Trade-offs in translation effects: Illustrations and methodological concerns

Anthony Pym and Ke Hu
Universitat Rovira i Virgili | University of Melbourne
Abstract

Trade-offs are solutions to translation problems where two or more apparently incompatible values are sought at the same time. As such, they present an alternative to theories that see translation as operating between two polarities of the one value. Analysis of three illustrative examples suggests that receivers can activate trade-offs that are quite different from those envisaged by translators and that different readerships may seek different kinds of trade-offs. The resulting instability gives rise to problems concerning research methodology. It is proposed that the study of trade-offs is suited to a mixed-methods approach that starts from receiver-produced data, that allows for more than two values, and that recognizes that not all solutions are trade-offs. This approach can also identify situations where one kind of trade-off leads to another, creating chains of value transformation that are informed by translation history.

Keywords:
Publication history

Date received: 2 January 2023

Date accepted: 23 September 2024

Published online: 18 October 2024

Table of contents

We would like to offer a humble contribution to basic translation theory. Our concern is with particular kinds of effects translations can have in the space of reception. Within that space, we are interested in ways receivers can activate trade-offs, understood as a rough weighing up of benefits and losses in such a way that at least two different kinds of value are sought at the same time. To take a simple example, the Chinese translation of the brandname ‘Coca-Cola’ is 可口可乐 kě kǒu kě lè, which both imitates the phonetics of the English and uses characters that can translate as ‘to permit the mouth to be able to rejoice’. If the phonetics were brought even closer to the English, the semantics would suffer; and if the semantics were adjusted to make a catchier phrase, the phonetics would suffer. In this way, a successful trade-off is able to score highly on at least two different value scales at the same time. Less successful trade-offs would score better for one value than for the others.

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