Applications of relevance theory to translation - a concise overview
(DRAFT - comments welcome)
© Ernst-August Gutt, 26/05/2004
1. Background
The relevance theory of communication was developed by Sperber and Wilson in the mid nineteen eighties (Sperber and Wilson 1986: ch. 1). It did not take long before it was applied to translation (Gutt 1991).
2. Key features
In line with relevance theory in general, its application to translation is primarily concerned with the explanation of translation as an act of communication in cause-effect terms.
Rather, its main concern is to provide translators and others interested with a cause-effect understanding of translation as an act of communication: given the way the human mind goes about communication, what will be the likely effects of particular solutions, or what solutions are needed to achieve particular effects? The overall scientific domain within which these explanations are sought is cognition.
This means that the practical contribution of relevance theory to translation is comparable to that of, say, the science of chemistry to chemical engineering. Just like an adequate understanding of the cause-effect relations at work in chemical processes is prerequisite to successful chemical engineering, the better the translator's understanding of the cause-effect relations that both enable and limit translation as an act of communication, the better s/he is equipped to find solutions at the translation desk that work. The aim is neither to describe or categorise translation as a text genre nor to prescribe standards or guidelines on how translation is to be done.
In essence translation is viewed as an act of communication about another act of communication. In this way it is seen as related to acts of communication like quotation, except that translation usually involves two different languages.
While acknowledging that linguistic differences are one major hurdle to be overcome for successful translation, the relevance-theoretic approaches bring out that contextual differences constitute a second major hurdle, of at least equal importance to the linguistic one.
3. Stages of development
3.1 Initial approach
Initially, relevance-theorists treated translation - in passing - as an instance of the interpretive use of language relying on resemblance in semantic representation or logical form (Sperber and Wilson 1986:228; Wilson and Sperber 1988:136). Language expressions - usually referred to as utterances, though they include both oral and written communication - are interpretively used when they are intended to provide information about the meaning of another language expression, in virtue of a resemblance relationship between their meanings. (This contrasts with the descriptive use of language, which is intended to provide information about the state of affairs which the expression refers to.) Meaning resemblance (interpretive resemblance) between utterances consists in the number of thoughts (assumptions) shared between their intended interpretations. (For further details see Sperber and Wilson 1995, ch. 4, section 7).
3.2 Translation as interpretive use
As a result of further research, Gutt (1991, 2000) proposed that, within the framework of cognition, translation can be accounted for more adequately as interlingual interpretive use in general, without the restriction to resemblance in logical form. A concise introduction to the application of relevance theory to translation is found in (Gutt 1992). Significant features of his proposal are the following.
Interpretive resemblance, the sharing of thoughts between the intended interpretations, forms a continuum, ranging in principle from no thoughts shared (no resemblance) to all thoughts shared (complete resemblance). Gutt used the maximal endpoint, complete interpretive resemblance, to define the notion direct translation.
According to the relevance-theoretic framework, in intralingual communication it is one of the unique features of direct quotation that it allows - at least in principle - the full recovery of the originally intended interpretation - if processed in the originally intended context. This crucial condition follows from the cause-effect interdependence of stimulus, intended interpretation and context, conditioned by the inferential nature of communication, a central claim of relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986: ch. 1) Applied to cross-language situations, one can define a mode of interlingual communication, direct translation, which presumes that the intended interpretation of the receptor text will completely resemble the intended interpretation of the original - provided it is processed in the original context (Gutt 1991:128-129). Since contextual information is rarely ever exactly the same between two individuals, the claim of direct translation may be better expressed as a dependency relationship: the closer the context of a direct translation resembles that intended for the original, the closer its interpretation will resemble that of the original.
While the demand that translations should convey the meaning of the original unaltered (= achieve complete interpretive resemblance) has been voiced for centuries, the innovative point about direct translation is the realization that the achievement of this goal crucially depends on the use of the originally intended contextual information; to expect a translated text to accurately reproduce the intended meaning of the original in a context different from that of the original goes against the basic laws by which communication works and is therefore unrealistic. This entails that readers of translations interested in getting as close to the meaning of the original as possible must familiarise themselves with the context of the original (Gutt 1991: ch. 7, section "On the use of the original context"). This is not a matter of choice, but follows from the cognitive laws of communication.
With regard to linguistic differences, Gutt pointed out that what matters for the achievement of interpretive resemblance is not so much the sharing of the concrete linguistic features as the possibility of replicating in the receptor language the more abstract communicative clues provided by the original (Gutt 1991: ch. 6). Though even at this higher level of abstraction the possibility of matching communicative clues is not guaranteed in any particular instance, it is true to say that the mode of direct translation offers the highest possible degree of interpretive resemblance to the original, depending on how closely the context in which it is processed resembles that of the original.
Any translation aiming at lower degrees of interpretive resemblance falls under the mode of indirect translation, named parallel to indirect quotation (Gutt 1991: ch. 5). Indirect translation places no special constraints on the use of context; in fact, indirect translation would typically uses the current receptor context. This gives indirect translation the advantage of good spontaneous comprehensibility. However, by the cognitive laws of communication, it also follows that the nature of that context determines the degree of interpretive resemblance achievable in any particular case.
Thus the relevance-theoretic account brings out the crucial role which context plays in translation, quite apart from the linguistic similarities and differences between the languages involved. A clear understanding of the influence of context can equip translators - and translation users - with a new realism regarding the possibilities and limitations of translation as a mode of interlingual communication.
Another interesting outcome of this account is that explains the inconclusiveness of the innumerable attempts of clearly defining such distinctions as paraphrase versus translation, literal versus free, etc. Since interpretive resemblance forms a continuum, there is no reason for there to be any definable non-arbitrary points apart from its endpoints.
The relevance-theoretic account also argues that 'covert translation' (House 1981) is significantly different from 'overt translation' (Gutt 1991: ch. 3). 'Covert translations', e.g. of tourist brochures, manuals, advertisements, do not aim at providing information about some original text and the resemblance relationship to any such text plays no role for their effectiveness and they can be produced independently of an original in any other language. Looked at as acts of communication, they fall under descriptive rather than interpretive use. Because of these significant differences in nature and with regard to the constraints that apply, Gutt suggests that these cases be differentiated from translation.
3.3 Translation as metarepresentational use
Later developments in relevance theory introduced the notion of metarepresentation to complement that of interpretive use (see esp. (Sperber 2000). According to Sperber and Wilson, metarepresentation is characterized by two elements that are already contained in the notion of interpretive use: a) the reliance on a relationship of resemblance between two representations, and b) the embedding of one representation in another. Different from interpretive use, however, in metarepresentation the resemblance does not have to be between the intended interpretations but can also lie in the sharing of linguistic properties. Wilson proposed to call such resemblances "metalinguistic" (Wilson 2000:426). Thus metarepresentation captured all instances of "representation by resemblance", thus "leaving the way open to a unified account" (Wilson 2000:425).
Applying these insights, Almazan reanalyzed the notion of translation as metarepresentational use rather than as interpretive use: “Translation is an instance of the metarepresentational use of utterances where the metarepresented and the metarepresenting utterances happen to be in different languages …" (Almazan Garcia 2002:175). The advantage of this account is that it allows the natural inclusion of a group of translation phenomena that do rely on resemblance relations to another text but not (necessarily) on resemblance in interpretation. Interlinear translation imitating the linguistic structure of the original language would be a case in point. Gutt had characterised them as translations that relied on "partial resemblance in linguistic properties". He pointed out that while not falling under interpretive use, they would still be covered by the wider relevance-theoretic framework (Gutt 1991:168-170). Almazan's proposal of defining translation as metarepresentation use does not need to treat this group as exceptional but " yield[s] a `truly unified account of translation' (Gutt 1991/2000) without the need for qualifications, … exceptions …, or ad hoc concepts …" (Almazan Garcia 2002:175).
3.4 Translation as higher-order act of communication
In subsequent research, the application in a cognitive framework of the term 'representation', and hence also of 'metarepresentation', to language expressions has come into question. In a series of lectures and papers Gutt has argued that such usage obscures the differences between mental representations and stimuli that form the core of human communication as we know it (ostensive-inferential communication): mental representations (in the sense of Fodor (e.g. 1981) inherently represent states of affairs, but are private, cannot be shared with others by perception. Stimuli, by contrast, are phenomena that others can perceive but since they do not inherently represent states of affairs (though they often have some representational properties), they require a process of inferential interpretation.
It follows from this insight that any act of communication concerned with another act of communication (now called higher-order acts of communication), can aim at providing information about either of its two key elements: the stimulus used or the interpretation intended in the original act. Higher-order acts of communication that focus on the stimulus used are said to be in s-mode (stimulus-oriented mode). They inform the audience of "what was said", as it were. Those focusing on the intended interpretation are said to be in i-mode (interpretation-oriented mode); they inform the audience of "what was meant".
This revised framework provides an explanation of the intuition that "telling what was said" and "telling what was meant" are not necessarily the same thing. Translation can now be accounted for as an interlingual act of higher-order communication. Translations relying on interpretive resemblance are accounted for by i-mode, those relying on resemblance in linguistic features by s-mode, thus offering a unified account. While indirect translation naturally falls under i-mode, direct translation turns out to be a hybrid, combining the features of both s- and i-mode in a unique way.
4. References
Almazan Garcia, E. M. (2002). Intertextuality and translation: a relevance-theoretic approach, Unpublished M.Phil. thesis.
Fodor, J. A., Ed. (1981). Representations: Philosophical essays on the foundations of cognitive science. Brighton, The Harvester Press Limited.
Gutt, E.-A. (1991). Translation and relevance: Cognition and context. Oxford, Basil Blackwell.
Gutt, E.-A. (1992). Relevance theory: a guide to successful communication in translation. Dallas, Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Gutt, E.-A. (2000). Translation and relevance: cognition and context. Manchester, St. Jerome.
House, J. (1981). A model for translation quality assessment. Tübingen, Gunter Narr.
Sperber, D., Ed. (2000). Metarepresentations: A multidisciplinary perspective. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Sperber, D. and D. Wilson (1986). Relevance: Communication and cognition. Oxford, Basil Blackwell.
Sperber, D. and D. Wilson (1995). Relevance: Communication and cognition. Oxford, Blackwell.
Wilson, D. (2000). Metarepresentation in linguistic communication. Metarepresentations: A multidisciplinary perspective. D. Sperber. Oxford, Oxford University Press: 411-448.
Wilson, D. and D. Sperber (1988). Representation and relevance. Mental representations: The interface between language and reality. R. M. Kempson. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 133-153.
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