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Part of
Translation in Transition: Human and machine intelligence
Edited by Isabel Lacruz
[American Translators Association Scholarly Monograph Series XX] 2023
► pp. 15–38

Chapter 2
The strange attractions of translation

Performance, expertise, and complexity

| Kent State University | New York University
The complex-adaptive systems model is useful for understanding translational behavior and cognition in a way that unites our discipline with others (economics, biology, psychology) investigating complex, non-linear, dynamical, and adaptive systems. We can recast some conceptions of the development of translation expertise and the methods and strategies of translation pedagogy using the metalanguage and concepts of complexity theory. Donald Kiraly realized this earlier, and this article extrapolates upon his innovative work. In particular, we examine the role of boundary conditions and “strange attractors” in the systemic emergence of behavioral patterns such as Halverson’s “default translations.” We examine how introducing new attractors as “lever points” can disrupt student translational systems and cause them to shift and settle into more pedagogically desirable phase spaces.
Keywords: complexity theory, complex adaptive systems, emergence, strange attractor, phase space, boundary conditions, translation pedagogy, translation competence, translation expertise, default translation
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Complex systems
  • Kiraly, complexity, and competence
  • Translation: Behavior and performance
  • The unpredictability of translation systems
    • First thought experiment
    • Second thought experiment
  • The emergence of order in translation performance
  • Performance clustering and translational strange attractors
    • Default translation as strange attractor
  • Expertise trajectory: Series of state clusters
  • Conclusions
  • References
Published online: 26 July 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ata.xx.02shr
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