ABSTRACT
Starting with a broader definition of pragmatics, this chapter constrains its scope on the Anglo-American tradition of pragmatics applied to translation to make a case for relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1986/1995) as the main theoretical framework in the area of cognitive pragmatics and the only cognitive pragmatic approach within Translation Studies. Considering translation as an act of interlingual interpretive language use, the chapter explores the concept of interpretive resemblance and looks at relevance-theoretic-related notions such as cognitive effects, metarepresentation and higher-order representations as a way to test pragmatic assumptions in translation, thus providing empirical evidence to account for how translation functions as a cognitive activity.
