ABSTRACT
Bible translators go to great effort to get the text right. Both source and receptor languages are analyzed from every perspective so that no nuance of meaning is missed. All too often, however, they expend little energy on cultural research, relegating it to another day when they have time – a day that never comes. But if context contributes as much to communication as the text, equal amounts of energy need to be invested in researching the contexts in which the text is processed. Translators that focus only on linguistic research may well strain at a gnat while swallowing a camel. Gutt comments:
Looking at the overall impact of a program in the BTS [Bible Translation Strategy], we should make clear to ourselves that some inadequacies in our linguistic knowledge of the RL [Receptor Language], e.g., about some morphological rules of the language, will probably be far less detrimental to our communication efforts than an inadequate knowledge of the religious beliefs, concerns, and overt and covert spiritual needs of the people; misjudgment in this area will almost certainly do considerable damage to our communication efforts. (1988:34)
The contextual information necessary to fill out the explicatures of a text (reference assignment, disambiguation, ad hoc enrichment, and so forth) is relatively easy to identify, as the grammar and semantics provide direct evidence for what is linguistically implicit. For example, the referent of ‘he’ is usually provided earlier in the text. If the text uses the word ‘now’, readers realize it refers to the author’s time and not their own. Implicated premises are more difficult to identify because their link with the text is less direct. They are evoked by the text, but are not represented in the grammar or semantics of the text.
