Affect, risk management and the translation of swearing

Translation, similarly to any other cognitive decision-making process, involves affect, at all phases and levels from affective items of translation and translators’ emotional reactions to the task at hand to the reactions of clients and audiences. In this article, I discuss at the manifold role of affect in the specific task of translating swearwords and swearing in fiction, and explore the applicability of the theory of risk management in translation (Pym 2015) to this task. The translation of swearing involves affective items of language, the identification and rendering of affective meaning, affective and somatic information retrieval and the management of personal emotional reactions, to the anticipation and management of the reactions of the client and the target audience. Taboo items arguably inherently involve risk, and therefore translating such items requires the management of specific types of risk. This article is a scratch of a surface which, I believe, warrants further academic investigation.