ABSTRACT

The deontologieal aim of translators may be to promote long-term cooperation between cultures. However, trcmslationcil and linguistic approaches to cooperation (Holz-Mänttäri, Grice, Sperber and Wilson) remain conceptually weak in that they fail to elaborate clear models of noncooperation and thus cannot say what kind of relations translators should try to hinder. The game-theoretic model of the prisoner's dilemma, on the other hand, incorporates an active mode of non-cooperation that might be of more interest to a trcmslatorial ethics. That model may be used critically to claim that (1) cooperation concerns what happens in intercultural space (overlaps of cultures) rather than the comparison of intentions, languages or cultures; (2) the mutual benefits to be sought are social as well as economic; (3) translators are responsible for promoting mutually beneficial outcomes but not necessarily for the outcomes themselves (translators are not negotiators); (4) the attainment of cooperation often requires procedures other than translation, and (5) translation, as a relatively expensive procedure, becomes non-cooperative when its costs exceed the value of the mutual benefits likely to result. These points have implications for the future of translation, translator training, and translation research, all of which need to adopt a wider field.