A Relevance Theory Perspective On Interpreting & Context

The furious popularity of interpreting, a result of an increasingly intensive demand for interlingual and cross-cultural communication against the backdrop of economical and political globalization, in recent years has been in the spotlight for practical application and academic research. A vast number of scholars have presented gigantic insightful views on diversified aspects of interpreting for the benefit of interpreters'self-improvement as well as better interpreting service. Given the fact that interpreting is an extremely complicated communication process involving both identified and unidentified factors, further study on interpreting is indeed of highly importance and significance, which leads to the inspiration of this graduation thesis concentrating on context and interpreting within the framework of Relevance Theory in hopes of alluring people's attention to the irreplaceable role of context in interpreting so as to accomplish better interpreting results with fewer processing efforts. The thesis, in the eyes of multi-discipline, can acquaint interpreter with practical tips from Relevance Theory to guide their practice.Interpreting, from the angle of Relevance Theory, is a dynamic contextual communication aiming at achieving optimal relevance for smooth exchange. During the process of interpreting, interpreters will inevitably encounter the problem of language choices in line with different contextual factors in order to transfer original message accurately and conduct successful communication. Inspired by Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory from the viewpoint of pragmatics, the author attempts to study the relations between context and interpreting in five sections. The thesis is organized in three chapters excluding introduction and conclusion. The introduction part is a general survey of the whole thesis starting with the intention of the research and its theoretic basis.In Chapter One, the author first outlines the core concepts of Relevance Theory, such as relevance and optimal relevance, contextual effect and processing effort, principle of relevance, etc. Relevance Theory was proposed by Sperber and Wilson, claiming that communication is an ostensive-inferential act.Chapter Two presents an overview of context such as definitions and classifications to explain the dependence of interpreting on context. More importantly, a brand new classification of context is introduced, that is, cognitive context can actually conclude linguistic context, situational context and cultural context. It's pointed out, then, that interpreting is dynamic contextual communication based on Relevance Theory.Chapter Three is a detailed description about application of context to interpreting with affluent examples from real-life interpreting scenarios from which we can learn that interpreting only takes place in a certain constant context. Therefore, to attain optimal relevance in the course of interpreting, interpreters are required to skillfully acclimate themselves to different contexts.In the last section, the author concludes the thesis and points out the highlight together with the shortage of this thesis.