Chronostratification of languages

The shift in emphasis from space to time, or the reduction of time with respect to travel and communication is what Paul Virilio terms ‘chrononpolitics' (qtd in Cronin 121). Cronin argues that this has implications for language and translation as well. As an example he cites the case of Hungary. The dominant languages in Hungary before Communist rule were German and Latin. With the Communist rule, the official language became Hungarian but it was not well-equipped to deal with the technological innovations that were taking place. So German was used for this purpose. But after the fall of the Communist regime in the 1990s, English came to be the language used instead of German, while Hungarian remained the official language. The result was the rapid Anglicisation of Hungarian, and that too not very smoothly – Hungarian began to incorporate English terms and phrases in their original form causing ‘calques'. This is not a healthy development for any language, as it is not forcing Hungarian to come up with its own terms. Rather, Hungarian is taking the easy way out by importing English words into its vocabulary. So development in terms of lexicon is only for English and not Hungarian. This results in what Cronin calls the ‘chrono-stratification' of languages (122). This means that languages like English which are developed enough to encompass technological innovations, will have an edge over languages like Hungarian which are not so developed. This results in a hierarchy that is reflected in translation also. Translations will more often be from English into the inferior language, as English is the source of technical and scientific knowledge.