Cultural Translation in the Context of Glocalization

In an increasingly globalized world, forces of localization have the potential to shape a powerful paradigmatic shift in viewing the vital role of translation in the global context of cross-cultural communication. The emergence of globalized commodity culture is certainly assisted by translation, and dictates the ways in which translation is conducted. Globalization also raises the troubling possibility of cultural colonization as a consequence of cross-cultural encounters, thereby creating a homogenized world that threatens to destroy local cultures. It is therefore a question of primary importance to (re)establish cultural location and identity in response to globalization. Through translation, a universalized and universalizing cultural language reawakens and reinforces cultural identification. Translation activities are part of local realities in relation to the global world of transnational cultures. In this respect, indigenous or local knowledge is indispensable to successful cultural translation by means of negotiating an acceptable cultural discourse for the target system. Global economic integration has enabled China to play an increasingly prominent role in today's world, economic and political, though not quintessentially cultural--a major source of dissatisfaction for many Chinese intellectuals. China has enthusiastically--if also somewhat circumspectly--embraced economic globalization while viewing cultural globalization with suspicion and scepticism. Thus, while localized appropriation of globalized cultural information is well explored, more shared or universal references are making it possible for Chinese translations of foreign, especially western texts, to be less encumbered by cultural difference, which facilitates cultural translation as a dynamic process of cross-cultural exchange. More than ever before, cultural translation is characterized by mixture and hybridity; yet it is still fraught with sharp cultural and political tensions. Rapid globalization in China has inculcated an ethnocentric fear of cultural difference and symptoms of cultural alterity are very much in evidence. Issues of cultural difference and the translation strategies formulated accordingly are best examined in the cross-cultural context of glocalization. I. Globalizing Trend and Translation