This Element addresses translation issues within an interpersonal pragmatics frame. The aims of this Element are twofold: first, we survey the current state of the field of pragmatics in translation; second, we present the current and methodologically innovative avenues of research in the field. We focus on three pragmatics issues – relational work, participation structure, and mediality – that we foreground as promising loci of research on translational data. By reviewing the trajectory of pragmatics research on translation/interpreting over time, and then outlining our understanding of the Pragmatics in Translation as a field, we arrive at a set of potential research questions which represent desiderata for future research. These questions identify the paths that can be productively explored through synergies of the linguistic pragmatics framework and translation data. In two case study chapters, we offer two example studies addressing some of the questions we identified as suggestions for future research. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This is a manual of literary translation and as such will be invaluable to students of linguistics, translation, literary theory and cultural studies. Translation plays an important role in increasing understanding among diverse cultures and nations. Literary translations in particular help different cultures reach a compromise. Beginning with the relationship between pragmatics and translation, the book introduces the major areas of linguistic pragmatics – speech acts, presupposition, implicature, deixis and politeness and how they can be applied in the field of translation. It balances theory and application through the examples of Arabic/English translation using a wide range of texts from The Cairo Trilogy by the Noble Literature laureate Naguib Mahfouz. Mahfouz’s trilogy has certainly lost much of its meaning in Hutchin et al.’s translation into English. Their translation fails to assess the effectiveness of the source text and to preserve its implied meaning. All these problematic renderings have contributed to the distortion or loss of meaning. The major concern of the study is to examine the pragmatic meanings involved in a literary translation. The attention given to pragmatic facts and principles in the course of translation can enhance the understanding of the text and improve the quality of translation.

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Pragmatics provides an overview of key concepts and theory in pragmatics, charts developments in the disciplinary relationship between translation studies and pragmatics, and showcases applications of pragmatics-inspired research in a wide range of translation, spoken and signed language interpreting activities. Bringing together 22 authoritative chapters by leading scholars, this reference work is divided into three sections: Influences and Intersections, Methodological Issues, and Applications. Contributions focus on features of linguistic pragmatics and their analysis in authentic and experimental data relating to a wide range of translation and interpreting activities, including: news, scientific, literary and audiovisual translation, translation in online social media, healthcare interpreting and audio description for the theatre. It also encompasses contributions on issues beyond the level of the text that include the study of interpersonal relationships in practitioner networks and the development of pragmatic competence in interpreter training. Each chapter includes many practical illustrative examples and a list of recommended reading. Fundamental reading for students and academics in translation and interpreting studies, this is also an essential resource for those working in the related fields of linguistics, communication and intercultural studies.

Arabic Rhetoric explores the history, disciplines, order and pragmatic functions of Arabic speech acts. It offers a new understanding of Arabic rhetoric and employs examples from modern standard Arabic as well as providing a glossary of over 448 rhetorical expressions listed in English with their translations, which make the book more accessible to the modern day reader. Hussein’s study of Arabic rhetoric bridges the gap between learning and research, whilst also meeting the academic needs of our present time. This up-to-date text provides a valuable source for undergraduate students learning Arabic as a foreign language, and is also an essential text for researchers in Arabic, Islamic studies, and students of linguistics and academics.

This book illustrates the potential of Relevance Theory (RT) in offering a cognitive-pragmatic, cause-effect account of translation and interpreting (T&I), one which more closely engages T&I activity with the mental processes of speakers, listeners, writers, and readers during communicative acts. The volume provides an overview of the cognitive approach to communication taken by RT, with a particular focus on the distinction between explicit and implicit content and the relationship between thoughts and utterances. The book begins by outlining key concepts and theory in RT pragmatics and charting the development of their disciplinary relationship with work from T&I studies. Chapters draw on practical examples from a wide range of T&I contexts, including news media, scientific materials, literary translation, audiovisual translation, conference interpreting, and legal interpreting. The book also explores the myriad applications of RT pragmatics-inspired work and future implications for translation and interpreting research. This volume will be of interest to scholars in T&I studies and pragmatics.

Pragmatics, often defined as the study of language use and language users, sets out to explain what people wish to achieve and how they go about achieving it in using language. Such a study is clearly of direct relevance to an understanding of translation and translators. The thirteen chapters in this volume show how translation - skill, art, process and product - is affected by pragmatic factors such as the acts performed by people when they use language, how writers try to be polite, relevant and cooperative, the distinctions they make between what their readers may already know and what is likely to be new to them, what is presupposed and what is openly affirmed, time and space, how they refer to things and make their discourse coherent, how issues may be hedged or attempts made to produce in readers of the translation effects equivalent to those stimulated in readers of the original. Particular attention is paid to legal, political, humorous, poetic and other literary texts.