Publications

Publication details [#32136]

Goldfajn, Tal. 2020. Translation and Loss-Aversion. Traduction Terminologie Rédaction (TTR) 33 (1) : 81–98.
Publication type
Article in jnl/bk
Publication language
English
Source language
Title as subject

Abstract

This paper is about the inflation of loss talk in a certain discourse on translation and how translation is often presented as a disaster or even an emblem of what is always missing. The guiding questions are: Why has the notion of loss become such a dominant concept when talking about translation? Where does this rhetoric of loss—in translators’ reflections, in translation reviews as well as in scholarly material of theoreticians—come from? What are some of the assumptions that underlie this loss discourse on translation products? Can one go beyond a descriptive perspective of the phenomenon and try to come up with a few explanations for this loss talk on translation? These questions are explored through the concept of loss-aversion from economics and decision theory (Kahneman, 2011). Finally, looking at translation discourse through the losing-glass, a few “unlosables” from the field of biblical Hebrew translation are discussed.
Source : Based on abstract in journal