Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 3. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 29)
Albert Péter Vernes: Translation as Interpretation
130 ALBER T PÉTER VERMES puzzled at what the language conveys and will ask for the help of somebody who can explain or interpret the text for him. Translation, however, is different from the above cases in that the interference of a mediator is necessitated not simply because the signal needs to be amplified or because the audience is unable to make sense of it but, first of all, because the signal as such is unintelligible to the audience. Thus, translation may be seen as a form of communication where the translator, a mediator, interprets the source communicator's message for the target audience, as he is incapable of interpreting it for himself. This can happen for two main reasons. Firstly because the audience may not be able to identify the source signals (problems with the code) and, secondly, because the audience may not possess the necessary background information for making sense of them (problems with the context). Unfortunately, this definition of translation as an interpretive communicative process is sdll too wide and imprecise in that it allows for the inclusion within its bounds of phenomena which are not normally thought of as instances of translation, such as hermeneutic interpretation or reading a fairytale to a child. However, it puts into focus the notion of interpretation, which may serve as the starting point of the quest for a more rigorous definition of translation. 2 Interpretation As explained in Sperber and Wilson (1986), utterance interpretation is an inferential process whereby the audience, on the basis of the context, infers from the stimulus the intended meaning of the communicator. For this to happen, the audience must use the set of contextual assumptions envisaged by the communicator, otherwise the communication may fail. Let us call the situation when this condition is fulfilled a primary communication situation , and the second, where the audience uses a more or less different set of contextual assumptions a secondary communication situation (Gutt 1991:73). Translation, of course, often occurs in secondary communication situations. An important question here is whether a given message (set of assumptions intended by the communicator) can be communicated in such a situation and to what extent. A secondary communication situation will often result in a misinterpretation. An observation to this effect
