Automated translation and pragmatic force
A discussion from the perspective of intercultural pragmatics
This article discusses the challenges that the rendering of the pragmatic implications of texts into a target
language posed for human translators and, by extension, for automated translation. It starts by discussing the importance of
pragmatics, focusing on two concepts that have received much attention on the part of pragmaticians as well as translation
scholars, namely implicatures and politeness. It moves to on to present some of the most notable publications on the interface
between pragmatics and machine translation. These illustrate that the interest in the pragmatic value of language has not
succeeded in advancing the integration of pragmatics into automated translation. Drawing on Kesckes and House, the last section
discusses two concepts to be considered regarding the role of pragmatics in intercultural mediation.
Article outline
- Introduction
- The importance of context in the production/interpretation of meaning
- The importance of pragmatics in translation
- Research into pragmatics and automated translation
- Intercultural pragmatics, recontextualization and (automated) translation
- Final remarks
- Note
-
References
References (39)
References
Austin, John L. 1962. How To Do Things with
Words. Oxford: Clarendon.
Ariel, Mira. 2010. Defining
Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

ATA American Translators
Association. 2021. “What Is Machine
Translation?” [URL]
Bowker, Lynne, and Jairo Buitrago Ciro. 2019. Machine
Translation Research: Towards Improved Machine Translation Literacy in the Scholarly
Community. Bingly, UK: Emerald Publishing.
Cutting, Joan. 2015. Pragmatics. London: Routledge.
Dahlgren, Marta. 2000. “A
Relevance-based Approach to Poetry in
Translation.” Perspectives 8 (2): 97–108. 

Farwell, David, and Stephen Helmreich. 2015. “Pragmatics-based Machine Translation.” In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation
Technology, edited by Chan Sin-wai, 167–185. London: Routledge.
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar. 2010. “The
Status-quo and Quo Vadis of Impoliteness Research.” Intercultural
Pragmatics 7 (4): 535–559. 

Grice, Paul. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts, edited by Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan, 41–58. New York: Academic Press. 

Guessoum, Ahmed, and Rached Zantout. 2005. “A
Methodology for Evaluating Arabic Machine Translation Systems.” Machine
Translation 181: 299–335. 

Hatim, Basil. 1997. Communication
Across Cultures. Translation Theory and Contrastive Text
Linguistics. Exeter: University of Exeter Press.
Hatim, Basil. 2009. “Pragmatics.” In Routledge
Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, edited by Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha, 204–208. London: Routledge.
Helmreich, Stephen, and David Farwell. 1998. “Translation Differences and Pragmatics-based MT.” Machine Translation 13 (1): 17–39. 

Hickey, Leo. 1989. “Introduction.” In The
Pragmatics of Style, edited by Leo Hickey, 1–12. London: Routledge. 

House, Juliane. 1977. A
Model for Translation Quality
Assessment. Berlin: TBL-Verlag Narr.
House, Juliane. 1998. “Politeness
and Translation.” In The Pragmatics of
Translation, edited by Leo Hickey, 54–71. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. 

House, Juliane. 2006. “Text
and Context in Translation.” Journal of
Pragmatics 381: 338–358. 

House, Juliane. 2010. “Impoliteness
in Germany: Intercultural Encounters in Everyday and Institutional Talk.” Intercultural
Pragmatics 7 (4): 561–595. 

House, Juliane. 2013. “Quality
in Translation Studies.” In Handbook of Translation
Studies, edited by Carmen Millán-Varela and Francesca Bartrina, 534–547. London: Routledge.
House, Juliane. 2016. Translation
as Communication across Languages and
Cultures. London: Routledge.
Kecskes, Istvan. 2014. Intercultural
Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kecskes, Istvan. 2011. “Understanding
the Role of Context in Language Use.” In Pragmatics and
Context, edited by Marcia Macauley and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2–34. Toronto: Antares.
Kohnen, Thomas. 2015. “Speech
Acts: A Diachronic Perspective.” In Corpus
Pragmatics, edited by Karin Aijmer and Christoph Rühlemann, 52–83. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kozanda, Dominik. 2014. Aproximación al estudio de las manifestaciones de (des)cortesía tú y usted en la combinación lingüística español
y alemán: implicaciones para la interpretación de lenguas [An approach to the
study of (im)politeness “tú” and “Usted” in the language pair Spanish and German: implications for
interpreting]. Hamburg: Diplomatica.
Landers, Clifford E. 2001. Literary
Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. 

Malmkjær, Kirsten. 1998. “Cooperation
and Literary Translation.” In The Pragmatics of
Translation, edited by Leo Hickey, 25–40. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. 

McEnery, Tony. 2006. Swearing
in
English. London: Routledge.
Nida, Eugene A. 1979. “Translating Means
Communicating: A Sociolinguistic Theory of Translation.” Technical Papers for the Bible
Translator 30 (1): 101–107. 

Nirenburg, Sergei, and Jaime Carbonell. 1987. “Integrating
Discourse Pragmatics and Propositional Knowledge for Multilingual Natural Language
Processing.” Computers and
Translation 21: 105–116. 

O’Driscoll, Jim. 2020. Offensive
Language: Taboo, Offence and Social
Control. London: Bloomsbury. 

Pavesi, Maria, and Pablo Zamora. 2021. “The
Reception of Swearing in Film Dubbing: A Cross-cultural Case Study.” Perspectives Studies in
Translation Theory and
Practice 30 (3): 382–399.
Santaemilia, José. 2008. “The
Translation of Sex-related
Language.” TTR 211: 221–252. 

Searle, John. 1969. Speech
Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of
Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Sidiropoulou, Maria. 2021. Understanding
Im/politeness through
Translation. Cham: Springer. 

Stede, Manfred, and Schmitz, Birte. 2000. “Discourse
Particles and Discourse Functions.” Machine
Translation 151: 125–147. 

Valdeón, Roberto A. 2020. “Swearing and the Vulgarization
Hypothesis in Spanish Audiovisual Translation.” Journal of
Pragmatics 1551: 261–272. 

Venkatesan, Hari. 2021. “The
Fourth Dimension in Translation: Time and Disposability.” Perspectives: Studies in Translation
Theory and Practice. 

Wilks, Yorick. 2009. Machine
Translation: Its Scope and
Limits. Berlin: Springer.
Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Mohsen, Mohammed
2024.
Artificial Intelligence in Academic Translation: A Comparative Study of Large Language Models and Google Translate.
PSYCHOLINGUISTICS 35:2
► pp. 134 ff.

Rivas Carmona , María del Mar
2024.
La traduction automatique comme ressource pour la traduction humaniste-littéraire : un instrument ‘artificiel’ peut-il transférer un texte essentiellement ‘humain’ et ‘social’ ?.
Studia Romanica Posnaniensia 51:3
► pp. 7 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 9 november 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.