Bridging meaning and context

This article explores which areas of explicature identification (i.e., disambiguation, reference resolution, saturation, free enrichment, and ad hoc concept constructions) were more attended to in Arabic-English translation. Twenty translators were asked to render from one language into another 50 sentences whose logical form could be enriched by explicatures. Translators were found to attend more to the effects of disambiguation and reference resolution. A demarcation line was drawn between explicatures that called for completing overt logical forms (disambiguation and reference resolution) and those that prompted calculating pragmatic competence and meta-linguistic knowledge (saturation, free enrichment, and ad hoc concept constructions). Using relevance theory as a framework of analysis, we propose that completing overt logical forms is more rewarding and less costly for translators than computing pragmatic competence and meta-linguistic knowledge. The figures corroborated this assumption, which showed that explicature observance was positively correlated with educational attainment and years of experience.

The importance of brand names and brand naming is widely recognized in today’s business practices. Previous studies have attempted to suggest different ways for brand naming; however, most works often ignore the semantic and pragmatic dimensions of brand names. Although the semantics and pragmatics of brand names are proved to be crucial to the success of product branding in several marketing cases, they are not clearly formulated as an effective way for successful brand naming. The objectives of the present study are: 1) to establish semantic and pragmatic guidelines for brand naming, 2) to identify the preferable semantic and pragmatic properties of brand names, and 3) to indicate important semantic and pragmatic factors in brand naming. To fulfill the objectives, Thailand’s exported food product brand names were used as the case study. Three sets of data were collected for the investigation. The first data set contains 175 brand names from five food product categories, i.e. rice products, frozen and chilled foods, canned and instant foods, snacks and candies, and food ingredients and seasonings, investigated. The second and the third data set are intended meanings and interpreted meanings of those brand names. The data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively based on the the concept of Sense and Reference (Frege, 1892 and Lyons, 1977), Cooperative Principle (Grice, 1975) and Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1985/1995). The study results suggest five-step brand naming guidelines, which are based on the preferable semantic and pragmatic properties of the brand names studied. In the first step, the brand name creators are required to investigate market environments in order to make general understanding about the markets. In the second step, the brand name creators have to set a clear objective of brand naming. The first and the second step are considered concerning the pragmatic dimension of brand names. In the third step, the brand name creators need to select lexical items and a presentation method that best represent their intentions. This step pertains to the semantic properties of brand names. In the fourth step, the brand name creators may have to measure comprehensibility of the selected brand names. In the fifth step, the brand name creators are required to design additional texts and images, e.g. logos, slogans, descriptions, etc. that enrich the brand name comprehensibility in the markets. The last two steps are mainly concerned with the pragmatic dimension. In summary, to create an effective brand name, the brand name creators need to focus on three semantic and pragmatic factors: 1) market environments, 2) brand naming intentions, and 3) comprehensibility of the brand names.

This paper explores the interface between syntax and pragmatics, focusing on the binding of pronouns and the pragmatics of the paradigms used to test this aspect of syntactic knowledge. Reinhart's (1986) version of Binding Theory (which accords a specific role to pragmatics in processes of pronoun resolution) and Sperber & Wilson's (1986) Theory of Relevance are used to examine the syntax and pragmatics of pronoun interpretation. A set of predictions based on Relevance Theory are evaluated against published results of tests of Binding Theory. The paper concludes that Relevance Theory provides a means of understanding constraints on testing syntactic knowledge and argues that pragmatic factors must be systematically controlled in any evaluation of syntactic knowledge.

Yailokhanova Alexandra Sergeevna The article highlights the approaches to the definition of «discourse» given in the fundamental works of Western and Russian scientists-linguists. It also discusses the conditions of implementation of pragmatic attitudes in the speeches of public speeches of US President B. Obama. We present the definition of «pragmatic context factor». As the main factors of pragmatic context it is allocated space factor, the time factor, the factor of events, phenomena and factors, recipient factor. The interaction of these factors in specific contexts of speech are to achieve the intended objectives of a politician, an analysis of possible situations that affect the organization of discourse. Examples of linguistic means of expression of these factors in the context of pragmatic speech are given. The result of this study is the analysis of given public speeches on the subject of the content and methods of implementation of a pragmatic context factors. Key words : pragmatics, context, pragmatic context, pragmatic context factor, discourse, political discourse.

Sci-tech texts contain a large number of professional terms and specific expressions, and cultural and cognitive differences pose numerous challenges to the E-C translation. Relevance Theory, as a cognitive pragmatic theory, provides strong theoretical support for the E-C translation of sci-tech texts. From the perspective of relevance theory, this study examines the translation of Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI(excerpt), analyzes how the translator, by aligning the cognitive environments of source and target language readers, employs strategies such as free translation, omission, and voice shift. The aim is to achieve optimal relevance between the original text and its translation, ensure faithful transmission of the original information, and enhance accuracy and communicative efficacy in E-C translation of sci-tech texts.

This study suggests a form-based approach to the translation of sacred texts, particularly the Holy Qur'an. This approach is referred to as Translation by Evidence (TE). Drawing upon Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory (1986, 2002), TE suggests that any translation of the Holy Quran should be faithful to the source text (ST) in two ways: It should transfer all pieces of evidence that serve a particular function (1), and keep ST and TT receptors' processing efforts comparable (2). The study applied TE to the polar interrogatives in the translation of the Qur’an initiated with the particle [hal] (roughly translated as is or is there). The pieces of evidence in the Ayas were found to be suggestive of three speech acts, namely assertives, expressives and directives. The study argued that TE is a more adequate translation strategy as it producea a more faithful translation in terms of the cognitive effect of the translated Ayas processing effort by the TT receivers. Keywords: Translation by Evidence, Relevance Theory, the Holy Qur'an, Interrogatives, Faithfulness

Based on relevance theory (RT), this study proposes translation by explicature (TE) as an approach for translating Sharia law texts. It recommends explicating such texts through various pragmatic processes, including saturation, disambiguation, reference resolution, and free enrichment. TE advises translators to approach the text interpretively, emphasizing its conceptual and procedural aspects, selecting elements based on the source text’s legal effect, and organizing the translation in accordance with the text’s purpose and legal impact. The study asserts that the selection of ST elements should adhere to the principle of relevance and be evaluated by establishing a context similar to that of the source text, while considering the principles of maximum cognitive effect and minimized processing effort for adequacy and validity.

Linguistic precision and cultural appropriateness are crucial in the translation of medical texts, particularly as globalization drives the dissemination of health information across diverse populations. This study investigates the major challenges and strategies involved in Chinese-English medical translation, with a specific focus on terminology, syntax, and the interplay between linguistic and cultural factors. Drawing on a corpus of translated medical texts, the research combines qualitative analysis with comparative translation evaluation to identify recurrent issues and effective solutions. The findings reveal that mistranslations often arise from lexical ambiguity, syntactic divergence, and insufficient cultural contextualization. Moreover, the translators subject-matter expertise and familiarity with target language conventions significantly impact translation quality. The study proposes a multi-dimensional approach integrating terminology standardization, functional equivalence, and genre-based strategies to enhance accuracy and readability in medical translation. These insights contribute to improving translation training and professional practice in the field of medical discourse. The implications of this study are particularly relevant for translation educators, practitioners, and policy-makers involved in health communication.

This paper addresses the issue of translatability of dialect in the translation of literary texts. It tackles dialect as a means of depicting the identity of the characters in literature. And it sheds light on the relationship between identity and language because using dialect is manifested and related significantly to the social stand of the characters in literary works. The translator of the text under study faces the problem of the existence of a linguistic variety in the original text, which depicts the close connection between the addressee, the means and the context in which it is employed. Hence, the difficulty in translating dialects in literary works is a linguistic problem, as well as a pragmatic and semiotic one, that is the presence of dialect in the text provides meanings and connotations far further than the linguistic level. That is why, in translating and tackling this variety of language, used by the author as a means of characterization or as a social class marker, this variety was standardized and flattened by the translator. The researcher concludes that the presence of dialects in Wuthering Heights adds communicative, stratificational, cultural, and semiotic value to the text. As far as translation is concerned, this forms extra challenges for the translator.

Previous research has shown that children’s referential choices are influenced by pragmatic factors in discourse (e.g., prior mention) and perceptual contexts (e.g., joint attention). However, most studies focused primarily on the verbal modality, with relatively little attention paid to children’s multimodal referential competence. To address this gap, the present study examined Mandarin-speaking children’s verbal and non-verbal referential acts in relation to the discourse factor, prior mention, and the perceptual factor, joint attention, during early childhood, with the aim of elucidating children’s increasing sensitivity to these discourse-pragmatic factors and their developing communicative ability. The dataset comprised 12 hours of natural conversations between Mandarin-speaking mother–child dyads. Children’s referential choices of the modalities and expressions were analyzed in terms of the two pragmatic factors (i.e., prior mention and joint attention). The results indicate that, from the earliest stage observed, children systematically differentiated newly introduced and previously mentioned referents in the modalities and referential expressions. They provided more information for new referents involved in joint attention via cross-modal referential acts, while relying on verbally informative expressions for new referents when joint attention was absent; conversely, previously mentioned referents were typically expressed with verbally reduced forms and usually without accompanying non-verbal acts. Cross-modal acts consistently served to identify new referents with joint attention in children’s usage across developmental stages and interactional contexts. Taken together, these findings suggest that children’s referential choices in both modalities reflect their emerging communicative and pragmatic abilities. This study advances understanding of Mandarin-speaking children’s multimodal referential ability by demonstrating how they integrate multimodal expressions of reference and how their non-verbal acts evolve alongside speech as they become more linguistically proficient.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Pragmatics: From Theory to Experiment and Back Again

Newspaper and advertising texts have traditionally been 'difficult children' for translation studies to deal with, mainly for one thing: they seem to be systematically norm-flouting. In fact, in traditional approaches, they were customarily quoted as typical examples of 'free translation', 'unfaithfulness' or, in some cases, out right creation of a new text. Although it is true that these texts present certain translation peculiarities, this is by no means a random process of transfer where translators set their 'wild imagination' to work. Quite on the contrary, it is argued here that it is precisely these texts that demonstrate how systematically translators are capable of forecasting the average target recipient and of adapting the texts to reader expectations by fulfilling pragmatic and semiotic considerations in the process of transfer; these seem to be the two guiding parameters for the occurrence of 'translation incidences' in newspaper binomials. To prove this claim, we present the results obtained from a descriptive study carried out with a selection of semiotic and pragmatic factors on a corpus of newspaper texts published by The Guardian and their subsequent translations into Spanish, published by El Mundo.

Quantification in natural language is an important phenomena as it relates to scoping, reference resolution, and, more importantly, to inference. In this paper we argue that the reasoning involved in quantifier scoping and reference resolution is highly dependent on the linguistic context as well as time and memory constraints. Time and memory constraints are not only physical realities that an intelligent agent must cope with, but, as we shall argue, they play an important role in the inferencing process that underlies the task of language understanding.KeywordsLinguistic ContextCertainty FactorInfinite DomainMemory ConstraintNatural Language UnderstandingThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The work is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of the Ukrainian-language translation of the texts of articles of the popular science substyle from the English language. Particular attention is paid to articles on environmental topics, which are quite common in the modern world. The relevance of the work is due to the need to study articles of the popular scientific sub-style of environmental topics as an object of translation studies and the peculiarities of their translation from English into Ukrainian. The aim of the study is to analyze the translation operations used in the translation of texts of the popular scientific sub-style of the ecological theme. To achieve this aim, it is necessary to define the concept of popular science article as an object of translation studies and to investigate translation operations. Despite the popularity of popular science articles (especially environmental topics) in modern society, this topic is currently insufficiently studied. The object of the research is the texts of popular science articles, and the subject is the operations that were used in the translation of these texts. The research material was the texts of four articles taken from the news sites BBC News UK and BBC News Ukraine. The translation of these texts was carried out using the strategy of communicatively equivalent translation. Tactics were implemented in it: the transfer of relevant information, linguistic and cultural adaptation of the text, reproduction of the stylistic characteristics of the text and stylistic adaptation of the text and the correct design of information. During the translation of the English-language texts of the popular scientific sub-style into the Ukrainian language translation operations such as search for interlingual and translation correspondences, generalization, concretization and permutation in the sentence are most often used.

Drawing on an integrated perspective combining Relevance Theory with Eco-Translatology, this study examines English translations of texts on major tourist attractions in Huizhou. It investigates three core issues: the multidimensional features of different types of tourism texts; how optimal relevance is achieved in the translated versions; and the implications of these findings for translation practices in Chinas international tourism publicity. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the research builds a specialized corpus through fieldwork, conducts quantitative linguistic analysis using Python and other technical tools, and complements these findings with qualitative textual analysis. The results confirm that effective translations achieve optimal relevance for target readers by means of adaptive transformation across three dimensions. The study provides both theoretical support and practical guidance for improving the quality of tourism translation and enhancing the international communication of Chinese culture.