Translation and

Globalisation
 Translation is all about

“ making connections,
linking one culture and
language to another,
setting up the
conditions for an open-
ended exchange of
goods, technologies
and ideas.
Michael Cronin
1. INTRODUCTION
In this era of globalization, it is almost impossible for a nation
to survive and prosper if the people of that nation do not
know more than one language. Translation has made the
production and circulation of global information flows
possible across different linguistic communities and cultures.
Globalization which usually refers to the integration of
economic, political, and cultural systems across the globe has
been possible because of translation. In fact, translation has
become a key mediator of global communication and thus
translators have always played a pivotal role in the
dissemination of the ever expanding knowledge and
information and bringing social and cultural change in the
society. In translation, language is not transferred; intended
meaning of the underlying utterance is being transferred since
languages are different superficially but they are more similar
This can be attested by language use in each similar socio
cultural setting, namely, greeting, introducing, answering
the telephone, making enquiries, instructing, requesting,
inviting, interrupting, apologizing, congratulating, paying
compliments, asking for permission, taking leave,
negotiating, thanksgiving, etc. With the increasing pace of
globalization the need of translation and interpretation has
also increased manifold. As a result of globalization,
minority cultures and communities have been able to make
their voices heard through the translation. In fact, translation
and globalization have dismantled the barriers between
nations and function as bridges between countries to make
human efforts meaningful and useful.
2. NEED OF TRANSLATION
IN GLOBALISED WORLD
Cronin emphasizes on a more self-aware and activist
dimension to the role of the translator in the age of
globalization. Translation, for Cronin, plays a crucial role
within globalization, since one of its primary functions is “to
replenish the intertextual resources of a culture.” (Translation
and Globalisation) In this globalized world translation has
become imperative for international as well as intra-national
communication. In a multilingual country like India where
there are hundreds of languages in use, no communication
can take place without translating and no one can imagine of
socio-cultural harmony and national integration.
Although translation of texts from one language to another has
been going on for the past so many centuries, a systematic
study of the linguistic process of translation has caught the
attention of linguists only recently. In 1950s translation came to
be accepted as a profession. There was a further development
in it as a result of rising international trade, increased
migration, globalization, the recognition of linguistic
minorities, and the expansion of the mass media and
technology. Campbell and Hale in Translation Today: Trends and
Perspective opine that as an applied discipline, translation and
interpreting puts people into real and important jobs.
3. GLOBALISATION
AS TRANSLATION
The asymmetries of globalization and the current inequalities in the
production of knowledge and information are directly mirrored in
translation, and this becomes visible when the directionality of
global information flows starts to be questioned. Thus, some
accounts of globalization have pointed at the number of book
translations from English and into English as an indication of the
power distribution in global information flows, where those at the
core do the transmission and those at the periphery merely receive
it. ). The global dominance of English is expressed in the fact that, in
1981, books originally written in English accounted for 42% of
translations worldwide, compared with 13.5% from Russian and
11.4% from French. At the same time, British and American book
production is characterised by a low number of translations: 2.4% of
books published in 1990 in Britain and 2.96% in the United States.
More generally, transparency and invisibility also characterize the
role of translation in globalization. The conception of
instantaneous communication, of the unimpeded transmission of
information flows, implies translation’s invisibility and, at the
same time, places new demands on translation. Thus, Cronin has
noted how the information economy generates pressures on
translation to become, on the one hand, a transparent medium of
fluid interchange, and, on the other, to approximate more and
more to the ideal of instantaneous transparency. The need for
instantaneous communication in real time generates the need for
simultaneous real-time translation, in which the human factor in
translation is finally eliminated.
Globalization has caused an exponential increase of translation. The
global dominance of English has been accompanied by a growing
demand for translation, as people’s own language continues to be the
preferred language for access into informational goods. As Cronin has
shown, an area of significant growth in the translation industry over
the last two decades has been the activity of localization, through
which a product is tailored to meet the needs of a specific local
market. In an informational economy characterized by instantaneous
access to information worldwide, the objective of the localization
industry becomes simultaneous availability in all the languages of
the product’s target markets. Translation values and strategies in
localization and e-localization (web site localization) are not uniform
but combine elements of domestication and foreignization to market
products that have to appeal to their target buyers but, at the same
time, often retain exoticizing connections to the language of
technological innovation.
Similarly, translation plays a pivotal role in the global circulation of
news, which are primarily produced by a limited number of
powerful organizations such as Western news agencies. A feature of
the globalization of news in the last decades is that while there has
been an increase in the circulation of news at an international level
there is, at the same time, a decrease in the number of agencies and
media that produce them. As a consequence of this, some
researchers have identified trends towards the homogenization of
international news. Therefore, translation plays a central role in
negotiating cultural difference and in shaping the dialectics
between homogeneity and diversity in the production of global
news.
2. CONCLUSION
Accounts of globalization have primarily focused on the increased
capacity for instant communication worldwide, ignoring the
necessary preconditions for achieving it. The important role played
by translation in the production and circulation of global
information flows has been made invisible and transparent, and this
has led to the assumption that information can circulate unaltered
across different linguistic communities and cultures.
Thank
You