Strategy choice, shaping factors and justifications: Perceptions of academic translators of Humanities and Social Sciences texts

Abstract

Scholars have conflicting views as to strategy choice between foreignization and domestication, and each view is supported by descriptive case analyses. So far, translation practitioners' voices on strategy use have not been heard. This study aims to explore translators' views on strategy choice, shaping factors, and justifications. The participants surveyed were translators of academic texts in Humanities and Social Sciences, a genre requiring substantial and creative interventions from translators in rhetorical norms and epistemological conventions. The results indicate that: domestication is used more often than foreignization; strategy use is translator-specific in that the translators are divided concerning the manipulation of the macro-level source-text features and content, though most of them agree to domesticate the micro-level features; eight factors (target readers' needs, authors, etc.) exert different degrees of impact on strategy use; and the current practices of justifying strategy use is invisible, harming the recognition of translators' contributions and their professional status.