However, this definition of less translated language as weak need not always hold true, as is evident from the position of English in India. We have already noted how most of the translations of Indian language literary works are into English in India (Lecture#28, Languages and the Politics of Translation in India). Paul St-Pierre, in his “Translation in an Era of Globalization” examines the nature of translations from Oriya into English and back. He shows that contrary to expectations, there has been a decline in translations from English to Oriya since 1970. The number of translations from English, among other languages, was also less. However, there was an increase in the number of translations from Oriya into English between 1942 and 2001. Obviously, the less translated-language status belongs to English in this scenario. Does this mean that English is in a less favoured position compared to Oriya?

Far from it. What it actually reflects is the importance accorded to English in the Indian situation, the prevalent feeling that a literary work becomes worthy of recognition once it gets translated into English. As St-Pierre puts it, this is the effect of globalization: “the value accorded English, the delinking with the local and regional language and culture and its subsequent marginalization” (170). English is so powerful that it threatens the existence of other languages in India. As St-Pierre observes, this is a double movement: “These translations are being produced for both national and regional, and occasionally international, readerships, at a moment when globalization is at one and the same time erasing, valorizing, the local and the regional … it is the sign, rather, of a process in which local languages and cultures are being irremediably lost …” (171).

The translators of Indian language works into English have a tendency to make the translations fluent to suit the target readership. In their zeal to appeal to the English-speaking reader in India and abroad, the translators have to resort to various domesticating strategies at the risk of sacrificing the cultural identity of their own language. Cronin points out: “Minority languages that are under pressure from powerful major languages can succumb at lexical and syntactic levels so that over time they become mirror images of the dominant language…As a result of continuous translation, they can no longer be translated. There is nothing left to translate” (Translation and Globalization, 141). The relationship between two languages cannot be on equal grounds if the source text is adjusted to suit the target readers, as is happening with the English translations of regional Indian texts. Most of the translations have extensive glosses to explain culture specific terms.