© Intercultural Studies Group Universitat Rovira i Virgili Plaça Imperial Tàrraco Tarragona Fax: (++ 34) Risk management in cross- cultural communication Anthony Pym

© Intercultural Studies Group The state of translation theory Equivalence died. Description, Skopos, deconstruction and localization live. No debate. Just data.

© Intercultural Studies Group Accumulated problems… Accept uncertainty, but how then do you decide what to do? Help your client, but risk serving unethical ends? Use technology to increase productivity, but risk losing quality? Intervene, but risk losing credibility?

© Intercultural Studies Group Example 1 In a birth certificate, where can you make a mistake? Name of person born? Date of birth? Name of midwife?

© Intercultural Studies Group This means Only work hard where there is high risk. Don’t work hard where there is low risk. (Don’t work too hard!) (These guidelines do not require equivalence.)

© Intercultural Studies Group What is risk? The probability of failing (not meeting success conditions). Success means mutual benefits. Minimally: The benefits must be greater than the efforts (transaction costs).

© Intercultural Studies Group Example 2 Foreign students will need to convalidar or homologar their first degree. Convalidación = accreditation Homologación = accreditation

© Intercultural Studies Group This means: “seek accreditation” = low risk? Use Spanish terms = low risk? Omit phrase = high risk!... More information is needed.

© Intercultural Studies Group Linguistics is not enough: Success conditions are not in the text. High-risk texts are not “rich points” (Agar).

© Intercultural Studies Group Risk aversion? Risk-averse strategies: generalization explicitation literalism (interference) Non-translation.

© Intercultural Studies Group Why risk aversion? Translators do not see success conditions. Translators are not responsible for risk management (Patton’s interpreter). Translators reduce transaction costs in order to increase the probability of (minimal) benefits.

© Intercultural Studies Group Universal reward structure? “Authors always get the praise for what is good in a translation, and translators just get the blame for what is wrong” (Leonardo Bruni 1405)

© Intercultural Studies Group Risk-taking? Translation of humor Translation in subtitles Highly localized texts Theater in the UK Advertising Texts of salvation (Nida, Gutt)

© Intercultural Studies Group Why more risk aversion? Cross-cultural communication: relatively high transaction costs relatively low trust between participants relatively tight success conditions. Translation is an expensive strategy, only justifiable in high-risk situations.

© Intercultural Studies Group Meeting the challenge Awareness of risk distribution: Summaries, and more summaries Oral before written In-class use of translations The experience of being translated

© Intercultural Studies Group Objection 1: trust Trust reduces communicative complexity. But translators are by definition open to mistrust. Mistrust feeds on minor mistakes. So,without trust, effort cannot be distributed away from low-risk messages.

© Intercultural Studies Group Objection 2 (Hatim) The calculation of success conditions itself increases transaction costs. So the default norm for translation is to reproduce what is in the text. (back to square one?)

© Intercultural Studies Group Activity The following text is from an interview. Please look at the Answer and 1) strike-through (or color in green) any element that is so low-risk that it could be omitted when interpreted simultaneously or consecutively, and 2) underscore (or color in red) any element that is so high-risk that it would merit extra time (e.g. to look up a term or to consider a reformulation). Note that you can also leave some text unmarked (i.e. with a white background).

© Intercultural Studies Group Activity Question: You suggested that through Kodak you can manipulate technology and fit in with this information revolution. Can you be more specific about the kind of products that Kodak will eventually be able to produce?

© Intercultural Studies Group Activity Answer: I’m sure my... I don’t even know these people yet but I know scientists and engineers well enough to know that they would not be very happy if I pre-announced products, but since I don’t know all about what the products are, I can speak loosely I guess. I think when you look at the imaging side of Kodak, let’s concentrate on that, and recognize that for the not, for the foreseeable future, as far as capture goes, that the silver halide capture media is probably the most cost-effective, highest resolution means of capturing visual memories, or visual images, that one could ask for.

© Intercultural Studies Group Activity So to me, you want to put that in the context of being a very effective way of getting the information to begin with, then you’ve got to talk about how you get that information into a digital form to use over information networks, I think you can begin to think of a whole array of possibilities. Once you start thinking in a broader context of Kodak’s imaging business really being to preserve visual memories, and to communicate them, and to distribute them, in perhaps ways that are totally different than people envision today, then I’ll let your imagination run off with you, cause mine sure does with me. I laid awake the last two nights thinking about those possibilities, and they’re really exciting but ninety percent of my ideas may never work, but there’s ten percent that will be killers.