Mamta Kalia

Translation in the global village
The “global village–whole world as one
globe” is being celebrated today. While
the term ‘village’ itself needs to be
interrogated, the other question is
“whether this global village really rests
on the tenets of post? to look at the
world as a ‘village’ is either an absurd
perception or a crafty euphemism. In
what sense is the world a village? Shall
we believe that we live in a quiet, tranquil
verdant nook with birds chirping and
fresh breeze caressing the harvest ? This!
In the face of realities like nuclear bombs
and global warming!
But when words are butchered, when
words like “peacekeeping”, “daisy cutters”
and sentences like “10 Iraqis detained
for interrogation” tell nothing about the
brutality and humiliation (this is how
words are put to shame before ‘deeds’)
of which the pictures from Abu-Gharib
were just a trailer, it is too much to
expect that what is said is also what
is meant. Thus when it is said that
the world is becoming a “small world”,
one needs to carefully examine what
it is all about ? We are being shown
continuously that the days of the nation–
state are over, at least in the West,
thus there are formations like the
European Union and treaties like GATT
or NAFTA . But as Radha Krishnan shows
in his brilliant essay “Postmodernism
and the rest of the world” “………despite
all claims of free trade, clearly, there
is a home and a not home, an inside
to be protected and an outside that is
really not our concern. And how do
we distinguish between who is “us” and
who is “them”? Of course, through the
good old category of “nationality” …………”
No theory can be blind enough to
evade the dangerous kernel of
nationalism, infact fundamentalist
nationalism is the fruit of globalization
that we seem to relish so much. Of course
“there is no country on God’s earth that
is not caught in the cross hairs of the
US cruise missile and the IMF cheque–
book. Argentina is the model if you
want to be the posterboy of neoliberal
capitalism, Iraq if you are the black
sheep”.
In such a world, translation, the act
of carrying across-can help in creating
a dialogue–on equal terms not
just politico-economic corporate
collaboration. There have been instances
in the colonial period when translation
has served as the vector of hegemonic
scenario. The translator can certainly
strive for a negotiation between the
difference of other and signification. As
Homi Bhabha writes- “Cultural
Translation, is not simply appropriation
or adaptation, it is a process through
which cultures are required to revise
their own systems and values by departing
from their habitual or “inbred” rules
of transformation.”
After all, to translate is to dispel
the comfortable illusion of unity that
the primary languages give us. It is
a disruption of the safir-whorfian
April-June 2010 :: 153