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By the nature of our work the team at Technical Translations are used to studying maps of the world in relation to the various translators we require for a particular translation project but only recently did it occur to us that each of our translators might be looking at the world from a distinctly different perspective depending on where in the world they are based.
We found some brilliant examples of this at http://flourish.org/upsidedownmap/ which is a website dedicated to maps of the world from what might be considered an unusual perspective.
One such example is McArthur's Universal Corrective Map of the World which was created by an Australian who was tired of being tormented for coming from the "bottom of the world" To counter this he created a new map which instead of usual North up convention placed Australia at the top and centre of the world and positioned the rest of the countries “upside down”. The interesting thing is how just looking at the world in this new orientation creates so many surprising insights into the relationship between the continents which are otherwise missed.
Over the centuries different cultures have often placed themselves at the centre of their maps of the world. The ancient Chinese considered South to be a sacred direction so when the Chinese invented the compass, they thought of it as pointing south as opposed to North, as a result many ancient Chinese maps are “upside down” to our modern eye.
Modern Chinese and Japanese maps still put Japan right in the middle and China near the centre but north south orientation has now been adopted. Even some American maps have the Americas in the middle, effectively splitting China in half, although the European style maps with America to the left are more common.
In the United Kingdom we get so used to seeing ourselves at the centre of the globe, that the other countries can become like wallpaper, and just as easily ignored. The great thing about looking at the maps from other regions of the world is that you really start to understand the word from the perspective of that region.
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