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

TRANSLATION AS INTERPRETATION 133 relevance; all other considerations follow from the answer given to this fundamental question. Thus, as Gutt writes, the translator, first of all, needs to clarify for herself whether the original informative intention is communicable in the given circumstances or it needs to be modified, and only then can she start thinking about the question of exactly how her communicative intention may be formulated (Gutt 1991:180). 3 Translation as Interlingual Interpretive Use If, as is most often the case, the same informative intention cannot be conveyed in the secondary context, then it will need to be altered in order to make it communicable, while ensuring at the same time that only such changes are effected as absolutely necessary to achieve this purpose. Translation can then be seen as the act of communicating in the secondary context an informative intention that interpretively resembles the original one as closely as possible under the given conditions. This entails that the principle of relevance in translation is manifested as a presumption of optimal resemblance: the translation is "(a) presumed to interpretively resemble the original [...] and (b) the resemblance it shows is to be consistent with the presumption of optimal relevance" (Gutt 1991:101). In other words: the translation should resemble the original in such a way that it provides adequate contextual effects and it should be formulated in such a manner that the intended interpretation can be recovered by the audience without undue processing effort. The following example in (1), taken from Péter Esterházy's Hrabal könyve (Magvető Kiadó, Budapest, 1990, p. 10) and its English translation in (2) by Judith Sollosy (Quartet Books, London, 1993, p. 4) will help to elucidate what optimal resemblance means in translation (the italics are mine). (1) Volt cukrászda, két konkurens kocsma, melyet mindenki a régi nevén hívott, a Serhá^ meg a Kondász ... (2) There was a café of sorts and two rival taverns, which everyone called by their old names, the Beerhall and the Kondász ... The problem here is that the Hungarian word 'ser' is associated with an encyclopaedic assumption to the effect that the expression is oldfashioned, it is not used any longer, and evokes the atmosphere of "the