Translation as an interpretive use of language and target-oriented

in a broader sense can help our understanding of the interpretive feature of translation and the validity for the target-oriented translation. From Relevance Theory viewpoint, translation falls naturally under the interpretive use of language. Sperber and Wilson explain “interpretation” as follows:

Any representation with a propositional form, and particularly any utterance, can be used to represent things in two ways. It can represent some state of affairs in virtue of its propositional form being true of that state of affairs; in this case we will say that the representation is a

description, or it is used descriptively. Or it can represent some other representation which also

has a propositional form – a thought, for instance – in virtue of resemblance between the two propositional forms; in this case we will say that the first representation is an interpretation of the second one, or that it is used interpretively. (Sperber and Wilson, 1986: 228-229)

96 In short, an utterance is said to be used interpretively when it is intended to represent what someone said or thought. Translation is intended to restate in one language what someone said or wrote in another language. If we see that Sperber and Wilson’s definition focuses on intra-lingual quoting or reporting, we would conclude that in inter-lingual situations translation belongs to the interpretive use.

Boase-Beier employs Relevance Theory in translating style. She reviews Gutt’s Translation

and Relevance (2000, first published in 1991), in which Gutt made a number of suggestions

about how translation could be explained using Relevance Theory, including these elements:

i) translation, as communication, works under the assumption of relevance (that what the translator intends to communicate to the audience is relevant enough to them to make processing it worthwhile).

ii) a translated text is an instance of interpretive, as opposed to descriptive, use (the translator is saying what someone else meant).

iii) texts in which the way of saying – the style – plays an important role require direct translation, as opposed to indirect translation, which, like indirect quotation, just gives the substance. (Boase-Beier, 2006: 44)

Here the direct translation and the indirect translation are coined from “direct quotation” and “indirect quotation” by Gutt: “Direct speech quotations preserve exactly what was said, whereas indirect speech quotations give an indication of what was meant” (Gutt, 1991: 125). He proposes to “define translation along lines paralleling to direct quotation”, in that “[It] calls for the preservation of all linguistic properties, so this kind of translation calls for the preservation of all communicative clues” (Gutt, 1991: 128). Gutt’s definition is not quite clear.

97 The essence, however, can be concluded as in the quotation above from Boase-Beier, that direct translation focuses on “not just what was originally said but, crucially, how it was said” (Boase-Beier, 2004: 277), whereas indirect translation focuses only on content. Since “The style of a literary text, as all translators know, is essential to its translation”, Boase-Beier (2004: 278) assumes that “Literary translation is always direct translation” (see the point (v) below).

Boase-Beier then claims that Relevance Theory might be useful for studying what happens to style when we translate:

i) The notion of mind style … can be integrated into translation theory as a set of weak implicatures which are communicative clues to a cognitive state.

ii) Relevance Theory allows for the importance of cognitive state as that which a translator will try to recreate, rather than meaning in a truth-conditional sense.

iii) By allowing a view of style as weak implicatures, Relevance Theory provides a framework and legitimation for the translator’s interpretive freedom and the creativity of the translation act.

iv) By tying poetic effect to the extra work, in terms of maximal relevance, that stylistic features call for, a Relevance Theory view can help explain the common intuition of translators that preserving style helps recreate the effects of the source text on the target reader.

v) An important difference between the way literary and non-literary texts are translated is that the former will tend to require direct translation (which preserves the style) while the latter will tend to require indirect translation (see Gutt, 2000: 68). (Boase-Beier, 2006: 44)

98 It is interesting that Boase-Beier’s view per se involves a metaphor – the style of a literary text as a set of weak implicatures. The “‘primary’ lexical or syntactical meaning”1 is considered to be the main or dominant assumptions of the author, and the style to be the weak implicatures. “Weak” though they are, they “serve to provide clues to a state of mind”, and amount to the “spirit” of the original text (Boase-Beier, 2006: 45). For weak implicatures, “There is not much ‘conclusive evidence’ (Sperber and Wilson, 1995: 198) but which are

open to interpretation” (Boase-Beier, 2004: 278; emphasis added). In a word, the subtleness,

richness, and openness of style – locating to the topic of this chapter about metaphor – offers the freedom for the translator to act and calls for a creative translation.

Another point that Boase-Beier underscores above is that “truth” in terms of Relevance Theory is not always an actual truth but something relevant; to this effect, even though the target-oriented creative translation appears “untrue” because it might radically change the original contents, it is actually interpreting “truth” since “it may instead be useful (or to be believed to be useful or to resemble something useful) or it may be said because it is assumed to be an addition to knowledge” (Boase-Beier, 2004: 276). This notion of “truth” is significant for literary translation in that it offers the translators freedom of using flexible translation strategies whichever is relevant and useful.