On The Implicitation In The English Translation Of Selected Works Of Cao Wenxuan(A Bilingual Edition)

"Explicitation" and "implicitation" are a pair of opposite concepts in translation studies,both of which are often regarded as features of translation universals.However,the research on implicitation is lacking,compared with that of explicitation,both in quantity and quality,thus being essentially on the periphery of studies of translation universals.In September,2016,Selected Works of Cao Wenxuan(A Bilingual Edition)were published officially,facilitating the spreading of works of Chinese children's literature overseas.This collection includes four children's novellas,all translated by the English translator-Helen Wang.Through comparative reading,it is found that the implicitaiton in the English version of the whole collection is obvious comparatively,which is contradictory to the "Explicitation Hypothesis" in translation studies.Therefore,in the background of Chinese culture going abroad,this thesis chooses Selected Works of Cao Wenxuan(A Bilingual Edition)as research materials and conducts an intensive study on implicitation displayed in the collection.Until now,researchers in translation studies have not reached a consensus on the definition of implicitaiton,and the present study adopts Victor Becher's definition,holding that implicitation can be sensed and observed when a given target text is more implicit than its corresponding source text.On the basis of the definition,thisstudy collects the data of implicitation in Selected Works of Cao Wenxuan(A Bilingual Edition)and quantitatively calculates its percentages in the unit of sentence.Then,it classifies the implicitation qualitatively and continues to explore the reasons behind the implicitation,so as to understand the mechanism of implicitation better.Besides,in data collection and processing,the thesis makes use of some research tools,such as Tmxmall,StruFreq Tool,SPSS 19.0.In view of previous research and present work,this study finds that the implicitation in Selected Works of Cao Wenxuan(A Bilingual Edition)can be divided into four types,namely omission,reduction,generalization and others.According to statistical results,there is no distinct difference in their overall distribution among the four novellas,for all values of Asymp.Sig in Chi-Square test are all over 0.05,even though there does exist distributional difference in each novella.Then,the reasons behind these implicitative phenomena can be attributed to two main factors,the influence from languages and the influence from related agents in translation.Furthermore,the former can be subdivided into the influence from Chinese and that from English,while the latter can be sub-grouped into the influence from the writer,the translator,the reader and even the publisher.In fact,the first factor bears much objectivity and the second one assumes much subjectivity.In translation activities,the two factors interact with each other,since languages influence related agents and related agents use languages.As a result,the implicitation in Selected Works of Cao Wenxuan(A Bilingual Edition)appears to be obvious and is realized by several means.As a case study,this study can make up the insufficiency of the research on implicitation,deepen the understanding of English translation of Chinese children's literature,and facilitate the effective spread of the works of Chinese children's literature overseas.