Cosmopolitanism

The world today seems to have got closer or more cosmopolitan,with many people speaking to each other in different languages in different fora. Michael Cronin defines this cosmopolitanism as a “socio-cultural condition” (Translation and Identity 9). He says that “in an era of  mass transportation, global tourism, significant migration and the relentless time-space compression of economies driven by information technology, cosmopolitanism is the body of thought most apt to describe our essential connectedness as global producers and consumers” (9). He also points out how it constructs “multiple subjects” or human subjects with “a plurality of different loyalties, a multiplicity of different ways in which they can be described or defined” (9). This cosmopolitanism also becomes a way of negotiation for the local with the global, and can provide frameworks of reference for translation practice in a world marked by inequalities between local languages and global languages that are stronger.

Cronin borrows the term ‘cultural cosmopolitanism’ from David Held who defines it as “the ability to stand outside a singular location (the location of one’s birth, land, upbringing, conversion) and to mediate traditions” (11). Cronin argues that all translators are cultural cosmopolitans in this sense because translations means a moving away from one’s language and culture to another, even when the translation is into a foreign language. Thus translation becomes a process of mediation, one which takes place on a daily basis in the world. Translation also demands that even as you move away from your language, you remain rooted in it; otherwise, translation becomes an impossibility. In the present world, ‘your’ language means the language you are most proficient in, which need not be your mother-tongue – this is one of the advantages of cosmopolitanism.