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Article published In:
Literary Translation in the Era of Artificial Intelligence: Challenges and Its Future Prospects
Edited by Wang Ning and Wang Hongtao
[Babel 69:4] 2023
► pp. 447–464

Automated translation and pragmatic force

A discussion from the perspective of intercultural pragmatics

| South China Business College | University of Oviedo | University of the Free State

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.

Keywords: intercultural pragmatics, context, recontextualization, politeness, automated translation
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • The importance of context in the production/interpretation of meaning
  • The importance of pragmatics in translation
    • Implicatures
    • Politeness
  • Research into pragmatics and automated translation
  • Intercultural pragmatics, recontextualization and (automated) translation
  • Final remarks
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 24 July 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00328.val
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