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Part of
Current Issues in Intercultural Pragmatics
Edited by István Kecskés and Stavros Assimakopoulos
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 274] 2017
► pp. 255–271

Chapter 11
Presuppositions, paralanguage, visual kinesics

Three culture-pragmatic categories of errors and misunderstanding in translation and interpreting illustrated on the basis of the language pair German/Greek

 | DFLTI, Ionian University, Greece
This paper examines presuppositions and non-verbal means, i.e. paralanguage and kinesics, as culture-pragmatic obstacles for translation and interpreting. On the basis of functionally orientated translation theory, its central aim is to demonstrate that misunderstandings may occur due to a mistaken interpretation of presuppositions, paralanguage and visual kinesics of the source culture by the translator/interpreter. For this purpose, it presents three different examples from the language pair German/Greek, one from translation and two from interpreting, by which the aforementioned categories of discourse are illustrated and their translational or interpretational implications and consequences analysed. In view of their significance, this paper concludes with suggestions on specialised training for the elaboration of cross-cultural expertise of translators/interpreters in their working languages.
Keywords: translation, interpreting, intercultural pragmatics, contrastive cultural competence
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Presuppositions and translation (German-Greek)
  • 3.Paralanguage and interpreting (Greek-German)
  • 4.Visual kinesics and interpreting (Greek-German)
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 June 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.274.12see
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