3.1.1.

Words in language are related to certain referents which they designate and to other words of
the same language with which they make up syntactic units. These relationships are called semantic
and syntactic, respectively. Words are also related to the people who use them. To the users of the
language its words are not just indifferent, unemotional labels of objects or ideas. People develop a
certain attitude to the words they use. Some of the words acquire definite implications, they evoke a
positive or negative response, and they are associated with certain theories, beliefs, likes or dislikes.
Words can be nice, ugly, attractive or repulsive. Such relationships between the word and its users
are called pragmatics.
To begin with, pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics developed in the late 1970.
Subsequently, pragmatics studies how people comprehend and produce a communicative act speech
act in a concrete speech situation which is usually a conversation.
Translation is a fairly common activity known to most of us. It is an activity of rewriting a
body of discourse into another body of discourse upon the condition that between the original body
of discourse and the resulting one, there exist some certain sort of relationship. What exactly this
relationship is, I shall try to specify in this discussion.
Pragmatics is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker and
interpreted by a listener. Consequently, it is more concerned by the analysis of what people mean by
their utterance than what the words or phrases in those utterances might mean by themselves.
Therefore, pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning.
This type of study necessarily involves the interpretation of what people mean in a particular
context and how the context influences what is said. It requires a consideration of how the speakers
organize what they want to say in accordance with who they are talking to. Consequently,
pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning.
This approach also explores how listeners can make inferences about what is said in order to
arrive at an interpretation of the speakers intended meaning. Therefore, pragmatics is also the study
of how more gets communicated than said.
Closeness of the speaker and listener, whether is physical, social, or conceptual, implies
shared experience. On the assumption of how close or distant the listener is, speakers determine how
much needs to be said. Pragmatics is the study of expression of relative distance.
To summarize, pragmatics the study of language use in interpersonal communication. It is
concerned with the choices made by speakers and the options and constraints which apply in social
interaction. It examines the effects of language use on participants in acts of communication.
Therefore, pragmatics is closely related to semantics, the study of meaning, with which it is often
associated. For this reason the current chapter follows that on semantics. Just as semantics covers a
range of levels grammar, syntax and the lexicon so pragmatics is spread across a number of fields
within linguistics and interfaces most clearly with semantics and sociolinguistics. The boundaries
cannot, however, be always clearly defined. Depending on the type of emphasis.
 When linguistics shifted its focus from investigating the nature and the pure structure of a
language to the actual use of a language, the translation studies switched its direction. Scholars
worked out various kinds of approaches based on a speakers or writers use of a particular language
for a particular purpose in a particular situation and concentrated on a hearers and readers
understanding of a text. As a result, there appeared theories describing the pragmatic aspects of
translation and the way a pragmatic potential of a source text can be reflected in a target text.
Neubert claims that, pragmatic adaptation is the process of adaptation of a translated work to
the needs of the target language audience. Along similar lines, Lehto suggests that pragmatic
adaptation is applied to modify those source text elements which, translated would not work properly
in the target language. He also claims that pragmatic adaptation refers to the modification of the
source text in order to produce the text which conforms to the needs of new language environment.
Chesterman and Wagner consider pragmatic adaptation a strategy of translation and propose
certain strategies of pragmatic adaptation.
1. Explicitness change. This strategy helps to transform the information of a source text to
make it more explicit or implicit. When the implicit information given in a source text is not
sufficient for the target audience, a translator can make it explicit in a target text. A translator can,
vice versa, omit some unnecessary information provided in a source text, which would be an
implicitation, if the target audience is expected to deal with it.
2. Interpersonal change. This kind of strategy, applied, to give an example, when translating
business letters, helps to change the level of formality, the degree of involvement and emotively of a
source text author.
3. Illocutionary change. This strategy involves a change of moods, changes of the structure of
rhetorical questions and exclamations, variation between direct and indirect speech.
4. Coherence change. This may include various types of the source text structure alterations
5. Partial translation. Using this strategy, a translator can reduce a source text to a summary.
6. Visibility change. In this case, translators undertake changes in the level of the authors
presence in the text. Alternatively, translators make themselves visible by adding footnotes,
bracketed comments, etc.
7. Transediting. This change involves radical re-writing of a source text.
To summarize, pragmatic adaptation can be applied to some isolated parts of a source text
which block target readers proper understanding of this text. In this case, pragmatic adaptation acts
as one of enumerated translation techniques. If a source text, translated as is, represents a general
difficulty for understanding, pragmatic adaptation can be opted for by a translator as a strategy
applied to the source text as a whole.
 Nida affirms refers to sociocultural adaptation in translation, postulating that for a truly
successful translation, biculturalism is even more important than bilingualism, since words only have
meanings in terms of the cultures in which they function. His opinion is strongly supported by Nord,
who claims that translating means comparing cultures. People of various cultures naturally differ in
the way they create messages and construct utterances, and sociocultural situations they apply those
utterances to vary as well.
The pragmatic implications of a word are an important part of its meaning that produces a
certain effect upon the Receptor. Of even greater significance is the pragmatic aspect of speech units.
Every act of speech communication is meant for a certain Receptor, it is aimed at producing a certain
effect upon him. In this respect any communication is an exercise in pragmatics. The pragmatic
aspect of translation involves a number of difficult problems.

To begin with, the pragmatics of the original text cannot be as a rule directly reproduced in
translation but often require important changes in the transmitted message. Correlated words in
different languages may produce dissimilar effect upon the users. An ambition in English is just the
name of a quality which may evoke any kind of response, positive, negative or neutral. Its Romanian
counterpart ambiia is definitely not a nice word. Thus, the phrase The voters put an end to the
generals political ambitions can be translated as Alegtorii au pus punct ambiiei politice a
generalului, retaining the negative implication of the original, but if the implication were positive
the translator would not make use of the derogatory term. The sentence The boys ambition was to
become a pilot will be translated as Visului baiatului era s devin pilot.
When we consider not just separate words but a phrase or number of phrases in a text, the
problem becomes more complicated. The communicative effect of a speech unit does not depend on
the meaning of its components alone, but involves considerations of the situational context and the
previous experience. A report that John has run a hundred meters in 9 seconds will pass unnoticed by
some people and create a sensation with others who happen to know that it is a wonderful record-
breaking achievement.
Here again, a great role is played by differences in the historical and cultural backgrounds of
different language communities, in their customs and living conditions. It stands to reason that the
natives of a tropical island can hardly be impressed by the statement that something is as white as
snow. The reported cooling in the relations between two friends may be understood as a welcome
development by the people who live in a very hot climate.
 Daniela Sorea, in her book Translation. Theory and practice, lists some of the main theories
of meaning, among which she mentions the so-called use theory of meaning, strongly connected with
the pragmatic view upon language. Pragmatics deals with meaning not as a mental representation,
nor as a relation between a symbol and an object or an entity designated by that symbol. In other
words, pragmatics situates language within wider social and cultural settings and behavioural
patterns and, while laying heavy stress on the context of the verbal exchanges, it deals with the way
people exploit words and combinations of words, with the actions actual users perform in the act of
communication. The meaning of a linguistic expression is given by its use, under certain
circumstances, where interlocutors nourish specific intentions and pursue specific goals. Interactions
like thanks, curses, greetings, praying, describing people and objects, narrating events and stories,
giving orders, expressing invitations, making assumptions, speculations, hypotheses, telling jokes,
idioms, figurative language are all aspects which might make translating from one language to
another troublesome.
According to Shuttelworth and Cowies Dictionary of translation studies pragmatic
translation is the kind of translation ,which pays attention not only to denotative meaning but also to
the way utterances are used in communicative situations and the way we interpret them in context.
Pragmatic translation will take into account connotative meaning, allusion, interpersonal
aspects of communication such as implicature, tone, register. Among pragmatic translations we can
cite: scientific treatises, government documents, instructions, descriptions, directions that appear on
packaged goods.