ​­
18. Available online : http://www.reseau-terra.eu/article541.html. ­
Falquet, J. (2014), ‘Des assassinats de Ciudad Juárez au phénomène des féminicides: de nouvelles
formes de violences contre les femmes?’ Contretemps, 7. Available online: http://www.contretemps.
eu/interventions/assassinats-ciudad-juárez-phénomène-féminicides-nouvelles-formes-violences-
­ ­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​­­ ­​
­­contre-femm.
​­
Héritier, F. (1996) Masculin, Féminin. La pensée de la différence. Paris: O. Jacob.
Iamarene-Djerbal, D. (2006) ‘Affaire de Hassi Messaoud’. Naqd, 22/23, ­ pp. 11–40.
­ ­ ​­
Iveković, R. (1993) ‘Women, Nationalism and War: ‘“Make Love Not War”’, Hypatia, Special Cluster
on Eastern European Feminism, 8(4), ­ pp. 113–126.
­ ­ ​­
Iveković, R. (1995), La Balcanizzazione della ragione. Rome: Manifestolibri.
Iveković, R. (2003a) Le sexe de la nation. Paris: Léo Scheer.
Iveković, R. (2003b) Dame-Nation. Nation et différence des sexes. Ravenna: Longo.
Iveković, R. (2003c) ‘Reconnaître ou non le partage de la raison?’, Transeuropéennes, 23, pp. 259–278. ­ ­ ​­
Iveković, R. (2004), ‘The Veil in France: Secularism, Nation, Women’, Economic and Political Weekly,
Bombay, 13 March.
Iveković, R. (2005a) ‘Nationhood and Women’, in Sharma, M. and Das, S. (eds.), Defining Dignity. An
Anthology of Dreams, Hopes and Struggles. New Delhi: World Dignity Forum-Heinrich Böll Foun-
dation, pp. 81–95.
­ ­ ​­

525
Rada Ivekovic ´

Iveković, R. (2005b) Captive Gender. Ethnic Stereotypes & Cultural Boundaries. Delhi: Women Unlimited.
Iveković, R. (2007) ‘Du partage de la raison. De la différence des sexes dans la construction de la nation’,
in Koudhai, B. (ed.), Kairouan: Le Gai savoir, Faculté des lettres et SH, pp. 45–55.
Iveković, R. (2010) ‘Subjectivation, traduction, justice cognitive’, Rue Descartes, 67, pp. 43–50.
­ ­ ​­
Iveković, R. (2014) L'éloquence tempérée du Bouddha. Souverainetés et dépossession de soi. Paris: Klincksieck.
Iveković, R. (2015) Les Citoyens manquants. Marseille: Al Dante.
Iveković, R. (2016) ­Réfugié-e-s. ­​­­ ​­ Les jetables. Paris: Al Dante.
Iveković, R. (2017) ‘Philosophie politique: Différence des sexes et partage de la raison’, Faces de Eva.
Estudos sobre a mulher, 38, pp. 107–130.
­ ­ ​­
Iveković, R. (2019) Politiques de la traduction. Paris: T ERRA-HN. Available online: http://www.re-
seau-terra.eu/IMG/pdf/-5.pdf, series ‘Alterego’.
Jaspard, M. and Enveff (2003) Les violences envers les femmes en France: une enquête nationale. Paris: La
documentation française.
Kofman, S. (1982) Le respect des femmes (Kant et Rousseau). Paris: Galilée.
Kofman, S. (2000) Socrates: Fictions of a Philosopher. London: Athlone Press.
Konstantinović, R. (1981) Filosofija palanke. Belgrade: Nolit.
Kovačević, L., Perković, M. and Zajović, S. (eds.) (2011) Ženski sud. Feministički pristup pravdi. Belgrade:
­
Žene u crnom, Available at http://zenskisud.org/en/index.html; ­ ­ ­ ­ ­
http://zenskisud.org/en/filmovi.
html. Belgrade: Women in Black, http://zeneucrnom.org/index.php?lang=en.
Kristeva, J. (1991) Etrangers à ­nous-mêmes. ​­ Paris. Flammarion.
Laclau, E. (1999/2000) ‘La démocratie et la question du pouvoir’, Transeuropéennes, 17, paragraph 82ff.
Laclau, E. (2005) On Populist Reason. London: Verso.
Lalita, K., Kannabiran, V., Melkote, R. and others (1990) ‘We Were Making History…’: Life Stories of
Women in the Telangana People’s Struggle. London: Zed Books.
Loraux, N. (1990) Les enfants d’Athéna. Idées athéniennes sur la citoyenneté et la division des sexes. Paris: La
Découverte.
Loraux, N. (1997) La cité divisée. L’oubli dans la mémoire d’Athènes. Paris: ­Payot-Rivages.
​­
Lyotard, J. F. (1983) Le Différend. Paris: Minuit.
Mai, M. (2006) In the Name of Honour. London: Virago Books.
Maillard, C. (1993) El crimen perfecto. Aproximación a la estética india. Madrid: Tecnos.
Maillard, C. (1998) La razón estética. Barcelona: Laertes.
Maillard, C. (2001) Filosofía en los dias criticos. Diarios 1996–1998. Valencia: Pre-Textos.
­ ​­
Meer, F. (2001) Prison Diary. One hundred and thirteen days 1976. Cape Town: Kwela Books.
Menon, R. and Bhasin, K. (1998) Borders & Boundaries. Women in India’s Partition. New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press.
Menon, N. (2004) Recovering Subversion. Feminist Politics Beyond the Law. Chicago and Delhi: University
of Illinois Press and Permanent Black.
Milčinski, M. (2017) ‘The End of Violence: An Illusion or a Feasible Aim?’, in Cicovacki, P. and Hess,
K. (eds.),
­ Nonviolence as a Way of Life: History, Theory, Practice. Delhi: M. Banarsidass, pp. 583–595.
­ ­ ​­
Moitra, S. (1988) ‘Alternative Standpoints. At the Foundation and Culmination of Kalidas Bhattacha-
ryya’s Philosophy’, in Sengupta, P.K. (ed.) Freedom, Transcendence and Identity. Essays in the Memory of
Professor Kalidas Bhattacharyya. New Delhi: ICPR-Motilal Banarsidass.
Moitra, S. (ed.) (1996) Women Heritage and Violence. Calcutta: Papyrus.
Moitra, S. (2002) Feminist Thought: Androcentrism, Communication and Objectivity. New Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal.
Mostov, J. (1995) ‘“Our Women”/“Their Women”: Symbolic Boundaries, Territorial Markers and
Violence in the Balkans’, Peace and Change, 20(4). ­
Mostov, J. (2000) ’Sexing the Nation/ Desexing the Body’, in Mayer, T. (ed.), Gender Ironies of Nation-
alism: Sexing the Nation. New York: Routledge.
Mouffe, C. (2018) Pour un populisme de gauche. Paris: Albin Michel.
Nāgārjuna (2002) ­ Stances du milieu par excellence: (Madhyamaka-kārikās). French trans. and commentaries
by Bugault, G. Paris: Gallimard.
Nancy, ­J-L.​­ (2004)
­ ‘Laïcité
­ monothéiste’, Le Monde, 01 January.
Nancy, ­J-L. ​­ (2005)
­ Déconstruction du christianisme 1, La Déclosion. Paris: Galilée.
Nasrin, Taslima (2007) ‘Let’s burn the burqa’, Outlook N˚22.
No author, ‘Always a Victim’, Editorial (2006: 18), The Telegraph, XXIV(173), Kolkata, 28 December.
Passerini, L. (1999) L’Europa e l’amore. Bologna: Il Saggiatore.

526
 Further on the politics of translation

Płonowska Ziarek, E. (2001) An Ethics of Dissensus. Postmodernity, Feminism and the Politics of Radical
Democracy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Sabatier, P. (2005) ‘Elégie’, Libération, 13 September.
Said, E. (1979) Orientalism. New York: Vintage.
Said, E. (1994) Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage.
Sakai, N. (2010) ‘Theory and Asian Humanity: On the Question of Humanitas and Anthropos’, Post-
colonial Studies, 13(4), ­ pp. 441–464.
­ ­ ​­
Sakai, N. (2011) ‘Theory and the West: On the Question of Humanitas and Anthropos’, Transeuropéennes.
­ ­ ­ ­ ­
Available online: http://www.transeuropeennes.eu/en/articles/316/Theory_and_the_West/Sakai. ­
Sakai, N. (2013) ‘The Microphysics of Comparison. Towards the Dislocation of the West’, Translate,
6, in ­eipcp-translate,
​­ eine kommunalität, die nicht sprechen kann: europa in übersetzung. Available online:
http://eipcp.net/transversal/0613/sakai1/en/#_ednref1.
­ ­ ­ ­ ­
Sangari, K. (2001) Politics of the Possible: Essays on Gender, History, Narratives, Colonial English. Delhi:
Manohar.
Sangari, K. and Vaid, S. (eds.) (1990) Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History. New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press.
Schmitt, C. (2002) Le Léviathan dans la doctrine de l’Etat de Thomas Hobbes. Sens et échec d’un symbole
politique. French trans. Trierweiler, D., preface Balibar, E. Paris: Seuil.
Schott, R. M. (2003) Discovering Feminist Philosophy: Knowledge Ethics Politics. Lanham, MD: Rowman
and Littlefield.
Schott, R. M. (2004) Cognition and Eros. A Critique of the Kantian Paradigm. University Park: Pennsyl-
vania State University Press.
Schott, R. M. and Klercke, K. (eds.) (2007), Philosophy on the Border. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum.
Sidwa, B. (2006) ‘Writing Her Wrong’, Tehelka, 30 December.
Spivak, G. (1999) A Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Cambridge
MA: Harvard University Press.
Spivak, G. (2004) ‘Ethics and Politics in Tagore, Coetzee, and Certain Scenes of Teaching’, Diacritics,
32, pp. 3–4.
­ ­ ​­
Srinivasan, A. (2006) ‘Papiya’s Crime’, The Times of India ( Times International), 18 December.
Theweleit, K. (1977/78)
­ ­ Männerphantasien 1–2.
­ ​­ Frankfurt a.M./Basel:
­ Verlag Roter-Stern.
­ ​­
Urvoy, D. (2006) Histoire de la pensée arabe et islamique. Paris: Seuil.
Varikas, E. (2006) Penser le sexe et le genre. Paris: PUF.
Vega, C. (2003) ‘Interroger le féminisme: action, violence, gouvernemantalité’, Multitudes, 12,
­ ­
pp. 49–60.​­
Weil, S. (1947) La Pesanteur et la Grâce. Paris: Plon.
Stojanović, S., Zajović, S. and Urošević, M. (eds.) (2013) Women’s Tribunal and a Feminist Approach
to Justice: Women for Peace. Belgrade: Women in Black. Available online: http://zeneucrnom.org/
index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=19&Itemid=12 http://zenskisud.org/
­ ­
2013.html.
Women’s Feminist ­Anti-militarist
​­ activity (1991), Belgrade: Women in Black. Available online: http://
zeneucrnom.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=3&Itemid=5;
­
Zajović, S., Duhaček, D. and Iveković, R. (2015) Ženski sud: o procesu organizovanja. Belgrade: Žene u
crnom.

527
 Conclusion
Paradoxes at the intersection of
translation and globalization

Dionysios Kapsaskis

In bringing together chapters written from various disciplinary perspectives, this handbook
has sought to highlight the diversity of themes and concerns that emerge at the intersection
of translation and globalization. This variety is not only conceptual; it is also discursive, and
includes different accounts of how translation as process and practice, and globalization as an
evolving historical condition, have shaped and continue to shape each other. While a critical
and transnational understanding informs all the writing in the volume, individual chapters
tell different stories about how translation has enabled globalization, and how globalization
has affected translation, historically and in the current moment.
The book’s organization in different parts  – concepts, people, culture, economics and
politics – indicates the very broad range of empirical and theoretical fields that are concerned
by the t ranslation – g lobalization interrelation. However, other cross- sections are possible.
If we use translation as a lens through which to view social and cultural life, but also if we
consider translation self-reflectively as interlingual/intercultural practice and as overarching
metaphor, a series of paradoxes emerge.

Translation, a technology of globalization

Translation is conterminous with technology both in the sense that it always implies ‘a tech-
nical infrastructure of production and transmission’ (Cronin 2003: 26), and in the sense
that it is itself a tool for building specific types of relations between linguistically dissimilar
groups. The enduring metaphor of translation as a bridge is telling of the social awareness
of translation’s technological character. The artificiality of the bridge is of particular impor-
tance. The paradox of the bridge is not only that it connects at the same time as it separates
the lands on each of its sides; it is also, and more importantly, that as soon as this construction
is erected, the lands on either side are invested with new significations and textuality. Each
side becomes distinct in relation to the other and makes a separate claim to its territorial self-
identity in a way that downplays the constitutive agency of the bridge.
Naoki Sakai has thought of translation as a technology employed to manufacture what he
calls regimes of monolingual address (Sakai 1997: 28; see also Sakai’s chapter in this volume).

528
 Conclusion

He highlights the paradox that, although translation is called upon to mediate a relationship
of discontinuity between addresser and addressee, its effect is to transform that relationship
retrospectively into one of continuity. The two parts concerned are not ‘translated’ in the
sense of being repeated-in- d ifference; rather the difference between them is objectified and
the two parts are instituted anew (Sakai 1997: 13–15). Like a mapping mechanism, transla-
tion makes possible to think of each language as being continuous with any other, but also
external to it. Once configured as autonomous systematic wholes, languages can then be
operationalized into parallel national regimes of monolingualism.
But the argument can also be reversed: the artificiality of translation works as a visible
reminder of the un-naturalness of monolingualism as political regime. For when the artifice
of translation is visible, as in a translated text that refuses to be naturalized within a new
linguistic ‘territory’, then both the source and the target languages are revealed to be partial
and non- organic refractions of the world they are supposed to represent. Walter Benjamin’s
utopian injunction was that translation should expose the fragmentary, artificial nature of
‘natural’ languages. In ‘The Task of the Translator’, he shows how translation belongs to
techne rather than to physis, in that it is a second- degree representation that does not directly
relate to nature but only to language. Equipped with a comparative gaze, the translator is
best placed to witness first-hand the individual languages’ partial and unsystematic relation
to reality, and to work this knowledge into the translation. From this point of view, the task
of the translator begins by establishing that no monolingual regime can have any privileged
access to any single ‘truth’.
As many of the authors in the volume stress, contemporary globalization has multiplied
the quantity and variety of translational exchanges and has intensified the technologization
of translation on an unprecedented scale. One pressing question that the volume asks is the
following: if translation is a technology of production of regimes of monolingualism and,
by the same token, a technology that makes visible the faults of these regimes, what is the
political meaning of its intense technologization in the era of globalization?
As Alonso and Nunes Vieira explain in their chapter, in the past decades there has been
a concerted engineering effort to develop tools that increase productivity while vastly re-
ducing the time that translation takes to be carried out. The result as far as readerships are
concerned is that the material labour of translation disappears from view and is replaced with
the illusion of near-perfect translatability. If translation appears to happen almost magically,
then a paradoxical new era of universal monolingualism dawns, where individual languages
become interchangeable because completely translatable into each other, and primarily into
international English as the dominant lingua franca. The illusion of an apparently seam-
less (though technologically mediated) continuum between languages risks to reintroduce
linguistic essentialism through the back door, while governments and the media are busy
legislating and celebrating linguistic polyphony. This point is hinted at in this volume by
Leal, who discusses the paradox of de facto monolingualism within a multilingual entity
such as the European Union, contrived by means of ‘elevating’ the status of translated texts
to ‘originals’ by stipulated law.
Computer-assisted translation blurs the visibility of translation, but it is only the most
spectacular mechanism designed to do so. As Laurence Venuti has been tirelessly arguing,
historically translation has been hostage to the Western cult of originality and has been
pressurized to endorse the logic of self-effacement. Today, digital technology is enlisted to
serve the same purpose and it does so with extraordinary efficiency. For example, capitaliz-
ing on the capabilities of resource sharing systems such as cloud-based platforms, the global

529
Dionysios Kapsaskis

translation industry delegates core translation roles to freelance translators who are physically
kept away from the various centres of operation (see Moorkens in this volume). I will com-
ment on the effect of this business logic further down, but it is important to remark that, in
this way, the labour of translation becomes less visible even within its own operational field.
Perhaps the most paradoxical example of invisibility as a result of technological manipula-
tion is that of audiovisual translation ( Ďurovičová in this volume). In this entirely technolo-
gized context, sophisticated techniques have been devised so that viewers are hardly conscious
of the genuinely translational environment in which they are immersed and through which
they have to mediate the audiovisual text. For example, subtitles are a powerful aesthetic
intervention on the body of the film; however, thanks to the strict regulation of their visual
and linguistic features, and to refined techniques of adherence to film editing and continuity
editing, subtitles become so naturalized that they are almost invisible. Similarly, synchronous
dubbing, though flouting some basic principles of verisimilitude because of lack of coinci-
dence between actors’ voice and lip movement, also becomes ‘ inaudible’ to those repeatedly
exposed to it. Collective blindness and deafness to translation are tested and attested to in
the cinema: for rarely do languages feel more fragmented and discontinuous and translation
more unreliable and suspicious than during the viewing of a foreign language film. And yet,
the inexorable conspicuousness of these methods does not prevent audiences from opting to
suspend their disbelief and to focus on the unity of the message.
Emily Apter has pointed out that something schizophrenic is revealed at the crossroads
of global media, translation and technology. Noting that the lingua franca of our time is
Netlish, the ‘mess[y]’ English that digital code ‘speaks’ (2006: 227, 230), Apter suggests
that this is becoming the universal language of translatability, bearing the marks of both
the disorder of multilingualism and the logical formalism of the code. As she puts it (2006:
239), ‘Netlish is an essentially schizophrenic phenomenon, pulled apart by the opposing
forces of linguistic entropy and semantic condensation’. In Apter’s ascription, translation
is a technology of globalization, in the service of a new universal monolingualism. Only,
this monolingualism (and its attendant monoculture) is not part of a historically partic-
ular nationalism but a planetary reconfiguration of textuality based on a technological
paradigm that has unapologetically shed any pretension to genealogical descendancy from
‘nature’. In fact, this new textuality rejects the idea of descendancy and origin tout court.
Every language, medium and format is eminently translatable into every other following
a logic of cross-textual transformation that is free from the pressure to remain faithful to
any ‘source text’. Crucially, this new condition unlocks an enormous potential for critical
insight and democratic practice ( Delanty, Bielsa, Vidal, this volume). But these still rely
on the social visibility of translation, which our contemporary post-industrial order seems
bent on minimizing.

Translation as industry and service

Most of the authors in this volume who examine translation as professional career and social
or commercial service point at various paradoxes in the way translation is understood in the
contexts of policy, culture and the economy. These paradoxes invariably relate to the ques-
tion of the visibility of translation as material mediation and labour, as discussed above. For
example, in her chapter, Gentile registers the deprioritization of interpreting education in
many countries at a time where increased migration flows make interpreting capability more
important than ever. Federici stresses the paradox of the virtual absence of translation and in-
terpreting in strategic planning for managing crisis situations, when it has been documented

530
 Conclusion

that this negligence has cascading effects on the affected populations. With regard to global
tourism, Katan shows how translators’ intracultural expertise tends to be sidestepped, when
in fact it is vital not just to the quality of visitors’ experience but also to the sustainability of
the host communities. And DePalma, who sees the language industry as a positive force that
enables communication and commerce, also notes that translation tends to be an afterthought
which occurs to governments and businesses once they become aware that multilingual read-
erships need to be reached.
A lot remains to be done in order for the contribution of translation to our multilingual
economies and societies to be fully recognized. But the seeming lack of valorization of the
labour of translation within the language service industry is more difficult to rationalize. The
fact that competition and economies of scale are compressing rates and salaries cannot fully
account for industry’s reliance on underpaid freelancers and even in some cases, crowdwork.
Many cite translation technology and global English as factors affecting the low standing of
translation work within professional translation contexts. Moorkens in this volume explains
lucidly the role of automation in increasing expectations of productivity and decreasing
translation rates. In their chapters, both Moorkens and Basalamah refer to the privileged
status of originals (i.e. source texts) in relation to translations thus pointing at the global
ideological and cultural condition into which the profession is embedded. This condition
also maps onto the geopolitics of translation flows, i.e. from English- speaking centres of
production of texts to linguistically diverse ‘peripheries of consumption’ of texts (see Brisset
and Colón Rodríguez, and Tymoczko in this volume). Literally as well as metaphorically, the
outsourcing model operates as a global mechanism for keeping translators at the margins of
the translation industry and of text production more generally.
Yet, as DePalma argues in his chapter, based on industry research conducted by the Com-
mon Sense Advisory (CSA), translation and localization remains a robust global business
with enviable prospects in the current challenging economic climate. Translators at the
higher end of the market, who are in a position to benefit from global interconnectedness
and the rise in demand for language services, are thriving. Furthermore, despite justified
concerns regarding the adverse effect of fragmented workflows (Alonso and Nunes Vieira)
on translation quality, the latter actually may benefit in certain respects from changes in
the business model, e.g. in terms of lexical consistency and the prevention of human errors.
In fact, translation quality is currently being reconceptualized as a feature that pertains not
just to the final product but also to the translation and localization process, including such
aspects as editing, revision, interaction with technology, and the broader workplace dy-
namics (Abdallah 2010). This, in turn, should remind us that judgements on the status of
professional translators and the state of global industry can only be meaningful if they take
into account how the traditional role of the translator has widened to include new tasks and
has been complemented by a number of other germane roles. More and more university-
educated translators build careers as translation ( project) managers, proof-readers, quality
controllers, machine translation post- editors, intralingual subtitlers, audio- describers, web-
site localizers, video-g ame testers, copywriters, transcreators and other relevant roles. Aware
of the need to bring translator education in line with this complex new reality, the European
Masters in Translation Competence Framework requires its member programmes to ensure
that they provide not just lingua- cultural competences but also technological, personal and
interpersonal, and service provision competences to trainee translators ( EMT Competence
Framework 2017; see also Orlando and Gerber, this volume). These ‘other’ roles and compe-
tences are not incidental to being a professional translator; they are now part of the definition
of what translation is.

531
Dionysios Kapsaskis

The purview of ‘translation’

The need to rethink what translation is and why it matters to contemporary societies is one
of the key messages of this volume. This is not, at heart, a theoretical issue. Theoretical de-
velopments in translation studies have often been practice- and society- driven, and this is
the case in the current juncture. This volume registers particularly well two types of chal-
lenges to conventional, text-based conceptualizations of translation. The first is related to
translation practices that are either new or have gained currency in recent years resulting in
terminological proliferation that cannot be conceptually contained within the standard par-
adigm of transmission from source to target. The second is metaphorical uses of translation,
designating cultural transformations activated and undergone by societies as they participate
in the contemporary move towards globalization. In the remainder of this Conclusion, I will
briefly gloss over these two challenges.
In addition to proliferation, there is a great deal of overlapping and inconsistency be-
tween many of the terms used to describe new or less conventional translation practices.
Interestingly, several of them converge in questioning the foundational idea of translation as
linguistic transfer. As Torresi suggests in her chapter, the terms ‘ localization’, ‘adaptation’,
‘transcreation’ and ‘rewriting’ are used almost interchangeably for the translation of adver-
tisements, to signify interlingual practices in which the verbal mode is only one of the
constituent elements, the broader semiotic encoding of the text is highly important, and the
act of translation is firmly oriented towards the end user. Both the idea of the ‘original’ text
whose ‘essence’ must be conveyed, and that of ‘fidelity’ as the methodological principle at
work in this act are destabilized.
From a different perspective, Jiménez- Crespo explains how, in commercial digital envi-
ronments, translation is often embedded into the very conception of the ‘original’ text. As
he explains, in the process of internationalization, digital texts (e.g. websites) are designed
from the start so that they do not rely on specific linguistic and cultural features and can
therefore be localized without important structural changes. The idea of texts being devoid
of language and culture (compounded with the idea that language and culture can be ‘added’
to these texts at will) may not stand up to close theoretical scrutiny; yet the point remains
that translation is conceived in these environments not as the act of carrying through a pre-
existent message but as a process that begins with the inception of the message and extends
prosthetically following the message’s global dissemination.
Worth noting is also Jiménez- Crespo’s reference to the use of ‘ internationalized version’
of texts, i.e. commercial texts edited so that they lose their l ingua- cultural specificities, again
in order to enable easy localization. This practice is somewhat similar to that of proxy texts,
mentioned by Tymoczko, i.e. texts which are translations of other texts but are used as source
texts for further translation into other languages. In these cases, the purpose is to create a
dominant-language version of an existing text (e.g. a novel) which was originally written in
a lesser used language, and then utilize this version as proxy to produce other translations.
Finally, there is also analogy with the example of template subtitling files, referred to by
Ďurovičová in her chapter as ‘genesis/master files’: these are sets of subtitles usually in English
to be used as relay texts for the subtitling of film dialogue into many other languages at once.
In her chapter, Tymoczko interprets changes such as these as part of a drive to simplify
and normalize t ranslation – a major paradox according to her in so far as more and more
nations are now part of global cultural and commercial exchanges. It seems, however, that
the paradox of translation’s normalization at a time of increasing complexity is itself further
complicated. As translation is being normalized, the difference between ‘source’ and ‘target’

532
 Conclusion

texts becomes less pronounced, the identities of the ‘original’ and the ‘translatum’ matter
less, and no hierarchy between them can automatically be assumed. As suggested earlier,
the demise of the canonical original- copy hierarchy should provide fertile ground for social
practices based on textual plurality and capacity for transformation. Indeed, in their chapters,
Fernández, Borodo, Basalamah, and Piróth and Baker offer important examples of errant, in-
terventionist and politically proactive uses of translation and interpreting. But there is at least
as much (and perhaps more generalizable) evidence, as per the examples mentioned earlier,
which suggests that a new global hierarchy is currently replacing the familiar hierarchies of
the past, with English (or Netlish) as a non-culture- specific language at the top. Translation
seems to be called upon to play the same role as in other historical periods, namely, to help
dissolve ancient orders and certainties and to replace them with new, firmer ones.
The capacity of translation to signify general processes of transformation that extend be-
yond the purely textual element has made it an apt metaphor for cross-cultural interactions
under globalization. Delanty, in this volume, makes a strong case for ‘cultural translation’
as the mechanism through which cultures interpret themselves as a result of encounters
with other cultures, and thus progress to a higher degree of self-reflexivity. In his account,
the ongoing intensification of these encounters (e.g. through trade, migration, technology
or even war) triggers reciprocal changes to the cultures involved, but also opens them up
to new possibilities of self-t ransformation. The historical projection that Delanty makes is
that, in modernity, translation is the form that cross- cultural and universal interconnected-
ness takes. Every culture must reinterpret itself as it comes into contact with every other.
Delanty’s memorable conclusion is that, in modernity, translation has become the dominant
cultural form.
This figurative sense of translation enlarges its purview to include cross- cultural interac-
tions that are shaping contemporary social life. Importantly, the metaphor of translation as
a tool for social change is not alien to the linguistic/textual model of translation. The case
is rather that translation as a linguistic practice is an infinitely rich resource that generates
possibilities of interpretation that extend beyond the text in the strict sense. Delanty’s use of
cultural translation touches upon ideas that are also central to debates about translation in
the linguistic sense of the word. These include the growing awareness that translation can
no longer be understood as simple transmission of meaning, and that its effect is to generate
newness. Cultural translation also exploits the paradoxical feature of textual translation to
impact not just on the receiving culture but also on that of the original. Finally, a critical
concern of cultural translation is the question of universal translatability, variously seen in
utopian or dystopian terms, as seen above. These insights suggest that literal and figurative
senses of translation feed into one and the same translational enquiry into language and soci-
ety, against the backdrop of global interconnectedness.
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Globalization is published at a critical historical
and ecological juncture. The hope is that translation emerges from this volume as a key in-
frastructure of social and geopolitical change. The change is happening at this very moment
by means of interconnections that take the shape of negotiations, conflicts, displacements,
adaptations and rewritings. As a form of techne, translation engineers these interconnections
in ways that can variously lead to emancipation from essentialist theories of nation and lan-
guage or, on the contrary, to new hierarchies that are consolidating hegemony at a global
scale. The contributors to the volume have lent visibility and critical insight into the work
of translation in various empirical and theoretical domains, without shying away from the
paradoxes, inconsistencies and uncertainties to which this work gives rise.

533
Dionysios Kapsaskis

References
Abdallah, K. (2010) ‘Translator's Agency in Production Networks’, in Kinnunen, T. and Koskinen,
K. (eds.),
­ Translators’ Agency. Tampere Studies in Language, Translation and Culture. Tampere: Tampere
University Press (B ­ 4), pp. 11–46.
­ ­ ​­
Apter, E. (2006) The Translation Zone: A New Comparative Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer-
sity Press.
Benjamin, W. (1992) ‘The Task of the Translator’, in Zohn, H. (trans.), Illuminations. London: Fontana
­ ­ ​­
Press, pp. 70–82.
Cronin, M. (2003) Translation and Globalization. London: Routledge.
EMT Competence Framework. (2017) European Master’s in Translation Competence Framework.
European Commission. Available online: https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/emt_compe-
­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­
tence_fwk_2017_en_web.pdf [Accessed 15 June 2020].
Sakai, N. (1997) Translation and Subjectivity: On “Japan” and Cultural Nationalism. Minneapolis: Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press.

534
 Index

Note: Bold page numbers refer to tables; italic page numbers refer to figures and page numbers fol-
lowed by “n” denote endnotes.

Aarne, Antte 229n12 Anastasiou, D. 378

Abdallah, K. 323, 329–331 Ancient Greek 233
Aberbach, E. 459 Anderson, B. 99, 433, 456
Abu-Lughod, J. 23 Anders, William 78
accessibility 179, 204, 311, 337, 341–345 Andrade, O. 67
accidental immigrant 149 Angelelli, C. V. 170
Achebe, C. 61, 65, 477 Anglo-American culture 166
activism 507, 508; alter-globalization 502–503; Anglo-Celtic racial majority 136
anti-torture 449; characteristics 498; Annual Review of the Translation, Localization, and
cosmopolitanism 478; globalization 499, 500; Interpreting Services and Technology Industry 203
human rights 446, 450; media and cyberspace anthropocene 85, 87, 92
504; political 3–4, 198, 406, 506; translation anthropomorphism 92–93
studies 501–502, 504, 505 anti-Catholic Protestant majority 134
actor network theory 307, 396 anti-Chinese sentiment 140
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi 65 anti-globalization 59, 204, 500, 501
advertising 4; colonialism(s) 355–356; ‘anti-system’ approach 131–132
commercial 351; cultural variation 352–355; Antonini, R. 190, 192
global trade 352–353; interdisciplinary Antwerp 77
356–358; language professionals 297; Anzaldúa, G. 473, 474
translation studies 351–356, 358 aphorism 219
Aeneid 20 Appadurai, A. 62, 115, 153, 191
Africa 28, 60, 61, 204 Appiah, A. 15
Agamben, Giorgio 50, 154 Apter, E. 56, 67, 71, 75–77, 266, 460, 530
The Age of Migration (Castles, Haas and Miller) Arabic 233, 238, 239
151 Arabic culture 238–239
Agile development methodologies 366 Archibugi, D. 428, 429, 430
Agnew, J. 74–75 area studies 78, 115
Agorni, M. 86, 340, 345 Arguedas, José María 474
Albl-Mikasa, M. 166, 167 Aristotle 22, 23, 72
Alonso, Dámaso 272 Arnason, J. 29, 30, 33
Alonso, E. 7, 395, 399, 529 Arnason, P. 32
alter-globalization movement 502–503, 505 artificial intelligence (AI) 370
Alvarez, Julia 474 Asad, T. 66
America Is Not the Heart (Castillo) 157 Asia 28, 204
Americanah 65 Asia Pacific region 205
American democracy 137 Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies
American literature 265 (APTIS) 100
American pragmatist tradition 133 asymmetry 5, 56, 57, 59–60, 267, 268, 472;
American West 139; Irish and Chinese authorship 258; cultural 221–222, 473;
migrants in 134 gender 522–523; globalization 379;

535
Index

languages 474; membranes 469; translation vs. Bible translation 228n6

power 428, 442 Bielsa, E. 86, 121, 294, 296, 300, 494
augmented translation 396 Big data 370
austerity 323–325 big money 416
Australia 182, 207, 211, 313 Al-Biruni 23
Australian Qualifications Framework 202 Blackledge, A. 456
authenticity 122, 251, 315, 489, 492; accessibility Blommaert, I. 355, 431
341–344; cultural 7; originality and 431, 455; Blyth, M. 324
purity and 431; staged 338 Boast, R. 315
authorship 3, 288, 457, 466; authenticity 251; Bodo, S. 309
authors’ rights and copyright 252; collective Boéri, J. 406
knowledge 261; derivative works 260; ethics Bogucki, Ł. 194
issue 258–259; notions 252; originality 252–255; Bologna Convention 207
status issue 256–258; superauthors 261 Bologna Process 202, 207
authors’ rights 252, 254–255 Bong Joon-Ho 278, 285
Automatic Language Processing Advisory borders 8, 40, 41, 46–51, 147, 469, 470, 520;
Committee (ALPAC) 325, 393 collies 90; conceptual 378; controls 76, 150;
cosmopolitan 471, 474–477; cultural 300, 341;
Babel 42, 44, 45, 198, 255, 406, 502–503, 506; divisions and 153; French 269; friction-free
Cinema Babel 279; West-centric concept 281 communication 337; geocultural 253; global
Babylon 225 frontier-land 470; identities 432; heterogeneity
Bachelard, Gaston 75 469; homo sacer 471; human rights discourse
Backus, Megan 119 and practice 451; international 152, 170; Italian
Baer, B. J. 120 314; languages 472–474; mobilizations 153;
Baghdad 22, 23 national 118, 119, 149, 152, 170, 293, 461, 470;
Bagley, P. 344 physical and metaphorical 472; political 280;
Baigorri-Jalon, J. 164, 166 remote 470; smart 470; social phenomena 434;
Bain, David Haward 141 state 254; symbolic 260; Translators without
Baker, M. 6, 7, 198, 406, 407, 410, 412, 502, Borders (TWB) 406–421; US-Mexican 470
505, 533 Borges, J. L. 257–258
Balibar, E. 469, 474 Borodo, M. 7, 533
Bancroft, M. 169 Braidotti, R. 88, 89, 472
Bandia, P. F. 4, 5, 67, 122 Braun, S. 165
Bar-Hillel, Y. 325 Bray, M. 505–506
Barnstone, W. 20 Brazil 227, 382
Barthes, R. 253, 357 Brennan, T. 325
Bassnett, S. 67, 86, 100, 294, 296 Brexit 170, 228n2
“battle of the languages” 166 Britain 134
Baudelaire, C. 27, 253 British economy 134, 138
Bauman, Z. 28–29, 150, 153, 161 British tourism 344
Bayart, J.-F. 64 Brooks, D. 383
Beck, U. 1, 7, 9, 115, 116, 124, 153, 436 Broughton, A. 324
Behaim, M. 73 Brownlie, S. 478, 501
Belgium 236 Buck-Morss, S. 461
Beliveau, R. 300 bunker mentality 152
Beninatto, R. 416–417 Burke, S. 253
Benjamin, W. 6–7, 27, 34, 44–45, 253, 474, 529 business process outsourcing (BPO) 364
Bennett, J. 89 business-to-business (B2B) 363
Bennett, T. 306, 308–310 business-to-consumer (B2C) 352, 363
Béranger, P. 463 Butalia, U. 516, 518
Berman, A. 67, 86, 121 Butler, J. 515
Berne Convention (BC) 251, 252, 254, Byron, Lord 465
255, 326, 493
Bhabha, H. 34, 66, 71, 75–76, 456, 466 Cabanellas, G. 331
Bhasin, K. 516, 518 Cairo 19, 23
Bhattacharyya, Kalidas 513 Calvet, L.-J. 67
Biau-Gil, J. R. 395 Calvo, E. 395, 399

536
 Index

Cameroon 237 climate change 85, 95, 151, 176, 227, 449;
Canada 236 animals 89–93; borders 8; demands 86;
Canal construction 135 machines 93–96; management 204; political
Canfora, C. 329 and cultural dimensions 2; terracentric
capitalism 63, 356, 499, 500; colonization 77; translation studies 87–89
European 520; global 63, 343; informational coercive isomorphism 316
5, 6; modern 14, 15 Cogo, A. 487
Caribbean 60, 61 Cohen, E. 337, 339, 341, 518
Caroll, Jane Suzanne 77 collective intelligence 252
Caron, A. 90 colonization 57, 251; capitalism 77; cultural
Casanova, P. 57–58, 60, 61, 67, 68, 266–271 355; European 433; globalization 58–60;
Cassin, B. 56 language in equality 255; legacy 224;
Castells, M. 5–6, 9 postcolonialism 102
Castillo, Elaine 157 Columbus 73, 74
Castles, S. 151, 168 commodity fetishism 6
Castoriadis, C. 30 Common Sense Advisory (CSA) 95, 203, 363,
Catholic religion 136 368, 372, 416, 417, 531
Celestial Empire 138 communication 132, 150, 152, 162, 169,
Central Pacific Railroad 138, 139, 142 222–223
centre/periphery 57, 102–103, 147, 152, 164, community engagement 307
258, 267–271, 398 community, idea of 133
Chabot, P. 94 Complexity Theory 229m13, 246
Chakrabarty, D. 71, 78, 457 Computer-Assisted (or aided) Translation (CAT)
Chang, C. 168 6, 210, 287, 391–394, 396–399, 529
Chan, S. 395 Conley, T. 81
Chávez-Silverman, Susana 474 Connolly, D. 315, 316
Cheung, M. P. Y. 104–107, 478 consumers/consumerism 64; cultural 353;
Chiaro, D. 355–356 end-users and retail 352; ethnocentrism 357;
Chin, Frank 139, 140 global 95, 352; identification 357; information
China 15, 23, 61, 73, 86, 120, 220, 221, 342, 366–367; growth-fixated economy 375;
384, 450; internationalization 104–106; postcolonial societies 60; suppliers 366; target
working-class communities 137 group 352, 353
Chinaman, John 139–141 contact zone 76
Chinese Americans 139–141 Cooley, Earlier Charles Horton 131
Chinese/English interpreters in Taiwan 168 Cooper, R. 337, 339, 341
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 137 copyright 251; Anglo-Saxon 254; authors’ rights
Chinese food 142 252; holders 193–195, 199, 252; law 253–255,
Chinese immigrants 137 260; ownership of 326; translation 331
Chinese/Mandarin 233, 235, 238, 243 Corbett, J. 86
Chinese workers 141, 142; railroad workers 139 Cornu, J.-F. 279, 280, 284, 288
Chin, Frank 139 Cosgrove, D. 71, 72
“Chin Sun” 137 cosmopolitanism 31, 86, 315, 317, 429–430;
Cho, H. 461 activism 478; borders 471; cultural translation
Choi, J. Y. 209 29, 32–36, 434; digital 93; globalization 300,
Chomskyan theory 90 472, 475; modern urban life 27; multiple
Christensen, T. P. 395 modernities 3; non-Eurocentric 477;
Christianity 20–21 secularism 519; sociological debates 302
Chukovsky, Kornei 465 country-of-origin (COO) effect 354
Cimoli, A. C. 309 Coupland, N. 377
Cinema Babel 279 Cox, A. 169
Cisneros, Sandra 474 Creese, A. 456
CIUTI (The Conference Internationale Criminal Justice Programme of the Directorate-
permanente d’Instituts Universitaires de General Justice, Freedom, Security of the
Traducteurs et Interpretes) 205 European Commission 170
Classics of Chinese literature 243 crisis: accommodating language 177–178;
Clausen, L. 295 Aristotelian model 72; cascading effects
Clifford, J. 34, 123, 306, 309, 315 181–182; conflict and 179; crisis

537
Index

communication 177; crisis management 177; and 484; linguistic hospitality 434–436;
crisis translation 178; Ebola 412, 415; monolingual vision 430–434
ecological 89; economic 324, 500, 504; global Democratic Party 136
scale 176; Greek migration 406; language De Mooij, M. 357
177–178; risk communication 8, 9, 181–182; Deng Xiaoping 243
response 183, 420; succinct literature review Denison, T. S. 137
178–181; transitional 260; translation 178 Denton, K. 315–316
Critical Discourse Analysis 355, 356 DePalma, D. A. 7, 531
Crocker, Charles 139 Derrida, J. 46, 67, 141, 151, 153, 253, 491,
Cronin, M. 2, 9, 22, 67, 72, 73, 77, 80, 86, 124, 493, 494
260, 314, 339, 460, 506 Desmet, E. 450
crowdsourcing 384, 412, 416–417, 419; Desnoes, Edmundo 272–273
freelancing 6; localization 385, 386; post- De Stefano, V. 331
editing 183; top-down 7, 191, 194–197; deterritorialization/reterritorialization 67,
translation 183, 191, 194, 408, 420; 154, 473
volunteerism 421 D’haen, T. 265
cultural asymmetry 221–222 Díaz Cintas, J. 194
cultural imperialism 285 Díaz, Junot 120–121, 474
culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) Di Biase, C. G. 80
communities 177, 179, 183, 184 Dibley, B. 315
cultural studies 56, 71, 75, 358, 378 Di Giovanni, E. 257
cultural turn 2, 56, 58, 66, 67, 299, 475 digital cartography 48, 50, 81
cultures: conceptual frameworks of digital communication 222
132; incommensurability of 132–133; Dijkstra, A. 342
and languages 154; networks, nature of Directorate-General for Translation
219–220 (DG Translation) 488–489
Cussel, M. 3 Dirlik, A. 31
cyberactivism 505 ‘disaster,’ definitions of 177
cyberfetishism 501 Disneyfication 315
Doerr, N. 503
Dalché, P. G. 73 Donald Duk (Chin) 139, 140
Damascus 23 Drugan, J. 203, 204
Dam, H. V. 164, 166, 397, 398 dubbing 279, 283–288, 369, 530
Damrosch, D. 114, 266, 267, 281 DuBois, W. E. B. 62
Dante 56 Dubslaff, F. 170
Davidson, Donald 133 Dünne, J. 81
Davier, L. 294, 298 Dunne, K. 329, 384
Debussche, J. G. 331 Dupré La Tour, C. 282
De Certeau, M. 75 Dv ů r Králové 458
decision-and policy-making center 164 Dwyer, T. 280, 286–287
Deganutti, M. 313, 314 Dybiec, J. 342
deglobalization 2, 282
Delanty, G. 477 Earth 88, 89; globe 71–72; geographies 73, 75;
Deleuze, G. 66–67, 473 physical occupation 63; rising 78–80;
Delgado, Abelardo 474 translation 76
Delisle, J. 86 Eastern Europe 205
demand and supply: B2B 363; B2C 363; Echeverri, Á. 99
CSA Research 363; data-based software ecology 80, 89, 94, 96, 222, 227, 286
370; ecosystem (see ecosystem); language Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (Marx) 6
market 371–372, 372–373; language service economic liberalism 324
outsourcers 364; MT 363; multilingual ecosystem: demand for language 365–367,
communications 364; qualitative and 367; freelancers 367–368; language service
quantitative research 363; software supports and technology 364, 365; language service
service delivery 370–371 industry 369–370; services span and spoken
democracy 4–5, 516, 522; American 137; language 368–369, 369
civility 523; cosmopolitanism 434–436; direct education of translators and interpreters see
504; equality 519language 427–430; identity translators and interpreters

538
 Index

Egypt 225 (see also multilingualism); policymaking 167;

Egyptian Revolution 407, 505 translation profession 205
Eisenstadt, S.N. 29, 30, 33 extensively localized websites 383
Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional
(EZLN) 504 Facebook 196–197, 408
Elias, A. J. 71, 80 face-to-face workshops 211
empire 16, 20, 257–258; Abbasid and Mughal Famine 1846 and 1855 135
22; ape 459; Celestial 138; colonization Fanon, Franz 157
58, 59; culture 459; global systems 72; fansubbing 191, 194, 197
Mongol 23; postcolonialism 66; Roman 14; Federici, F. M. 8, 177, 184, 406, 413, 530
Russian 463 Fedorov, A. V. 464
empowerment 191, 309–310, 342 Fels, J. 80
EMT programmes 206 Feminism 246; advertising translation 356;
Engels, Friedrich 27 anti-humanism 88; ethics 5, 514–517; Ni
English 204, 235, 236–237, 245 Una Menos 500postcolonial studies 253, 354;
English as a lingua franca (ELF) 162, 166–168, transnational 120
209, 210, 487 Feyerabend, Paul 132
English monolingual border patrol 170 fidelity/faithfulness 20, 55, 66, 259, 284, 287,
English navvies 134 466, 532
English to French, country and subject of Flores, G. 169
books 236 Fogg, Phileas 77, 78
entextualization 341 foreignization and domestication 67, 114, 116,
environment/environmentalism 87; 117–122, 295, 298, 301–302, 338, 379
anthropocentric treatment 65; bubble foreign language versions (FLVs) 224, 285
337, 344; digital 260, 288, 532; economic foreign translation practices 226–227
activities 414, 499; educational 207; global 79, Foucault, M. 66, 75, 475
208; human impacts 85; monolingual 286; France 59, 60, 520
museum 306, 308, 311; online MT services freedom of mobility: and displacement 148–151;
193; register 311; regulation 95; social and exponential growth of 147; primary role
physical 395; software tools 193; translation of 148
330, 530; VLE 208; work 207, 330; French 232, 236, 238
ethnic community 43 French literary system 269
‘ethnic’ immigrant group 136 French neoclassicism 117
ethnicization 514 French Theory 237
ethics 491; aesthetics 521; code of 195; economic French to English translations 237
fairness 400; feminist 5, 514–517; issue of Freud, Sigmund 88, 243
258–259; location 76; professional 211; Frey, C. B. 326
translation technology 9, 95
Eurasia 13, 14, 19, 23 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 34, 133
ethnocentrism 101, 105, 114, 271, 357, 435, 476 Galician literary market 271
eurocentrism 101–102, 104, 105, 430, 460, 471 Galtung, Johan 102
Europe 15, 23, 27, 56, 73, 107, 206, 207, 266, Gambier, Y. 109
282, 428, 433, 491, 520 García, Cristina 474
European Directive 2010/64/EU 171 García, O. 357
European Economic Community (EEC) Gasché, R. 491, 494
483–484 Gaspari, F. 231
European languages 233 Gavioli, L. 340–341
European Masters in Conference Interpreting Geertz, Clifford 143
(EMCI) 206 gender studies 358
European Master’s in Translation (EMT) Gentile, P. 7–9, 165–167, 165–168, 530
Network 206, 328, 399, 531 Gentzler, E. 67, 68, 113, 118–119
European Migrant Crisis 2014-2016 180 geocentrism 80, 86–87
‘European’ Renaissance 23, 24 geography 87, 514; boundaries 212; colonial 68;
European Social Forum (ESF) 262n2, 503 cultural 133, 300; data sources 183; dispersion
European Union (EU) 9, 205, 366, 6; distribution 236; earthrise 78–80; globe
529; directive 2011/ 24/ EU 182; 71–73; human 134; imaginative 71, 73–75;
employment 324; multilingualism 9 interdisciplinary 3; language 122, 124, 368;

539
Index

limits 52; location 103; space 246; territorial 9; Gnedich, Nikolai 457
translation 75–78, 80–82, 314 Godard, Jean-Luc 287
geopolitics 271–274, 531 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 117, 118, 266,
German 168, 232, 233, 236 435, 436
Germany 167, 168, 195, 382 Goffman, E. 131, 132, 142, 144
Giddens, A. 86, 163 Gogol, Nikolai 457
Glick-Schiller, Nina 152 Gómez-Peña, Guillermo 474
global: culture 36, 147, 150, 271, 315, 381, Gongyan, Jia 105, 106
427; economy 6, 79, 95, 231, 259, 268, 366, Gonzalez-Davies, M. 209
395–397; flows 57, 86, 147, 149, 197; justice Goodman, R. 443
79, 500–503, 508; media 123, 280, 296, 299, Gordon, Avery F. 141
300, 302, 530; networks 121, 190, 271, 275, Gouadec, D. 205
386; news 4, 293–299, 301–302; North and Gramsci, A. 66
South 4, 58–64, 66; studies 1–5; village 375; Grand Bargain Commitment 180
warming 176 grass-roots translation 194–198
Global Humanitarian Summit of 2016 180 Greece 15, 239, 436
globalism 1, 80, 86 Greek New Testament 228n6
globalization 13, 16, 62, 147–150, 161; activism Gregory, D. 75
498–501; advertising translation 353–355; Griffith, D. W. 281–282
anti-globalism 1–2; communication Guangdong Province 138
222–223; complexity theory 225–226; Guattari, F. 66–67, 473
cultural asymmetry 221–222; cultural Guggenheim Museum 316
networks, nature of 219–220; disembodied Guillot, M.-N. 317
2; diversity of translation practices 225; Gurevitch, M. 295
dynamism 1; economic 16, 65, 176, 183;
foreign translation practices 226–227; Haas, H. 151
on higher education 205–207; history Halal tourism 344
14–16; and indigenous languages 224–225; Halliday, T. 443
interdisciplinary 356–357; interpreting and Hall, M. 308
challenges of 162–164; interpreting and Han Chinese ethnic group 244
translation studies 211–212; markets 351, Hancock, M. 315
352; Monash MITS 209–211; museums Hanson, T. A. 166
314–316; neoliberal era 325; network practices Hardt, M. 260
220–221; politics of translation 513; subjective Harley, J. B. 80
7–8; technology 528–530; on T&I industry Harry Potter series 194, 195, 199
202–205; within T&I programmes 208–209; Harvey, D. 75, 325
translation networking 222–223; translation Al-Hasan ibn Suwâr al-Hammar 22
practices parameters 223–224; web of Hausa 241
communication networks 222 Hayot, E. 266
Globalization 3.0 345 Hebrew 233
Globalization and Localization Association Hebrew-Aramaic texts 21
(GALA) 297 hegemony 227, 258; see also globalization
Globalization, Internationalization, Localization Heilbron, J. 245, 457
and Translation (GILT) 376–378, 384 Heller, M. 338
Global Language System Theory 239 Hendzel, K. 329
global news organizations: doubly invisible heritage translation practices 225
294; homogenization 295; linguistic borders Héritier, F. 513
293–294; localization 296–299; multi- Hermans, T. 67, 492–493
source characteristics 301; national audiences hermeneutic tradition 133
295–296; recontextualization 296; textual heteronormativity 515
intervention 296; transediting 296; translated Higgins, M. D 273
news 299–301; translation invisibility 302 higher education 205–207
Global Translation and Interpreting Professional Hijuelos, Óscar 474
Practices 210 Hillis Miller, J. 265
globe 71–72 Hindi 239, 240
glocal/glocalization 61, 204–205, 353–354, 376, Hobsbawm, E. 456
378–379 Hodgson, M. 30

540
 Index

Hofstede, G. 357, 381, 383 infosphere 89

Ho, G. 356
Homer 20, 457
homogenization 1, 65, 207, 295, 491, 499
Hooper-Greenhill, E. 308
Hora, Zelená 458
hospitality 150, 151, 434–436, 456, 477
Huang, J. 354
hub translation 226–227
Hugo, Victor 254
Hui, H. 340
human-induced environmental change 85
Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in
Humanitarian Response 180
human language 225–226
human rights: actors 445–449; advantages 441;
anti-torture activism 449; centres 443; gender
equality 443; peripheries 442, 450; political
space 449; power dynamics 451; rights
holders 450; social justice 441; transformation
442, 444–445; translation 442, 444–445;
travel 444–445; vernacularization 442, 443;
Western liberal-legalist discourse 443
human-rights-based paradigm 180
human translators: human-machine interface
392; MT and CAT development 393; MT/
enhancement of CAT systems 393–394; MT
pioneers 392–393; NMT 394–395; techne 392
Hunayn ibn Ishaq 22
Hurricane Katrina 179
Hutchins, J. 231, 393
Iamarene-Djerbal, D. 522
imaginative geographies 73–75
imperialism 29, 56, 58, 63, 102, 245, 252, 285,
459, 462; see also empire
In altre parole, In other Words (Lahiri) 154
independent software vendors (ISVs) 370
India 156, 239, 382, 520
indigenous languages 224–225
Industrial Revolutions 134
industrial society 5–6
inequality 499–500, 522; colonization and
58–60; cultural turn 56, 58; gender 513;
interlingual communication 55; languages 55;
metaphorical conceptualization 57; mission
civilisatrice 57; neo-colonialism 62–66;
postcolonialism 60–62; postcoloniality 56;
power and 35; quality of life 176; translation
studies 66–68
informational capitalism 5, 6
informational society 5
Information and Communication Technology
(ICT) 94, 95, 165, 166
information society 5
information technology 5, 209, 239, 260,
380, 499
Inghilleri, M. 8, 478
Inglis, D. 4
intellectual property (IP) 252, 410, 417
intergeneric intertextuality 311
interlingual translation 40–42, 45, 294, 296,
306, 307, 316–317
International Business and Marketing 375,
381–382
International Federation of Red Cross and Red
Crescent Societies 183
internationalism/internationality 3, 41, 42, 45,
265, 377, 463, 464
internationalization 286, 532; APTIS 100;
centre/periphery 102–104; China 104–106;
de-localization 379; Eurocentrism 101–102,
108; European languages 106; globalization
100; postcolonialism 101–102; Western
models 107
International Literary and Artistic Association
(ALAI) 254
International Monetary Fund (IMF) 64,
324, 500
International Organization for Migration
(IOM) 151
international pinnacle languages 224
interpreting, evolution of 180; analysis, model of
163; and challenges of globalization 162–164;
English as lingua franca 166–168; global
perspectives in 161–162; migration flows
168–171; profession 9, 163–167, 171;
technological developments 164–166; and
translation studies 211–212
interrogative museum 309
invisibility 294, 301–302
InZone Centre 178
Iran 31
Ireland: employment opportunities lack 134;
poverty 134
Irish: Chinese superior workmanship 142;
‘ethnic’ immigrant group 136; working-class
communities 137
Irish-American Catholics 136–137
Irish immigrants 133–136
Irish landowner 135
Irish Literary Revival 269
Irish navvies and Paddys 134–137
Istanbul 77
Italiano, F. 75
Italy 233, 382, 384, 436
Ives, P. 429
al-Jâhiz, Abû Utmân 22
Jakobson, R. 40–41, 45
James, P. 2, 3, 7
Japan 31, 73, 86, 258–259
Japanese 233

541
Index

Jimenez-Bellver, Jorge 5 Japanese 43, 44; modality 40; ‘nation’ 44;

Jimenez-Crespo, M. A. 7, 86, 383, 384, 532 plurality 42; translation proper 40, 41, 45, 48,
Jinks, D. 443 51; translation types 40
John, J. D. 266 language industry 203, 363–364, 367, 369, 380
JoSTrans (“Professional Translation” 2016) 171 language-related communication issue 177, 179
Joyce, J. 268–272, 274 languages 88–89, 150, 156, 165; demand and
Judea 15 supply (see demand and supply); democracy
Juris, J. 204 427–430; dominant 68, 102–103, 224, 227,
236–237; indigenous 57, 59, 224–225, 343,
Kachru, B. B. 486 364, 507; market 371–372, 372–373; minority
Kadohata, Cynthia 474 61, 66–68, 224, 237, 270, 271, 506; world
Kaf ka, Franz 472 translation flows 231–235; see also specific entries
Kant, I. 28, 42, 44, 514, 515 language service 162, 179, 203, 297, 325,
Károly, K. 298 364–373, 489, 531
Karp, I. 308, 309, 317 language service providers (LSPs) 205, 287, 325,
Karpinsky, E. C. 153, 154 331, 364–365, 367–372, 372, 394
Kay, M. 326 languaging 343, 437
Kaza, Madhu H. 158 Lanier, J. 407
Kelly, D. 206, 340, 341 Larbaud, Valery 268–269
Kelly, N. 203 Latin 233, 436
Kenny, Kevin 136 Latin America 61, 204, 205, 282
Kenya 419–420 Latour, B. 87
Khasnabish, A. 408 Lazaro Gutierrez, R. 169, 170
Al-Khwarizmi 22 Lazier, B. 78–79
Kiraly, D. 209 League of Nations in 1926 164
Klein, N. 416 Lecercle, J. 66
knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) 364 Lee, J. J. 135
Kobarid Museum 313–314 Lee, Robert G. 137
Kofman, S. 515 Lefebvre, Henri 75
Kolbert, E. 89 Lefevere, A. 100
Konstantinović, R. 513–514 Leslie, D. 307
Konzelmann, S. 323–324 Levine, Suzanne Jill 118, 119
Koponen, M. 398 Liao, M.-H. 312–314
Koselleck, R. 28 Lieberman, P. 90
Koskinen, K. 397, 398 Limón, Graciela 474
Koyré, A. 72 lingua franca 19, 338, 341, 378, 380, 428, 436, 437
Kratz, C. A. 308, 309, 317 literature: centre/periphery dichotomy 268–271;
Kronenberg, K. 325 geopolitics 271–274; global informational
Kuhn, Thomas 132 flow 275; universal 269, 271, 272; world
Kull, K. 89 literature 265–268
Kurochkin, V. 463 localization: crowdsourcing 385, 386; culturally
Kymlicka, W. 428, 429, 433, 437 adapted websites 383; de-localization 379;
economic constraints 382–384; foreignization
labour market structures 193 379; GILT process 376–378; globalization
Lafargue, P. 326 384–385; glocalization 378–379; industry-
Lahiri, Jhumpa 154, 155, 156 based discourse 376; International Business
Lambert, J. 116 and Marketing 375, 381–382; LISA 376;
Lanchester, J. 96 post-editing MT 376; quality 384; reverse
landscapes 133–139, 141 localization 379; studies 380, 380–381; TIS
language-culture-nation 148 375, 385; websites 383
language-independent determinate reality 133 Ločmele, G. 354
language individuality: Babel interpretation 42, 44; London 15
co-figuration 45–48, 50; colonization looking glass self concept 131
60; continuity in discontinuity 46–50; Loraux, N. 516, 517, 522
countability 39; dialects 41; English 43–44, Lossner, K. 417
57–58; ethnic community 43; interlingual Lotfollahi, B. 355
translation 41, 45; internationality 41, 42, 44; Lotman, J. 457

542
 Index

Louie, David Wong 474 metacognition 209

Lumeras, M.A. 395 metacognitive knowledge 209
Lviv 77 metacognitive skills 209
Lynch, B. 309–310 methodological nationalism 1, 3, 8, 110, 115,
116, 124
MacCannell, D. 338 Meylaerts, Reine 229m13
McCarthy, C. 310 Mezzadra, S. 51
McClellan, Andrew 315 Middle East 204, 205
McDonough Dolmaya, J. 193, 197, 407, 421 Mignolo, Walter D. 460
Machine Translation (MT) 183, 370–373, migrant labour force 134
384–385, 415; CAT 393–394; data-driven 326; migrant spectors and landscape 133–134;
development 325, 326; digital cartography 81; Chinese ‘Celestials’ 137–139; Irish ‘navvies’
goal 391; human translators 6; languages 224, and ‘Paddys’ 134–137
363; money trail 416–418; online services 193, migration 154; flows 163, 168–171; human
398; origins 396; pioneers 392–393; post- geography 134; illegal immigrants 158;
editing 399; quality 327, 330; sociological immediate effects of 131; and transmigrancy
approach 278–279; training 331; unpaid 151–154; ‘universal experience’ of 151
crowdsourcing 420 Mikhailov, M. 463
MacIntyre, A. 34 Mikhalkov, Sergei 464
MacLean, K. 449–450 Miller, Kirby 135
McNeil, W. 30 Miller, M. J. 151
MacPherson, James 458 Minaev, D. 463
Magris, M. 340, 341 Model European Union 167
Maillard, C. 516 modernity/modernism 27–28; civilizational
MA in Interpreting and Translation Studies characteristics 29, 30; cosmopolitanism
(MITS) 208, 209 32–36; cultural translation 32–36; entangled
Malay 240, 240, 241 29; global dimension 31; interaction modes
Malaysia 240, 241 32; literary movement 27; micro-modernity
Mallarmé, S. 254 261; sociological theory 29; transformative
Malmö Museums 310 process 30
Malouf, M. G. 271 Modiano, M. 487
Manca, E. 344 Moll, Y. 119
Mandarin to Uyghur 245 Monash MITS 209–211
Mangiron, C. 86 Monash University 208, 209
Manuel, N. 507 Mongolia 15
Marais, K. 89, 229m13 Mongolian 245
Marinetti, C. 307 monolingualism 49, 437, 529; uniformity 62
Martínez, S. 448–449 Moorkens, J. 6, 7, 327, 329–331, 531
Martin, John 457 Moraga, Cherríe 474
Martinsen, B. 170 Morales, Alejandro 474
Martin, T. 463 Moraru, C. 71, 80
Marxism 241 Moretti, F. 266, 268
Marx, K. 6, 27 M āori community 310
Masaryk, Tomáš 458 Morozov, E. 418
masculinization 518 Morris, Philip 353
Mason, I. 340 Moser-Mercer, B. 165
Master of Interpreting and Translation Studies Mowbray, M. 505
(MITS) programme 202 multiculturalism 8, 133, 204, 309
Mbembe, A. 64 multi-language vendors (MLVs) 368
Medina Reguera, A. 384 multilingual communication 180, 181
Mellinger, C. D. 166 multilingualism: communication 180, 181;
Member States of the Arab League 238–239 languages and language policy 483–486;
Ménard, Pierre 257 liberation linguistics 487; multiplicity vs.
Menchú, Rigoberta 267 unity 488–490; translations 204
Menon, R. 516, 518 multilingual translations 204
Mensah, H. A. 357 multimodality 353
Merry, S. 441, 443, 450 multimedia translation studies 278

543
Index

Muñoz Sánchez, P. 194 Nkrumah, Kwame 63

Musacchio, M. T. 378 non-European languages 233, 239, 239
museums 3; community engagement 307; Non-Governmental Organizations 178
cross-linguistic intercultural interaction non-native original speech 168
307; cultural translation 306; globalization non-professional translators 198–200;
314–316; interlingual translation 306; characteristics 191–194; grass-roots level,
Tlingit translators’ 307; translation off-stage translation projects 194–196; grass-roots social
307–311, 316; translation on-stage 307, activist translation initiatives 197–198; top-
311–314, 316 down crowdsourcing projects 196–197
Muslim culture 157 non-profit organizations (NPOs) 366
Muzaini, H. 316 Nornes, M. A. 279, 287
North America 205
Nail, T. 151 North American Free Trade Agreement
Nam Fung, Chang 104 (NAFTA) 499, 500
Nancy, J.-L. 519 Norway 157
Napu, N. 338 Nuremberg trials 162
Naqvi, A. R. 157 Nussbaum, M. 87–89
National Register of Interpreters 171
nationalism: methodological 1, 3, 8, 113, 115, Obejas, A. 120
116, 124; romantic 455, 458 O’Brien, S. 177, 211, 327, 330
nations: ethnic nation 455; imperial 461–465; O’Connor, J. 273–277
models of 456; primordial 457–461; Romantic O’Hagan, M. 86, 190, 191, 196, 379
nationalism 455 Okada, John 474
nation-state 51, 60, 114–115, 148, 152, 153, 448 Olohan, M. 191, 192, 197, 397
Native American children 229n10 Onciul, B. 307, 310, 316–317
Native American populations 225 ‘Opening’ policy 243
navigators/navvies 134 Opium War in 1842 137
Neather, R. 311–312, 316 Orengo, A. 296, 297
Negri, A. 260 Organisation internationale de la francophonie
Neilson, B. 51, 116 (OIF) 236
Nelson, B. 30 Orientalism 355
neo-colonialism 102 originality 252–257, 431, 455, 457, 460, 462, 529
neoliberalism 3, 4, 323, 324, 499 Oruka, O. 261
neoliberal era: 3D quality model 323; economic Osborne, M. A. 326
liberalism 324; globalization 325; language Ost, F. 260
service industry 325; MT 323, 325, 326, 330, O’Sullivan, C. 279, 280, 284, 288
331; NMT 327, 330; TM 326; translation Otero Pedrayo, R. 269
industry 324; translation quality 329–330; Ottmann, A. 329
translators’ profile 327–329; voluntary Ó Tuathail, G. 74–75
deflation 324 outsourcing 205, 297, 324, 325, 364, 531
Nergaard, Siri 8 Ozolins, U. 170
Nesiah, V. 447
Netherlands 382 Padrón, R. 81
Network Analysis 246 Pakistan 239, 340
Neural machine translation (NMT) 327, 330, Palmer, P. 90
392, 394–395 Panizzon, R. 378
Neuzeit 28 Paris 19
Newman formulation 119, 122 Parish, N. 313, 314
New Orleans 77 ‘Patsy O’Wang: An Irish Farce with a Chinese
news see global news organizations Mix-Up’ (Denison) 137
New Zealand 182 Paz, O. 256
NGOs 421, 446, 447; demand 337; free Pearl River Delta 138
translation 412; humanitarian 411, 412, 415, People’s Republic of China (PRC) 242, 243
420, 421; implications 408; labour market Pereira, A. 381–383
414; partner 419, 420; TWB 420; HIV/AIDS Pérez-González, L. 190, 192–194
450; volunteer translators 410 perlocutionary effect 48
Nida, E. 340 Persian 239

544
 Index

philosophical reflections translation studies 253 Reithofer, K. 168

Pickering, A. 397 Renan, Ernest 456
Pickles, J. 80–81 Renault, Louis 251
Piróth, A. 6, 7, 533 Return on Investment (ROI) 382–383
Plato 49, 72 Rico, C. 400
plurilingualism 427, 433, 437 Ricoeur, P. 33
Polezzi, L. 80 risk communication 177, 181–182
police and healthcare interpreting 165 Risku, H. 330
politics of language 198, 427–429, 431, 432, Ritzer, G. 337
434, 437 Robertson, R. 7, 29, 300
politics of translation 3, 255, 437, 513–525 Roediger, David 136
Pollock, S. 31 Rome 15, 225
Płonowska Ziarek, E. 516 Rorty, Richard 133
populism 2 Rosenberger, B. 294
post-carbon society 87 Rossato, L. 355–356
postcolonialism 60–62, 67, 101–103 Ross, D. 340, 341
postcolonial studies 57, 253, 256, 355 Rowley, R. 313, 314
postcolonial theory 29, 56, 61, 62, 66, 68, Rubery, J. 324
102, 516 Rumford, C. 1
postcolony 64 Ruokonen, M. 397
post-editing; crowdsourcing 183; demand Rushdie, S. 67, 152, 476
394; MT 330, 331, 368, 376, 384, 392, 394, Rushkoff, D. 325, 407, 408, 418
396–400; writing 208 Russell, Andrew J. 139, 140
post-industrial societies 161 Russia 220, 221
postmodernism 28, 56, 58, 66, 73, 119, 253, Russian 233, 238, 241–242
343, 516 Russian Translations into Swahili 242
poverty 134
Powell, Colin 408 Sacramento Union 138
Pratt, M.L. 18, 76, 120, 306 Said, E.W. 71, 74–76, 477
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life Sakai, N. 3, 116, 121, 123, 458, 513, 528
(Goffman) 131 Saldanha, G. 211
promotional translation 351–358 Samuel-Azran, T. 298, 300
property-rights 254 San Francisco 138, 139
Ptolemaic planetary system 72 Sanskrit 239
‘The Public Realm’ 143 Santiago, Esmeralda 474
public service 162 Santos, B. de S. 261, 503–504
public service interpreting 165–166, 169 Santoyo, J.-C. 23
Public Service Interpreting and Translation Sapiro, G. 67
(PSIT) 342 Sattelzeit 28
Pushkin, Alexander 462 Scanell, K. 507
Pym, A. 107–109, 117, 191, 197, 199, 200, Schäler, S. 378
204–206, 205, 206, 296–298, 327, 379 Schleiermacher, F. 114, 117, 118, 435
Schmitt, C. 50, 51
Qing dynasty 138 Scholte, J. A. 2
Quarantelli, E. L. 177 Schorch, P. 314
queer studies 57, 67 Schwarz, A. 177
screen errancy 286–287
Rafael, V. L. 59, 67, 434, 461 Seeger, M. W. 177
Ramírez Delgado, C. 384 Seidman, N. 459
Randeria, S. 449 self-knowledge 133
Ranger, T. O. 456 self-reflection 18
Rantisi, N. M. 307 Selim, S. 407
Reagan, Ronald 324, 499 Sellnow, T. L. 177
‘reference’ language 245 semilocalized websites 383
refugees 151–152, 158, 472, 516–517, 523–524 Sendai Framework 176
regional-language vendors (RLVs) 368 Sennett, Richard 143
re-globalized cinema 286–288 Service Provision category 328

545
Index

Shakar, Zeshan 157 Sturge, S. 307

Shamma, T. 466 subjectivity 89, 92, 117, 253, 428
Sharma, S. 357 subtitling 532; abusive 287; countries 283; and
Shimp, T. A. 357 dubbing 279, 286; English 119, 287; Japanese
Shirky, C. 409 118; non-professional 193
Shishkov, A. 462 Sulaiman, Z. 337, 344
Shryock, A. 307 Suny, R. G. 463
‘silent’ period 281–282 Susam-Sarajeva, Ş. 102–109
Silverman, R. A. 309 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 183
Silverstone, R. 121 17 Sustainable Development Goals 176
Simmel, G. 27, 75, 131 sustainability 87, 331, 337, 344–345, 531
Simmons, B. 443 de Swaan, Abram 230, 233, 236, 239
Simon, S. 71, 75, 76, 77, 114, 121, 149, 307, Swahili 239, 241, 241
309, 314 Switzerland 236, 382
Singapore 86, 240, 241
Singh, N. 381–383 Taiping Rebellion 138
single-language vendors (SLVs) 368 Taiwan 382; Chinese/English interpreters in 168
Six UN Languages (TL) 234, 235 Tampere 77
Skains, R. L. 259 Tan Zaixi 105
skopos 278, 340, 398 target languages 231–235, 234
Slobodchikoff, C. 91, 92 Target Text systems 311
Slocombe, K. E. 91 techne 392, 461, 529, 533
Sloterdijk, P. 71–73, 72 technological developments 162, 164–166
Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) 384 technological utopianism 288
Smith, V. 81, 355 technology impact: CAT tools 391;
Snell-Hornby, M. 340 dehumanization 398; human activities and
social networking 193 translation 391; human translators (see human
“social turn” 169 translators); MT 391; post-editing 397;
“society” concept 131 translation epistemology 395–396; translation
Soh, C. 315, 316 profession 397–399; translator training
Soja, E. 75 399–400
Solidarités International (SI) 410–413, 412, Tejaswini, N. 67
414–416, 420, 421 terracentric approach 9, 87–89, 96
‘Son of Heaven’ 139 terrestrial globalization 72
SOS-VICS project data 170 Thailand 31
source languages 231, 232, 234 Thatcher, Margaret 324, 499
South Asia 282 Therborn, G. 31
South East Asia 208 Thiong’o, N. wa. 61, 460
South Korea 86 Third Culture Kids (Naqvi) 156
Soviet regime 242–243 Third UN World Conference in Sendai,
Spain 23, 74, 382, 384, 476 Japan 176
Spanish 235, 238, 436 Thompson, Stith 229n12
Spanish Civil War 246 Thorpe, C. 4
Special Interest Group of Translation and Interpreting Tieber, M. 167
for Public Services (SIGTIPS) 169 T&I Graduate Employability Strategies 208
Specters of Marx (Derrida) 141 T&I industry 202–205
Spivak, G. C. 66, 71, 79, 80, 266, 477, 514, 515 T&I programmes 208–209
Srinivasan, A. 522 T&I training courses 205
standardized websites 383 Tlaxcala 198, 406, 506–507
Stecconi, U. 109 TM Town 408, 408
Steger, M. B. 2, 3, 7 Tognini Bonelli, E. 344
Steiner, G. 256 top-down crowdsourcing translation enterprises
stereoscopic vision 152 196–197
Stockhammer, R. 81 Torresi, I. 355, 532
Strobridge, James 139 Torres, Luis de 74
Strom, R. 325 Torres-Simon, E. 206
student-learning outcomes 202 Tourgeniev, Ivan 254

546

tourism 3, 4, 204, 308; accessibility 337,
341–344; authenticity 341–344, 338; auxiliary
language 338; cultural 316; English plus
multilingual translations 338; foreignization
338; international 337; Islamic 344;
interpreter/informant 339; lingua franca 338;
staged authenticity 338; studies 339–341;
travel writing 338
tourism studies 339–342, 345
Toury, Gideon 101
tradosphere 88, 89
training programmes 206
transatlantic solidarity 273
transcreation 118, 285, 353, 368, 532
transculturality 56–57, 67
transformation: cultural 475, 532;
epistemological 395; global economy 6;
human rights 442–451; knowledge 260;
learning and 430; rationalization 27; rules 34,
144; social 50, 75, 473; vernacular 458;
translanguaging 343, 355, 357–358, 432
translatability 132–133
translation: audiovisual 4, 9, 177, 194, 200,
279, 330, 530; community 191, 192, 410,
507; complexity of 226; complexity theory
225–226; cosmopolitan 472, 475–478; cross-
cultural interactions 533; flows 3, 57 (see also
world translation flows); flows and societal
changes 242–245; global economy 231; in
globalizing context 223–224; industry and
service 530–531; invisibility 134, 279, 294,
301–302; literary 257, 268, 271–274, 287, 299,
338, 391, 436; migration and transmigrancy
151–154; mobility and displacement 148–151;
of news 4, 121, 293–294, 296–302;
‘normalization’ of 226; and places 18–19;
political 427, 503; politics of 3, 255, 437,
513–524; profession 8, 17, 101, 190, 193, 205,
392, 397–399; promotional 4, 352, 354,
356–358; quality 312, 329–331, 357–358, 384,
397, 531; self-transformation 533; studies
99–110, 113–124, 211–212, 256–259, 339–341,
356–358, 501–502; technology 91, 223,
393–395, 399–400, 531; tourism 337–342,
344; transfer languages in 224; transmigrant
subjectivities 154–158; volunteer 191, 192, 398,
407, 408, 412, 413, 419, 420
translational cyborg 193
‘translational transnational zone’ 152
translational urban spaces 149
Translation and Globalization (Cronin) 2
Translation and Interpreting Studies (TIS) 161,
162, 375
translation memories (TMs) 326, 393
translation penalty 285
translation studies 99–110, 211–212, 256–259,
339–341, 356–358
Index
translation theory 225
Translation Trends in the Digital Age 210
translation zone 75–77
translator status 205, 355, 398, 412–414
The Translator’s Invisibility (Venuti) 230
Translators without Borders (TWB) 366, 406,
419; vs. humanitarian organizations 418–420;
Solidarités International (SI) 410–413,
412; machine translation 416–418; money
trail 416–418; translators’ status and ethos
413–414; unpaid work 414–416; volunteer/
crowdsourced translation 407–410, 409
transmigrant/transmigrancy 149, 151–158
transmigrant subjectivities 154–158
transnation/transnational/transnationality 3, 7,
29, 71, 461; aesthetic production 57; border
zones 149, 152; centrality of 274; citizenship
86; democratic politics 428; feminism 120;
flows 86; globalized experiences 115, 116;
governance 499; languages 66; literary
texts 267, 269; plurilingualism 153; social
movements 462; transculturality 57; translocal
translation 444; transmigrancy 149
transnational feminism 120
transnationalism 152
transworld instantaneity 2
transworld simultaneity 2
travel 78, 225, 442, 516; authenticity and
337–338; guides 342, 343; translation
445–448; writing 80, 338
Triandis, H. 340
Trivedi, H. 67
Troussel, J.-C. 331
Trump, Donald 221
Trumpener, K. 457
Tsai, C. 294
Turkey 239
Turkish 239; Origin of Translations from 240
Twain, Mark 257–258
Tymoczko, M. 5, 67, 93, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104,
106–110, 117, 301, 379, 478, 501–502, 532
The Types of the Folktale (Aarne) 229n12
Ukraine 228n1
Ulysses 268–270
UN Declaration of Human Rights 180
UNDP report 238
UNESCO 230, 238, 247n2, 316,
UNESCO’s Index Translationum 230, 231
UNICEF 416
Union Pacific Railroad 138
United Kingdom 59, 182, 237, 242
United Nations (UN) 166, 176, 230, 233, 234,
235, 238, 341, 366, 406, 446, 490
United Nations General Assembly 176
United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) 406
547
Index

United States 43, 58, 134, 182, 220, 225, 227, Western globalization 74
237, 242; Industrial Revolution in 134, 135; westernization 58, 74, 101, 461
Irish immigrants in 133–136 Western Renaissance 251
unity and diversity 148 Wheeler, M. 342
universal/universality/universalism 19, 514, Wheeler, T. 342
516–519, 523 Whitehead, C. 311, 314
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Whitman, Walt 254
(1948) 150 Wikipedia 197
UN Languages 238 Wilke, J. 294
untranslatability 56, 80, 149, 155, 158 Williams, R. 88
Urdu 239, 240, 240 Wilson, R. 337
Windhager, F. 330
Valdeón, R. A. 90, 296 Witcomb, A. 313
Valenzuela, Liliana 476 Wood, D. 80
Valero Garces, C. 170 Woodward, D. 80
van de Kerchove, M. 260 Woodworth, J. 86
Vandenbogaerde, A. 446 ‘Work Integrated Learning’ (WIL) 211
Van Doorslaer, L. 103–104 World Disasters Report 2018 180
van Leeuwen, T. 298 World Health Organization 182
Varikas, E. 514 world cinema 278–281, 288; nationalization
Vazquez, R. 449 282–286; ‘silent’ period 281–282;
Vega, Ana Lydia 474 synchronized speech 282–286
ventriloquism 279 world literature 275, 281; Anglo-American
Venuti, L. 57, 67, 76, 113, 114, 117–122, 230, conceptualization 62; canonical 114; centre/
258, 259, 267, 268, 273, 275, 379, 455, 529 periphery dichotomy 268–271; eurocentrism
Venuti, Lawrence 230 460; geopolitics 271–274; translation of
vernacularization 443 265–268
Verne, J. 77, 78 World Social Forum (WSF) 255, 261, 500,
Vertovec, Steven 115 503–504, 506
Vieira, L. N. 7, 394, 395, 399, 529 World Trade Organization (WTO) 254,
Villanueva, Tino 474 353, 499
Virgil 20 world translation flows: flows and societal
Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) 208 changes 242–245; global economy 231;
volunteerism: crowdsourced translation machine translation 231; preferred subjects
407–410, 409; Egyptian Revolution 236–242; source and target languages
407; humanitarian organizations 406, 231–235; speakers of 233
418–420; machine translation 416–418; World War II 228n3, 241
money trail 416–418; political activism Wuhan Municipal Museum 312
406; translators’ status and ethos 413–414; Wu, M. M. 168
TWB 410–413, 412, 418–420; unpaid work Wyse, Francis 135
414–416
Yeoh, B. S. A. 316
Wagner, E. 489–490 Yildiz, Y. 431
Waisman, S. 258 Young, R. J. C. 63, 66
Walcott, Derek 271 Yunker, J. 383
Waldmüller, Johannes 445, 449
Walkowitz, R. L. 121, 123 Zapatista online activism 508
Way, A. 395 ‘zero-degree’ cinema 280
Weaver, W. 325 Zethsen, K. K. 164, 166
Web 2.0 192 Zhukovskii, Vasilii 457
Weber, Max 27, 30 Zoboff, S. 327
Wei, L. 357 zombification 64
Weinbaum, A. E. 358 Zuberbühler, K. 91
2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak 180 Zuckerman, E. 93–94

548