Pym, this time, in an article called “On Cooperation,” telling us what translation students should be trained to do. Translate? Well, yes, that too but there are all sorts of other exciting things: “training programmes should progressively be oriented to the production of intercultural mediators.”* This would reflect what is already happening at the “commercialised top end of the current [2000] labour market,” the world of the “intercultural management assistant,” “language service provider” and “multi-tasking translator” — or flunky, to you and me. A kind of general dogsbody that can not only relay your barked instructions in a comprehensible language to the fawning lackies in the hotel lobby but also have your laundering dropped off to the pier where your Panamanian schooner is moored.

Maeve Olohan, ed. Intercultural Faultlines

* “Programme,” “progressive,” “production.” Pym is a wordsman; he must be aware of the Manchurian Candidate overtones in his choice of vocabulary.