Minority languages

This brings us to another major issue of concern which is that of the status of minority languages in the globalized world. The term minority here refers to the status of that language in the international scenario and not on the number of people speaking that language. For instance, Mandarin though spoken by a substantial number of people would be a minority language because it does not have any decisive role in the world of political, economic or technological power. So would Hindi, Japanese or Dutch. Cronin points out how translation theory is exclusively western-oriented, without taking any of the minority languages into consideration. By western-oriented, he means specifically English and French. Cronin is keen to undermine the notion that the ‘west’ does not imply a homogeneous power centre, a fact tha. even postcolonial translation criticism like Tejaswini Niranjana's, is not free of this biastowards the west.. Niranjana highlights the short-sightedness of the west in homogenizing the culture of the colonies, but she is guilty of the same homogenization when she refers to Anglo-French culture as ‘European'. Why does Niranjana think that English and French can represent all of Europe ? What of those other European languages that are in a minority with respect to these two languages?

The interesting aspect of these minority languages is that all of them have a rich translation history. These languages translate copiously from English and French. Cronin gives the statistics: 70% of the world's books are produced in English, French, German and Russian. In just the field of children's literature in Britain and the U.S, translations account for only 3% of the total children's books produced. In comparison, Finland has 70% translations, while it accounts for 50% in Netherlands and Italy . But we find very little representation of these languages like Finnish or Italian, in works of translation theory and criticism. These are languages of western societies that are economically and socially in a relatively better position than most Asian or African countries. Even then, they occupy minority status with respect to English.

Cronin points to another danger in this state of affairs. Translation by itself has traditionally been considered to be an ‘invisible' process, as very often the translation is made smooth to make it appear as good as the original, where the translator's presence is hardly felt. Cronin argues that minority languages are made ‘doubly invisible': “Firstly, there is the general failure to include theoretical contributions from minority languages in translation theory anthologies...Secondly, there is not always a willingness to acknowledge that translation perspectives from the point of view of minority languages will not always be those of major languages” (140). He also points out that the ‘foreignizing' translation strategy advocated by those like Schleiermacher might be beneficial only for major languages which can afford to retain foreign terms and phrases. As far as a minority language is concerned, it might be better to face the challenge of a foreign language and invent equivalent terms, thereby expanding its lexical base.