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

134 ALBER T PÉTER VERMES golden days" of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Since in this part of the book the writer describes the layering upon each other of the past and present, this assumption definitely has some contextual importance here. However, the English word 'beer' does not carry a comparable assumption and this part of the context is thus lost in the translation. On the other hand, it has a near synonym in English, 'ale', which does contain in its encyclopaedic entry the assumption, waking images of the past, that this drink is brewed in the traditional way, without adding hops. Moreover, the related compound 'alehouse' is further loaded with the encyclopaedic assumption that the expression is outdated, old-fashioned, and its use in the translation would thus have resulted in the closest possible interpretive resemblance with the original. Here, in my opinion, the translator committed a mistake: she let part of the context be lost without a good reason, since the preservation of the encyclopaedic assumption in question would not have caused a considerable increase of processing effort and would not therefore have threatened the optimal relevance of the translation. In this case, then, although the target text does fulfil the presumption of optimal relevance, the level of interpretive resemblance could have been made higher. In traditional terms, this might be called an instance of "unjustified translation loss", which in this case means the loss of some implicature, while in other cases an explicature can also be lost in similarly unwarranted ways. On the other hand, it may happen that the preservation of some implicature or explicature will threaten the optimal relevance of the target text; that is, an excessive degree of interpretive resemblance may also count as a

—different kind of

—translation mistake. We have arrived at, then, a definition of translation which seems to provide all the necessary conditions to guide the translator: They determine in what respects the translation should resemble the original

—only in those respects that can be expected to make it adequately relevant to the receptor language audience. They determine also that the translation should be clear and natural in expression in the sense that it should not be unnecessarily difficult to understand (Gutt 1991:102). These conditions, among other things, seem to explain why it is preferred that the translator translate into her mother tongue (or her