Globalization Insider

Multilinguality, Globalization and the Translator’s Unprecedented Power

Minako O’Hagan, LISA Asia-Pacific Editor/SALIS, Dublin City University

Since my move to Ireland, I’ve been constantly impressed by Europe’s multilinguality exemplified by many of my colleagues, even outside the language department, who are conversant in three languages. They can comfortably function in any of them and easily give examples in all of them during their lectures to make the content more relevant to students from different parts of Europe.

In Asia, it would be a rare exception even for Asian Language Department lecturers to be able to freely switch between Chinese, Japanese and Korean, for example, despite the overlap of some Han characters in their writing systems. In contrast to multilingual Europe (that does seem to mean European Union languages), multilingual Asia is something that is simply not being pursued through its major languages. This is largely because the way to globalization in Asia is aligned more explicitly with mastering English. For example, Nissan’s Chief Operations Officer, Carlos Ghosn, often dubbed as a champion of globalization in Japan, has made English an official language within Nissan. A similar move to stress the importance of English may be seen in Malaysia, following its Bahasa Malay efforts, while Singapore seems to be making a concerted effort to improve on “Singlish,” which is seen by Singaporian translators with a strong aversion. Indeed, the globalization language strategy seems different depending on locality – after all, location still matters.

This issue of the Globalization Insider provides an article by a Japanese engineer, come technical translator, based in New York City. I was familiar with Minoru Mochizuki’s name in the Japanese translators’ mailing list, Honyaku, where he has been a regular contributor, but I had not met him face-to-face until the European Association for Machine Translation/Controlled Language Applications Workshop (EAMT/CLAW) and the International Japanese/English Translation (IJET) Conferences in May this year. During the latter, I was interested to hear that he is a Translation Memory (TM) convert who is beginning to tap into the tool’s practical value. This contrasted with my consistent impression that, among Japanese-English translators, TM is a technology yet to prove itself and reach a critical mass.

As Mochizuki claims, patent translation indeed sounds like a good candidate for this technology, due to the requirement for consistency in the use of terminology and a certain recurrence of phraseology. Given the increasing use of TM on the one hand, and the popularity of a corpus-based approach to translation solutions on the other, one could envisage in the near future specialized TM content being marketed as a high-priced product. Could this be the beginning of true, large-scale “collage translation” made up of “cut and paste” of existing sentences as described by Brian Mossop in the Canadian Association for Translation Studies (CATS) Conference in Canada?

This leads me to the second installment of my conference report (premium content), covering the aforementioned conference held in Halifax, Canada in May 2003. The theme was the impact of globalization on translation. In a sense, the linkage sounds too obvious, given that translation is only needed when text crosses national or linguistic borders, thus justified and driven by globalization. And yet, globalization’s true impact on the language industry is far more complex. As Anthony Pym suggested in his opening keynote, in the context of globalization, the use of translation and localization by multinationals is less about the protection of cultural diversity than about spreading their mantras unmoderated. It is an entertaining thought to imagine the impact when translators do start changing the embedded philosophy behind the product in the process of translation. This would give the translator an unprecedented power. Read on to learn more about this debate.

The third article by John White (premium content) brings us back to the practical reality of localization. I wonder how many project managers have not lost a night’s sleep thinking about untranslated strings! White talks about the importance of internationalization and following the proper procedures to avoid discovering missed strings after the affair. It brings me back to the words of the quality control guru, Dr. Deming, whose golden rule was “get things right first time round.” This message seems to have a particular relevance to localization, for which shoddy internationalization is a sure path to a failed project.

The last issue of the Globalization Insider dealing with Unicode and standards set a record for the number of Letters to the Editor received. Please click here if you are interested in reading some of them.

As a sneak preview of what is in store for a future edition of the Asia-Pacific Globalization Insider, LISA contacted the Japanese translator of the Harry Potter books and may be featuring an interview when she finally finishes translating the fifth book in coming months. The International Federation of Translators (FIT) is inviting an international circle of Harry Potter translators for its 50th anniversary event in Paris in November 2003, which we also hope to report on the Newsletter. Watch this space.