Risk disposition of translators: a study of trainee translators’ justifications for decisions in the simulated setting

Abstract

This study looks into nine Chinese Mandarin-speaking MA student translators’ justifications for strategies while encountering problems when rendering an English marketing text into Chinese, and explores their risk disposition – habitual use of risk strategies. A list of “justifications” has been detected based on Englund-Dimitrova’s (2005) “evaluation” model and Pavlović’s (2010) “argument” model. Experiment-group and control-group translators were employed in a simulated setting to test the effects of the main variable of the translator’s peer-group interaction with colleagues and non-Chinese clients. Subjects’ screen activities and verbalization of thoughts while translating were recorded. Additional data were collected through the pre-experiment questionnaire and retrospective interviews. Qualitative and quantitative results suggest that use of peer-group interaction does not seem to have brought about much difference in subjects’ use of risk-taking/averse/transferring strategies. The “client-based” justification is crucial for trainees with practical translation experience regardless the amount of the experience and the group they belonged to.