Local voice in a global world : translating for a small new zealand immigrant community

Abstract

The Serbian community in New Zealand is very small and relatively new, almost all having arrived in New Zealand in the 1990s, following the break-up of former Yugoslavia. As newcomers and educated professionals, Serbians mostly request translation of official documents and certificates, and this does not generate enough work for a full time professional. With only 12 million speakers, Serbian is a language of limited diffusion. There is a lack of dictionaries and tools available in New Zealand. There are also issues surrounding the separation of the Serbo-Croatian language into several languages. Different educational systems and changes in names for government agencies used over the years of political turmoil add to the usual problems with correspondences of words and terms. This all makes the work of a translator challenging. Translators cannot rely on translation as a main source of income. Are there other benefits which could be an incentive for spending free time on translating? Is there enough work to gain the necessary experience and expertise in a particular area? In this context, is globalisation another challenge, or an opportunity? The paper will discuss the challenges the translator meets and the opportunities offered by the Internet.