Translations and Cultural Identity

"A culture's language is one of its essential cornerstones."

One reason for presenting the notice of this international event in various languages is simply to provide ready access by a broader audience. The other (perhaps less obvious, but equally important) is as a small protest against the growing dominance of English.

Although the general acceptance of this "modern capitalist Esperanto" has, admittedly, made international communication more convenient, the long-term cultural price paid around the globe has been and continues to be considerable. (Please read note below.)

All translations posted here are made by volunteers who have an affinity for this project. However, translating certain terms can be difficult, even in a free-style format; in addition, errors do occur during e-mail transmissions. Being unable to proof-read some of the translated versions, we hereby ask readers who speak both respective languages well, and perceive any discrepancy between the meaning of the original (English) and one of the other editions, to contact us and we will forward suggestions to the translator.

If your language is not yet represented here and/or you feel motivated to translate the Symposium Notice--or any other part of this site--please let us know.

The success of television as the builder of roads by which Materialism (widely represented by the "American way of life") has traveled the globe is well documented. Hollywood, of course, presents its culture of make-believe in English...

Consequently, it has become trendy for hundreds of magazines around the world to substitute their own language's perfectly suitable terms and phrases with "cool" English ones. This is not only within advertisements promoting the products of multinational corporations, but increasingly now in journalistic features and even in essays with a literary slant, and of course in common speech between friends.

This phenomenon is not the result of some spontaneous "literary evolution" of Homo sapiens, or of a conscious and informed choice arrived at by a worldwide forum that in all fairness English should become the world's number-one language. Instead, another kind of deliberate and not-so-openly-communicated strategy has been at play...

And so the cultural identity-devouring sharks can now pound their chests with satisfaction. For instance, Ed Pratt, former chairman of Pfizer Inc. and the recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award for his "contribution to global education" unabashedly declared that there is "no time for unnecessary frills such as studying foreign languages." No time, that is, for the American students. It is they who should devote the energy spent in other countries to the study of English, to subjects like computer science, economics and math so as to gain an edge in the global arena of business gladiators...

Pratt has traveled extensively and, apparently, "everyone with whom there was any need to talk already spoke English...* (D. Korten, When Corporations Rule the World, 1995)

Imagine!