Download Complete Volume - National Translation Mission

Book reviewsLocating the ‘missing ‘link’? Not quiteTranslation and IdentityMichael CroninRoutledge: London and New York, 2006.Translation Studies scholar Michael Cronin’s recent bookTranslation and Identity is set against the background ofcontemporary world, based on certain assumptions, and demands thereaders to share them as they sail through the book. Some of theseassumptions are that that we are living in a globalised world; todayidentity has taken centre stage of various political struggles and isthe important category with which we make sense of thecontemporary world; in the globalised context it is difficult for theformation and continuance of a particular identity; identity isprimarily formed around languages and issues arising out of thequestion of identity lead to extremely violent conflicts. It is in thisassumed context that Cronin tries to situate translation as the‘missing link’ between the ‘local’ and ‘global’, and according tohim, `[translation] must be at the centre of any attempt to think aboutthe question of identity in human society.’ He also entruststranslators and thinkers about translation the obligation, `to engagewith debates about how in our century we are to find ways to livetogether in our households and in our cities and in our world.’This rather jargon-free and small book which runs to 166pages is divided into four chapters. In the first chapter, Translationand the new cosmopolitan, Cronin advances a new concept ofcosmopolitanism, ‘micro-cosmopolitanism’ which is a‘cosmopolitanism from below’, and is sensitive to and recognises`differences’ within the local/particular not as essentialist but asfluid. Conceptualising the translation phenomenon as ‘global hybrid’and ‘mutable mobile’, Cronin views the history of translation asessentially transnational. Further he argues for the centrality ofTranslation Today Vol. 3 Nos. 1 & 2, 2006 © CIIL 2006