Barriers To Cross-Cultural Interpretation And Their Solutions: A Relevance Perspective

The overall thesis is to make a study of interpretation from the relevance theoretic point of view. Relevance theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson is mainly concerned with communication, and has provided a new cognitive perspective for the study of translation (particularly written translation). Interpretation is a basic form of translation and it is similar to written translation in nature, thus, relevance theory, which has been applied to the study of written translation, can also be adopted to explain interpretation. According to Sperber and Wilson, human communication is an ostensive-inferential process. Thus, interpretation, which is regarded as a sort of communication, is also an ostensive-inferential process.Since interpretation, which happens between peoples from different cultural backgrounds, is a cross-cultural communication, different cultural backgrounds are bound to lead to different cognitive environment as well as different cognitive abilities. As a result, the task of seeking optimal relevance lies on the interpreter. In order to achieve this, an interpreter, as the bridge and intermediary, should shuttle back and forth between two cultures freely, apply the most appropriate methods and select the most suitable expressions in interpretation. To sum up, an interpreter should have cross-cultural awareness.This thesis, based on relevance theory, makes a tentative analysis on the cross-cultural interpretation, the cross-cultural awareness and its significance in interpreting, finally, the author gives some suggestions on dealing with some obstacles in cross-cultural interpretation.