Relevance Theory and Bible Translation

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Relevance Theory and Bible Translation (DBT)

Relevance Theory Relevance Theory (RT) is a pragmatic, cognitive theory of human communication developed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson (1995 first edition 1986). Previous communication theories depended to a greater or lesser extent on a code model, in which a sender encodes a thought in a message which is transmitted via some medium (perhaps with attenuation and noise complicating the picture) until it is received and decoded to provide the receiver with a replication of the senders thought. Dissatisfied with such a mechanical model, H.P.Grice (1989) sought to explain the success of conversation based on a principle of cooperation: make your conversation contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose of direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. This was filled out by a number of maxims of quantity, quality, relevance and manner. Sperber and Wilson took what were essentially empirical observations and grounded them in a comprehensive theory of communication, based on cognitive psychology. RT is specifically interested in ostensive communication - acts of communication which signal their intention to communicate. Ostensive communication is doubly intentional. It has not only an informational intention (the intention to communicate something to the receiver) but also a communicative intention (the intention to be recognized as an act of communication.) This covers the vast majority of deliberative human acts of communication, but excludes, for example, a bead of sweat on the brow of a speaker which might communicate either anxiety or overheating to an observer, without the speaker intending that to be communicated. RT holds that although coding-decoding processes do occur, they are insufficient to explain the complexity and refinement of ostensive communication. The basic observational fact is that we nearly always say much less than we mean. Meaning is radically underdetermined by the message that carries it. Even when all the laws and resources of syntax and semantics have been applied the results must be subjected to interpretation based on the extensive use of inference, before the senders meaning can be reached. Thus most acts of communication are both ostensive and inferential. The text of a message interacts with its intended context to prompt the audience towards the meaning communicated. This process of searching for meaning is driven by the desire to find the communication relevant. We are programmed to understand messages by interpreting them in contexts that provide for us the best or most likely set of useful ideas. These contexts are sets of propositions that we already hold to be true or probably true. The sum of such ideas is our cognitive environment and two participants in a dialogue assume each other shares a mutual cognitive environment. Given two participants who share a lot of common background, this is a potentially huge set of ideas. The particular context which the speaker expects the listener to access in interpreting the communication is a specific subset of this. By evoking a context the speaker both compels and constrains the listener towards a specific interpretation. An idea communicated is more relevant if it has lots of useful implications (called cognitive or contextual effects) for the listener, which may provide new information, strengthen, modify or negate information the listener already has. These ideas may further be classed as contextual assumptions and contextual implications. The former contribute or modify the set of ideas the listener is using to interpret the ongoing communication (bringing them more into line with the speakers) while the later leads the listener on to new territory. The communication is also more relevant if it requires less mental processing effort to understand. A communication is optimally

relevant when it is worth the listeners effort to process it, and it is the most relevant text that could have been generated consistent with the speakers abilities and preferences. These parameters are described more formally by Sperber and Wilson (1995:125) as extent conditions: Extent condition 1: an assumption is relevant in a context to the extent that its contextual effects in this context are large. Extent condition 2: an assumption is relevant in a context to the extent that the effort required to process it in this context is small. These two conditions illustrate the fundamental insight of Relevance Theorythat human cognition takes place in a balancing act between processing effort and contextual effect. Communication works because the audience makes the assumption that the communicator intends to communicate and intends to be relevant. The audience does not need to determine in advance the context within which to process a communication. Rather, various contexts are accessed progressively as a message is processed. The immediate context can be extended by the listeners access to their short term memory of previous parts of the conversation, to information about aspects of the message stored in their longer term memory (known as encyclopaedic entries) and other environmental factors to which the message points them. Thus in understanding a communication, the audience does not take a particular context as given and proceed to assess the relevance of the communication. Instead relevance is taken as given and a context selected to justify that assumption. This leads Sperber and Wilson (1995: 270) to enunciate the following: Presumption of optimal relevance (a) The ostensive stimulus is relevant enough for it to be worth the addressees effort to process it. (b) The ostensive stimulus is the most relevant one compatible with the communicators abilities and preferences. An audience understands a communication by bringing to it the most accessible elements of the mutual cognitive environment and deciding on the meaning that produces the adequate contextual effects for acceptable processing effort, in the light of this assumption. The communicator, knowing this, produces the stimulus which will lead the receptor to his intended meaning. This explanation is summarized by two principles of relevance. The First (Cognitive) Principal of Relevance is the fundamental claim: Human cognition tends to be geared to the maximisation of relevance. The Second (Communicative) Principle of Relevance states: Every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance. (Sperber and Wilson, 1995:260 -261) Put more simply, when we receive ostensive communication, we assume that there are useful ideas that we can access for an acceptable amount of thinking. We proceed to interpret the stimulus we receive within the contexts that are most readily available to us, and typically stop processing when we consider that adequate contextual effects have been derived to fulfil our expectation of optimal relevance. The propositions potentially communicated include explicatures ideas which can be derived by processing the actual form or text of the stimulus, such as by resolving ambiguities, filling in details from memory etc. and implicatures ideas which can only be derived by interpreting the stimulus within the intended context, not from the text alone.

Communication aims to increase the mutual cognitive environment by allowing the receiver to derive cognitive effects from the interaction of the stimulus with his/her existing cognitive environment. Communication we find relevant must have some connection with our existing knowledge (or the processing effort to make sense of it is too great) but should not simply repeat what we already know (or the contextual effects are insufficient.) Sperber and Wilson developed RT largely around considerations of face-to-face conversation, i.e. acts of oral, primary communication. However, from the beginning they envisaged it as applying equally to written communication and to literary texts. Texts may be considered as samples of ostensive communication. It is a commonplace of textual interpretation that what is loosely termed context is important to meaning. But RT focuses on what takes place in the minds of the communication partners, and thus context including co-text, intertext, and the context of situation only influences communication to the extent that it influences the cognitive state of the communication partners. The ability of RT to explain the many forms of non-literal language use in literature (metaphor and other figures of speech, irony and the like) arises from a distinction that can be made between descriptive use and interpretive use of language. (S&W 224-243) In the former, an utterance (or text) is used to represent an actual or desired state of affairs in the real world. In the latter, interpretive use, an utterance represents the speakers interpretation of another representation (e.g. an utterance or thought.) Reported speech, metaphor, simile, irony are all examples of interpretive use, which are also called metarepresentations. A number of authors (e.g. Pilkington 2000, McKenzie 2002) have taken the application of RT to literature much further. In particular, many figures of speech and other forms of poetic language can be shown to operate by generating a large number of weak implicatures. Since RT holds that no sharp cut-off can be defined between strong author-intended implicatures and a long tail of progressively weaker contextual effects for which the audience must take more and more responsibility, plenty of room is left for the subtle and nuanced effects of literary texts on varying audiences, and the possibility of multiple readings of the same text. Thus RTs treatment of literature is neither a deterministic author-centred approach nor a deconstructive audience-centred approach. Rather it functions to explaining how each such approach operates. The Bible is a special case of a literary text. It is distinct in its multiplicity of authors and contexts of communication (many details of which are not known), the time depth through which contemporary audiences must examine it, and not least the overlay of the assumption by some (readers and authors) that it represents a message from God (see Pattemore, 2003, 38-45). But taking it as a literary text, RT offers a framework for understanding firstly how each original communication act would have been understood by its first audience within the cognitive environment they shared with the author, and secondly how subsequent audiences, assuming different sets of priorities within their cognitive environments, arrive at differing readings (Pattemore 2004). RT also provides a principled way of evaluating the role of intertextual quotation and allusion within biblical texts (Pattemore 2002a). Relevance Theory has found wide application to many fields of investigation linguistics, literary studies, cognitive psychology, communication studies, philosophy, translation and interpreting, to name a few. Publications have included important text books such as Carston (2002). A regularly updated on-line bibliography, located at http://www.ua.es/personal/francisco.yus/rt.html, provides references and in many cases access to published and unpublished works

Relevance and Translation Theory RT was introduced to the world of Bible Translation by Ernst-August Gutt (1992, 2000) Noting the

failure of both descriptive and evaluative attempts to provide an adequate theoretical account of translation, Gutt looks to RT because it addresses not external factors but the mental processes involved in understanding language. If translation can be seen as a specific case of ostensive communication, then RT should provide an explanation for how it works. Gutt thus sees no need for an separate theory of translation. His approach is based on the RT distinction between descriptive and interpretive use of language. Gutt considers translation to be interlingual interpretive use. Thus we can speak of an interpretive resemblance between thoughts and utterances: two utterances., interpretively resemble one another to the extent that they share their explicatures and/or implicatures. (2000, 44) Interpretive resemblance between two utterances in different languages can be used as a criterion of faithfulness of translation, replacing the problematic notions of equivalence+ or similarity. In the early presentations of his theory, Gutt drew an analogy between direct and indirect speech and two ways in which utterances in different languages can be said to resemble one another, which he labelled direct and indirect translation. The distinction is an important one, though the analogy is potentially confusing, since when the first utterance is in a different language from the one that represents it, there is no possibility of anything truly analogous to direct speech. All translation represents an interpretation formed in the mind of the translator. However, the translator can choose to produce an utterance in the second language which aims to represent the original utterance in some way, or an utterance which aims to represent his interpretation of the original utterance. The former, which Gutt called direct translation, is intended to be heard and understood within the same cognitive environment as the original communication act, and when it does so, has the potential to interpretively represent the original utterance in all its implicatures and explicatures. The latter, indirect translation, aims at less than complete interpretive resemblance, and may be heard within the new audiences own cognitive environment. One of the results of Gutts work is to dispel the notion that a translation may both fully represent the original texts meaning but be communicated entirely within the target audiences cognitive world. Others working with RT in the translation field have described translation as a particular type of metarepresentation. (Almazan Garcia 2001). In later formulations of his work Gutt (2005, 2006) has changed his terminology, though not the substance of his account of translation. The act of translation is regarded as a higher order act of communication. Given that any act of communication involves a stimulus produced by the communicator, and an interpretation formed by the receptor, when a translator seeks to represent an utterance in a language other than the original, he may attempt to represent primarily the stimulus (s-mode translation) or the interpretation (i-mode translation.) Yet even these are poles of a continuum rather than discrete types of translation. For further discussion see the entry in the present volume on Translation Theory.

Relevance Theory and the Practice of Bible Translation Gutts theoretical proposals have aroused some controversy in Bible translation communities (Wendland 1996, 1997). This is largely a result of misunderstanding of the level at which the RT explanation of translation works, and of the kind of theory that it purports to be. Firstly, Gutts work operates on the level of the fundamental laws governing human communication, applying them in a cross-linguistic context. And secondly, it is not an attempt to prescribe in any way how translators should go about their task or the techniques they should use, but rather an explanation of why,

when certain assumptions are made and strategies adopted, the results are the way they are. For more details on the debate see Pattemore (2007). Nevertheless, RT does have significant contributions to make to the more practical tasks of Bible translation, on both the sides of the language divide. On the side of understanding the source texts, RT provides sharper tools for analysing the text viewed as the record of a communicative event. A section of the Society of Biblical Literatures International Conference has been exploring the contribution of RT to Biblical Interpretation since 2003. RT is found to help determine the significance of genre in text interpretation (Unger??), in the analysis of discourse features of a text( Blass 1990, Pattemore 2003), in pinpointing the role of grammatical particles (Sim, Evans??), in understanding how the meaning of words is constructed by actual use (Lexical pragmatics, Green??), the function and significance of intertextual reference and allusion (Pattemore 2002a) and to determine which elements of the mutual cognitive environment, often loosely called background, are likely to have been active in the original audiences understanding of the text, and hence by implication the authors construction of the text ( Green, Pattemore 2004, 2008b). As RT becomes more familiar in the wider biblical studies community, it is likely that its cognitive and inferential insights into the way in which texts work will increasingly influence mainstream exegesis (Meadowcroft 2002, Perry 2009). RT also has an impact on translation strategies and choices. Translators have long grappled with the problem of implicit information, shared by the original author and audience but probably not by the secondary audience who receive the translation. RTs distinction between explicatures and implicatures provides a principled way of deciding how to tackle this problem. When in a translated text, implicatures or explicatures are made explicit, their status in the interpretation changes. They are now presented as something for which the author takes direct responsibility and intends directly to communicate. This may distort the integrity of the translation, diminishing its claim to represent the original communication event. While some explicatures can safely be made explicit assertions in translation, implicatures which become assertions also create their own sets of implicatures which may not represent anything intended by the author. (Pattemore 2008a) Another issue addressed by RT is the question of consistency of translation of specific words or phrases. Because of the prevalence of polysemy, it is a commonplace of translation that meaning in context is more important than overall verbal consistency (see the entry on concordance.) But RT holds that the semantic indicators of the current text are still only pointers to the meaning, and that prior texts which may use the same word in different senses, are yet a part of the cognitive environment within which the new text is interpreted. This places constraints on the translators word choices, if he is aiming to reproduce the implicatures and explicatures of the original. (Pattemore 2002b, 2008a) Gutts RT approach to translation suggests that it is theoretically possible, in the limiting case, for a translated text to communicate all the implicatures and explicatures of the original but only if the secondary audience has access to the aspects of the original cognitive environment which are significant for understanding the text. The question then becomes, how can these aspects be made available to the secondary audience? Part of Gutts answer is that the Bible does not stand alone, but must be a part of the teaching programme of the churches. Nevertheless there have always been ways of attempting to communicate some of these contextual factors in the printed editions of

translated Bibles, through footnotes, illustrations, introductions and the like. Harriet Hill (2006) has used RT to investigate ways to adjust the contextual mismatches that inevitably occur when a biblical text is read in translation by an audience far removed from its original context. She suggests that all translation projects should include research into appropriate ways of bridging this gap. All possible means should be brought to bear on the task, but her quantitative results show that providing contextual information as footnotes (i.e. close to but not within the text) is perhaps the most effective way. Her findings also have implications for the kinds of helps that need to be provided in Study Bibles (Hill 2010). In accordance with the principles of relevance this should not simply be restating the text, or a series of cross-references, but by carefully crafted notes that provide precisely the assumptions the readers would lack. RT proponents have brought their findings, both theoretical and practical, to the pedagogical task of training translators (Sim, Hill et. al. in press) and this approach is finding increasing usefulness in many parts of the world.

Summary Relevance Theory views translation as a Higher Order Act of Communication, dependant as are all acts of communication, on inferential interpretation of a stimulus within a specific context. It thus explains translation, in terms of the search for optimal relevance, as a means of achieving interpretive resemblance. In doing so it defines the possible outcomes of various translation strategies, with the limiting case being that in which the secondary audience is presented with a text which has full interpretive resemblance to the original, when they are given access to the original cognitive environment. RT provides tools for the translator both in understanding the original communication event behind the original text and in crafting a secondary text which will meet the requirements of the new audience. At the same time, by defining what is possible to achieve, it allows translators (and their sponsors) to set out realistic aims for a translation, and make realistic claims about its potential.

References Almazn Garca, Eva M. 2001. Dwelling in Marble Halls: A Relevance-Theoretic Approach to Intertextuality in Translation. Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses 14:7-19. Blass, Regina. 1990. Relevance Relations in Discourse: A Study with Special Reference to Sissala. Cambridge: CUP. Carston, Robyn. 2002. Thoughts and Utterances: The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication. Oxford: Blackwell. Grice, H.P. 1989. Logic and Conversation. In Studies in the Ways of Words, edited by H. P. Grice. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Gutt, Ernst-August. 1992. Relevance Theory: A Guide to Successful Communication in Translation . Dallas: SIL. . 2000. Translation and Relevance: Cognition and Context. 2nd ed. Manchester: St. Jerome. . 2005. On the significance of the cognitive core of translation The Translator 11:1:25-49 Formatted: English (U.K.)

. 2006. Approaches to Translation: Relevance Theory. In The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, edited by K. Brown. Oxford: Elsevier. Hill, Harriet. 2006. The Bible at Cultural Crossroads: From Translation to Communication. Manchester: St. Jerome.

. 2010. Relevant Study Bibles. BT 61 (4):191-207. Hill, Harriet, Ernst-August Gutt, Margaret Hill, and Christoph Unger. in pressspress. BibleTranslation Basics: Communicating Scripture in a Relevant Way. Dallas: SIL International. McKenzie, Ian. 2002. Paradigms of Reading: Relevance Theory and Deconstruction . Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan. Meadowcroft, Tim. 2002. Relevance as a Mediating Category in the Reading of Biblical Texts: Venturing Beyond the Hermeneutical Circle. JETS 45 (4):611-27. Pattemore, Stephen. 2002a. Relevance Theory, Intertextuality, and the Book of Revelation. In Current Trends in Scripture Translation, edited by P. Noss. Reading: UBS. . 2002b. Repetition in Revelation: Implications for Translation. BT 53 (4). . 2003. Souls under the Altar: Relevance Theory and the Discourse Structure of Revelation, UBS Monograph Series, 9. New York: UBS. . 2004. The People of God in the Apocalypse: Discourse, Structure, and Exegesis. Edited by J. Court. Vol. 128, SNTSMS. Cambridge: CUP. . 2007. Framing Nida: The Relevance of Translation Theory in the United Bible Societies. In History of Bible Translation, edited by P. Noss. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. . 2008a. A Drift on a Sea of Implicature: Relevance Theory and the Pragmatics of Translation. Journal of Biblical Text Research 22:180-202. . 2008b. How Relevant is Exegesis for Translation? In A Man Called Daniel: A Festschrift in Honour of Bishop Daniel C. Arichea, Jr., edited by A. d. Corro, E. Ebojo and R. Yu. Manila: Philippine Bible Society. Perry, Peter S. 2009. The Rhetoric of Digressions: Revelation 7:1-17 and 10:1 - 11:13 and Ancient Communications, WUNT 2 Reihe 268. Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck. Pilkington, Adrian. 2000. Poetic Effects: A Relevance Theory Perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sim, R. Retelling Translation unpublished Sperber, Dan , and Deirdre Wilson. 1995. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell. Wendland, Ernst. 1996. A Review of 'Relevance Theory' in Relation to Bible Translation in SouthCentral Africa. Part 1. Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 22 (1):91-106. . 1997. A Review of 'Relevance Theory' in Relation to Bible Translation in South-Central Africa. Part 2. Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 23 (1):83-108.

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