Decision Making in Translation: Translator’s Strategies and Decision Models for Rich Points in Titles

Abstract

Recent developments regarding translation competence have led to the acknowledgement of the strategic role of decision making in the translation process. Researchers in different science fields have always seen problem-solving as an intrinsic part of any cognitive activity. The specific character of translation decision making is a challenging area of research which is primarily associated with the essence of the translation problem and strategies to solve it. The paper addresses translation decision strategies with the aim of classifying them and proposing clusters of translation decision models for problematic text elements collectively called Rich Points. The classification was verified on a corpus of 160 newspaper titles of articles published between July and August 2020 and translated into Russian. The correlation between the source text and target text (TT) Rich Point patterns afforded ground for proposing a set of translation decision models. Quantitative assessment of Rich Points frequency revealed a tendency to eliminate them in the TT. However, translation decision strategies and assessment of models productivity rate revealed it was due to the translators’ loyalty towards factual information. The results suggest that although translation problems involve meaning disintegration, they can demonstrate patternlike nature, and pattern recognition seems to form the core of translation decision strategies and models.