ABSTRACT
We have suggested that translation is most usefully taken not as a matter of replicating an ST in the TL but as a challenge to reduce translation loss. The threat of loss is most obvious when the translator confronts general issues of cultural transfer like those discussed in Chapter 4. However, many issues of cultural transfer arise not from extralinguistic cultural sources but from intralinguistic sources, specifically the demonstrable formal properties of the ST. These properties actually present a threat of greater translation loss than the more obvious one posed by the general question of cultural transfer.
