A Practice Report On The Interpretation From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Relevance Theory was proposed by Sperber and Wilson in 1986.As a communicative theory of cognitive pragmatics,it is dedicated to the study of ostensive-inferential communication covering the communicative intention and informative intention.Relevance Theory can help guide interpreting process.Under the theoretical framework of Relevance Theory,the process of interpreting is a double ostensive-inferential process which involves the speaker,interpreter and audience.On the one hand,the speaker needs to demonstrate his/her communicative intention through ostensive stimuli and the interpreter should select proper context assumptions,combining information with her own cognitive environment and inferring the communicative intention of the speaker.On the other hand,the interpreter should take the audience's cognitive environment into account to manifest the communicative intention of the speaker so as to achieve the optimal relevance of the utterance.This is an interpreting practice report,which is based on one interpreting practice when the author was working at IBM CSC China 37 Program during her internship period.Under the guidance of Relevance Theory and context,she analyzes the problems in interpreting and puts forward possible solutions and strategies accordingly.This report can be divided into five parts.The first part provides the description of the whole process.In the second part,the author introduces Relevance Theory and context,dividing the context into linguistic context and non-linguistic context.The third and fourth are the major parts,which analyze the difficulties in interpreting and provide corresponding coping strategies.The last part is the conclusion and reflection of the task.Finally,the author wishes to improve her interpreting performance by applying Relevance Theory to the interpreting task to deal with these barriers.