Translation theories and pragmatics – Analysis of maritime and legalese language based examples

Abstract

Translators and interpreters need to rewrite or retell the essence of a message to be conveyed in a foreign language through cognitive grammar, implicatures, connotations and sometimes standardized phrases to bring out the full and true meaning in the translated work. The aim of this paper is to acquaint with the specificity of the translatorʹs workshop, familiarization with the working framework for translations of implied meaning, theories of translation and elementary principles to be followed, so that, the reference meaning of the communicated content could impart pragmatic meaning. In view of the constraints of literal translation, special attention is given to linguistic aspects of pragmatics with regard to the conveyance of context sensitivity, precision, intentionality of the communicating sender, influence of the translator’s linguistic intuition and approach, and communicating receiver. Different approaches to translations and possible limitations are exemplified and explained with the use of Polish and English equivalents adopted from standard, maritime and legalese language.