<p>If possible, I would like to receive your decision at my office email address ([email protected]). Thank you.</p><p>Best regards,</p><p>(Mr) Pertti Hietaranta Professor of English University of Tampere School of Modern Languages and Translation Studies</p><p>E-mail: [email protected] (office) E-mail: [email protected] (home)</p><p>On the degree of appropriate complexity: securing comprehensibility in translation</p><p>In his article on cross-cultural communication and translation, Anthony Pym (2004) suggests that communication across cultural borders "can be characterized by a relatively high degree of effort required to reduce complexity… and by relatively narrow success conditions that create points of high-risk discourse," and that such cross-cultural communication, even in the form of translation, therefore requires "a special kind of risk management."</p><p>The present paper takes a closer look at some of the risk factors involved in translation especially as regards the role of certain culture-specific phenomena in terms of the threats they may pose to the intelligibility of translations.</p><p>Specifically, it is suggested on the basis of some empirical data analysed for their cultural significance that even translations of source texts containing culturally highly specific data may be either fully or at least reasonably comprehensible to the intended recipients if translators are aware of how certain basic principles of risk management should be applied in translation and in text production in general.</p><p>The importance of the following principles, in particular, is demonstrated by reference to a number of attested translations. First, the principle of appropriate complexity: a text should be of appropriate cultural complexity to be readily digestible. Secondly, the principle of appropriate odds for a win-win situation: it should be reasonably obvious that taking the trouble to read a translation will provide its readers with an edge over their competitors in terms of a better understanding of some culturally significant habits in a business negotiation situation, for example. Finally, the principle of appropriate explicitation techniques: if you decide to explain something which you believe may otherwise remain culturally opaque to your readers, make sure the technique you use is acceptable to your audience. Laypersons and experts, for instance, tend to have different expectations in this regard.</p>