关联理论与口译理解策略

Relevance theory and the tactics of verbal comprehension in interpreting

Sperber和Wilson(1 986 )的关联理论认为 ,对话语的理解应依靠语境 (也称语境假设 )来寻求信息的关联 ,然后再根据话语与语境的关联情况进行推理 ,求得语境效果。通常情况下 ,关联性强 ,推理所付出的努力就小 ,语境效果就好 ;关联性弱 ,推理所付出的努力就大 ,语境效果就差。按照这一理论 ,口译人员提高话语理解的速度和质量的策略在于尽量建立或寻找和话语信息密切关联的语境假设。本文将就关联理论及其对口译理解的影响和作用作一番初步的探索。

Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1986) emphasizes that the success of verbal comprehension depends on two conditions: (1) whether the hearer can find out the optimal relevance of the source text to its context; (2) whether the hearer can infer from the relevance until the contextual effect is yielded. Generally speaking, if the relevance is close, the effort spent in inferring is little and the contextual effect is good; if the relevance is loose, the effort spent in inferring is great and the contextual effect is poor. According to this theory, in order to improve the speed and quality of verbal comprehension in interpreting, the interpreter should create a context closely related to the source or find out the relevance of the context to the source. This paper will make an exploratory research on the relevance theory as well as its help to the verbal comprehension in interpreting.