Risk taking: trainee translators vs professional translators. A case study.

Abstract

This study investigates risk-taking in translation. Five translation students and 5 professional translators from German-speaking Switzerland were asked to think aloud while translating a user guide from French into German. The focus of the study was the analysis of the participants' reaction to an ambiguous source-text passage through investigating the strategies they used to translate that passage on the one hand; and their uncertainty as revealed by the think-aloud protocols of their translation processes on the other. The results show a higher propensity for risk-taking among the student group. Also, the translators mitigate potential risk by making the client a partner in the translation process. The study has implications for both research and teaching. It reveals the need for more research into whether translations produced by students necessarily are more literal than those of more experienced translators. Secondly, it suggests that students should be made even more aware of the fact that consulting the client is not an admission of failure, but a necessity. Students also need to know how to successfully communicate with the client when uncertainty arises.