Cover not available

Article published In: Target
Vol. 30:1 (2018) ► pp.3–23

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

On randomness

ORCiD logo with link | University of Amsterdam
Published online: 25 January 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.14124.coh
Abstract
Andrew . 2008. “On Explanation.” In Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies: Investigations in Homage to Gideon Toury, edited by Anthony Pym, Miriam Shlesinger, and Daniel Simeoni, 363–379. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar article “On Explanation” examines what it means to explain translational phenomena. In doing so, it explores the nature of explanation itself and raises one crucial question: How much is beyond explanation? In other words, to what extent could translational phenomena be due to mere chance? This article addresses this question by drawing on six landmark experiments within the field of psychology. These experiments suggest (1) that we, as translators, might unknowingly be injecting random elements into our translations, and (2) that we, as Translation Studies scholars, might be ‘seeing’ causes in that randomness where there are none. This article also draws on psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s ideas about the ‘illusion of causation’ and on Nassim Taleb’s definition of randomness within the humanities and social sciences. It concludes by arguing that retrospective explanations of translations should pay far more than lip service to the notion of chance.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Chesterman on explanation
  • 3.Randomness and its relation to TS
  • 4.Daniel Kahneman on the machinery of cognition and cognitive errors: System 1 and 2
  • 5.Six experiments
    • 5.1Experiment 1: The illusion of physical causation
    • 5.2Experiment 2: The illusion of intentional causation
    • 5.3Experiment 3: What are our intentions actually?
    • 5.4Experiment 4: Anchoring and the wheel of fortune
    • 5.5Experiment 5: Priming and a word recognition task
    • 5.6Experiment 6: Priming and our attitudes
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1The illusion of causation and TS scholarship
    • 6.2Randomness and translation
    • 6.3Random primes and TS scholarship
  • 7.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
References (43)
References
Bassnett, Susan, and André Lefevere. 1998. Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chesterman, Andrew. 1998. “Causes, Translations, Effects.” Target 10 (2): 201–230 Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. “On Explanation.” In Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies: Investigations in Homage to Gideon Toury, edited by Anthony Pym, Miriam Shlesinger, and Daniel Simeoni, 363–379. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. “On Explanation” [lecture given at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain, on February 2, 2011]. Part one: [URL]; part two: [URL].
Colman, Andrew M. 2009. A Dictionary of Psychology. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Darwin, Charles. 1872. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Englich, Birte, Thomas Mussweiler, and Fritz Strack. 2006. “Playing Dice with Criminal Sentences: The Influence of Irrelevant Anchors on Experts’ Judicial Decision Making.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 321: 118–200. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hall, Lars, Petter Johansson, Betty Tärning, Sverker Sikström, and Thérèse Deutgen. 2010. “Magic at the Marketplace: Choice Blindness for the Taste of Jam and the Smell of Tea.” Cognition 117 (1): 54–61. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hall, Lars, Petter Johansson, and Thomas Strandberg. 2012. “Lifting the Veil of Morality: Choice Blindness and Attitude Reversals on a Self-Transforming Survey.” PloS ONE 7 (9): e45457.
Hall, Lars, Thomas Strandberg, Philip Pärnamets, Andreas Lind, Betty Tärning, and Petter Johansson. 2013. “How the Polls Can Be Both Spot On and Dead Wrong: Using Choice Blindness to Shift Political Attitudes and Voter Intentions.” PloS ONE 8 (4): e60554.
House, Juliane. 2013. “Towards a New Linguistic-Cognitive Orientation in Translation Studies.” In Interdisciplinarity in Translation and Interpreting Process Research, edited by Maureen Ehrensberger-Dow, Susanne Göpferich, and Sharon O’Brien, special issue of Target 24 (1): 46–60. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hubscher-Davidson, Séverine. 2009. “Personal Diversity and Diverse Personalities in Translation: a Study of Individual Differences.” Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 17 (3): 175–192. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hume, David. (1777) 2007. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Peter Millican. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johansson, Petter, Lars Hall, Sverker Sikström, and Andreas Olsson. 2005. “Failure to Detect Mismatches between Intention and Outcome in a Simple Decision Task.” Science 310 (5745): 116–119. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johannsson, Petter, Lars Hall, Sverker Sikström, Betty Tärning, and Andreas Lind. 2006. “How Something Can Be Said about Telling More Than We Can Know.” Consciousness and Cognition 15 (4): 673–692. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johansson, Petter, Lars Hall, and Nick Chater. 2012. “Preference Change through Choice.” In Neuroscience of Preference and Choice. Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms, edited by Raymond Dolan and Tali Sharot, 121–141. Amsterdam: Elsevier Academic Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel. 2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Allen Lane.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel, and Amos Tversky. 1974. “Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.” Science 185 (4157): 1124–1131. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kaplan, Michael, and Ellen Kaplan. 2006. Chances Are… Adventures in Probability. London: Viking Penguin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Keil, Frank C. 2006. “Explanation and Understanding.” Annual review of Psychology 571: 227–254. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mussweiler, Thomas, and Fritz Strack. 2000. “The Use of Category and Exemplar Knowledge in the Solution of Anchoring Tasks.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78 (6): 1038–1052. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Laviosa, Sara. 2002. Corpus-based Translation Studies: Theory, Findings, Applications. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lefevere, André, ed. 1992. Translation/History/Culture: A Sourcebook. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pinker, Steven. 2007. The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. New York: VikingGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pym, Antony. 1998. Method in Translation History. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. Exploring Translation Theories. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Robinson, Douglas. 1991. The Translator’s Turn. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Saldanha, Gabriela, and Sharon O’Brien. 2013. Research Methodologies in Translation Studies. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Salmon, Wesley C. 1998. Causality and Explanation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scott, Clive. 2012. Literary Translation and the Rediscovery of Reading. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Strack, Fritz, Leonard Martin, and Sabine Stepper. 1988. “Inhibiting and Facilitating Conditions of the Human Smile: A Nonobtrusive Test.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54 (5): 768–777. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. 2010. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. 2nd ed. New York: Random House.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Toury, Gideon 1998. “A Handful of Paragraphs on ‘Translation’ and ‘Norms’.” Current Issues in Language and Society 5 (1/2): 10–32. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tymoczko, Maria. 2012. “The Neuroscience of Translation.” In The Known Unknowns of Translation Studies, edited by Elke Brems, Reine Meylaerts, and Luc van Doorslaer, special issue of Target 24 (1): 83–102. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vanderauwera, Ria. 1985. Dutch Novels Translated into English: The Transformation of a “Minority” Literature. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence. 2002. “The Difference That Translation Makes: The Translator’s Unconscious.” In Translation Studies: Perspectives on an Emerging Discipline, edited by Alessandra Riccardi, 214–241. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Von Wright, Georg Hendrik. (1971) 2004. Explanation and Understanding. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wason, Peter C. 1968. “Reasoning about a Rule.” Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 20 (3): 273–281. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wright, Chantal. 2016. Literary Translation. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Bai, Ziling
2025. Deviations as precursors. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies DOI logo
Duběda, Tomáš
2024. From Jiří Levý’s model of translatorial decision-making to Optimality Theory: an application to legal translation. The Translator 30:2 ► pp. 196 ff. DOI logo
Pang, Shuangzi & Kefei Wang
2020. Language contact through translation. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 32:3 ► pp. 420 ff. DOI logo
Sofer, Andrew
2020. All’s I-L-L That Starts “I’le”: Acrostic Space and Ludic Reading in the Margins of the Early Modern Play-Text. Renaissance Drama 48:2 ► pp. 273 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue