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Article published In:
Translation Spaces
Vol. 11:2 (2022) ► pp.234–253

(Mis)translating Sensitive Content

The manipulation of source texts under the effects of anger

ORCID logo | University of Granada

This article offers an exploratory approach to the role of anger in translation performance. We performed a study in which translation students translated a negative review containing opinions that they may potentially find offensive. Based on previous findings pointing to punishment and restoration of justice as the most common behaviors of anger, we predicted that angry translators would manipulate the text in an attempt to punish the author and/or mitigate the offensive content. We operationalized such manipulation by identifying attenuating and emphasizing strategies in target texts. While no significant differences were revealed between baseline and post-read anger levels, sentiment analysis tools revealed angry moods when applied to participants’ written opinions. Significant differences were also found for the strategies applied with more occurrences for attenuation than emphasis. However, these findings are acknowledged as preliminary; larger samples, control groups and more reliable indicators of anger would be necessary to corroborate these results.

Keywords: translation performance, translators’, behavior, emotions, anger, offensive content, negative review
Article outline
  • 1.On the effectiveness of target texts in provoking emotional reactions. A brief overview
  • 2.The impact of anger on cognitive translation performance
  • 3.Repairing the offense: Behavioral consequences of anger
  • 4.Materials and methods
    • 4.1Aim and hypotheses
    • 4.2Participants
    • 4.3Materials
    • 4.4Methods
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Types of attenuation and emphasis strategies detected in target texts
      • Attenuation strategies
      • Emphasizing strategies
    • 5.2Anger levels detected by psychometric tests
    • 5.3Anger levels detected by text sentiment analysis
    • 5.4Emphasis vs. attenuation translation strategies
  • 6.Discussion and conclusions
  • References
Published online: 8 August 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.21027.nar
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