On The Explicitation Strategy In The English-Chinese Translation Of Britain’s Europe

Due to differences between Chinese and English and between cultures,an English text(e.g.,a historical text)that contains plentiful implicit and abstract elements as well as cultural information presents considerable challenges for Chinese readers to understand.It would especially be the case if a translator tends to preserve the surface structu re of the source text.On this account,this translation report focuses on how to deal with implicitness in a historical text.This author consciously adopts the strategy of explicitation in her translation of Britain’s Europe:A Thousand Years of Conflict and Cooperation.It is a historical work covering a long time span and involves complicated historical issues and political discussions;the language of this book is rather abstract and obscure.This report discusses the explicitation strategy and illustrates how,through this strategy,the target text can become clearer and more explicit in terms of meaning,logic,and the transmission of cultural information.Explicitation in the translation is analyzed on three levels:lexical,sentence,and textual.On each level,specific translation techniques under the explicitation strategy are presented with examples.On the lexical level,this report discusses the explicitation strategy and its specific applied techniques from the perspectives of the explicitation of conceptual meaning of synonyms,the explicitation of conceptual meaning of polysemic words,the explicitation of cultural information of historical terms and the explicitation of pragmatic connotation of metaphors.On the textual level,this report analyses how explicitation is achieved through processing of textual cohesive devices,i.e.,reference,substitution,conjunction,ellipsis and lexical cohesion.This report presents a systematic approach to the use of explicitation strategy in translation.It is hoped that translators can have a better idea of how to apply explicitation strategy and make their translation more explicit in terms of meaning,logic and cultural information so as to avoid cultural misunderstandings.