Globalization and Translation Essay

GLOBALIZATION AND TRANSLATION GLOBALIZATION AND TRANSLATION Two fundamental features of Globalization are crucial for the overcoming of spatial barriers and for the crossing of knowledge and information, thus resulting in the mobility of people and objects; and a proper contact between different linguistic communities.Globality is manifested not only in the creation of supra-territorial spaces for finance and banking, commodity production (transnational corporations production chains) and global market, but also in the significance of travel and international movement of people (mass tourism, business travel, migration and exile) and the consolidation of a global communications system: that distributes images and texts to any place in the world. These developments emphasize- in spite of the fact that English is a predominant language on the globe – an important growth in the significance of translation, which becomes a key mediator of global communication.Yet language and translation have been neglected in the current literature on globalization. Globalization is generally associated with the shrinking of our world and the possibility of instant communication across the globe. Widespread metaphors – like a superhighway which flows with information- creates an image of the world as a network of interconnected places in which space ceases to be significant. This globalization theory focuses on mobility and deterritorialization, trying to obscure the complexities involved in overcoming cultural and linguistic barriers and made the role of translation in global communication invisible.

However, translation is a key process in the development of global connectedness. Therefore it is central for understanding the material conditions that make possible this connectedness and translation has important consequences for the way that globalization is understood today. First, globalization has been defined as ‘the widening , deepening and speeding up of worldwide interconnectedness in all aspects of contemporary social life and is notably not a new phenomenon, but was already present in the world religions and empires of antiquity’ (Susan Basnett 2008:19).Moreover, globalizing tendencies are inherent in the development of capitalism, which functions through its geographical expansion; and the nineteenth century was a major period for the development of global connections. While some theorists point to the deep historical roots of globalization and maintain that ‘different processes of globalization have developed at different times, followed different trajectories and tempos’ (Susan Basnett: 19)it is believed that the origins of contemporary globalization are to be found in the early modern period, when Europe’s political and military expansion took place.What is new about the present phase of globalization, which Roland Robertson designates as the ‘uncertainty phase’, starting in the late 1960’s is the intensification of global interconnectedness and of global consciousness. This is generally related to several key developments.

The global dominance of English is expressed in the fact that, in 1981, books originally written in English accounted for 42 per cent of translations worldwide, compared with 13,5 per cent from Russian and 11,4 per cent from French.At the same time, British and American book production is characterized by a low number of translations: 2,4 per cent of books published in 1990 in Britain and 2,96 per cent in the United States. On the other hand, 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.An area of significant growth in the translation industry in recent decades has been the activity of localization, through which global products are tailored to meet the needs of specific local markets. 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 elocalization (website localization) are not uniform but combine elements of domestication to market products that have to appeal to their target buyers, but often retain exciting connections to the language of technological innovation. Similarly, translation plays a central role in negotiating cultural difference and in shaping the dialects between homogeneity and diversity in the production of global news. Esperanca Bielsa and Susan Bassnett- Translation in Global News, published by Routledge, New York, 2008.