Risk management in translation: A reply to critics

Abstract

Risk management has been proposed as an approach that can help explain why translators make certain decisions in certain situations. A review of the surprisingly extensive work done to apply the concepts to translation suggests that one of the intellectual attractions of the approach is that it can avoid the essentialisms of equivalence and univocal purposes. Risk management has nevertheless been criticized on several fronts: for purporting to explain all aspects of a more complex process, for assuming a rational translator, for deviating from accuracy as the translator’s main task, for overlooking the affective dimensions of language use, and for being associated with the evils of economics. These criticisms lose ground when risk management is seen as part of a wider approach to translation, and when the concepts are not taken as an account of everything that translators do