ABSTRACT
There are hardly two terms more closely bonded together than translation and globalization. No matter how far it dates back in history, globalization begins with translation, and translation enables and facilitates globalization. Perhaps no one speaks of the mutually constitutive relationship between globalization and translation more stunningly than Michael Cronin when he suggests, in the context of discussion on multiple modernities, reconsidering globalization as translation in Translation and Globalization. Spivak’s call for democratic translation in the age of globalization finds a politically resonant echo in Judith Butler’s writing about how to translate the universal across linguistic borders in a genuinely democratic way. What Butler urges us to practise in the age of globalization is cultural translation that articulates concepts of universality in culturally different ways. Rethinking universality in terms of cultural translation, Butler is blazing a new trail in theorizing the irreducible singularity of cultures, or Benjamin’s ‘foreignness of languages’.
