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

140 ALBER T PÉTER VERMES Then, thirdly, as Gutt (1991) also points out, in such circumstances it is a crucial requirement, in order that the communication does not fail, that the audience be explicidy made aware by the translator of the intended degree of resemblance between the original and the transladon in a translator's foreword or otherwise (p. 183). This case, when the target reader is aware of the fact that what he is reading is a translation, Gutt (1991) calls overt translation. Finally, the translator, as any communicator, has to make sure that her communicative intentions are in accordance with the expectations of the audience. If she thinks that the intended target audience will not be able or willing to exert the extra effort demanded by a direct translation then she will be bound to choose another approach to the given translation task, in order to ensure the success of the communication (Gutt 1991:185). 6 Conclusions The notion of translation as interpretive language use is based on the view that translation is a form of communication and, as such, can be accounted for in terms of the relevance theory of communication. This implies that the theory of translation is a natural part of the theory of communication and that any translation principle, rule or guideline is an application of the principle of relevance and "all the aspects of translation [...], including matters of evaluation, are explicable in terms of the interaction of context, stimulus and interpretation" through this principle (Gutt 1991:188). Of course, the importance of the context had already been realised by the communicative-functional approaches to translation as well. Polysystem theory, skopos theory, and the action theory of translation all pointed out that a translation is always the product of a specific context, including various factors such as cultural conventions, the circumstances and expectations of the target reader, or the intended purpose of the translation and thus the content of the translation is effectively determined by these factors. As a consequence, in these theories the source text is relegated, from the status of the absolute measure of evaluation, to that of a mere stimulus or source material and the success of the translation is measured by its functional adequacy in the target context. In this, these approaches can be regarded as the forerunners of relevance theory. What I see as a major advantage of relevance theory is that, con-