Explicitation In The English-Chinese Translation Of Historical Texts:a Case Study Of Stage To Studio

Stage to Studio,a historical book written by James P.Kraft,introduces how sound technologies reshaped the American music industry from the late 18th century to the mid19th century.As a bridge for cultural exchanges,these historical texts are invested with rich culture connotations,which poses great challenges to their English-Chinese translation in terms of vocabulary,logic,writing style and expressive effects.Accordingly,explicitation,a translation strategy,can reveal the implicit information implied by the source text in the target text,thus achieving effective cross-cultural communication.At present,scholars at home and abroad mainly focus on the definition and classification of explicitation,or the verification of the "explicitation hypothesis",but translation techniques targeted at a specific text type are worth further exploration.This thesis attempts to summarize the typology and application of explicitation in the EnglishChinese translation of historical texts with multiple examples chosen from the translation project of the first two chapters of Stage to Studio.Based on the typology put forward by Hungarian scholar Kinga Klaudy,the case analysis in this thesis departs from the traditional analytical method which examines explicitation from the perspectives of lexis,sentence and discourse.In order to present explicitation more comprehensively,this thesis formulates a new analytical framework featuring four dimensions including semantics,syntax,stylistics and pragmatics.By analyzing examples collected from the translation of the book,this thesis identifies four explicitations in the English-Chinese translation of historical texts.Semantic explicitation deals with the semantic disproportion between Chinese and English,and removes semantic ambiguity in the target text.Syntactic explicitation could help avoid terrible syntax,thus improving the readability.Stylistic explicitation can make the target text more logical and restore the language style and expressive effects of the source text as much as possible.Pragmatic explicitation provides target readers with necessary background knowledge so as to bridge the gap between different cultures.Based on the typology,this thesis summarizes eleven translation techniques such as generalization of figurative expressions,restructuring,and addition of paratexts,which aim to provide some possible solutions to delivering four explicitations.Given that this case study focuses on a single text type and is subject to limited sampling materials,the conclusion of this thesis entails further verification.This author sincerely hopes that this thesis could help attract more scholars’ attention and further research on this topic.