Is translation a mode?

Abstract

This essay argues that globalization and the politics of translation need to be thought through together as part of the same problematic. Globalization functions like a language and it is crucial that the world speak in many languages rather than adopt the voice of dominant or hegemonic monolingualism. The socio-political and cultural valences of Global English have to be understood as one of the many ingredients that constitute global communication and miscommunication. Working through the nuances of Walter Benjamin's and Jacques Derrida's theories of translation, this essay makes the point that the project of global understanding should not degenerate into the project of colonising the Many in the name of the One. The going global of English should be understood not as a universalization of its jurisdiction, but rather, as an acknowledgement of its vulnerability to the world and its many tongues, accents and registers. A critical translation theory locates meaning as simultaneously inter- and intra-lingual, and in doing so, makes sure that the meaning of the world is forever postponed in the name of its difference from itself. It is only on the basis of the clamour of languages among and within themselves that globality can speak and speak for the world.

Keywords:

• translation
• pure language
• global language
• Global English
• globality
• monolingualism
• untranslatability

Notes

For the nature of duality in the context of the bilingual love of the translator, see Abdelkebir Khatibi (1990).

For a spirited articulation of feminism with the modality of translation, see Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (2000). For a powerful recasting of the politics of translation in a postcolonial context, see Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000: 72 – 96 and 272 – 75).

For a thorough critique of liberal multiculturalism, see the chapter, ‘The Use and Abuse of Multiculturalism’, in Radhakrishnan (2003).

Chapter 1, ‘Revisionism and the Subject of History’, of Radhakrishnan (2008) deals extensively with the theme of the ‘return’ by way of Friedrich Nietzsche, Adrienne Rich and Frantz Fanon.