| This report discusses the application of explicitation strategy in the English-to-Chinese translation of the World Bank report entitled The COVID-19 Pandemic:Shocks to Education and Policy Responses.Explicitation is to make what is implicit and vague in the source text clearer and more explicit in the target text,to improve the comprehensibility and readability of the target text.The source text is a report issued by the World Bank on education under the pandemic.It is translated for its academic and practical values,namely offering policy options for coping with the impacts on education and giving insights into the long-term development of education.For the translation,rich examples of education programs in different countries and education policies in past crisis pose challenges to readers without the background knowledge.Besides,some abstract words which are hard to translate into equivalent Chinese and the implicit information that needs to be inferred from the context could also hinder the readers’ understanding of the text.To deal with these difficulties,explicitation strategy is applied in the translation.In accordance with Klaudy’s four categories,namely obligatory,optional,pragmatic,and translation-inherent explicitation,specific techniques of explicitation are analyzed,including explaining abstract words,adding category words,adding footnote,adding explanatory words,clarifying logical relationship and contextual information.Examples of obligatory,optional,pragmatic explicitation are discussed.Under each category,the author of this translation report analyzes probes into the application of the explicitation strategy,the reasons for such explicitation and the effects it achieved.Explicitation makes the target text more readable and easier to understand.But how to apply explicitation strategy depends on the translator’s subjectivity.The translator should make decisions according to the text type,translation purpose and the target readers,to improve the readability and avoid over-explicitation. |
