The Application Of Relevance Theory To Interpretation

The overall objective of this dissertation is to make a study of interpretation from the relevance theoretic point of view. It will assist the interpreter to realize the importance of the context in relevance theory and propose a standard to measure the quality of the interpretation: the more relevant the interpretation is, the better it is. Interpretation is a basic form of translation and it is similar to written translation in nature. Therefore, relevance theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson, which has been applied to written translation, can also be adopted to explain interpretation phenomenon. In this paper, the author gives a brief introduction of some basic notions in relevance theory, such as relevance, communication, principle of relevance, optimal relevance, etc. According to relevance theory, the purpose of every act of communication is to convey the optimal relevance and interpretation is an ostensive--inferential communication instead of just encoding--decoding process. During the course of inference, it requires the interpreter to relate the new information to the old information, which is the basis of correct comprehension. The most powerful tool in inference is the context which refers to a subset of the hearer's assumptions about the world. Therefore, the process of interpretation is actually a process of choosing proper contexts. The selection of a particular context out of a range of conceivable contextual assumptions is determined by the search of relevance. The criterion to judge the success of interpretation is the transference of optimal relevance. However, the interpreter, different from translator, should pay attention to some non-verbal contextual factors, such as phonetic variations, facial expressions, body expressions, etc, which sometimes can provide the hint for the interpreter to determine the meaning of the utterance. The author also applies the relevance theory to interpretation teaching and suggests that...