It's a pleasure to have Dr Sarah Maitland back for another seminar talk on the contractual relationship between the client and the translator, ownership of translation works, and the need to encourage this discussion during interpreter and translator education.

Abstract

No contract can anticipate every eventuality. When the unexpected happens, what matters is who has the right to decide what to do, in areas where the contract is silent. In the complex world of translation, the source text is also silent, and it is the translator who must do the job of deciding on a path between the text’s historical context of production and reception, and the future its translation will inhabit. But does this model cover all situations of translation contracting? Is it always the translator who decides? What rights are acquired or relinquished in translation, and what is the impact? Through the application of property rights theory to real-world examples of translation for performance, this talk will consider who controls the narrative (literally) in translation, and what some of the consequences might be for translation contracting.

About the speaker 

Dr Sarah Maitland is author of What is Cultural Translation? (2017), published by Bloomsbury Academic, and co-editor of Translation as Advocacy: Perspectives on Practice, Performance and Publishing (2024), published by John Murray Languages. She is Deputy Editor of the Journal of Specialised Translation and until 2021 was an elected member of the Executive Council of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS).