What’s The Global Language Movement?

The Global Language Movement encourages writers from all corners of the world to limit their translations of cultural key terminologies in order to contribute to the formation of a global language that best reflects the cultural diversity and multitude of human thought, originality, and inventiveness.

Introduction:

BEIJING/TOKYO - The non-Western world must use its global abilities to dismantle the legacy of Western language imperialism and institutionalized discrimination against non-European words, concepts and categories through tackling global word-poverty and language inequality, and fostering cultural reconciliation in the written world. A new generation of Western scholars must use their resourcefulness to influence the tide of culture and establish a future global language that will make room for all key terminologies and socio-cultural originalities of all Western and non-Western cultures, to limit or end translation of important names and key terminologies wherever possible, and thereby expanding our knowledge of each other and enlarging and enriching written world history. If we liberate the words of all people, that is going to change EVERYTHING.

“The liberalization of all the world’s vocabularies has only just begun…”

The Future of Global Language:

World history, or better: the writings thereof, is still administered by the West. However, if Asia truly wanted to escape the suzerainty of European words over her thoughts and originality there is a sure-fire way: Revive and promote more Asian words and key concepts. [Read HERE]

Language Imperialism:

…is the deliberate translation of foreign key terminologies for various reason such as claiming the sovereignty over the definition of thought, assimilating a foreign idea into one’s own culture, or the willful omission of a foreign word in order to keep once language pure and clean of foreign forms. [Read HERE]

The End of Translation:

In order to rejuvenate the inventiveness and originality of all the world’s societies we must respect the names they have given to their ideas and traditions by not translating them, but instead adopting those foreign key terminologies into our own lexicon. [Read HERE]

The Competition for Terminologies:

If human rights protect the human body and personhood of each individual (in theory), culture rights should protect the products of our languages. [Read HERE]

Shengren - The Rise of Chinese Terminologies:

Chinese loanwords are underrepresented in the English language. There are some, like kungfu, kowtow, and fengshui. However, the large majority of Chinese originality has been either omitted or translated into European words. This is going to change. As a symbolic concept and representative for tens of thousands of other unique Chinese concepts are the Shengren of China. [Read HERE]

Inside Peking University - The Rise of the Junzi:

Many people search endlessly for the secret key or a magic formula that would enable them to understand China. Naturally, at some point, they want to know how the Chinese are educated. There are many prestigious schools in China, but let us talk about Peking University, the mother lode of Chinese education. [Read HERE]

In the Media:

Pattberg’s revolutionary ideas on language and culture, although not yet mainstream, have been published on a global scale in leading newspapers, magazines, journals, books, and various blogs. Here’s a small selection of cv stops:

At Big Think – The World’s Leading Thinkers

At The Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies

At the German East Asiatic Society in Tokyo

At The University of Tokyo

At Peking University

At Harvard University

At Taipei Times

In Iran

Talks on Global Language:

Dr. Pattberg has attended numerous conferences and has given talks and presentations on Global language and Chinese terminologies in several key universities in seven countries. His contact email is: pattberg’at’pku.edu or thorsten.pattberg’at’yahoo.com.

WHAT’S NEXT: The Rise of Chinese Terminologies in the 21st Century (6/2014):

A new joint book-project (IAHS/PKU/Hanban/Confucius Institutes Headquarters/Foreign Language Press) is currently under way, to be published in 2014. Here’s an excerpt from our proposal:

Dr. Pattberg’s current research is centered on Cultures, Languages, and Empires. He led Peking University’s effort to establish the discipline of ‘Translation History’ at The Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies, under Professor Tu Weiming, that would –it was hoped- eventually convince Chinese scholarship to promote original Chinese terminologies into World History (instead of falling back on European translations).

In collaboration with academia and media in China and abroad, Dr. Pattberg composed a series of influential language articles with a combined circulation of over three million copies sold in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China, Japan, Korea, and Singapore. Repeated key phrases were Language Imperialism, Competition for Terminologies, End of Translation, Shengren, European Confucianism, Future of Global Language, Post-translational Society, etc. A compilation of these articles will be published in book form in summer 2014 with generous grants from Hanban/Confucius Institute Headquarters, supported by Peking University, The Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies, and published by China’s Foreign Language Press under the preliminary title ‘The Rise of Chinese Terminologies in the 21st Century’:

“It is true that China has risen economically, politically, and military; yet, it is also true that China has left little impact on the world culturally. In fact, the Chinese tradition is being marginalized by Western cultural dominance, largely because most theories are owned by Western thinkers and overwhelmingly expressed in Western philosophical vocabularies, Judeo-Christian categories, or Greco-Roman taxonomies. By comparison, Chinese thinkers and their vocabularies, categories, and taxonomies play no greater part in the formation and continuity of world history. (This is about to change.) Even after the successful establishment of the ‘Confucius Institutes’ overseas, China had to realize that it cannot teach the Chinese language to the majority of foreigners, and that the Chinese language is far too complex and difficult to master part-time, letting alone without living in China. But what the ‘Confucius Institutes’ can do, and what is explicitly addressed in this book project, is the promotion of Chinese key terminologies into foreign languages.” –T. Pattberg (10/2013)

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