“In Globalization 1, which began around 1492, the world went from size large to size medium. In Globalization 2, the era that introduced us to multinational companies, it went from size medium to size small. And then around 2000 came Globalization 3, in which the world went from being small to tiny.” Putting away elaborate descriptions and high sounding jargons to explain globalization, American Journalist Thomas Friedman has presented this simple viewpoint that says it all. Just as people cannot survive in isolation, and are intertwined via mutual understanding and cooperation rooted in social structures, the same concept holds good for nations in today’s “Think Global, Act Local” world framework.
It is also important to comprehend that the relation between translation services and globalization is definitely not linear, but a complex two-way process. The transition of Translation Services from an individual-centric, isolated and unorganized sector to a specialized, corporate and well- structured industry can be directly accredited to globalization, because the latter has provided a huge impetus to organizations to venture into international markets to sell their products and services. With free trade policies and subsidized export tariffs, it is a lucrative opportunity for companies today to diversify and expand across several nations, and their primary barrier involves language, which is where professional translation services come into play. Hence globalization initially raised a huge demand for professional, certified and most of all reliable translation service providers. Today this demand has escalated upwards to include multilingual services across a wide range of sectors, or in short a stop solution for a wide variety of translation requirements in several different languages spoken in the multilingual market segments. Therefore, as opposed to a decade earlier, today’s service providers offer translation services in a number of languages across all possible sectors- Technical Translation, Financial Translation, Website Translation and Localization, Software Translation and Localization, Literary Translation, Legal Translation, Business Translation, Medical Translation, Transcription, Voice-overs/Dubbing, Sub-titling, Media and Press Release Translation, Training and Research-related Translation, Translation of Licenses and Patents and so on and so forth.
Escalation and evolution of global translation demands have not only brought about a change from canonical to professional, diversified translation services, it has simultaneously brought about a paradigm shift in the field of translation studies, transforming it from a literary, canonical and academic study to a more market or job-oriented professional area of expertise. A new work-force of professional translators is fast emerging in the market in order to meet the current demands of globalization. One must note that just as globalization has paved the path for evolved professional translation services, similarly professional translation services being offered in the global market today have provided further impetus to globalization by facilitating international players to penetrate local markets and successfully carve a niche for themselves by effective localization and subsequent trust-building. In the words of French Theorist Paul Virilio, “The speed of light does not merely transform the world. It becomes the world. Globalization is the speed of light.” which certainly is a bright sign for the translators across the world.
