Do translators get attached to constructions? On a pivotal role of the minimax strategy in translation

The article presents an analysis of renderings of the Swedish –s passive voice construction in a sample of multiple non-professional Polish translations of the same non-literary Swedish text, with a view to verify the validity of the thesis that translators resort to the minimax strategy while translating, as well as it discusses the possible correlation of this strategy with the development of characteristic features of the language of translation, the so-called “third code”. The article is structured as follows: Firstly, it presents the origin of the notion of the minimax strategy in translation studies and discusses it in reference to the psychology of translation. What follows is a brief description of the “third code” and its characteristic features. The subsequent part offers a discussion of the passive voice structures in Swedish and Polish as well as the semantically akin Polish constructions that may potentially be used to render the Swedish –s passive conceptualisations. Subsequently, the collected data are examined to answer the research questions. The article concludes with suggestions for further research on the “third code” and translation universals with reference to the minimax strategy.