Kääntäjän toimijuus valtiosopimusprosessissa

This article deals with translators’ agency in the preparation of treaties. It is based on interviews with two Finnish-Russian translators and two Finnish-Swedish translators. The interviewees were asked to describe the treaty process from their point of view, and utterances referring to various forms of agency were identified in their responses. I approach agency as an extensive, complex concept that consists of several, interdependent elements, which I have taken into account in my analysis. In this article, I analyse agency at three levels: textual, paratextual and extratextual. The analysis shows that treaty translators exercise agency at all these levels and have an extensive role in the treaty process. Shedding light on the different tasks of Russian and Swedish translators, the analysis also highlights the situated nature of agency.