- Cultus 6 David Crystal said "I don't expect my translator to be a mind-reader [...] knowing about the presuppositions and intentions underlying the utterances made by the participants". Issue 7 will focus on this very point. Who should translate, and who is translating the presuppositions and intentions underlying the utterances made by the participants in the real world?
A term for this process is "transcreation", which has been used in the Arts (in particular poetry and drama) to talk about transposition into a different language or into a different medium (a poem is transcreated into an art form or onto the stage). Transcreation has also been closely linked with localisation, but differs in that a transcreator is expected to take much more account of the original language/culture/context than a localiser who will be 100% client or end-user oriented.
As interculturalists should we agree or disagree with Crystal? Why should (or should not) the translator or interpreter be a transcreator?
We would like contributions that focus on these issues, and in particular on these other (non) professionals such as crowd-sourced volunteer translators, fansubbers, international journalists, subject specialists with some foreign language understanding, cultural mediators, community interpreters and child interpreters.
How important are they, and what sort of job are they doing?
Also what, if any difference is there between these transcreators and translators/interpreters; and what should the profession be doing about accounting for the unsaid, for the presuppositions and intentions underlying the utterances?
