A new orientation toward intercultural and international communication will demand a redefinition of the professional communicator and professional communication: Translation—understood in a broad sense—will become a crucial skill. Analyzing what is absent from contexts and messages will become just as important as editing and refining what is present in them. This article considers the process of translation in the framework of the postmodern debate about language and reality as well as the economic, cultural, and social phenomena that have transformed the communication landscape during the past 50 years.

In a world of interlinked economies and communication networks, the translation of pragmatic documents is prevalent, important, and increasingly costly. This article treats concepts and practices of pragmatic translation, summarizes interviews with translators and professors of translation conducted in Morocco in the spring of 1994, and makes recommendations regarding language study for technical communicators and the teaching of translation in professional and technical communication programs in the United States.

Pedagogy and research in intercultural and international communication depend on an understanding of a framework of concepts: (a) the instability and ambiguity of cross-cultural signifiers, (b) culture as a changing construct, (c) culture as a plurality and mixture of cultures, and (d) cross-cultural communication as dialogic. We need to revise our notion of culture as acquisition, our transmission model of communication, and our pedagogy of presenting tips and fostering stereotypes about “foreign” peoples and places. We need to begin with concepts of intercultural/international communication and a discussion of faulty approaches and appraisals that engender miscommunication before taking a narrow focus on dos and don'ts in our exchanges with others.

Business and technical writing grows out of a need to “build bridges” between ourselves and others. With today's diversifying readerships and increasingly global marketplace, business and industry face a new challenge that is reshaping our conception of business/technical writing and the metaphors of the genre. The metaphors of “selling” and “reader‐centeredness” demand especially to be recast and subordinated to a new metaphor of interculturalism/ internationalism—"ourselves among others.” Grounded in a social theory of language and communication, this new metaphor signifies that “bridge‐building” across differences will be the key in contexts becoming at once more heterogeneous and global.