Is relevance theory applicable to proverbs’ translation?

• Authors: Anca-Mariana Pegulescu
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Translation, viewed as a multi-faceted task, can arise different types of difficulties. Proverbs have been considered special patterns, displaying sometimes hidden meanings or suggesting morals issuing from a particular example. These paremic units - the proverbs - conveyed feelings, states of mind, behaviours or ‘metaphorical descriptions of certain situations’(Krikmann). Starting from Savory’s list of pair-wise contradictory translation principles, I intend to prove that the link between different ‘forms’ and their ‘contents’ lies in the principle of relevance when referring to proverbs. Even if relevance theory is not a theory of linguistic structure - and many translation problems imply structural mismatches - relevance theory offers insights about contextual information. Proverbs are seen as texts in themselves. My analysis will target the ethnofields of ‘to buy’ and ‘to sell’ in English proverbs and their Romanian corresponding versions.

Keywords

EN

context; ethnofield; focal area; meaning; principle; structure

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Journal of Language and Cultural Education
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 4
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 124-132

Dates

published

2016-01-01

online

2016-02-09

Contributors

author

Anca-Mariana Pegulescu

• PhD Inspector general for English, Japanese and Chinese Romanian Ministry of Education and Scientific Research 28-30, G-ral Berthelot St. București România

References

• GUTT, E.-A. (2000). Translation and relevance. Cognition and context. Manchester St. Jerome.
• INGARDEN, R. (1973). The cognition of literary work of art. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
• LARSON, M. I. (1984). Meaning-based translation. A guide to cross-language equivalence. New York: UPA.
• ZHONGGANG, S. (2006). A Relevance Theory Perspective on Translating the Implicit Information In Literary Texts. Journal of Translation, 2(2), 43-60.

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/jolace-2016-0010