Transmedia Storytelling, Translocal Productions: Audiovisual Strategies of Globalization in Australia

One of the fundamental problems underlying the English as a global language vs. local languages debate is that they often adhere to the dichotomous ‘global vs. local’ vision of transnational communication, treating them as incommensurable discourses and often reviving the spectre of cultural authenticity. Yet global movies, such as Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, use the potential of transmedia and transcultural strategies to reach a global audience. T he production of such movies exploits the growing realization within the media industries that what is variously called «transmedia, multiplatform, or enhanced storytelling» represents the future of entertainment and its economic growth (Jenkins 2003; 2006). On the other side, in order to enter the daily lives of its global audience, the film production decided to exploit the power of another social good: Australian culture. T hus, as the critical applied linguistics scholar, Alistair Pennycook, notes, the literature on English as a global language has often failed to investigate whether English as a global language may be defined as a «translocal» language, a language of fluidity that moves across, while becoming embedded in, the materiality of localities and social relations. T he analysis of interlingual translations of post-colonial English language varieties, but also of their intralingual translation into global English, will provide some significant «insights» on how the materiality of globalization shapes translocal social knowledge, creates translocal audiences and contributes to the creation of a supervernacular language. Following this line of thought, the aim of the article is to claim a central space for Audiovisual Translation studies in the study of English as a global language.