Explicitation In English-Chinese Translation Of Philosophical Text

The arguments in philosophical texts are clear and powerful.The logic is rigorous.A lot of philosophical terms,opinions of famous philosophers,historical,cultural and social knowledge of the West are involved.There are also many complex and compound sentences,and long sentences.Among all the difficulties in translating philosophical texts,presenting the information clearly is vital and worth researching.This report discusses the translation of the introduction and the first half of chapter one of the philosophical text Thought under Threat:On Superstition,Spite,and Stupidity.The selected part provides an overview of the threats and challenges faced by people’s thinking nowadays and the cause of stupidity.To deal with the ellipses of words and phrases,the frequent use of substitutions,philosophical terms,long and difficult sentences,and Western cultural backgrounds,the translator should adopt explicitation strategies so that the information of the source text can be conveyed explicitly to the readers.This report explores the application of explicitation strategy in the translation of philosophical texts from English to Chinese.The author adopts Klaudy’s typology of explicitation,namely,obligatory explicitation,optional explicitation,and pragmatic explicitation,as the analytical framework of this report to identify and categorize the explicitation strategies in the translation,since it provided a practical framework for analyzing explicitation in the translation process from the perspectives of grammatical level,textual level,and cultural level,allowing for a more logical and systematic analysis of the translation strategies.She lists eight explicitation strategies,which include adding grammatical components,choosing more specific expressions,elucidating substitutions,adding category words,restructuring sentences,adding connectives,adding in-text notes,and adding footnotes,according to the translation process and case studies.