The role of pragmatics in translation and the pragmatic difficulties that encounter translators

Language is used not simply to report events in the world. It is used also to convey the rich mental models that individuals and cultures bring to bear on the communication process. It is the claim of the pragmatic-based approach Farewell and Helmreich (2004), that texts do not have meanings, but rather that in producing texts, people intended meanings. That is to say, the translator attempts to understand the author's intent in creating the source text for the original audience and then recreates, to the possible extent, that intent for the target audience by using the target language.

Based on conventional perspective, pragmatics operates in two different phases of the translation task; first, processing of source text (message), and second conceptualizing and reformulating the target text (message). In both phases a great awareness of the pragmatically relevant differences is needed so as to achieve an adequate translation that can fulfill its communicative role in the target language and culture. As a mediator, the translator performs as text receptor in the first place by trying to understand and capture the message of the source text. During this comprehending phase, the translator is bound to the source text pragmatics that he tries to decode appropriately and convey the true and intelligible meanings intended in the source text. However, in the process of translation, the translator is bound to manage the pragmatic differences between both source and target context.

Through pragmatics training, translators will be able to perceive the different interpretations of cross-cultural languages, and get accustomed to their assorted conventions, structures, and form. In this regard, any ignorance of such pragmatic aspects may lead to translation problems of pragmatic nature. For instance, speech events differ cross-culturally just as in social distance and closeness which are often culture-specific. It means that in each community there are specific cultural contexts in which word-in –word translation cannot help to convey the intended meanings of the source text. The translator is thus involved in using his knowledge of cross-cultural pragmatics to convey the message appropriately in his translation without causing any offence.

Generally speaking, translation of the pragmatic aspects is a constant hurdle as the translators’ mission here is not only to render the linguistic particles but also to match the appropriate cultural and conventional dimensions of the source and the target languages. Hence, this paper is intended to investigate the role of pragmatics in translation, and to figure out the profound problems and difficulties the translators face in rendering the pragmatic aspects in their translations.

This current study is intended to achieve the following two objectives:

• 1.    To examine the role of pragmatics in English-Uzbek translation.

• 2.    To identify the kinds of the problems and difficulties that the translators face in rendering the pragmatic aspects.

The advantage of studying language via pragmatics is that one can talk about people's intended meanings, their assumptions, their purposes or goals, and the kinds of actions (for example, requests) that they are performing when they speak (Yule, 2010). Pragmatics is, then, the way we convey the meaning through context of the communication. This meaning includes verbal and nonverbal elements and it varies according to different factors such as the context, the topic of conversation, the relationship between interlocutors, and some other social factors. With respect to translation, a pragmatics-based approach. Farewell and Helmreich, (2004), provided a much more explicit framework for reasoning about the many choices that translators must make in producing their translation. However, the central assumption of such approach is that language is vague and texts radically under specify the interpretation. This is why translators must interpret utterances against the context of beliefs about the world, about the elements of the utterance in the context, and about the topic and related individuals and states of- affairs. From the perspective of a pragmaticsbased translation and in view of the widespread and significant translation variants to be expected from both human and machine translation systems, it should be clear that the focus of evaluation should be on, firstly, the similarity and difference between the beliefs of the participants and the inferences performed during the source and target language interactions, and, secondly, on the naturalness of expression of the target language text. It should also be clear that there is a wide range of potentially appropriate translations for a given interaction.

Among the many researchers who addressed the interrelated relationship between translation and pragmatics, Kitis (2009) who considered the various levels of analysis of language from a pragmatic viewpoint, and showed how they contributed in distinct ways that need to be taken into account in translating into another language. These pragmatic levels are regarded as constituting the infrastructure of the translation process, and it is claimed that raised awareness of their multifunctionality in this process must be visible in the translation product. Similarly, Pym (1992), proposed that translators increasingly had to work on texts written in two or more languages. Such texts might typically were working documents, minutes of meetings or similar interim reports on the activities of scientific research teams, international bureaucracies or multinational companies. Indeed, they were likely to emanate from any institutional framework where more than one language was used. The result was that many technical translators were called upon to work from multilingual source texts, and did so quite successfully. Yet their success was at the same time a failure for many traditional and not-so-traditional ways of looking at translation. The rendering of these texts required a mode of pragmatics that adopts an economic-probabilistic approach to the genealogy and authority of texts, ultimately accepting that the place of source-text production might be more intercultural, and indeed more hybrid, than that of translations. Bernardo (2011), also, showed how different the production of a translated text was from the one of other texts produced under the constraints of a single context, especially at the pragmatic level. In the textualizing process of translation, the translator is bound to manage the pragmatic divergences between both source and target context, i.e., he must eventually recreate textuality in all its dimensions. In order to achieve an adequate effect with his translated text, high demands are set in the translator’s textual competence. That was why the latter should integrate every translator’s training course and knowing about pragmatics as the core of translation could help translators to be more efficient.

More importantly, Nida (2000), was among the first linguists who emphasize the importance of pragmatic knowledge in translation, yet he was not the only one who did so. There are other writings which have adequately pointed out that there are interactions between pragmatics and translation, such as Malmkjar et al. (1998) who raised some problems in translation which occur due to the pragmatic differences between the source language and the target language. In this vein, Mason and Hatim (1997), proposed a general pragmatic approach and suggested that for a better translation there is a need to maintain the same pragmatic effect of the source text on the target text. In addition, Gut (1991), followed Sperber and Wilson’s (1986) relevance theory, i.e., they said that translation is a communicative situation in which the translators interpret and present the communicative clues in texts. Translators, in general, may make some pragmatic errors due to several reasons, such as the lack of pragmatic knowledge of the target language, and the unawareness of the importance of pragmatics in the translation task.

Depending on the fact that translation is considered as a means of interlingual communication, and pragmatic awareness has been recognized as one of the essential components of communicative competence, then there is a real demand for enhancing the understanding of pragmatics, and more specifically to increase the cross-lingual and cross-cultural awareness and knowledge of translators. Pragmatic awareness could help to improve the pragmatic competence to ensure less pragmatic failures that translators might fall in. So, pragmatic knowledge and raised awareness of its importance sharpens the translators' acumen Robinson (2003). Well-trained translators nowadays need to have a raised awareness of the many layers embracing texts. This will be achieved if they can actively identify and transfer pragmatic determinants of texts. As a result, translators' pragmatic awareness is considered as one of the main bases of translation and well cross-cultural communications. Being aware of pragmatics and its importance helps translators and translation field uncover the hidden paralinguistic and cultural features and differences between languages, and then to establish convergence between different cultures and languages.

In this perspective, research in the relationship between translation and pragmatics  with reference  to  specific  source/ target languages  are of significance, justifying an empirical research in the interrelation between pragmatics and translation in cases of English- Uzbek/ Uzbek- English translation. Differences between English and Uzbek at the pragmatic level can lead to different errors and miscommunications when translating.