2.  The purpose of this paper is to examine the
Relevance Theory as it pertains to literary translation.
The focus of the study will be on the use of
implicature by the translator in translating large
chunks of information from one language to another.
For the purpose of this paper, I will use the original
English language version, as well as the translated
Polish version of Candace Bushnell's "Sex and the
City" to illustrate how the translator adopts a
relevance theory approach and will attempt to
present a cognitive study of the implicit information in
literary text. The results of this paper should show that
translation is a clues-based interpretive feature of
language across language boundaries.

3.  Is the translation of literary works based
solely on context?
 What is the role of implicature?
 Of explicature?

4.  Literary works
› are characterized by “careful use of language,
being written in a literary genre (poetry, prose
fiction, or drama), being read aesthetically, and
containing many weak implicatures” (Meyer
1997: 24).
 implicit information
› the author enriches the literary texts with their
own unique flavor
› texts rich in implicit information usually cost the
reader more conceptual effort to process them.

5.  An assumption communicated by an
utterance U is explicit [hence an
„explicature‟] if and if only it is a
development of a logical form
encoded by U‟.
 An assumption communicated by U
which is not explicit is implicit [hence
an „implicature‟] (Sperber and Wilson,
1986)

6.  Sperber and Wilson (1986)
› the context of an utterance is “the set of
premises used in interpreting [it]” (p.15).
Therefore, it is a psychological notion.
› “a context is a psychological construct, a
subset of the hearer‟s assumptions about the
world” (p. 15).

7.  Co-text:
› most static traditional context in which a
word is used involving the information of
time, place, characters, events
 Situational context:
› information about a definite action or an
event.
 Background knowledge:
› Individual knowledge---participants‟
knowledge about the event and the
force of the utterrance.

8.  Direct translation: “A receptor language
utterance is a direct translation of a source
language utterance if and only if it purports
to interpretively resemble the original
completely in the context envisaged for the
original”(Gutt 2000: 177).
 Indirect translation: the translator presents
his translation on the presumption that its
interpretation adequately resembles the
original in respects relevant to the target
audience

9.  English version of Candace Bushnell‟s
“Sex and the City”
 Polish translated version of the same
book.

10.  Comparison of English vs. Polish versions
using sample passages from each book.
› Descriptive and interpretive language
› Implicatures and Explicatures

11.  “On Sunday evening Carrie went to a cocktail party
thrown by the designer Joop- one of those parties that
should be in a movie…A man walked by with a cigar in his
mouth and one of the men Carrie was talking to said,
„Ooooh. Who is that again? He looks like a younger,
better-looking Ron Perelman.‟ „I know who it is,‟ Carrie
said. „Who?‟ „Mr. Big.‟ […] Carrie had seen Mr. Big before,
but she didn‟t think he‟d remember her…At the party, Mr.
Big was sitting on the radiator in the living room. „Hi,‟ Carrie
said. „Remember me?‟ She could tell by his eyes that he
had no idea who she was, and she wondered if he was
going to panic. He twirled the cigar around the inside of
his lips and took it out of his mouth. He looked away
flicked his ash, then looked back at her. „Abso-fucking-
lutely.‟ (Bushnell: 40)

12.  Literary text and its properties are the
physical foundation of the author‟s
intention
› impossible to interpret a literary text into
another language without regard to its text
properties.
› literary translation should also be based on
the intentional textual
properties/communicative clues

13.  Direct translation
› committed to complete interpretive
resemblance
 indirect translation
› adequate resemblance in relevant respects
 difference is brought about by the
linguistic and the cultural barriers.

14.  Direct translation was used in 95% of the
book with footnotes being
supplemented for words or phrases that
were not translateable

15.  “Magda has been friends with Peri for
years- in fact most of her girlfriends are
former dates of Peri‟s whom she met
through him. „He knows everything about
us,‟ one woman said. „He‟s like Daryl
Van Horne in The Witches of Eastwick.‟
„Van Horney is more like it,‟ said another.
We opened the wine.”

16.  “Magda od lat przyjaźniła się z Perim -
właściwie większość jej koleżanek to były
 dziewczyny Periego, które przez niego
poznała.
 - On wie o nas wszystko - powiedziała inna.
- Jak ten Daryl van Horne z Czarownic z
 Eastwick.
 - Już raczej van Horney [horny (ang. slang) -
napalony] - skomentowała inna.
 Otworzyłyśmy wino.”

17.  A literary work depends on its mode of
being and its formal structures (Ingarden,
1973)
 A literary work is an entity with
intentionally stratified structures and the
origin of a literary work is in the creative
acts of consciousness on the part of the
author.

18.  results have made clear that translation
is a clues-based interpretive use of
language across language boundaries

19.  Translation is a cross-cultural event—it is
part of cross-cultural communication
(Bassnett 2001) and communication is an
event in which people share their world
of thought with others. It is “a part of
human psychology” (Gutt 1998: 42).

20.  Relevance theory distinguishes between
two models of language use in which
human minds process information: the
descriptive mode and the interpretive
mode.
 translation is an instance of interpretive use
of language, and from the relevance
theory point of view, a scientific definition of
“translation” would be “interpretive use of
language across language boundaries”
Gutt, 1998)