Culture-critic comments on language imperialism and translation

Below, work on translation by Peking University scholar Dr. Thorsten J. Pattberg from Germany.

·A great piece that should make the West think very seriously about its globalisation project: Language and Empire: my language, your prison

··Here’s another piece about ‘language imperialism’ by Thorsten J. Pattberg called The End of Translation.

·Pattberg tells us that because ‘knowledge is a polyglot’, we need “to unite all the languages’ vocabularies into one” to make a truly global language! See here for a six minute you tube that explains this.

·“I have nothing against translation , but there are simple things that you should not translate in order to show respect to other cultures” says Pattberg in an interview here.

·“What we see in Western China studies is a fraud” says Pattberg in this you tube video, in which he dramatically trashes Western scholarship as ingrown and provincial. See also this similar video, which Pattberg says that hegemonic Western educational systems “force us to employ pure and clean English or else perish”.