have sought to investigate in a range ofscenarios: interviews with translators, analysisof drafts and correspondence in literaryarchives, multiple translations by my MAstudents, and the analysis of the simultaneousinterpreting of sensitive political texts. I pity the interpreters who were in theEuropean Parliament booths in February 2010for Nigel Farage's attack on the President ofthe European Council, Herman Van Rompuy.Farage claimed: 'I do not want to be rude.but, but. you know, really, you have thecharisma of a damp rag and the appearanceof a low-grade bank clerk.'4Unsurprisingly, most of the interpretershesitated at this point, doubtless taken abackat the virulence and directness of the attack.The French interpreter gives vous avez lecharisme d'une serpillière('you have thecharisma of a floor-cloth') and the German dasCharisma eines nassen Lappens('the charismaof a damp flannel'). Both omit any reference tothe bank clerk, while the Italian downplays thefirst part as Lei ha un carisma di una personaincapace('you have a charisma of anincompetent person'). This may be partly dueto time pressure and processing constraints,24 TheLinguistAUGUST/SEPTEMBERwww.iol.org.ukFEATURESWhy do translators make certain, often controversial,decisions? Jeremy Munday investigatesTranslators and interpreters know thatsometimes a single word or expression maycause as many problems as the whole of therest of a text. My interest, as a translator,teacher and researcher, is to identify these'critical' points in a text -those that cause realprocessing problems to the translator andaffect the text's reception, and whichsometimes carry an element of risk because ofthe subjective interpretation they require. In some instances these may be individualnaming words that are an indication of theideological or political stance of the writer ortranslator: the choice, for instance, betweenCatholic Derry and Protestant Londonderry,between Anglophone Montreal andFrancophone Montréal, between colonialBombay and modern-day Mumbai.1In religious texts the impact is magnified. In16th-century Peru, the Jesuits under José deAcosta imposed the Spanish word andconcept Dioson an indigenous tradition thatalready had its own monotheistic divinenames, Viracochaand Pachacamac.2Yet thecontroversy caused by such sensitive terms isnot only of historical relevance. In 1986, thegovernment of Malaysia banned the use ofthe word Allah to refer to the god of religionsother than Islam. This issue resurfaced in 2009,when criticism of the translations of propernames in the Bahasa Indonesia Bible led tothe confiscation of more than 20,000 copies inMalaysia.3For some Muslims, the translationcasts doubt on the Quranic concept of theoneness of Allah and, in the expression 'Son ofGod', may be regarded as blasphemous.How do translators and interpreters come tomake these choices and at what stage in thetranslation process? How can we identify whatthe crucial choices are? These are questions IA risky businessbut also because of the severe face-threatening act and the interpreter's desire toavoid exaggerating it. Since interpreters usethe first-person, they represent the speech actof Farage and incur the risk of the words beingtaken as their own subjective interpretations.Intervention isn't easyAlthough most translators and interpreterswork on less dramatic texts, this does notmean that their intervention is easy. Intechnical translation, subject-specificterminology plays a critical role but it is farfrom being the only issue. I conductedresearch with professionals working in avariety of languages and situations. The mostfrequent problems they noted were singlewords in the source language thatcorrespond to a range of possibilities in thetarget language. An instance where this becomes a questionof interpretation is the German Aufwand,which can mean 'time spent', 'cost incurred','effort expended', or any combination of thethree. The word Belastungcauses headachesbecause it means 'loading', both in themechanical and in the electrical sense, butcan also mean 'impact/stress/strain'. Some ofthese are quite far from the core meaning. Several interviewees raised the question ofpolysemous words, where the equivalentdepends on context and collocation, afrequent problem in translation revision. Anexample is the German noun Leistung, whichcan mean 'service', 'payment', 'performance','power', 'benefit' 'achievement', 'proficiency','effort', 'output', 'efficiency', 'accomplishment','rating', 'showing', 'feat' and more.5In some instances the translator's choicesinvolve what I call 'attitude-rich' wordsMost of the interpretershesitated, doubtlesstaken aback at thevirulence anddirectness of the attack

Vol/51 No/4 2012AUGUST/SEPTEMBERTheLinguist25FEATURESsay pitch regulated upwind turbine with activeyaw in Romanian?'), some posed awkwardproblems that directly required the translator'sinterpretation. Take this example from aSpanish hotel catalogue:El hotel Balneario X cuenta con. unlujoso spa que recoge la tradición delhistórico balneario fundado en 1898 y laproyecta hacia la vanguardiaen un Spa dereferencia mundial.'The X Resort hotel has. a luxurious spawhich takes the tradition of the historic resortfounded in 1898 and projects it towards thevanguardin a world reference Spa.'Respondents made three suggestions forthe highlighted phrase: 'brings to the fore/forefront'; 'brings completely into the 21stcentury'; and 'makes them one of the mostinnovative (and technologically advanced)spas in the world'.8These three possibilitiesrevolve around different interpretations ofvanguardiaas 'forefront', 'very modern' and'innovative'. Indeed, the proposer of this last solution offers the justification:'Vanguardiaimplies one of the first to do new things and offer new methods andtechnologies in their field.' Some overlapbetween the two is apparent from therespondent's addition of the bracketed '(andtechnologically advanced)'. Other examples where translatorinterpretation was paramount were newlycoined terms in the communication andbusiness worlds, such as 'blue-sky explorationpotential' and the 'bleeding edge of webdesign'. Their coinage and evolution in Englishis worthy of a study in its own right, tracingtheir transfer from one collocation to another(eg, 'blue-sky thinking') and their acceptanceinto the mainstream. In translation, this typeof item causes problems irrespective oflanguage pair and often results in a moregeneral translation (eg, 'optimistic promotionpotential') or explicitation ('positiveexpectations in relation to explorationpotential'). These are further examples of risk-reduction strategies. The problem is thatsometimes the result can be not only risk-freebut also rather insipid and an example of theoften lamented 'translationese'. Jeremy Munday's Evaluation in Translation:Critical points of translator decision-making isout now through Routledge.Notes1Baker, M, 2006, Translation and Conflict,Abingdon, Routledge, 123-5; Mossop, B, 2007,'The Translator's Intervention through VoiceSelection', in Translation as Intervention, London,Continuum, 18-372 Kim, S, 2004, Strange Names of God, NewYork, Peter Lang3Ahmed, S, 2009, 'Bibles Seized as MalaysianMinorities Fear Fundamentalism', CNN, 29/10/09http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/10/29/malaysia.bibles.seized/4Speech viewable, with interpreting, atwww.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getVod.do?mode=chapter&language=EN&vodDateId=20100224-15:23:21-918, timing 16:14:10 to 16:16:475www.linguee.com/english-german/search?sourceoverride=none&source=auto&query=Leistung 6www.linguee.com/english-german/search?sourceoverride=none&source=auto&query=anspruchsvoll+7www.proz.com/kudoz8www.proz.com/kudoz/spanish_to_english/tourism_travel/4350977-proyecta_hacia_la_vanguardia.htmlSIGN OF CONFLICTProtestant Londonderry is changed toCatholic Derry on this road sign.Translating names can prove difficult,and choices can be politically charged because their value can shift and sodepends, at least in part, on the translator'sinterpretation. Take the German adjectiveanspruchsvoll. Equivalents are mainly positivebut not always so: 'demanding', 'challenging','sophisticated', 'ambitious', 'discriminating','exacting', 'taxing', 'discerning', 'upmarket','pretentious' and so on.6How is thetranslator to decide reliably?Surprisingly, some of the clearest indicatorsof attitude are sometimes overlooked. Oneexperienced reviser said that German modalparticles (auch, doch, eben, einmal, ja, schon,etc) frequently require revision in the texts shecorrects, while English attitudinal adverbs, suchas 'just', 'only' and 'even' are often omitted.Risk avoidanceIt is well-known that text type, genre andpurpose are crucial determiners of translationstrategy, but my research highlighted othersituational factors. For marketing texts, somein-house translators said they grant themselvesmore latitude than the freelancers with whomthey collaborate, since they are more familiarwith the image the company wishes to projectand have more opportunity to check possibletranslations with management. When doubts arise, the tendency is to'hedge your bets' and opt for something that'can't be wrong'. This risk-avoidance strategyis one that will be familiar to many translators,but its actual implementation would benefitfrom more research and discussion. I decidedto trace it in a sample of online translatorfora, including KudozTM.7These fora areuseful because the discussions reveal someof the reasons behind translation decisions. While the vast majority of the queriesconcerned technical terms (eg, 'how do youSEANMACK, 8/3/01 VIAWIKIPEDIA, CC BY 3.0