'Two Thirds of a Boy are his Uncle's': The Question of Relevance in Translation

The present paper is an attempt to show that translation activity is a matter of translating what is contextually relevant in terms of source text and audience, and ignoring what is contextually irrelevant. Successful intralingual communication is essentially dependent on the receiver's recognition of the sender's communicative intention with reference to optimal relevance (Sperber and Wilson 1986). However, interlingual communication may create ample room for what may paradoxically be called 'camouflaged relevance', where a deviant rendition may prove ostensibly relevant to the target reader insofar as providing new information and establishing an apparent linkage with the source language text in question are concerned (Gutt 1996). This means that reader-oriented translation relevance should be taken with utmost care so as to avoid far-fetched interpretations which may arise from either understating or overstating the intended message, whether consciously or subconsciously. The empirical data in this study show that translation relevance is rooted in universal, functional, and culture-bound principles.