Descriptive Translation Studies

Translation Studies is an interdiscipline in which social, psychological, cognitive, economic, cultural, and historical factors play an important role (Gile, 2012). In his paper, Holmes (1988) envisioned a process-oriented branch of Descriptive Translation Studies which he also called ’the psychology of translation.' Translation psychology can be seen to comprise a great deal more than what is happening in the translator's mind during the translation process (Jääskeläinen, 2012).

Uncertainty is an indispensable part of translation in a world of uncertainty, though the translation is still possible (Pym, 2010). There is always some degree of indeterminacy in language and meaning, and generally, in communication (Quine, 1960). Chesterman (1997)

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in the humanities is called the observer effect: each observation, we accept, is affected by the position of the observer. In the same way, we could say that a text never fully determines what a receiver understands it. Each receiver brings a set of conceptual frames to the text, and the reception process is thus an interaction between the text and those frames. The same would then hold for translation: no source text fully determines a translation of that text. It is not possible to be entirely certain about the meanings that are going to be translated. Quine's (1969) principle of the indeterminacy of translation confirms that different translations are produced by different translators, among which no translation is regarded as incorrect (Pym,

Ambiguity tolerance is considered a core variable in the emotional and cognitive orientation of the individual toward life (Frenkel-Brunswik, 1949) . Tolerance of ambiguity, then, is the way individual deals with ambiguity when they run into some unknown, complicated or conflicting cues (Furnham, 1994). Generally, for those with low ambiguity tolerance, there is an aversive reaction to ambiguous situations. These situations are perceived as a threat and a source of discomfort. Reactions to the perceived threat are stress, avoidance, delay, suppression, or denial (McLain, 1993). Intolerance for ambiguity is defined as "a tendency to resort to black-white solutions, to arrive at premature closure as to valuable aspects, often at the neglect of reality, and to seek for unqualified and unambiguous overall acceptance and rejection of other people"(Frenkel-Brunswik,