My Final Essay

Summarise the main effects of globalisation and discuss to what extent they are beneficial to Applied Translation Studies

In recent years, there has been an increasing movement of globalisation all over the world. This means the expansion of interaction between many countries. Globalisation is an ongoing process, so the viewpoints about its effects are often revealed differently. Some supporters believe that it provides us with easy and convenient ways of communication. Critics, however, point out the increase in gap between the rich and the poor because of the international free trade. Although globalisation includes controversial matters, it is undeniable that the effects of globalisation spread widely on various fields such as economy, technology, science, and business. In particular, the advances in the globalisation of the economy, communication, and language are remarkable for the last several years and this change has considerable impact on translation which plays a significant part in these human interactions. This essay will consider the effect of globalisation from the standpoint of economy, communication, and language and examine how valuable they are for the translation business. The examples of the impact of globalisation will be shown and both positive and negative effects of the globalisation on
translation will be given.

With regard to the effect of globalisation on economy, the increase in cross-border corporate activities is given as one of the biggest changes all over the world. At first, it is obvious that international free trade intensifies by the effect of globalisation. Free trade is an economic theory of selling products between people without any trade barrier like taxes or quotas (BBC NEWS, 2004). It is often argued that international free trade causes the inequalities between rich countries and poor countries. However, it is no question that there are great benefits for many farmers and they can organise their own marketing and selling. Another divelopment is, the presence of multinational companies in economic. Steve Schifferes (2007) mentioned that in the post war years more and more of the global productions have been carried out by big multinational companies who operate across borders. Multinational companies, such as Unilever, TOYOTA, and Nestle, obtain huge profits by globalisation. Unilever, for instance, its sales of $45,679 million in 2000 ranked it fifty-fourth by revenues in the fortune 500 list of largest companies for that year (Geoffrey J, 2002).

Globalisation also makes it possible to communicate with people across national borders easily. Communication has two meanings: One is defined as the act of communicating with other people and the other is explained as a message sent to someone by letter, telephone, etc. (Cambridge Learner’s Dictionary). According to this definition, globalisation gives rise to two different types of communication. Firstly, it affects our face-to-face communication. Thanks to the effect of globalisation, easy and quick transport which connects with many countries facilitates easier face to face communication. It enables us to overcome the distance barrier. Secondly, globalisation provides us with better spatial communication such as e-mail, skype, and facebook. Skype, which allows users to make free calls over the internet, experienced a huge growth in user numbers during the past year and it has about 246 million registered users worldwide(BBC NEWS, 2007). In fact, improvement of communication technologies contributes to the spread of borderless communication all over the world.

With the expansion of globalisation, the need for common language (lingua franca) is growing around the world. The prospect that a lingua franca might be needed for the whole world is something which has emerged strongly only in the twentieth century, and since the 1950s in particular (Crystal D., 2003). Now English begins to be recognised as a global language and it is applied to every field of our lives. The role of an official language is today best illustrated by English, which has some kind of special status in over seventy countries, such as Ghana, India, and Singapore (Crystal D., 2003). However, linguistic diversity, especially indigenous and minority languages, disappears rapidly because of the spread of English. This leads to the loss of cultural identities and varieties. Moreover, it has a speculative concern about the future of English. As a result of the dissemination of English as a lingua franca, every people speak English in different ways because of their different territories where the language has taken root. This is known as ‘New English’. New English might cause the complexity of the original English.

As a result of the better communication facilities due to globalisation, many opportunities for translation in the international circumstances are created. With the growth of multinational companies, the demand for working for multinational companies as a translator has been increasing. Employment of translators is projected to increase 24% over the 2006-16 decades much faster than the average for all occupations (U.S. Department of Labor, 2007). In addition, the expansion of the internet and communication technologies makes it possible to do translation work easily and quickly. Today, nearly all translation work is done on a computer and most assignments are received and submitted electronically. This change reduces the burden on translators and offers smoother communication with the client across the borders. Moreover the internet provides translators with further resources of special knowledge or terminology.

On the other hand, the spread of English as a lingua franca by globalisation seems to impact translation practices negatively. Firstly, it causes the loss of varieties in translation business. It is widely believed that demand for translating English into another language and vice versa increases rapidly with globalisation. However, this does not take into account that the opportunities for translating languages other than English decreases in recent days. The United Nations (UN) was established with five official languages. There is now a widespread view of reducing the numbers of languages to cut down the translation costs (U.S. Department of Labor, 2007). Secondly, the appearance of New Englishes makes it complicated to pursue the accuracy in translation work. To translate means to adapt a text to its target culture without changing the intention of the writer, so it is nearly impossible to handle many forms of English based on hundreds of different cultural backgrouds.

On the whole, globalisation affects various fields like economy and communication and this change provides us with comfortable and innovative life. In terms of language, especially translation business, there are both positive and negative impacts on it. On one hand, it is benefcial for translators to gain more opportunities to work in an attractive environment. On the other hand, it causes the loss of translation industry for many indigenous languages. Maintaining balanced relations between common global language and other particular languages is the key to live and work in a globalised age.
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References

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