Language of Technology

Minority or less-developed languages face another drawback when it comes to the dissemination of science and technology. There is the general assumption that these languages are not equipped to deal with the advancements in scientific and technical knowledge that are being made on almost daily basis. For instance, how many scientific books are written in Hindi or other Indian languages? From this also follows the assumption that you need English to deal with the challenges of a modernised world. Unfortunately this seems to be the case when you look at one of the aspects of contemporary life which is the computer and the internet. The language of this world is English, especially American English or cyber English. Cronin points out that “80 per cent of e-mail and data content are in English, a language that is not spoken as either a first or second language by three-quarters of the people on the planet” (143). What happens to those who do not know this particular type of English? Cronin quotes Joe Lockard as the answer: “Non-English speakers have remained the permanent clueless newbies of the Internet, a global class of linguistic peasantry who cannot speak technological Latin” (144). This has created another hierarchy wherein translations have to be from the dominant language, namely English. There have been attempts to counter this by utilizing other languages like Hindi etc on google sites, but they are hardly adequate to ward off the bigger threat of English swamping all other languages. English thus falls into what Cronin categorises as ‘target-language intensive' languages, where all translations are from English into other languages because English is seen the source of knowledge. The other languages have to translate this knowledge into their own systems. Minority languages are source-language intensive because translation activity is into their languages from others which are considered major or dominant.

However, the status of a minor language is never fixed. It is a relative position which is dependent on a lot of factors. Cronin is of the view that this relative positioning of minority languages has a direct bearing on translation theory because of three factors. Firstly, the position of a language can change from that of a major one to being a minor one, depending upon political and economic power. In fact Cronin argues that all languages “are potentially minority languages” (145). The relegation of Persian to an inferior position with the coming of English in India is a case in point. So the translation experience of minority languages is educational for any language, irrespective of whether it is major or minor. The second factor lies in the dichotomy between the target-language intensive and source-language intensive languages. Translation practice in the target-language intensive major language can be studied only against the background of the translation experience of the minority languages. The third factor is the pressure on minority languages to translate, if they have to keep pace with the latest developments in any domain of knowledge. A recognition of this pressure means that translation is not just an academic activity meant to satisfy purely scholarly curiosity, but an urgent necessity in terms of practical life. Translation thus becomes a reflection of asymmetrical power relations in the world today. Thus translation strategies might also provide strategies of meaningful resistance and empowerment as far as minority languages are concerned.