Cronin: Translation and Globalization
Michael Cronin examined translation as a flow that is never symmetric. Far more is translated from English into minority languages than the reverse. The asymmetry shapes which cultures get heard.
Minority and majority
A minority language is one whose speakers must function bilingually to participate in wider markets and discourses. Translation into a minority language sustains the language; translation out of it broadens its reach. Both flows are needed, and the second is consistently under-resourced.
AI as accelerant
AI translation lowers the cost of both flows, but more steeply for the dominant direction (everything into English) than the reverse. A pipeline that takes minority-language quality seriously must invest disproportionately, because the parallel data is thinner. Cronin's argument is the case for not treating translation as a single market price.
Further reading: Spivak, Tymoczko.