From Culture to Business

Abstract

In translation studies, there has been little interest in how the economics of translating affects the wording of translations and the quality ideal with which translators work. To investigate this, the article begins by looking at the history of the Canadian government’s Translation Bureau, contrasting the pre-1995 period, when translation was done for socio-political purposes, with the past 10 years, when the government appeared to pursue translation more as an employment-and profit-generating activity in which Canada could do well. The second part of the article considers whether the changes in the government’s approach can be seen in terms of the ‘industrialization’ of translation. The third part examines the relationship between the economic and the linguistic at the Translation Bureau in terms of the approach to quality control, the conflict between quality and quantity, and the managerial structure. The article concludes that when translation comes to be treated as an economic end in itself rather than a socio-cultural activity which incidentally provides people with a living, this has an impact on linguistic output.

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