Development Communication, Translation and Culture

Abstract

Communication -which is tightly dependent on culture and civilization- and development are two closely-correlated concepts, the absence of each can affect the other one. In a modernized society, national development, i.e. inward-looking, plans are devised based on communication facilities and capabilities playing a major role in social development. However, not all plans are inward-looking. Besides, government officials and decision makers have been advised by experts to examine development plans of other nations and invest in the technology sector within different cultural contexts. This appears impossible, somehow, to transfer technology, compare and contrast different development plans (particularly outward-looking ones) without communicating with other states through a unified language, the main part of which will be culture and translation. In fact in the process of modernization, communicating with modernized states through a unified language and translation appears unavoidable. Although heads of states participating in the World Summit on Cultural and Linguistic Diversity in the Information Society emphasized on the significance of linguistic diversity in the age of information, they could not deny the dominancy of the English language as the main language of international exchange and the gravity of translation as the main tool of communication among cultures and civilizations. In the present paper, researchers have focused on clarifying relation(s) between development communication and translation while incorporating culture, civilization in particular, into this context.