Englishization and the politics of translation

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to investigate the treatment of translation within the international business and management (IBM) literature to highlight colonialist assumptions inscribed in this treatment as a result of the hegemonic status of English. Design/methodology/approach This investigation takes the form of a systemic literature review to examine the treatment of translation in the IBM literature through a postcolonial lens. Findings The findings demonstrate that despite growing interest in language in international business, matters of translation have received comparatively little attention. However, those articles that do address translation matters tend to do so in five key ways, including epistemological/methodological considerations, exploring translator agency, the investigations of the discursive void/conceptual fuzziness between languages, and approaches that discuss translation as social practice. Research limitations/implications Despite the authors’ critique of English-language hegemony, this literature review is restricted to English-language journals, which the authors acknowledge as problematic and discuss within the article. Practical implications In exposing the limited treatment of translation within the literature, the authors provide a call to action for IBM scholars to be more explicit in their treatment of translation to ensure representation of cultural and linguistic Others, rather than providing domesticated accounts of multilingual research. Originality/value Although there have been other articles that have examined translation in the past, this paper is the first to do so through a postcolonial lens, demonstrating from a linguistic perspective the colonialist assumptions that are still prevalent in IBM knowledge production, as evidenced by the treatment of translation in the field.

Contextual and linguistic challenges for French business schools to achieve international accreditation: experts as boundary-spanners

“…These vignettes convey the specific language inadequacies of the French (Boussebaa and Brown, 2017) and their overall frustrations, vulnerabilities and inequalities, as well as the detrimental and exclusionary effects (Michalski and Śliwa, 2021; Tietze et al , 2016) experienced by non-Anglophone speakers to achieve the expected accuracy, linked to the dominance and imperialism of English (Phillipson, 2006; Tietze and Dick, 2013) as the mandatory accreditation language. Moreover, translated documents do not necessarily present the local (French) HE practices in an adequate way (Wilmot and Tietze, 2020). Coping with these linguistic constraints may require significant practical and political effort (Carlile, 2002, 2004) for the schools to be able to achieve their international accreditation goals effectively.…”

“…This is in line with previous research demonstrating the negative effects of the dominance of English as the institutionalized language of internationalization, including accreditation, in management education (Boussebaa and Brown, 2017; Boussebaa and Tienari, 2019; Tietze and Dick, 2013). This dominance of English has made institutions in non-Anglophone contexts vulnerable to the inequities in fluency, subtlety, and precision (Phillipson, 2006), in both general and specialist language (Michalski and Śliwa, 2021; Tietze et al , 2016), professional jargon (Gaibrois, 2018), as well as in matters of translation (Wilmot and Tietze, 2020). Consequently, marginalization and tension may occur, reinforcing the effects of imperialism (Boussebaa and Brown, 2017; Phillipson, 2006), neo-colonial domination (Boussebaa and Tienari, 2019; Tietze, 2022), and colonization practices (Michalski and Śliwa, 2021; Tietze and Dick, 2013) related to the use of English as a mandatory language in academic contexts.…”

“…Additionally, business schools outside the Anglophone sphere are under increasing pressures to achieve legitimacy through international accreditations (Boussebaa and Tienari, 2019). The colonizing effects of the English language on meanings and understanding are therefore enhanced and intensified (Tietze and Dick, 2013), even more so when documents need to be translated into English since the translation process is itself imbued with “colonialist assumptions” (Wilmot and Tietze, 2020). Indeed, schools in non-English-speaking contexts are confronted with “mental colonialism […] [and] […] linguistic imperialism […] where English is used in an absolute way as the only tool through which the world can be labeled and understood” (Tietze, 2022, p. 26).…”

Decolonizing journals in management and organizations? Epistemological colonial encounters and the double translation

“…Each round of review demands another payment. In addition, translation involves negotiating meaning between contexts (Wilmot and Tietze, 2020) amid epistemic and stylistic tensions.…”

Social capital, language and host country nationals (HCNs) as global talent

“…Communication serves as an essential element that connects the expatriates to the host environment (Kim, 2001). Despite English being the taken-for-granted lingua franca in global business (Wilmot and Tietze, 2020), the inability of the expatriates to adapt to the host country's language is one of the limitations of expatriates working in subsidiaries (Reiche and Harzing, 2008). Expatriates fluent in the host country's language tend to have better relationships with HCNs (Shaffer et al, 1999;Selmer and Lauring, 2015).…”