Translation and World Englishes

Abstract The article discusses a rarely researched type of translation—intermediary translation, that is, translation from English as an International Language that serves as a lingua franca, or a mediating language in intercultural communication. World Englishes, or varieties of English, are characterized by their distinctive features that should be familiar to intermediary translators and interpreters, as they facilitate intelligibility, comprehensibility, and interpretability of the source text. The author argues that Larry Smith's theory of successful intercultural understanding is pivotal for translators, as it focuses on the forms, semantics, and pragmatics of a source text in a world English. Challenges in these aspects related to localized world Englishes are pointed to. Besides, the article discusses interrelation of close terms: intermediary, indirect, and internal translation, with a focus on common features and different translation strategies. The final part of the article dwells upon translating transcultural/translingual fiction, that is, literature written by the author in a second language, which is an interesting research problem, especially in the case of translating this literature into the first language of its author. Examples of East Asian Englishes and Russian English are used to illustrate the discussed theoretical theses. Intermediary translation from world Englishes, which is being expanded with the spread of global English, is described as an interlinguistic translation (from a world English to another language) and as an intralinguistic/intervarietal translation (from one variety of English to another variety), the latter case requiring knowledge of cultures that underpin world Englishes (translating cultures) and familiarization with distinctive features of varieties of Englishes.