Relevance Theory: a Comparative Version of Memoirs of a Midget

Jerónimo Corregido

Universidad Nacional de la Plata

1. Introduction

In this paper we will try to provide a scientific framework of analysis for translations and

translating. Our position will be sustained by the Relevance Theory –henceforth, RT, as

established by Sperber and Wilson (1986, 1995) and as revised by Ersnt-August Gutt (1989,

2000). One of our general axioms will be that there is no need for an independent translation

theory, for translation, as an instance of communication, can be underlain by RT, which can be

considered a total theory1. On the basis of this frame, we shall also claim that every translation

conveys its presumption of optimal resemblance with the original text. The original ostension

can only be apprehended if: a) the receptor uses the original contextual premises to process the

information, and b) the translator makes use of natural expressions in the target language. These

principles will be put to action to analyse the translation(s) of Memoirs of a Midget, by Walter

de la Mare.

1.1 Relevance Theory

RT is a post-Gricean, cognitive scientific theory which aims to provide a modular model

of the human mind and thus sketch the architecture of the brain. Modularism, as opposed to

connectionism and other theories of the mind, states that the brain is composed by several

autonomous and independent modules or faculties (Fodor, 1983). The mind, works by means of

frugal heuristics, i.e., rapid on-line processes that demand low energy cost and specialized skills.

RT was first applied to the field of human communication; for this reason, it is commonly

misunderstood as a theory of communication. At the very core of this framework lies the notion

of relevance, defined as a ‘potential property of any input to any perceptual or cognitive

process’2. This implies that inputs from the phenomenical reality carry a property that can be

processed by a human cognitive system. From the plurality of inputs that surround a mind, it

unconsciously selects those that are potentially more relevant. This is called maximisation of the

relevance. More technically, the mind reduces the processing effort and increases the positive

cognitive effects. The processing effort is the energy used to process an input; therefore, the

1 The concept of “total theory” implies that there exists a finite set of premises that can account for every explanation of any field of study. We believe that RT can be developed into such and “over-theory”. 2 Carston, Robyn (2011) “Relevace Thoery”, CSMN, University of Oslo, p.2.

more the processing effort, the less the relevance. Cognitive effects are deductively inferred

premises that, when combined with existing information, may strengthen already held beliefs,

contradict them to create new conclusions or yield to new conclusions. From that set, only

positive cognitive effects are essential to maximising the relevance, i.e., those that produce

benefits to the cognitive system. This is known as the Cognitive Principle of Relevance: human

cognition is oriented towards maximising the relevance. It follows, then, thay, ceteris paribus,

the less the processing effort and the more the positive cognitive effects, the more the relevance

for an individual in a given context.

The type of communication studied by RT is called ostensive-inferential communication.

This implies: a) an informative intention, i.e., the intention of informing something to a receptor,

and b) a communicative intention, i.e., the intention of informing a receptor about an

informative intention. Communication is only effective when the receptor apprehends the

communicative intention. For that matter, he must combine it inferentially with contextual

assumptions. Context is therefore a paramount element in this model. It is not of a physical

nature, but of a psychological one: contextual premises lie in a human mind, and they are the

basis from which a cognitive computational system works. In order to optimally interpret a

communicative intention, then, the cognitive system must select the appropriate contextual

premises. This deductive processing of an input provides a set of explicatures and implicatures.

The former are a group of conclusions analytically implied, born out of cognitive work such as

referent assignation and disambiguation, among others; the latter consist of a set of contextually

implied conclusions that may or may not be essential to arriving at the optimal interpretation3.

Ostension and inference, such as processing effort and cognitive effects, are crucial concepts of

RT. Consistently with the Cognitive Principle of Relevance, we can deduce the Communicative

Principle: every input comes with a presumption of its optimal relevance. This is why the human

mind takes effort in processing inputs in the first place. It will also be fundamental to our

research to bear in mind that the optimal relevance can only be achieved when selecting the

appropriate contextual assumptions.

1.2 Translation and Relevance

Some translation theories study translation as a linguistic practice (Steiner, 1975);

others, as a political activity (Venuti, 1995), and even others as an artistic discipline (Ortega y

3 For further Reading on the implicature/explicature distinction, cf. Carston, Robyn (2009) “Explicit-implicit Distinction”, London University College.

Gasset, 1937). Very few remember that what lies at the very core of translation is nothing but

communication, and when they do, they regularly suffer from erroneous assumptions about the

nature of communication itself; also they have all failed when trying to provide a unified, solid

theory of translation, not restricted to particular cases and text typologies4.Underlying these

problems, as Steiner (1975) acutely points out, there is a unifying leit motif, an unsolvable

question that all translation theories directly or indirectly refer to: how can the translator

achieve faithfulness? The question has always been answered by means of pre-scientific5

parameters, usually loaded with subjectivity and cultural specific methods.

The solution to many of these issues was given by Ernst-August Gutt with the creation

of his relevance-theoretic model. The aim of this project is to establish a unified theory, capable

of accounting for all cases of translation. As Gutt (1989) states, the position that translation

theories should be restricted to text typologies or even specific cases, held by some researchers

–namely, Wilss (1982), is intrinsically corrosive to the spirit of science; for what is the purpose

of a theory, but to integrate many cases under one common scope? RT allowed Gutt to introduce

and solve translation problems as part of a communicative event and, as such, as an ostensive-

inferential relation. The great advantage of this program is, as we shall see, that it can be applied

to any instance of translation.

RT distinguishes between descriptive and interpretive uses of language: ‘In descriptive

use, a) the thought belongs to the speaker and b) the speaker intends it to accurately represent

reality. In interpretive use, a) the thought belongs (originally) to someone other than the speaker

and b) the speaker intends his/her utterance to accurately represent the original thought.

Someone speaking descriptively intends to be faithful to reality; someone speaking

interpretively intends to be faithful to the meaning of the original speaker’ (Smith, 2000: 39).

The analogy with translation is thus obvious: translation is an instance of interpretive use, with

the peculiarity that the interpretive verbal stimulus is expressed in a different language than the

original one.

The interpretive notion is, of course, gradual, no discrete: the original and the translated

stimuli may share a certain amount of explicatures and implicatures. The question that arises is,

then: to what extent is interlinguistic interpretive use valid as translation? If two stimuli share a

4 Further discussion on Smith, K. (2002) “Translation as a Secondary Communication. The Relevance Theory Perspective of Ernst-August Gutt”, in Acta Theologica Supplementum 2, African Journals Online, Bloemfontein. 5 In this work, “science” must be understood as “hard science”. We follow Boccara (2002, 2010), Krivochen (2011, 2013, 2014) and many others as we try to use a model that resemble that of Physics.

relatively low quantity of implications, are they a true instance of translation? Let us consider

the following example6:

a) Julian: All swans are white.

This is a case of descriptive use of language, in which the character, Julian, is responsible

both for the idea and for the intention of representing reality. Now:

b) Manuel: Julian said: ‘All swans are white’,

is a case of direct quoting. The quote, therefore, has the property of sharing all the explicatures

and implicatures with the original stimulus. What Manuel says belongs to Julian, and the

responsibility for the value of truth of the quoted proposition is only Julian’s. However,

c) Manuel: Julian said that all swans were white,

represents another case, as it is an indirect quotation. The quoted stimulus does not carry the

presumption of conveying the same explicatures and implicatures that the original message; it

only purports to represent a set of the original implications, which are those that the addresser

considers important for the addressee.

In the same way, we can differentiate direct from indirect translations. The former are

those that carry the presumption of optimal resemblance with the original text. As argued by

Gutt (2000: 177), direct translation must aim at complete interpretive resemblance in the same

context envisaged for the source text. As every input comes with the presumption of its optimal

interpretation, consistent with the Communicative Principle of Relevance, we assume that every

direct translation conveys its presumption of optimal faithfulness. The translation of Memoirs

of a Midget that we shall present in further sections is a case of direct translation. I indirect

translation on the other hand, the translator presents the interpretive stimulus on the

presumption that its interpretation is relevant for the target audience only in some aspects. It

does not guarantee complete resemblance. A clear example of this is the translation of Robinson

Crusoe by Julio Cortázar (which is about half of the length of the original text), or the

interpretation of buying and selling exchanges, in which the interpreter transmits only

information that he deems relevant for the addressees.

Direct translation an only be achieved by means of natural use of language in the

interpretive stimulus. Techniques such as foreignisation and the like are seldom –if ever,

6 Taken from Coregido (2013) “La traducción de los cuentos de Bukowski a partir del estudio científico-cognitivo de la traducción: la Teoría de la Relevancia”, UNLP, p.6.

relevance-oriented. If the translator makes use of extravagant syntax and unnecessary linguistic

paraphernalia, what he really does is to undermine the relevance: all those resources increase

the processing effort and therefore lower the relevance level. Consistent with the Nida and

Taber’s (1969) hypothesis, we believe that the task of the translator must be restricted to

reproduce the soul of the message, i.e., the translator must only be faithful to the ostensive

stimulus. The raw material for the translator’s work is the core of the ostension.

Simple though it seems, this idea has several implications, some of them contradicting

current related theories. Regularly, RT programs of translation point out that direct translations

must be faithful to the intention of the original writer (cf. Zhonggang, 2006). The term

‘intention’, however, is often used loosely. Does it mean that the translator must interpretively

transmit what the author tried to convey, or what he actually did? For the sake of brevity, we

shall only say that our position is that translators must not be faithful to the author’s intention,

but to his ostension: this implies, particularly, the communicative intention referred to in section

1. More concretely, this theorem, derived from the Principle of Relevance, involves that the

translator must not reproduce the author’s intentions, which are always vague and inaccessible,

but what the author actually conveyed: explicatures and implicatures lie always accessibly at the

very core of the ostensive stimulus; intentions are impossible to apprehend conclusively (cf.

Corregido, 2013). This is also consistent with the skepticism for effability shared by relevance-

theorists (Sepreber and Wilson, 1995) which evolved into the skepticism for total translatability

(Gutt, 2000).

Once discussed the issue of translation performance, the problem of its interpretation

arises. For, if inputs must be deduced on the basis of existing contextual assumptions in order

to form relevant conclusions, which are those assumptions? Is the reader to create ad hoc,

instantaneous premises, or should he interpret the text on the light of its original context, or

every possible type of reading is acceptable, in spite of the different conclusions It may yield to?

The answer that Gutt’s model provides for this question is that the optimal interpretation of a

translated text is the one created upon the contextual premises envisaged for the original

audience. When the addresser’s and the addressee’s contexts diverge, the case is called

secondary communicative situation. However, if the reader of a translation wants to apprehend

the optimal interpretation of the input, he must decipher the analytic and the contextual

implications; the only way to do this, is to process the stimulus with the same contextual

premises which it was created with. In indirect translations, as the reader does not intend to

grasp the whole set explicatures and implicatures, the text can be processed with the contextual

assumptions that he has most readily accessible –more often than not, they correspond to the

target context’s. We hold the view that, in order to provide the reader of direct translations with

the appropriate context, the translator must add a preface to his work, analysing all the crucial

contextual elements. In this way, he assures that the reader will not misinterpret the stimulus7.

2. Experimentation

The one reason to create a theory is to serve the practice. If it proves unhelpful by

experience, its tenets have to be revised. Most of the detractors of Gutt’s framework have

argued that this theory is impossible to put into practice. Many works, however, have refuted

that assertion (Zhonggang, 2006; Almazán García, 2001; Corregido, 2013); we hope that this

research can be counted among them.

2.1 Translating Memoirs of a Midget

We will focus our discussion on the translations of Memoirs of a Midget by Walter de la

Mare. The first translation was done by Julio Cortázar in 1946 and the second was performed by

us following the parameters discussed on the previous section. This does not mean that

Cortázar’s translation is not relevance-oriented: every human act is. The difference, as we shall

see, is that the decisions taken in the course of our translating processes were done on the

grounds proposed by RT.

The current translation was aimed to a general Spanish-speaking audience, unlike other

experiments (cf. Corregido, 2013). According to this program, the ideal audience should be

provided with the necessary information to interpret the interpretive stimulus optimally.

Otherwise, the addresser –in this case, the translator, runs the risk of being misinterpreted; not

only this, but also de translator could be deliberately unfaithful to the original input, and

therefore his task as a professional would fail. For all cases, translation problems were solved

consistently with the Cognitive Principle of Relevance, i.e., trying to maximise the positive

cognitive effects at low processing effort. For that matter, the syntax and the range of

expressions used are as natural as possible for the ideal audience.

All cases can be analysed under these parameters. Let us consider, for instance, the

following example:

α) ‘When I awoke, the morning sky was gay with sunshine, there was a lisping and

gurgling of starlings on the roof, the roar of the little river in flood after the rains shook the air

7 For further discussion and enriching examples about the translation of the Gospel of Mark, cf. Gutt (1989) “Translation and Relevance”, UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 1, p. 80.

at my window, and there sat Pollie, in her outdoor clothes, the rest of the packing done and she

awaiting breakfast’.

α’) ‘Cuando desperté, el cielo matinal estaba lleno de sol, había ceceos y gorgoteos de

estorninos en el alero, bramaba el arroyuelo desbordado y Pollie, vestida para salir y con nuestro

equipaje listo, esperaba mi despertar para que desayunáramos’.

α’’) ‘Cuando desperté, el cielo matinal estaba animado con rayos de sol, había gorjeos y

ceceos de estorninos en el tejado, el rugido del pequeño río en crecida luego de las lluvias

agitaba el aire junto a mi ventana, y allí estaba Pollie, sentada, con su traje de salir, el resto de

las cosas empacadas y a la espera del desayuno’.

The original stimulus is represented by α). The following are Cortázar’s translation8 and

our own, respectively. The first difference that can be observed between the translations is the

missing ‘animado’ in Cortázar’s version. We chose to keep the intricate syntax of the original not

to give an exotising effect, but to be as faithful as possible to the original stimulus. As widely

accepted by grammarians –especially generativists, syntax communicates as much as the

semantic content9. Syntax provides a model of interpretation that is later processed by the

inferential module in order to arrive at the optimal interpretation. In this case, we chose to use

the word ‘animado’, which suits well the non-lexicalised concept ANIMADO*. This choice seems

to work fine as an interpretive representation of on-lexicalised concept GAY*. Non-lexicalised

concepts are those that need an ad hoc concept to determine their meaning. They are an

evidence of the ineffability of concepts, for they work exactly as representations of concepts

that are absent in the language, whose sense can only be arrived at by means of inference10. We

deem that the other version misses this important, though not crucial, point.

We also thing that Cortázar’s version makes a wrong use of ‘gorgoteos’: even though

‘gurgle’ ca be thus translated, the Spanish word is often related to the sounds emitted by liquids

or gases, unlike ‘gorjeos’, which is related to bird’s whistles. When the reader arrives at the ad

hoc concept GORGOTEO*, as a sound similar to that of boiling water, but produced by birds, he

8 De la Mare, Walter (1946) Memorias de una enana (traducción por Julio Cortázar), Editorial Nova, Buenos Aires, p. 60. 9 We do no really believe that syntax and semantics are split components, but for the sake of brevity we will assume that they belong to different scopes. Works such as Uriagereka’s (1995) seem to prove our point. 10 Carston, R. (2010b) “Lexical Pragmatics, Ad Hoc Concepts and Metaphor: a Relevance Theory Perspective”, Italian Journal of Linguistics, February 2010.

will be spending unnecessary processing effort; thus, the translator’s choice is not as relevance-

oriented as it could have been.

For the sake of brevity, once again, we will not discuss Cortázar’s omissions in the rest

of the passage. All we can say here is that the translator tried to reduce the overwhelming

amount of information packed in such a small grammatical fragment in order to render the text

more accessible and entertaining. That is not at all a bad choice, and an intent reader could see

marks in the translation that link the text to Cortázar’s own style in literary production. Our

choice, however, as humble translators with none of the great genius of Cortázar, aims to remain

as faithful to the original stimulus as possible. The syntax of our version is as dense as the

original’s and we hope that we have not missed anything when trying to convey the same

explicatures and implicatures.

This example, however, shows a greater divergence:

β) ‘(…) To persons in trade they denote success and future prosperity and eleviation (…)’.

β’) ‘(…) Para comerciantes indican pros-pe-ri-dad y ascenso (…)’.

β’’) ‘(…) Para las personas de comercio, denotan éxitos y prosperidad futura y ascesenso

(…)’.

In β we can find the scholarly exertion of Pollie, the main character’s housekeeper, upon

reading a book. Her efforts at trying to read smoothly and clearly are unmistakably shown by

the uttering of the neologism ‘eleviation’, which seems to be a mispronunciation of ‘elevation’.

Cortázar, however, chooses to mark that literacy inefficiency by dividing in syllables the word

‘prosperidad’, as if the character was having trouble with that word. This does not seem to us a

very much dangerous unfaithfulness to the original stimulus: one way or other, the reader will

finally interpret that reading a book is not an easy task for Pollie. Cortázar’s intervention,

notwithstanding, spoils the following joke:

γ) ‘(…) and no less indubitably have I lived in “great state” –though without much

eleviation’.

γ’) (…) menos aún dudo de que “he vivido muy bien”… aunque sin demasiado ascenso’.

γ’’) (…) y no menos indudablemente había vivido yo «en una buena posición», aunque

sin demasiado «ascesenso»’.

The version in γ’ lacks all the irony that the narrator conveys in γ and, we hope, is

faithfully represented in γ’’. We arrive at the conclusion, then, that Cortázar’s intervention in β’

is unfounded. The interpretive utterance fails to transmit the same quality and quantity of

implicatures. In the same utterance, we find quite a different translation problem: the

interlingual representation of ‘living in a “great state”’. Our first option was ‘con un gran cargo’,

trying to simplify the stimulus: upon writing her memoirs, Miss M. (the midget) devotes a lot of

reflection and thinking to the times when she lived as guest in a frivolous though rich mansion

in London, property of Miss Monnerie. At that time, what she had was ‘a great position’, i.e., in

Spanish, ‘un gran cargo’ or ‘una buena posición’; this is synecdochic of ‘a great state’ –living in a

great state implies having a good position, in this case. We deem that our decision was fully

justified by the plot and the scenery presented: coherent with the tenor and the mode of the

story, it provided the reader of the translation with a revealing clue to the thread of the

narrative. Moreover, it adds something to the text: having ‘a good position’ (‘un gran cargo’) is

precisely what Miss M. subtly criticises at the end of the novel, for her ‘position’ consisted only

of being the pet of the aristocracy. ‘Un gran cargo’, however, was finally replaced by ‘en una

buena posición’, thus destroying a fine clue for the reader, losing the synecdochic relation that

seemed so profitable, and depriving the translation of a substantial narrative element –a

functional catalysis11. The choice of ‘en gran estado’ also seemed semantically justified, allowed

by the analytic assumptions of the original input; however, its syntactic behaviour is not as

natural in Spanish as the chosen version.

We can also say a word or two about the significance of the divergence on the following

example:

δ) ‘Tiny points of heat broke out all over me, as one by one my fellow passengers turned

their astonished faces in my direction’.

δ’) ‘Puntas de fuego parecieron arder en mi cuerpo a medida que los restantes pasajeros

volvían uno tras uno sus asombrados rostros en mi dirección’.

δ’’) ‘Pequeñas burbujas de calor se desprendieron de mí mientras, uno por uno, mis

compañeros de viaje volteaban sus rostros en mi dirección’.

The difference, though not central for the common researcher, is crucial to our

understanding of the application of RT to translation. Undoubtedly, Cortázar’s choice in δ’ is

much more elegant that our version (‘puntas de fuego’ as opposed to ‘pequeñas burbujas de

calor’), though we deem our translation more relevant and interpretively faithful. The central

11 Barthes, R. (1982) “Introducción al análisis estructural”, in Análisis estructural del relato, Ediciones Buenos Aires, Barcelona.

issue here, however, is the use of ‘parecieron’ in δ’. Following Carston (2010a, 2010b, 2010c)

and Sperber and Wilson (2004) the way of processing metaphors and comparisons is inherently

different. Basically, metaphoric uses of language convey a set of weak implicatures (i.e., not

essential to the interpretation of the stimulus, though complementary). With the use of

‘parecieron’, Cortázar is making the figurative image of the original deliberately hypothetical,

like a comparison: ‘”as if” tiny points of heat broke out’. The way of processing both utterances

is different, and in the interpretive stimulus many weak implicatures are lost. Our version tries

to recover them, getting closer to the original input. The reader then creates an ad hoc concept

PEQUEÑAS BURBUJAS DE CALOR*, an ineffable construct that represents not a physical entity, but the

mood of the character. Let us take a brief look at the following case:

ε) ‘Why, I had chosen my fate: I must hold my own’.

ε’) ‘Pensé: “He elegido mi destino; ahora debo enfrentarlo’.

ε’’) ‘Después de todo, ya había elegido mi destino: debía mantener mi posición’.

We infer that Cortázar failed to transmit, and maybe to interpret, the idiomatic meaning

of ‘hold my own’, which means, according to the 2nd edition of the Cambridge Dictionary of

Idioms, ‘to be as successful as other people or things in a situation’, and according to McGraw-

Hill American Dictionary of Idioms and Phrasal Verbs, ‘to do as well as anyone else’. Even though

we could not find an idiomatic expression of the same value in Spanish, we chose to

interpretively represent the most salient features of the stimulus. Our version provides the same

amount of explicatures, though not the same quantity of weak implicatures. However, as Gutt

points out (2000), there is no reason to believe in complete translatability, to the same extent

that there is no proof of the total effability (Sperber and Wilson, 1986, 1995). This means that

there will be cases in which the translator will find himself at a loss when trying to convey the

exact representation of the original stimulus.

Another insight on inference brings us to this example, taken from our version of the

text:

ζ) ‘Aún lo veo, tan caballeresco como esos escarabajos errantes, entrando en la cocina

con su pequeño bolso negro’.

According to García Negroni (2010) and many other prescriptive theorists, the use of the

gerund ‘entrando’ is ambiguous, for it can refer either to the grammatical subject of the

sentence (the ‘pro’ subject) or to the direct object ‘lo’. As regards the purely syntactic level, the

remark is unquestionable, and other instances of the same mistake can be found in our version.

However, when it comes to inference, every ambiguity vanishes: the referent of the gerund can

be no other than the direct object ‘lo’, referring to Mr. Waggett, a character of the novel. The

reader can infer that by means of the possessive pronoun ‘su’, but also because the narrator

emits a value of judgment that can never be applied to herself. The syntactic interface creates a

surface interpretation which is first analyse by the syntactic (or linguistic module); this provides

a set of conclusions that are further processed by the inferential module, and it is then when

the interpretation becomes unequivocal.

The absence of ambiguity is central to this kind of scientific studies. It is true that literary

texts offer a range of possible interpretations that enrich the scope of the tenor. However, in

technical terms, there cannot be single entity having the property of being two or more things

at a time; it follows, therefore, and consistently with the Communicative Principle of Relevance,

that every input has one and only one optimal interpretation. This interpretation must be

deduced with the appropriate contextual premises, as has been duly explained in previous

sections. Let us consider, then, this example, taken from our version of the text:

η) ‘El resto de mis pertenencias (mi cama de dosel, etc.) habrían de ser guardados en

una gran caja y enviados tras de mí’.

The clause ‘tras de mí’ (‘after me’) can be interpreted in two ways: a) the luggage (‘mis

pertenencias’) were to be sent to Miss M. once she had arrived in her new house, or b) the

luggage was going to literally follow Miss M. during her trip, thus becoming some kind of magical

element. Both interpretations are perfectly allowed at the syntactic level; however, due to the

nature of the human mind, they cannot coexist, for that would mean a deficiency either in the

short-term memory or in the neuronal synapsis. Therefore, the mind, in the inferential module,

must select only one. Which can it be: the one that has no connection whatsoever with the plot,

or the one that follows a rational direction and that is functional and coherent to the

development of the narrative? The answer is self-evident: option (a) will be the one chosen in

normal conditions, under a normal deductive processing of the mind. There exist, of course,

many other options that we could have chosen to minimise the processing effort that this

deduction implies; those options, however, interrupt the normal flow of the utterance, alter the

original’s text syntax and can interfere in the processing of the stimulus. That is why we have

chosen to trust the reader’s perception to reduce the ambiguity; the other options we came

across were too detrimental to the flow of information.

Another difficulty emerged when trying to convey the meaning of:

θ) ‘(…) falling off the pit of her carriage’.

θ’) ‘(…) caerme efectivamente en el casco del carro’.

The original text, in θ, uses the word ‘pit’ to refer to the hollow part of the carriage, the

one between the chauffer’s seat and the passenger’s. Carriages are not usual elements to

modern readers, and the average audience of this text could not follow the text fluently if a too

technical text were used for ‘pit’; on the other hand, if the natural Spanish correlative for ‘pit’

(‘pozo’) had been chosen, the image would have been too vague, the reference could have been

lost and the optimal resemblance would have been put at stake. We finally chose, then, the

lexical item ‘casco’. In the eleventh entry for this word in the Real Academia Española’s

Dictionary, we find that it refers to the hollow body of a ship. An extensional meaning can be

easily applied, by means of pure inference, to the hollow part of a carriage. The interpretation

comes naturally, without much extra processing effort, and therefore contributes to maximising

the relevance. The use of ‘pozo’ would have been too blurry, and the use of any of the technical

terms suggested by countrymen in a small survey would have been too unusual and thus too

irrelevant –in its technical sense, to an average modern Spanish reader. Moreover, the receptor

of the interpretive stimulus must process the information with the contextual premises of the

original audience: then, any other conclusions he may arrive at other than the actual hollow

space of the carriage could not be consistent with the assumptions held in mind.

Another interesting case was presenting by the idiolect of the ticket seller at Lindsey’s

train station. Let us take a look at it:

ι) ‘"Lor, Mr Waggett, I'd make it a quarter for 'ee if it was within regulations. But 'tain't

so, the young lady's full natural size in the eye of the law, and I couldn't give in to 'ee not even

if 'twas a honeymooning you was after"’.

English is a versatile language when it comes to represent accents by means of writing

devises; Spanish, on the other hand, does not present such ductility. Does it mean that the

idiolect features of this minor character must be dismissed in the translation? The answer is no,

for that would imply a resignation to convey the stimulus faithfully. However, we are between

the hammer and the anvil: either we choose to use a deliberate intricate language that could

add to the processing effort, or we can grasp as many features of the stimulus as we can and

put them in a natural stretch of discourse. The former option was the chosen one.

Notwithstanding, the intervention does not lack characteristics of the Spanish oral discourse.

ι’) ‘–Por Dios, señor Waggett, se lo dejaría a un cuarto si estuviera dentro de las

reglamentaciones. Pero no es así, la joven dama es de tamaño completamente normal ante el

ojo de la ley, y no podría ceder ante usted ni aunque fuera una luna de miel lo que está

buscando’.

We can easily spot the vocative ‘Por Dios’, that even though is not restricted to oral

discourse, it is a mark of a speakerly mode (Carter and Mc Carthy, 2001: 95). Cortázar made use

of the vocative ‘Diablos’ which is diametrically opposed to the content meaning of ‘Por Dios’.

His version gained force in its speakerly mode, but lost a little of precision as to the stimulus

‘Lor’, which appears to be a shortened form of ‘Lord’, thus referring to the Christian God,

according to the contextual assumptions held in mind at the moment of translating. The

expression ‘el ojo de la ley’ (‘the eye of the law’) may seem not consistent with this mode

because of its technical, even legal style; however, it also seems to be a set phrase in Spanish

that can be uttered by anyone in any situation, not strictly related to a certain formal

environment. Therefore, even though some marks of the oral medium are lost in the flow of

information from one language to the other, some features of the idiolect and of the spontaneity

of the utterance are preserved, and can infer with the precise contextual information.

The following cases shows another instances in which the translator must choose to

convey certain features of the stimulus, trusting his audience to activate the precise contextual

premises:

κ) ’(…) Mr Waggett touched his hat’.

κ’) ‘(…) el señor Wagget se llevó una mano al sombrero’.

Literally, the original stimulus can be translated as ‘el señor Wagget se tocó el

sombrero’; however, the reader would find himself at a loss trying to interpret such a premise.

‘To touch one’s hat’ does not mean anything functional to the plot in this situation, when Pollie

and Miss M. are departing from the train station. What the original stimulus really implies is that

Mr. Waggett is saying goodbye to them by tipping his hat’s rim, as men used to do until the

middle of the XXth century. More allusive to this action seems the option ‘se llevó una mano al

sombrero’, which is more descriptive of the intention that caused the action. Of course that, for

a reader with no contextual information about the customs of the age, this allusion would be

completely irrelevant. However, if processed with the right mental assumptions, the utterance

can prove its narrative value.

Another enriching example can be illustrated by this case:

λ) ‘The small, bead-brown eyes wheeled from under their white lids and fixed me with

their stare’.

The key term here is ‘wheel’. This is a path of motion construction12, typical of verb-

framed languages as English. Spanish, being a satellite-frame language, cannot incorporate the

manner of motion directly in the main verb, but must do it by means of adjuncts (according to

what Mateu i Fontanals (2000) and Juan Stamboni (2012) suggest). Following this theory, the

main event is not conflated in the verb ‘wheel’ but in the preposition ‘from’. Therefore, the

Spanish version should be something like: ‘sus pequeños ojos castaños como cuentas surgieron

debajo de sus pálidos párpados girando como ruedas y fijaron en mí su mirada’. This stimulus

transmits the very same syntactic layering than the original, and therefore seems a perfect

option to send to the inferential module. However, as regards its naturalness, the normal flow

of information is interrupted by the second gerund ‘girando’, which interferes with the reading

and borders with bad style. To eliminate it would be a blunt treason to the original stimulus, but

to keep it as a gerund is detrimental to the maximising of the relevance, which is always our

main aim. The final option was, then:

λ’) ‘(…) sus pequeños ojos castaños como cuentas giraron debajo de sus pálidos

párpados y fijaron en mí su mirada atenta’.

We assume that the lost syntactic information can be recovered from the inferring

process that leads to the optimal interpretation: if the eyes ‘giraron’ then it must be like

‘wheels’, and if they fixed the stare then they moved ‘from under their white lids’. All in all, the

subtle structural changes do not affect the interpretation of the stimulus. Without a good

apparent reason, Cortázar chose the option ‘giraron como cuentas’ (‘wheeled like beads’), which

seems to us a poor equivalent to the spirit of the original input.

A similar case is introduced by:

μ) ‘We were jogging along in fine style’.

In this instance, ‘jogging’ corresponds to the manner of motion, and along to the

direction of the action. Again, this is a path of motion construction. This time, being faithful to

the syntax was not an impediment to the optimal fluency:

μ’) ‘Avanzábamos a grandes trompicones’.

However, the question that arouse was whether to include the final ‘in a fine style’ of

the original stimulus. When thinking about its function in the ostension, we find that its value is

12 MATEU i FONTANALS, Jaume (2000). «Why Can‟t We Wipe the Slate Clean? A Lexical-Syntactic Approach to Resultative Constructions». Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Filologia Catalana.

merely to stress the ‘jogging’, and not to add something about the situation or the narrative

plot. However, when attempts were made to discover a Spanish equivalent, such as a doubling

adjective or an adverb modifying the verb, we found that all the options were detrimental to

the maximising of the relevance. With the omission of the final adjunct the text does not lose

any crucial fact that cannot be recovered from the inferring process; more bluntly, with the

omission of an awkward Spanish equivalent, the text gains fluency and, by diminishing the

processing effort, it increases the relevance, which is always our main concern.

One last example:

ν) ‘(…) my heat was too full to let me linger by the water’.

Miss M.’s heart was too full, but too full of what? What where the sentiments that

possessed her at the moment of departure from her birth home? Was it happiness? Or else

sorrow? Or else, to be more precise as to the feelings that arrest one’s heart on those situations,

it was tribulation? This last concept seems to us general enough yet sufficiently precise to

describe the character’s humour. In this case, Spanish allows a literal translation: ‘mi corazón

estaba demasiado lleno para dejarme permanecer junto al agua’. However, ‘lleno’ is terribly

vague, not to say not relevant, for it undermines the naturalness of expression and it forces the

reader’s mind to wander among possible ad hoc concept that suit this particular meaning.

Therefore, is ‘full’ in this case entails directly ‘full of tribulation’, we see no reason why this

cannot be the perfect interpretive stimulus for the proposition:

ν’) ‘ (…) mi corazón estaba demasiado atribulado para dejarme permanecer junto al

agua’.

‘Atribulado’, which means ‘full of tribulations’, adopts an enough versatile and explicit

meaning that fits exactly the character’s humour in that specific passage. This is process of

narrowing the meaning until we reach to the most precise interpretive expression for the

original ostension. The presumption of optimal faithfulness is fully conveyed by this utterance.

3. Conclusion

We have analysed the results of our version of Memoirs of a Midget and we have done it a

purely scientific, unambiguous way. As Popper (1959) suggests, we have tried to contrast our

theory with as many cases as possible, and so far it has hold its own. In parallel, Gutt’s program

has proved its value as thorough theory. It is important to note that all human behaviour is

relevance-oriented because such is the nature of the human mind. This means that Cortázar’s

translation, like ours, aims to be relevant, in its technical sense. The main difference is that a

translator who trusts in RT will always find a solution to his problems within this model, without

getting involved in the non-scientific parameters that other theories suggests, such as political

commitment subjective artistic value and the like.

If our claim is true and the human cognition is relevance-oriented, there should be no

barriers to define RT as a total science, as suggested in the Introduction. When the researcher is

aware of the way the mind works, there can be no obstacles to explain every task, every work

in which the cognitive system is involved. We trust that modularism will show great advances in

coming times and, therefore, contribute to the development of all kinds of disciplines that have

traditionally been blurred by non-scientific patterns of analysis.

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