Constraints of Attaining Pragmatic Relevance from English into Selected Luhya Varieties in Interpreter-mediated Sermons

Abstract

Interpretation is an ultimate bridge among people who speak more than one language. In the case where the audience fails to understand the source language (SL), it is necessary to get the message to communicate with the target language (TL) speaker through an interpreter. This paper aims to evaluate the possible constraints of attaining pragmatic relevance during the delivery of interpreter-mediated sermons from English into selected Luhya varieties. The rationale for this position is that since English and Luhya belong to different language families, rendering information between these two languages can be very challenging. The Relevance Theory by Sperber and Wilson (1986) provided the background for discussing the data. Data was collected through Key-Informant Interviews for the interpreters, Focus Group Discussions for the congregants and the researcher’s non-participant observation during church services. The audio recording was used to collect corpus for analysis.  The following constraints were revealed; grammatic and structural constraints, time lag, idiomatic expressions in the SL, lack of compatible hyponyms, phonological and prosodic constraints, semantic constraints, lack of lexicalized TL versions, culture-specific words in the SL and polysemous words.  The findings also revealed that interpreters need to be aware of the constraints they face in interpreting sermons to determine the appropriate strategies to counteract the constraints.