It sometimes feels like our world is getting smaller by the day. The ongoing rush of globalisation is bringing nations and cultures together like never before – making translation a more essential business than ever. It’s no wonder, in this climate, that some businesses are looking for a one-size-fits-all method of communicating with the world… but is Global English really the solution they’re looking for?

It’s known by many names – International English, World English, English as a Lingua Franca, and many more besides. The premise is simple – it’s supposedly a variant of the language that belongs to everyone, not just the British or the Americans who give their names to the two most popular dialects. It’s the end point for a fairly logical train of thought: standardisation helps businesses increase efficiency, particularly in a global context, so can’t we standardise the language we use on as broad a scale as possible? But as tempting as the idea sounds, it has serious flaws – as our article explains. In truth, there is no such thing as “Global English” – or at least no standardised version of it.

We’ve been here before, of course: projects like Esperanto and Interlingua have shown that while the idea of a standard international language might be a wonderful utopian dream, it’s very difficult to make it work in practice. In our blog, we discuss the potential pitfalls facing translators and businesses who work with this latest contender for universal-language status, and explain why people should be wary of adopting it right now. It’s not all negative, though: we also show the real benefits that come with addressing an audience in a language they’re most familiar with, proving once again that translation works best when you take the time to do it properly.

What do you think? Are we on course to all speak the same language ten years from now, or fifty, or a hundred? Would you take on a translation job into Global English? Read our article and let us know what you think in the comments.

This is the summary of an article published in the translation blog of Translators Family, under the title Global English: promises and pitfalls, by Oleg Semerikov and Translators Family.

Subscribe to the translation news daily digest here. See more translation news.