A Report On The E-C Translation From The Perspective Of Explicitation Theory

This report explores explicitation strategies employed in the process of the EnglishChinese translation of Invisible Empire:The Natural History of Viruses.The selected book,a popular science text,mainly introduces how viruses cause disease,how our understanding of viruses has changed over centuries,and how some viruses benefit humankind and the planet.The source text contains vague references,long sentences with many subordinate clauses and modifiers,implicit logical relations and culture-specific terms,posing challenges to translation.This report discusses five explicitation strategies for these translation difficulties based on specific examples,with Klaudy’s three types of explicitation(obligatory,optional and pragmatic explicitation)as the analytical framework.For obligatory explicitation,the author adopted strategies including the specification of references and restructuring of sentences.Specifying references can make the specific meaning of the references more explicit and avoid semantic ambiguity.Restructuring sentences can facilitate the translation of long and complex sentences to be more natural and fluent and conform to Chinese expressions.For optional explicitation,the strategy of adding connectives can reveal the implicit logical relations and improve the cohesion and coherence of the target text.For pragmatic explicitation,footnotes and in-text notes were added,which can provide background information and explain culture-specific terms,thus facilitating target readers’understanding.This report may enlighten others in the translation of popular science texts.When encountering the abovementioned translation difficulties,translators can adopt specific explicitation strategies to make the target text more explicit in terms of meaning,logic and cultural information,increasing the readability and acceptability of the translated text.