Prophet of a multi-ethnic Ireland

Translation: Michael Cronin's Translation and Globalisation is quite simply the most complete study on translation since George…

Translation: Michael Cronin's Translation and Globalisation is quite simply the most complete study on translation since George Steiner's After Babel (1975), writes Marco Sonzogni.

The many strengths of this remarkable, if challengingly dense book, will, one hopes, undermine the scepticism with which academia too often regards translation.

Pedantic and snobbish, many old- fashioned academics deny translation studies the status of a "proper" scientific discipline. Like cultural studies, translation's interdisciplinary nature eludes spuriously canonical specialisms and is unfairly dismissed by narrow, self-serving minds.

This book - which follows the author's groundbreaking Translating Ireland: Translation, Languages, Cultures (1996) and his Across the Lines: Travel, Language, Translation (2000) - confirms that Michael Cronin is, as leading translation studies scholar Susan Bassnett has said, "the most exciting writer today in the field". In five sections, the book examines new translation paradigms as determined by global societies and economies (chapters 1 and 2) to map the "new geographies" and "new politics" of translation (chapters 3 and 4). The impact of globalisation on the relationship between translation, languages, political and economic power is further examined in chapter five. This is the most thought-provoking section of all.

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In it, Cronin addresses the pressures and repercussions that a multimillion dollar translation industry exerts on issues of cultural identity and minority languages. "If translation has played such a crucial role in the consolidation and development of imperial and national languages," he argues, "there is no intrinsic reason why translation should not be of benefit to minority languages."

Using case studies from all continents, Cronin advocates strategies of "translation ecology" to safeguard minority languages and cultures. He tackles complex and often contentious issues with authority and remains in control of his multi-faceted topic.

This spans anthropology and information technology, statistics and literature, global marketing and language policies, cultural identity and "echolands", escapism and transformation. It even draws connections between the Irish monk Columbanus, Houdini and Count Dracula. With eel-like deftness, he guides readers through the intricacies of translation.

The variety of themes makes it fractious to single out one aspect or line of argument as more relevant than another. However, one pertinent issue requires a particular mention: the consequences of English being the most widely translated language in the world. As such, English is a byword for globalisation and perceived as a universal language.

Driven by multiple forces, the number of non-native speakers determined to learn English is constantly rising. To be able to communicate in English has rapidly become a passport to access the "benefits" of a globalising world. (In Europe, for instance, English has now replaced French as the main foreign language learned by young people).

Ironically, however, English is also globalisation's silent victim. Increasing numbers of native speakers, including many who choose to study languages at third level, show abysmal grammatical awareness of the language genetically theirs.

If, on the one hand, English is, again ironically, the lingua franca of globalisation's economic and cultural imperialism - creating, at least on the surface, a sense of global community - on the other, its accepted hegemony will inevitably lead to what Cronin terms "the global parochialism of Anglophone monoglossia". In consequence, the effort of native English speakers to use a foreign language is often frustrated by native speakers of that language, resolutely determined to practice "the language of all languages". So the global status of English - Steiner was the first to talk about the spreading of "global English" - is developing an alarming linguistic lethargy among its native speakers.

It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that "there is a growing body of evidence", as Cronin emphasises, to suggest that "foreign language-learning in Ireland, Britain and the United States is experiencing a marked decline".

Cronin reminds us that translation is "simply impossible" without language-learning. Despite providing the etymological "memory chip" to so many English words, Latin (like Greek) is progressively disappearing. The closure of the Classics department in Queen's University Belfast is symptomatic. A vital part of Ireland's old and rich tradition of promoting cultural and linguistic exchange is thereby dying.

Colleges appear to be permanent building sites to accommodate the demands and expectations (as well as the profit!) of th'e new generation of global students. Yet the "building" of multicultural and multi-lingual societies based on wide-ranging language courses and training in translating is ruinously underestimated and under-budgeted in comparison with more functionally profitable programmes.

On this front, too, Cronin leads by example. He is a founder-member of the Irish Translators' and Interpreters' Association - the only self-funded translation association in Ireland - which has worked relentlessly over the past two decades to improve the standards of qualifications and professional recognition of translators.

Cronin has also established and inspired a research network on the theory and practice of translation. Under his leadership, Dublin City University is now among the most innovative centres of inter-cultural studies, translation studies and applied languages in Europe.

For these and for many other reasons, Translation and Globalisation is a vital study, establishing its author as the prophet of a multi-ethnic Ireland. Cronin's relentless commitment to cultural and linguistic pluralism - not only as an intellectual but also as an Irish and European citizen at home in three languages (Irish, English and French) - is a necessary and powerful warranty against the vacuous provincialism of globalisation.

Recently, on the departure monitors of a Paris airport, the Italian translation of the English "flight" and the French "destination" was, ominously, a mistranslation: "destino", meaning "destiny". Cronin reminds us also that translation - with its strengths and, indeed, with its limitations - will always be central to shaping the "destiny" of "whatever new global order we create for ourselves".

Marco Sonzogni is Faculty Fellow in Italian at UCD and the editor of Translation Ireland

Translation and Globalisation. By Michael Cronin, Routledge, 208pp,  £18.99