On the Application of Relevance Theory to Interpretation

1、關(guān)聯(lián)理論在口譯中的應(yīng)用on the application of relevance theory to interpretationabstract: interpretation is a communicative process which faithfully and orally transfers the information from one language to another. it helps people who speak different language to overcome language barriers and serves as a bridge

2、 in intercultural communication. since china communicate with the outside world more frequently, the demand for interpretation increases dramatically. interpretation practice greatly develops, and the research work on interpretation has gained more intention. however, the study of interpretation in

3、china is long being ignored and many researches are still experience- oriented, lacking sufficient theoretical support. based on this situation, the theoretical research in this field should be deepened. since relevance theory can provide a new cognitive perspective for the study of interpretation,

4、this thesis attempts to research interpretation in the light of relevance theory.relevance theory proposed by dan sperber and deirdre wilson in 1986 holds that human communication is an ostensive- inferential cognitive process. this thesis introduces a few essential concepts of relevance theory, and

5、 it is a tentative study of interpretation under the guidance of relevance theory. it also indicates that in the process of comprehension, the interpreter should search for the context that is closely relevant to the information conveyed in the utterance; and in the process of reproduction, he shoul

6、d also consider the target hearers cognitive environments so as to achieve optimal relevance. finally, the author makes a general survey of the thesis and concludes the main points of the thesis. interpretation serves as a bridge in intercultural communication. based on relevance theory, interpreter

7、s can achieve optimal relevance and ensure the efficiency of interpretation.key words：relevance theory; interpretation; communication; understanding; function 摘要：口譯是通過口頭表達(dá)將信息從一種語言形式等價(jià)地轉(zhuǎn)換成另一種語言形式的交流過程，它幫助人們克服語言上的障礙，在跨文化的交際過程中發(fā)揮了橋梁作用。隨著中國對外交流日益頻繁，社會對口譯的需求快速增長，口譯實(shí)踐得到很大的發(fā)展，有關(guān)口譯的研究也得到更多的關(guān)注。但我國的口譯研究較晚，大多是

8、以實(shí)踐經(jīng)驗(yàn)為基礎(chǔ)，缺乏足夠的理論性，因此我們有必要深化這一領(lǐng)域的理論研究。基于關(guān)聯(lián)理論可以從認(rèn)知的角度為口譯研究提供新的視角，本論文嘗試從關(guān)聯(lián)理論來研究口譯過程。sperber和wilson在1986年提出關(guān)聯(lián)理論，他們認(rèn)為言語交際是一個明示一推理的認(rèn)知過程。本文介紹了關(guān)聯(lián)理論的一些重要概念，對關(guān)聯(lián)理論框架下的口譯過程作了一番探討，指出譯員在話語理解過程中應(yīng)在自己的頭腦中搜尋與說話人話語信息最具關(guān)聯(lián)的語境，在原語再現(xiàn)時又要考慮聽話人的認(rèn)知語境尋求最佳關(guān)聯(lián)。最后，論文對全文進(jìn)行了回顧，總結(jié)本論文的主要觀點(diǎn)?？谧g是交際的橋梁，譯員應(yīng)充分利用關(guān)聯(lián)理論來指導(dǎo)口譯，獲得最佳關(guān)聯(lián)，出色地完成口譯任務(wù)。關(guān)鍵

9、詞：關(guān)聯(lián)理論；口譯；交際；理解；作用contents. introduction.3. literature review.4 a. about interpretation.4b. about relevance theory.5iii. relevance theory .6. the application of relevance theory to interpretation.7a. degree of relevance .7 b. optimal relevance .81. optimal relevance.82. interpretation of optimal rel

10、evance.8c. the principle of relevance.10. conclusion 11works cited.13i. introductionwith the development of communication and transportation technology, the world has seen an unparalleled expansion of communication across many countries. therefore, people speaking different languages come together m

11、ore often to hold meetings, conduct research, and solve problems of common concern. all these activities involve international or intercultural communication and hence all ask for the participation, which can be considered as a kind of intercultural communication, and which can enhance the intercour

12、se among different cultures.under such environment, china, as one of the promising developing countries in the world, has also seen a great many encouraging achievements in its drive for modernization: chinas accession to wto, beijings selection as the host city for the 2008 olympics, and shanghais

13、successful bid for the 2010 world exhibition, all of which prove that chinas level of international engagement has reached an unprecedented height and all of which ask for the involvement of intercultural communication. therefore, interpretation is gaining more and more importance in china.however,

14、in china, interpretation is still a fledgling research field. although in recent years, great achievements have been made in interpretation practice, the interpretation theory badly needed to guide interpretation practice is comparatively lagged behind. in other words, the field of interpretation th

15、eory in china is still at its initial stage. so it is necessary to pay more attention to this field, and more researches should be carried out on it.relevance theory is proposed by sperber and wilson whose aim is to present a new approach to the study of human communication. since its birth, relevan

16、ce theory has been considered a breakthrough in theories of communication and been applied to disciplines such as linguistics, literary studies, translation, and psychology.since interpretation is a kind of intercultural communication, it is plausible to study it from the perspective of communicatio

17、n theories. and since relevance theory is a new approach to the study of communication, studying interpretation within the framework of relevance theory may bring about some new insights into interpretation and give the interpreters some new strategies in their interpreting practice.this thesis , di

18、stinguishing interpretation from translation, and regarding interpretation as a cognitive- inferential communication, tires to explain the process of interpretation within relevance theory. whats more, with examples, it shows the importance of the application of the relevance in interpretation, and

19、the important function of relevance theory in interpretation.ii. literature reviewa. about interpretationsince languages are often obstacles for interlingual and intercultural communication, translation becomes a go- between to bridge the language gap. translation is to express the meaning of one la

20、nguage by another language. it has two forms, oral interpretation and written translation. (梅德明，2000：3). interpretation, as the oral translation, plays an important role in helping speakers of different languages and cultures to freely exchange ideas without feeling the language barriers.as a phenom

21、enon or an activity, interpretation has a long history, dating back to the early period of human society. at that time, the economic and cultural activities of primitive tribes and nationalities were only provincial activities, which restrained the further development of the society. since people sp

22、eaking different languages have desire for exchanges in trade and culture, they need to communicate with others for the purpose of bartering, exchanging information and marriage. when language becomes the obstacle in intercultural activities, interpretation occurs. it helps people remove the languag

23、e hindrance in communicating with the outside world (梅德明，2000：3). so we say interpretation has much to do with exchanges between peoples of different nationalities.interpretation existed in ancient times and represented human communications among different nationalities in politics, economy, militar

24、y affairs, culture, science and technology etc. the earliest interpretation appeared in an unprofessional way because anyone who knew both languages would do the work. there were no interpretation theories or skills at all.the real interpretation in the world begins at the early 20th century with th

25、e occurrence of the two world wars. to some extent, we can say that the paris peace conference held in 1919 was a changing of interpretation, because the modern interpretation skills such as interpretation memory, notes taking and retelling were presented and extensively used for the first time. it

26、was at this conference that interpretation became a profession and basic technique and the skill training gained more importance. then the new castle criminal trial held at the end of the second world war was another changing in the history of interpretation, for the application of interpretation in

27、 four languages (english, french, russian and germany) improved the efficiency of the trail, which was also generally regarded as the beginning of contemporary interpretation.with chinas opening up to the outside world to revitalize her economy and its entry into wto, the situation today is much bet

28、ter now. the demand for interpreters increases a lot and people begin to attach importance to interpretation practice, so interpretation has made much progress. more and more college students show great interest in interpretation. interpretation has gained more attention than ever before. though the

29、 researches of interpretation have been enhanced, the problem of insufficiency in theory study still exists.b. about relevance theoryrelevance theory (sperber and wilson 1986) is a pragmatic theory which is derived from gricean approach to pragmatics. both approaches hold that verbal communication i

30、nvolves not only encoding and decoding, but more crucially, the drawing of inferences, in which contextual assumptions play an important role. the central tenet of relevance theory is its belief that humans tend to pay attention to the most relevant phenomena available; the construct the most releva

31、nt possible representations in a context that maximize their relevance. in relevance theory, the counterbalancing effect of contextual effects and processing effort is crucial in the process of achieving optimal relevance on the part of the hearer. we can say that the pursuit of relevance is general

32、 and compulsory guide communicators have to abide by, and no linguistic interpretation of discourses can stand well without.sperber and wilson (1986) hold that meaning is actively constructed by the mind through the interplay of the context with knowledge and reasoning. they propose relevance- theor

33、etic model of human communication that includes an explanation for the existence and nature of implicit information. they contend that at heart hunman communication relies on inference. meaning is not conveyed by the text alone, but crucially relies on the inferential combination of the text with a

34、context. sperber and wilson (1995: 1- 64) reasonably argue that most types of human communication, including some verbal communication, are often too vague to be properly analyzed with the encoding and decoding model of information transmission, which largely ignore the non- linguistic properties of

35、 utterances. in the inferential model, the communicators intention is to be inferred by the receptor in an effective act of communication. then what is involved in the inference and what guides the inference?relevance theory answers the two questions in terms of “context” or “cognitive environment”,

36、 which provides the recourses for inference, and “the principle of relevance”, which guides and delimits the inference.iii. relevance theory according to the study of cognitive linguistics, human beings have mutual cognitive psychology and get recognized with things through relevant knowledge. proce

37、eding from mans cognitive features, english scholar dan sperber and french scholar deirdre wilson put toward an influential communicative theory: relevance theory in their book relevance: communication and cognition first published in 1986 and revised in 1995. relevance theory is a cognitive approac

38、h towards communication. in relevance: communication and cognitive (speber and wilson, 2001) sperber and wilson present an analysis of the code model of communication and propose and ostensive- inferential model. relevance is a core part in relevance theory. sperber and wilson first defined it as fo

39、llow”:“an assumption is relevant in a context if and only if it has some contextual effects in that context.” （ sperber & wilson 2001: 122）.context used to process new assumptions is essentially a subset of th individuals old assumption, with which the new assumptions combine to yield a variety of c

40、ontextual effects （ sperber and wilson 2001: 132）. it is part of an individuals cognitive environment. in other words, if an assumption can result in changes in an individuals cognitive environment, we call it relevant to the individual.according to speber and wilson, relevance is compatible with hu

41、man psychology. thus humans cognition is closely related with relevance. in the process of communication, each utterance of the speaker has different extent of relevance which will create the hearers choice of relevance; undoubtedly, he would choose the one with great relevance.“relevance means duri

42、ng the process of the comprehension of an utterance, people try to seek for relevance between newly- presented information and contextual assumption. in terms of relevance, it refers to the process of cognition and inference.” (he ziran: 1998:133).there are two main points of the relevance theory: (

43、1) inference is the core of communication. a sentence can be hardly understood if only know the relationship of pronunciation and meaning. for example: she is so great. if only comprehend this sentence from surface, this sentence means that she is very great. or “she is so great!” is it the tone of

44、satire? (2) the principle of relevance: the construct the most relevant possible representations in a context that maximize their relevance. therefore, relevance depends on the relationship of two facts: contextual effect and cognitive effort. only when the two facts are balanced, the information is

45、 considered relevance. iv. the application of relevance theory to interpretationthis thesis will explain the application of relevance theory to interpretation from three aspects.a. degree of relevancerelevance is a matter of degree. relevance is defined in terms of contextual effect.so the more cont

46、extual effects an utterance achieves, the more relevant it will be.however, contextual effects do not come freely: they cost some mental efforts to derive, and the greater the efforts need to derive, the lower the relevance will be. consider the following example:rose to mary: do you still remember

47、the first bike you have? if it is uttered when rose to mary are talking about their childhood, it is obviously highly relevant to her and she will spend not so much effort in recalling memories of her first bike. however, if it is uttered abruptly when rose and mary are talking about business, it is

48、 obviously less relevant to mary at that moment. yet, while still assuming roses question to be relevant, mary will try very hard to recall the memories of the first bike. so while contextual effect is a positive factor of relevance, processing effort is a negative one: other things being equal, the

49、 greater the processing effort, the lower the relevance. thus, the degree of relevance can be defined in terms of contextual effect and processing effort.b. optimal relevance 1. optimal relevanceit is assumed that communication, like many other human activities, is determined by the desire for optim

50、ization of resources, for the best possible balance of effort against effect. when interpreting an utterance, people do not assume that the speaker intends them to go on expanding the context indefinitely and deriving ever more implication; but what they intuitively do is to choose the minimal set o

51、f implications that would make the utterance worth listening to, and stop there. sperber and wilson define the notion of “optimal relevance” in terms of effort and effect (sperber and wilson, 1986:158). consider the following example:there is someone behind you.is this utterance a supposition or a w

52、arning? here is another example:johns coming.is the speaker expressing his expectation or his promise? when receiving the utterances, the hearer might combine the propositions expressed in them with different contextual assumptions and hence infer different conclusions. to avoid misunderstanding, th

53、e speaker can express the same meaning in a different way.2. interpretation of optimal relevance people have already known that relevance is decided by contextual effect and cognitive effort. and the following is the formula:relevance= contextual effect/ cognitive effortthe understanding of utteranc

54、e and success of communication are always on the basis of optimal relevance, which is defined as the largest relevance with the least cognitive effort. actually, relevance interpretation theory is a matter of how to retain optimal relevance in the target speech. that means how the interpreter seeks

55、the optimal relevance from the original communicator and keeps the optimal relevance in his interpreted speech. how is it achieved? both factors have to be considered: contextual effect and cognitive effort of an utterance.lets first look at an example. the following utterance is from the actual spe

56、ech made by the director general of the international atomic energy agency in the meeting of the iaeas board.it is clear that the wave of expansion in the agencys duties which is resulting from the acceptance of comprehensive safeguards by argentina, brazil, south africa and the dprk will be followe

57、d by another wave as former members of the soviet union join the npt as non- nuclear weapons states.a. 我們機(jī)構(gòu)責(zé)任擴(kuò)大的原因包括阿根廷，巴西，南非和朝鮮的加入，此外，前蘇聯(lián)的成員國也繳入了核不擴(kuò)散條約。b. 顯然，我們機(jī)構(gòu)業(yè)務(wù)的擴(kuò)大是因?yàn)榘⒏ⅲ臀?，南非和朝鮮的加入，同時，前蘇聯(lián)的一些共和國也加入了npt條約，成為了無核國家。it seems that people cannot find the relevance of “npt” in the context immediately, but in fact, the relevance is built in the whole cognitive environment and demands the interpreter to mobilize his encyclopedic knowledge and find its implied relevance. p