A Comparative Study Between Relevance Theory And Adaptation Theory Applied In The Interpreting Process

In recent years, interpretation tends to be researched from a cross-disciplinary perspective. Pragmatics, psychology and other sciences are being applied in the interpretation research. Relevance Theory by Sperber and Wilson (hereinafter referred to as RT) and Adaptation Theory by Verschueren (hereinafter referred to as AT) are two Western pragmatics theories that have been specifically applied to the studies of interpretation. However, the following issues need further discussion.1. The majority of researches are made in a mono and parallel way– either RT applied to interpretation or AT accounts of interpretation and the like. Dual and vertical approach, for example, comparative study of RT and AT in the application to interpretation is relatively scarce.2. Due to the fact that RT and AT vary in propositions, neither of the theory can be independently applied to interpretation research. Insufficiencies mean there is room for improvement.3. If potential relationships as well as similarities and differences between RT and AT are to be discovered, are there any possibilities that these two theories be made an integral application to the interpretation where insufficiencies arisen in issue 2 could be offset in a complementary way?As far as these issues are concerned, this thesis on the basis of literature review attempts to make a comparative study between RT and AT in terms of their application to interpretation, to be specific, different interpreting process, and to discover respective pros and cons before making them an integral part in the application to interpretation research.Interpretation is a cross-culture communicative process among original utterer, interpreter and target audience with the interpreter as the core. The interpreting process can be divided into two stages—comprehension stage and reproduction stage. In comprehension stage, the interpreter infers to capture the communicative intention conveyed by the utterer by making relevant assumptions. Whereas in reproduction stage, the interpreter adapts to the target culture and makes linguistic choices of the target language at different levels to deliver original utterer's intention. RT elaborates the relevance principle in verbal communication, providing the interpreter with internal mechanism (cognition) of utterance comprehension on language use. AT, however, manages to describe the adjustability of context and language structure, providing theoretic base for the interpreter in the target language use.The preliminary conclusion is that RT and AT are complemented in the application to overall interpreting process to the largest extent thanks to RT's interpretive power and AT's descriptive power, offsetting insufficient descriptions of specific language use from RT and the lack of theoretic interpretation from AT. The interpreting process is in this way better described and applied by pragmatics, offering an inspiringly integral and theoretical guidance to be observed for practical purposes.