What is it about?
The author develops a translation theory which considers source and target elements as social actors engaged in communication in order to achieve mutual benefits. The model suggests, among other things, that the social effort put into communication should not exceed the mutual benefit ensuing from the interaction. Applied to translation, the aim of the model is to formulate general hypotheses about the context in which translation should occur and the social costs it should involve.
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Why is it important?
This was a first foray into the economic analysis of translating. It laid the groundwork for the theory of translating a risk management, and found a way to move beyond the theories of equivalence.
Perspectives
At the time, this was a straight exercise in interdisciplinarity: I picked up cooperation theory and applied it to a new object. This became a key text in my own intellectual development, but no one else seems to have appreciated it much.
Professor Anthony Pym
Universitat Rovira i Virgili
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This page is a summary of: Translation as a Transaction Cost, Meta Journal des traducteurs, January 1995, Consortium Erudit,
DOI: 10.7202/003880ar.
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