The implicit corporate translation policy

Abstract

This chapter examines the largely implicit translation policy of a sports equipment company, pseudonymised as ActiveLife. It addresses three Spolskyan interconnected research questions on beliefs, practices, and management of translation and interpreting — both paraprofessional and professional. The data consist of interviews, a field journal, translatorial documents, and spontaneous employee reflections. They are subjected to an interpretive analysis based on frameworks from Spolsky (2019, 2023), González Núñez (2016) and Tesseur (2017), and Lesk, Lavric and Stegu (2017). The findings reveal an unmanaged yet functional policy relying on bricolage (Lavric 2012) i.e. employees’ experience and intuition. Further growth will likely require a more explicit policy. This study contributes to empirical research on translation policy, called for by Meylaerts (2011).