The Pragmatics of Dialogue Interpreting

1. The Pragmatics of Dialogue Interpreting Ian Mason Heriot Watt University

2. Modes of interpreting

3. Dialogue interpreting • Face-to-face • Spontaneous • Three-way exchange • Consecutive (mostly)

4. Styles • Courtroom: the non-person • Triadic Exchanges: negotiation of roles and meaning

5. Att. What is the name of the airline? Int. [What is the name of the airline?] Wit. [It’s TACA] Int. It’s TACA Att. Could you repeat that? And spell it please? Wit. [TACA] Int. [Can you spell it?] Wit. [T-A-C-K] Int. T-A-C-K O.J. Simpson trial

6. Interpreter role expectations • Establish common ground between participants • Act as intercultural mediator

7. Pragmatics • The Co-operative Principle • Maxims • QUANTITY (‘Be as informative as required; do not be more informative than required’) • QUALITY (‘Do not say what you believe to be false’) • RELATION (‘Be relevant’) • MANNER (‘Be clear, be orderly’)

8. Implicature • Where a maxim appears to be ‘flouted’, seek an inference. • Inference = unexpressed meaning supposed by hearer.

9. An example: QUANTITY, MANNER • IO “That immigration officer would ask you some questions”. • Seems to be a statement, not a question. • Seems to state the obvious • So, it flouts the maxim of QUANTITY • Inference = It’s a question • Also flouts the maxim of MANNER (vague) • Inference = answer to specific questions.

10. An example: QUALITY • TV “So [Name] and NATO after all. After so many years under the communist regime, in NATO’s lap Mr Ambassador?” • INT “A very important question, Your Excellency. After so many years being a part of the Warsaw Pact under communist rule, how do you feel about accessing NATO?” • Seferlis (2006)

11. An example: QUALITY • Objectively, a country cannot be “in the lap of” a military alliance. • So, the TV host’s expression appears to flout the maxim of quality. • Implicature: the country is subordinate to NATO. • Inference by interpreter: an insult. • The interpreter avoids the implicature in his version.

12. Interpreter behaviour • Compensation for losses • Accommodation to hearer • Protection of their own image • Assumptions about ‘knowledge state’ of participants

13. ‘Knowledge’ and ‘assumptions’ • “All a speaker has to go on when treating something as given or ‘shared’ is what s/he assumes the hearer assumes” • Prince (1981: 232)

14. Relevance Theory • ‘mutual cognitive environment’ • Assumptions ‘mutually manifest’

15. Mutual manifestness • A: “Do you want some coffee?” • B: “Coffee would keep me awake” • (How are the speaker and hearer to distinguish the assumptions they share from those they do not share?)

16. Context • “The set of premises used in interpreting an utterance” • “A subset of the hearer’s assumptions about the world” • Sperber & Wilson (1986: 15)

17. The culture-specific nature of contextual assumptions “I must caution you, you do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court”

18. (Sperber & Wilson 1986) “To communicate is to claim an individual’s attention hence, to communicate is to imply that the information communicated is relevant” SO… Relevance Theory

19. Greatest possible contextual effect in exchange for the smallest possible processing effort Principle of Relevance

20. Contextual effect = any modification or improvement to our assumptions brought about by an act of communication.

21. ST “At the Feyziyeh seminary my own small child Mostafa drank water; they cleansed the jar. That was because I used to teach philosophy”. [DRINK] [CLEAN] [TEACH PHILOSOPHY] An example

22. TT “At the Feyziyeh seminary my own small child Mostafa [a son who subsequently died in Iraq while Khomeini was exiled there], drank water; they cleansed the jar [meaning that his son was considered to be religiously unclean]. That was because I used to teach philosophy”.

23. ‘New’/’old’ information • “Relevance of new information to an individual is to be assessed in terms of the improvements it brings to his representation of the world” • Sperber & Wilson (1986: 103)

24. ‘New’/’old’ information • Connexion of new and old information creates a contextual effect through: • creating a new contextual implication • strengthening a previous assumption • abandonment of previous assumption

25. Adjustments to improve relevance

26. Immigration interviews • IO That immigration officer would ask you some questions. • INT The official asked you two questions. What did you say to him? Why did you come here?

27. RT account of this move • Interpreter has adjusted her output in order to preserve the balance between contextual effects and processing effort in a different cognitive environment.

28. IMM (in Polish) That is I had eight hours mop, and two hours Hyde Park. INT (in Polish) But from ten till six here at the hotel? IMM (in Polish) Yes INT (in English) Right, I worked nights at the hotel from 10-6 in the morning, and then from 6-8 I was picking up rubbish in Hyde Park.

29. Problem • What are the limits to the interpreter’s adjustments for the sake of relevance?

30. ‘Interpretive resemblance’ • As a producer-oriented guarantee • Gutt (2000: 37), following Sperber & Wilson (1986: 226-237)

31. Extent of resemblance? • “only in those respects that can be expected to make it adequately relevant to the receptor language audience” • “It should be expressed in such a manner that it yields the intended interpretation without putting the audience to unnecessary processing effort” • Gutt (2000: 107)

32. Problem: • How can monolingual participants know the extent of the interpretive resemblance that has been applied by the translator?

33. IO How is it that you’re still in this country? INT (in Polish) Why are you still here? IMM (in Polish) Because I wanted to go to school here, till now I've managed to, I had to earn money to go to schoolbecause school is quite expensive. INT (in English) I had to, my intention was to attend an English course here, but I didn't have enough money, so I had to earn the money in order to pay for the course. …

34. IMM (in Polish) And I still go to school, I did go to school once a week, unfortunately. INT (in English) And I have been attending an English course once a week.

35. IO What were you doing before that in Poland? INT (in Polish) And what were you doing in Poland before coming here to England? IMM (in Polish) I was learning at school. INT (in Polish) As a student? IMM (in Polish) No, a car mechanic. INT (in English) Right, he was attending a course, a car mechanics course.

36. IO (English) What did they say? INT (Polish)And what did they say? IMM (Polish)That we’ll travel to work in England. INT (Polish)What does it mean ‘we’ll travel’? Because there were more? IMM (Polish)Yes INT (English) Yes, they said they’d go and work in England because apparently he wasn’t the only one, there were several people involved.

37. Conclusions • Interpreter motivated by Relevance • Tends to be receiver-oriented (Gutt’s guideline) • Common ground between participants may be reduced.