Chapter published in:
Pragmatics and its Interfaces
Edited by Cornelia Ilie and Neal R. Norrick
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 294] 2018
► pp. 143–162

Translation studies and pragmatics

| Hamburg University | Hellenic American University
My chapter highlights the role of context in the interface between translation studies and pragmatics. Translated texts are doubly contextually bound: to their originals and the new recipients’ contextual conditions. This double linkage underlies the equivalence relation – the conceptual heart of translation. Translation involves re-contextualisation, and a distinction is often made between overt and covert translation as qualitatively different ways of re-contextualisation. Overt translations are embedded in new contexts co-activating original contexts for their new recipients. Covert translations have the status of originals in new contexts being of equal concern for old and new addressees. Here the new addressees’ communicative preferences are accounted for via a cultural filter resulting from relevant contrastive pragmatic studies. Examples of such filtering are provided.
Keywords: context, translation, re-contextualisation, overt translation, covert translation, equivalence
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • 1.Taking a closer look at ‘context’
  • 2.Translation as a communicative event involving re-contextualization
  • 3.Functional equivalence in re-contextualisation
  • 4.The cultural filter and contrastive pragmatics
  • 5.Translation as re-contextualisation and English as a lingua franca
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 07 September 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.294.07hou
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