ABSTRACT
232In this chapter: A common justification of teaching young would-be translators how to translate, and including translation theory in the curriculum, is that we tend to habitualize what we do, and those habits can blind us to market place complexity. Translators who have been working exclusively on technical texts may develop habits of style-less accuracy, and as a result mistranslate an advertising text; translators who have been working exclusively on advertising texts may develop habits of accuracy-free style, and as a result mistranslate a technical text.
Translators can never rely entirely on even the highly complex and well-informed habits they have built up over the years to take them through every job reliably; in fact, one of the “habits” that professional translators must develop is that of building into their “subliminal” functioning alarm bells that go off whenever a familiar or unfamiliar problem area arises, calling the translator out of the subliminal state that makes rapid translation possible, slowing the process down, and initiating a careful analysis of the problem(s). By having to stop to solve problems, habitualized translators not only learn new flexibility; they retrain their habits to be more attentive to problems as they arise.
Rules and theories: all through Chapters 4–10, the sequence has been intuitive leaps first, then pattern-building, and rules and theories last. When the alarm bells go off, the sequence is reversed: the first thing you check is the lexis (look up words in the dictionary) and the syntax (is the word order coherent?), or intersemiotic consistency (do the words match the images? do the melodies match the body movements?) or what you remember consciously of the norms governing this type of translation task, etc.
233 Pattern-building: if the rules don’t come to you consciously, or the ones that do occur to you don’t seem to fit this problem, you begin to feel your way to possible alternative solutions to it.
Intuitive leaps: ultimately, though, you have to choose, and choosing often means going with your intuition.
