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reduced processing efforts as they are, like proverbs and stereotyped/formulaic expressions, more or less stored and retrieved as an entity); conjunctions (they can be explicated by means of conjunctions such as and/or); a comma, however, instead of an explicit conjunction can imply vagueness which as part of the meaning has to be preserved; connotation (which is explained in terms of the assumptions made in the context or by means of the respective logical and/or encyclopaedic entries); formulaic expressions and capitalization: are a matter of processing efforts in relation to cognitive effects as they are stored as an entity (compare 'collocations' above); metaphor (it deals with a range of implications of varying strength); proper nouns (the preservation of culture-specific terms for culture-specific institutions in translation can be explained by the role of the processing effort necessary to retrieve the respective entries); morphology (processing effort depends on the naturalness of an statement) and the naturalness of an statement depends on the language involved; therefore a compound in one language can equal a modifier plus noun in another in terms of processing effort; uncommon coinages (require more processing efforts due to low frequency words and unexpected collocation or unexpected morphology, but as reward they yield additional cognitive effects); word order (it is related to the effort-saving background-information and the effect-carrying foreground information).

In sum, one can say that the merits of E.-A. Gutt's relevance-based translation model are the development of a theoretical frame which

-is applicable to distinct types of text,

-is applicable to a wide range of individual linguistic translational problems,

-guides the translator to define the meaning of a sentence as a whole, i.e. within the given context,

-guides the translator to distinguish between explications as well as implications,

-provides, at least rudimentarily, the notion of communicative clues for the preservation of stylistic effects, and

-can be used to explain or justify translatory decisions.

2.2 Humour theories

In her paper on humor theories, the author discussed jokes in the light of D. Sperber and D. Wilson's relevance theory and investigated the following questions: Can the verbal joke be considered as a form of communication and hence be subsumed under the relevance-based communication theory developed by D. Sperber and D. Wilson? If so, can relevance theory account for the degree of appreciation of jokes (a question that has to be considered in the light of Z. Freud's relief theory stating that laughter is the result of a saving in expenditure of psychic energy). Her answer was: "While relevance theory can very well account for jokes as a special type of communication, no relationship could be established between relevance as the result of contextual effects gained and processing efforts spent, on the one hand, and the appreciation of jokes as the result of high contextual effects at low processing costs giving rise to laughter, on the other hand" [10. P. 21].

The reasons are at hand: neither processing efforts nor contextual effects are measurable quantities; hence, the appreciation of jokes is always context-dependent and subjective. Relevance theory is too limited as an approach to account for the multifaceted nature of jokes. It was suggested that the creation and the comprehension of jokes involve human capacities that go far beyond linguistic issues so that an interdisciplinary investigation involving, in addition to linguistics, neuro-linguistics and social-psychology and possibly philosophy seems advisable.

REFERENCES

1.A Student's Guide to 50 American Novels/Ed. by Lass A. N. Y.: Washington Square Press, 1966.

2.Boecker E. William Faulkner's later novels in German. A study in the theory and practice of translation. Niemeyer: Tübingen, 1973.

3.Faulkner W. Light in August. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,1988.

4.Faulkner W. Licht im August. Aus dem Amerikanischen übertragen von Franz Fein. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1988.

5.Freud S. Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewußten. Sigmund Freud - Studienausgabe. Bd. 4. Psychologische Schriften. Frankfurt: Fischer, 1905.

6.Grice P. Logic and conversation // Grice P. Studies in the way of words. Harvard: Harvard Univ. Press,1968. P. 41-58

7.Gutt Ernst-August. Translation and Relevance: Cognition and Context. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.

8.Gutt Ernst-August. Implicit Information in Literary Translation: A Relevance-Theoretic Perspective. Target, 1996. Vol.

8.Part2. P. 239-256

9.Muschard J. Relevant Translations: History, Presentation, Criticism, Application. Frankfurt: M. Peter Lang, 1996.

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Текст и дискурс: традиционный и когнитивно-функциональный аспекты исследования= Рязань, 2002. - 236 с.