ABSTRACT
94In this chapter: A person-centered approach to any text, language, or culture will always be more productive and effective than a focus on abstract linguistic structures or cultural conventions.
Intuitive leaps: our first impressions of people are by necessity imperfect, and are often complicated and even overturned by later acquaintance; but it is still valuable for translators to pay attention to those first impressions, and even to intensify them by imitating people’s body language and speech.
Pattern-building: getting to know people, everybody you have any kinds of dealings with in life, is extremely useful for translation work; one of the important professional “skills” it develops is emotional intelligence.
Rules and theories: the academic fields of study that provide you with “rules and theories” about people include psychology and cognitive science, and both have generated powerfully useful research into translation. (Others include sociology and ethnography, which will figure in Chapter 9.)
