Implicitation And Explicitation Of Referential Cohesion In E-C Translation

Explicitation as a common phenomenon in the translation process is a major research topic in the field of translation studies. It has been discussed extensively in the existing literature (e.g. Blum-Kulka 1986; Blum-Kulka 2000; Baker 1992). In contrast, the concurrent phenomenon of implicitation has not received adequate scholarly attention. This is particularly true of the relationship between explicitation and impliciation. Klaudy (2009) hypothesized that translators prefer to perform operations involving explicitation and often fail to perform implicitations even if they have the choices. Labeled as the Asymmetry Hypothesis and assumed superior to Blum-Kulka’s Expliciation Hypothesis, it has been tested in other language pairs such as Denmark-French and English-Hungarian. But it has rarely been examined in the combination of English and Chinese.The thesis aims to fill this research gap by probing into the translation of referential cohesion in the English-Chinese direction in order to test the Asymmetry Hypothesis. The chosen case is the famous British novel The Wind in the Willows and its Chinese version translated by an experienced and credited translator. Both the original and the translated text contain a large quantity of referential cohesion. The research draws on Halliday’s cohesion theory as the indicator for cohesion shift. It compares the number of cohesive referents in the source text and their corresponding translation in the target text. The translation operation is classified into implicitation, explicitation, and correspondence. The research calculates the degree of explicitation and impliciation and examines the context in which the shift of cohesion is located. Discourse features that motivate the translator’s decision are analyzed.The thesis finds that explicitation is outweighed by implicitation in this case study, thus refusing the Asymmetry Hypothesis. The finding is consistent with Denturck (2012) and other empirical studies. It is suggested that the relationship between explicitation and implicitation is closely related with translation direction and language combination. The thesis also finds that the translator’s decision is, to some extent, subjective. The decision making is not consistent throughout the whole translation in that the triggers that motivate explicitation or implicitation vary considerably.The thesis has implications for both translation studies and translation practice. It tests the Asymmetry Hypothesis and describes the phenomenon of explicitation and implicitation in E-C translation, providing further empirical evidence for the research on translation universal. It makes an effort to combine corpus-based translation studies and translation process research, trying to explore new approaches for research on translation universal. It also formulates its own hypothesis that optional expliciationa and implicitation is up to the translator’s subjectivity. The proposed hypothesis about the translator’s subjectivity provides new perspectives for explaining the shift of cohesion. The thesis has also discussed the effect of the translation of referential cohesion, suggesting that improper treatment of cohesive referents might exert an impact on the style of the target text.