Relevance theory in translation and interpreting studies

This chapter presents an overview of Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1986/1995) and its application to translation and interpreting. Relevance Theory is a cognitive-pragmatic framework that explains communication in terms of the interaction between processing effort and cognitive effects, grounded in the principle that every act of ostensive communication conveys a presumption of its optimal relevance. After introducing the theory’s core assumptions and key conceptsdsuch as context, explicatures and implicatures, conceptual and procedural meaning, and metarepresentationdthe chapter examines Ernst- August Gutt’s seminal relevance-theoretic account of translation as interlingual interpretive language use. The chapter then reviews major applications of Relevance Theory in translation and interpreting studies, including research on translation processes and competence, note-taking, and machine interpreting. Overall, the chapter highlights the value of Relevance Theory as a linguistically grounded and cognitively informed framework for understanding translation and interpreting as forms of secondary communication.