Cover not available
Part of
Translation Flows: Exploring networks of people, processes and products
Edited by Ilse Feinauer, Amanda Marais and Marius Swart
[Benjamins Translation Library 163] 2023
► pp. 183–206

Chapter 10
Flowing to the reception side

A trade-off model of translation acceptance

| National University of Singapore

The empirical line of reception studies has staked out new research questions regarding the effects of translation on actual readers. Nevertheless, the underlying mechanisms of how the translated text flows towards and is received by the target reader remain elusive, notably with respect to attempts to rationalise the individual reader’s decision-making in compromising situations. Drawing on empirical evidence from a quasi-experiment in which a group of 22 readers in Australia responded to various translations of Chinese foreign affairs discourses, this chapter illustrates how a nonlinear trade-off model serves to explain the reader’s ultimate judgements in which linguistic and ethical considerations are weighed against each other. It is found that a pair of two incompatible but desirable expectations is (un)consciously calculated by the reader. The extent to which the translation can be accepted is susceptible to the degree to which the reader trusts the translator.

Keywords: translation reception, reader expectations, trust, trade-off model, translated Chinese foreign affairs discourse
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Moving beyond linear progression towards a trade-off model
  • This study
    • Instrument
    • Participants and sampling
  • Discussion
    • Faithfulness vs fluency
    • Explicitation vs implicitation
    • Distance vs proximity
    • Summary and interpretation of findings
  • Conclusion
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 9 October 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.163.10hu
References (58)
Adamczyk, Magdalena
2015 Do hedges always hedge? On non-canonical multifunctionality of jakby in polish. Pragmatics 25 (3): 321–344.Google Scholar
Athique, Adrian
2016 Transnational Audiences: Media Reception on a Global Scale. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Becher, Viktor
(2010) “Abandoning the notion of “translation-inherent” explicitation. Against a dogma of translation studies”. Across Languages and Cultures 11 (1): 1–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blumczyński, Piotr and Ghodrat Hassani
2019 “Towards a Meta-theoretical Model for Translation. A Multidimensional Approach.” Target 31 (3): 328–351. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana
1986 “Shifts of Cohesion and Coherence in Translation.” In Interlingual and Intercultural Communication: Discourse and Cognition in Translation and Second Language Acquisition Studies, eds. by Juliane House, and Shoshana Blum-Kulka 17–35. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Butterworth, Brian
1980 “Evidence from Pauses in Speech.” In Language Production. Volume 1: Speech and Talk, ed. by Brian Butterworth, 155–176. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Chesterman, Andrew
1998 “Causes, Translations, Effects.” Target 10 (2): 201–230. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2001 “Proposal for a Hieronymic Oath.” The Translator 7 (2): 139–154. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2005 Problems with strategies. In New Trends in Translation Studies. In Honour of Kinga Klaudy. (17–28), Krisztina Károly and Ágota Fóris (eds). Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.Google Scholar
2006 “Questions in the Sociology of Translation.” In Translation Studies at the Interface of Disciplines, eds. by João Ferreira Duarte, Alexandra Assis Rosa, and Teresa Seruya, 9–27. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Colina, Sonia
2008 “Translation Quality Evaluation: Empirical Evidence for a Functionalist Approach.” The Translator 14 (1): 97–134. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Di Giovanni, Elena and Yves Gambier
2018 (eds). Reception Studies and Audiovisual Translation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Enríquez-Aranda, Mercedes, and Francisca García Luque
2018 “The Reception of Subtitled Films from a Sociological Perspective. An Empirical Case Study.” Babel 64 (3): 464–489. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gambier, Yves
2018 Translation studies, audiovisual translation and reception. In Reception Studies and Audiovisual Translation, edited by Elena Di Giovanni and Yves Gambier (pp. 43–66). John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gentile, Paola, Fruzsina Kovács, and Marike van der Watt
(eds) 2021 Transnational Image Building: Linking up Translation Studies, Reception Studies and Imagology, Special Issue of Translation Spaces 10 (1). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grin, François, László Marácz, Nike K. Pokorn, and Peter A. Kraus
2014 Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe: A Position Paper on the MIME Project. University of Geneva. Access: [URL]
Henitiuk, Valerie
2008 “ ‘Easyfree Translation?’ How the Modern West Knows Sei Shônagon’s Pillow Book.” Translation Studies 1 (1): 2–17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2022 “Feeling foreign: A trust-based compromise model of translation reception.” Translation Studies 15(2): 202–220. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kershaw, Angela
2013 Complexity and Unpredictability in Cultural Flows: Two French Holocaust Novels in English Translation. Translation Studies 7 (1): 34–49. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koller, Werner
1995 “The Concept of Equivalence and the Object of Translation Studies.” Target 7 (2): 191–222. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koskinen, Kaisa
2000 “Institutional Illusions.” The Translator 6 (1): 49–65. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kotze, Haidee
2019 “Converging What and How to Find Out Why. An Outlook on Empirical Translation Studies.” In New Empirical Perspectives on Translation and Interpreting, eds. by Lore Vandevoorde, Joke Daems and Bart Defrancq, 333–371. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kruger (Kotze), Haidee
2012 Postcolonial Polysystems. The Production and Reception of Translated Children’s Literature in South Africa. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 Fluency/resistancy and Domestication/foreignisation: A Cognitive Perspective. Target 28 (1): 4–41. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kruger (Kotze), Haidee, and Jan-Louis Kruger
2017 “Cognition and Reception.” In The Handbook of Translation and Cognition, eds, by John Schwieter, and Aline Ferreira, 71–89. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kurz, Ingrid
2001 Conference interpreting: Quality in the ears of the user. Meta 46 (2): 394–409. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lefevere, André
1992/2017 Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Marais, Kobus
2019 A (Bio)Semiotic Theory of Translation: The Emergence of Socio-cultural Reality. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Márquez Reiter, Rosina
2018 “Interviews as sites of ideological work”. Spanish in Context 15 (1): 54–76. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McAuley, Thomas E.
2015 “Audience Attitude and Translation Reception. The Case of Genji Monogatari.” Babel 61 (2): 219–241. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McMartin, Jack, and Paola Gentile
2020 “The Transnational Production and Reception of ‘A Future Classic’: Stefan Hertmans’s War and Turpentine in Thirty Languages.” Translation Studies 13 (3): 271–290. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meylaerts, Reine and Maud Gonne
2014 “Transferring the City – Transgressing Borders: Cultural Mediators in Antwerp (1850–1930).” Translation Studies 7 (2): 133–151. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Newmark, Peter
1997 “The Customer as King.” Current Issues in Language and Society 4 (1): 75–77. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nord, Christiane
1997/2018 Translating as a Purposeful Activity. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.Google Scholar
O’Brien, Sharon
2008 “Processing fuzzy matches in translation memory tools: An eye-tracking analysis.” In Looking at eyes: Eye-Tracking studies of reading and translation processing, Susanne Göpferich, Arnt L. Jakobsen and Inge Mees (eds.), 79–102. Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur.Google Scholar
Pápai, Vilma
2004 “Explicitation: A Universal of Translated Text?” In Translation Universals. Do They Exist?, eds. by Anna Mauranen, and Pekka Kujamäki, 143–164. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pym, Anthony
1992/2010 Translation and Text Transfer: An Essay on the Principles of Intercultural Communication. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
1995 “Translation as a Transaction Cost.” Meta 40 (4):594–605. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 Exploring Translation Theories (2nd edition). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
2015 Translation as Risk Management. Journal of Pragmatics 85: 67–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 Translation Solutions for Many Languages: Histories of A Flawed Dream. London and New York: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Ross, Dolores
2021 “ ‘My Language Has an Immense Potential.’ A Review of Cees Nooteboom’s National and Transnational Circulation.” In Transnational Image Building: Linking up Translation Studies, Reception Studies and Imagology, eds. by Paola Gentile, Fruzsina Kovács and Marike van der Watt, Special Issue of Translation Spaces 10 (1): 70–93. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rossi, Peter H., Mark W. Lipsey, and Howard E. Freeman
2004 Evaluation: A Systematic Approach (7th ed.). Thousand Oaks, London: Sage.Google Scholar
Scarpa, Federica
2020 Research and Professional Practice in Specialised Translation. Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting. Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Tirkkonen-Condit, Sonja
2004 “Unique Items – Over- or Under-represented in Translated Language?” In Translation Universals. Do They Exist?, eds. by Anna Mauranen, and Pekka Kujamäki, 177–184. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Todorova, Marija
2021 “The Western Balkans in Translated Children’s Literature Location-dependent Images of (Self)representation.” In Transnational Image Building: Linking up Translation Studies, Reception Studies and Imagology, eds. by Paola Gentile, Fruzsina Kovács and Marike van der Watt, the special issue of Translation Spaces 10 (1): 94–114. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Toury, Gideon
2012 Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tuominen, Tiina
2018 “Multi-method Research. Reception in Context.” In Reception Studies and Audiovisual Translation, eds. by Elena Di Giovanni, and Yves Gambier, 69–90. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tymoczko, Maria
1999/2014 Translation in a Postcolonial Context. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence
1995 The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wehrmeyer, Ella
2015 “Comprehension of Television News Signed Language Interpreters: A South African Perspective.” Interpreting 17 (2): 195–225. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Weimer, David L. and Aidan R. Vining
2005 Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practice (4th ed.). Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Xu, Minhui, and Jing Yu
2019 “Sociological Formation and Reception of Translation. The Case of Kinkley’s Translation of Biancheng.” Translation and Interpreting Studies 14 (3): 333–350. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zadeh, Lotfi. A.
1965 “Fuzzy Sets”. Information and Control 8, 338–353. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zheng Binghan, and Mingqing Xie
2018 “The Effect of Explanatory Captions on the Reception of Foreign Audiovisual Products. A Study Drawing on Eyetracking Data and Retrospective Interviews.” Translation, Cognition and Behavior 1(1): 119–146. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zwischenberger, Cornelia, and Franz Pöchhacker
2010 “Survey on Quality and Role: Conference Interpreters’ Expectations and Self-perceptions”. Communicate! Spring 2010 Accessed January 25, 2011. [URL].