When and how to revise?: Building a cognitive dyad of translator and reviser through workflow adjustment

Abstract

The translation production team that consists of a translator and a revisercan be investigated as a specific kind of (sub)system of socially distributedcognition, a cognitive dyad; this system is defined as only including thetranslation professionals who are directly involved in the drafting of thetranslation. Based on interviews with translation professionals, I argue thatthis fine-tuned cognitive dyad gets its form not only as a result of its partici-pants’ characteristics, but also under the influence of other factors, some ofwhich vary from one project to the next, leading to the flexible formation ofthe reviser’s task in particular. The three most important project-specificinfluencing factors are the text genre, the translator’s experience and compe-tence, and the client’s needs and requirements. While genre and the client’sneeds and requirements seem to have a markedly similar impact, mainlyinfluencing the internal task configuration of the cognitive dyad, the transla-tor’s experience and competence often leads to non-revision. Trust is animportant element in this process.