The Translator as Communicator

Sample 3.6
Interviewer:
What were the contents of the letter you handed
to King Fahd?
Tunisian Government minister: This matter concerns the Saudis. (as relayed by
interpreter)
In 
Sample 3.6
, the interviewer asks a very pointed question. The minister is
reported to have replied rather curtly in Arabic, in terms which the interpreter
has relayed verbatim into English. The wrong impression has been conveyed,
however, and the intended sense should have been relayed as:
INTERPRETING: A TEXT LINGUISTIC APPROACH 43

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This is a matter solely for the Saudis’ consideration!
The error may be attributed to lack of awareness of contextual specifications
which surround utterances and dictate the way they should be interpreted.
Relevant contextual factors include:
1 the register membership of the text (journalese, diplomacy, etc. as fields;
formality of tenor, etc.);
2 the pragmatic force of the utterance (what is intended and not explicitly
stated—here, unwillingness to give a direct answer to a question);
3 the culture-specific genre requirement that journalists do not overstep the
mark; the discourse of rebuttal; and the text-type focus on managing a
situation.
In addition to these factors, much contextual information lies outside the text, in
the area of prior expectations—about the line of questioning pursued and even
beyond this about the whole speech event which ultimately culminates in the
form of words used (i.e. in the utterance proper). True, the word concern carries
a considerable amount of textural information; but in the absence of contextual
indications from both within and outside the currently unfolding interaction, this
particular word could mean anything and could thus function in a variety of
speech acts, one of which is the ‘representative statement’ erroneously opted for.
The utterance was obviously intended to function as:
(a) a diplomat’s way out of journalists’ awkward questions;
(b) an intended ‘telling-off’: do not pursue this line of questioning, or else!; 
(c) a socio-cultural sign carrying a specific attitudinal meaning (resenting
nosiness), a certain genre specification (the familiar parrying of nosy
journalists’ questions) and a particular rhetorical purpose (steering the text
receiver in a direction favourable to the text producer’s goals).
The English journalist who asked the question would no doubt have appreciated
the kind of meanings yielded by the register membership of the utterance ((a)
above), its pragmatic meaning (b) and its semiotic significance (c). However,
lured by the kind of ‘inviting’ answer which he received through the interpreter,
the journalist pursued the initial line of questioning, only to be rebuked a second
time.