Context Matching Interpretive Resemblance Optimal Resemblance

Within relevance-theoretic framework, the author tries to investigate whether context matching, interpretive resemblance and optimal resemblance could constitute a translation model by exploring the relationship among them. The author tests the efficacy of the proposed translation model on data from C-E enterprise brochure translation.On relevance theory assumption, there are three factors contributing to human communication: inference mechanism, processing effort and context, among which, the former two are of communicative competence attribute (Gutt, 2005). To be explicit, humans possess similar inference mechanism and therefore invest similar amount of effort when understanding an utterance with a matched context. However, the same stimulus processed in different context will never lead to the same interpretation. Thus, context matching between an addressor and his addressee is of profound importance for a successful communication. A translator, accordingly, would produce a translated text serving as a stimulus enabling his target audience to derive, select and organize a context matched with that intended by the translator. Only thus can a successful translation communication be ensured. It therefore suggests that context matching is of top priority in translation communication.Interpretive resemblance, supposed as a translation strategy, is to fulfill the mission of context matching on the ground of the following three arguments: the first is translation as an interpretive use (Gutt, 2000); the second is the definition of interpretive resemblance (Gutt, 2000) and the third is the relationship between context matching and interpretive resemblance (Wilson & Sperber, 1988).Likewise, interpretive resemblance will be conditioned by three factors: present cognitive environment of the target audience, processing effort and fidelity to the original text. And then optimal resemblance, derived from the notion of optimal...