Abstract:

The role of context remains underexplored in translation studies, which in the last two decades has focused on cultural elements from different perspectives (such as feminist or postcolonial ones). In this talk, I will discuss the role of pragmatics in translation as an alternative to the traditional and artificial dichotomy language/culture. Pragmatics was first discussed at some length in the late 1990s by authors like Eugene Nida. Although in the West Nida has been criticized (particularly in the US, e.g. Venuti, Gentzler), he was among the first to discuss the importance of context. I will discuss some of the tenets of pragmatics and their significance for translators using examples from various genres

Guest Speaker:

Roberto A. Valdeón is Full Professor in English Studies at the University of Oviedo, Spain, and a member of the Academia Europaea and of the European Science Foundation. He is the author of over 130 publications, including contributions to journals such as, Language and Intercultural Communication, Across Languages and Cultures, Meta, Intercultural Pragmatics, Terminology, The Translator, Journal of Pragmatics, Target, Babel, Journal of Pragmatics, Philological Quarterly, Journalism and Translating and Interpreting Studies. He has guest-edited special issues of Target, Meta, European Journal of Translation Studies, Across Languages and Cultures, and Language and Intercultural Communication. He is Editor-in-Chief of Perspectives Studies in Translation Theory and Practice and General Editor of the Benjamins Translation Library. He has been a visiting scholar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Visiting Professor at the University of Leuven and is a Research Fellow at the University of the Free State, South Africa (2014-2020). He has co-edited the Routledge Handbook of Spanish Translation Studies.