Cognition and context in translation analysis: Contextual frames of reference in Bible translation

Abstract

This article describes the concept of contextual frames of reference (CFR) and explains its importance to the analysis of Bible translations. The article starts by explaining the idea of cognition, which is fundamental to the notion of CFR. Then it briefly sketches the origin of the concept of framing from its broad context of translation studies up to its specific framework in this article. Finally, it elaborates using Ruth 3:9, 3:10, 3:16 and 4:2 to show how the four heuristic CFRs can be used as a tool for analysing translations. The four heuristic classes of CFR are socio-cultural, organisational, communicational and textual. In this article, they are presented as tools that can be used to hypothesise why a translation renders a source text (ST) the way it does, based on an analysis of the probable circumstances surrounding the translation.