Risk mitigation in translator decisions

Abstract

The translator’s risk management while translating can involve several general dispositions, of which risk taking, risk avoidance, and risk transfer have been modeled previously (Pym 2015). In this paper we propose a fourth type of disposition, risk mitigation, which was identified by Matsushita (2016) through empirical research based on Pym’s model. Risk mitigation is a disposition where the translator incurs one kind of risk in order to reduce another. Analyzing authentic examples in multiple languages, we ask whether mitigation is fundamentally different from the other three types, whether it involves a specific restriction on how much effort should rationally be invested by the translator, and whether a general logic of trade-offs is applicable. We further propose that mitigation correlates with factors both on the production side of the translator’s discourse, where it enhances translatorial visibility, and on the reception side, where it can respond to imprecise identification of the target public.

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