Be relevant (relevance, translation and cross-culture)

Abstract

This paper focusses on relevance, translation and cross culture, that is, on the way addressees from different languages and cultures perceive the same messages and how these respond to the varied expectations communicators have and which have been nurtured from a wide cultural experience. Relevance theory offers the right tools to understand the way people from different cultural backgrounds react to the same pieces of information and the effects they cause on them. Using Gutt's application to translation of Sperber and Wilson's "descriptive and interpretive use of language", I highlight the importance of descriptive (covert) translation, not only in examples where the addressee's assumptions must be fulfilled even at the expense of the communicative intentions manifested in the original language but also in other instances where interpretive translation would have been traditionally preferred.