| Explicitation,a phenomenon commonly found in all forms of translation,refers to the treatment made by the translator that clarifies implicit or underlying messages in the source text,with the aim of enhancing the readability of the target text;however,it can also result in an increase in the length and redundancy of the target text.This concept was proposed in 1958 and later recognized as a translation universal,which has received much academic attention.In recent years,with the vigorous development of the film and television industry and the rise of research on audiovisual translation,explicitation has been the subject of an increasing amount of scholarly inquiry in this field.The material chosen for this report is the subtitles of the 2022 film Ambulance translated by the author,which feature a considerable number of implicit messages,culturally loaded words,and informal expressions.Given the spatial and temporal restrictions of subtitling,the difficulty of this translation project lies in maintaining the simplicity and readability of the subtitles while also delivering implicit messages and reproducing the original flavor of the film.Accordingly,the subtitler made extensive use of explicitation in this translation project and sought to keep the balance between explicitness and concision.This report reviewed previous research on explicitation and audiovisual translation,made some adjustments to Klaudy’s and Perego’s category of explicitation,and proposed a revised classification framework on non-obligatory explicitations tailored for subtitling.Under this framework,the author identified 317 occurrences of explicitation in this project,among which language-based reformulation is the most frequently used.With the case study approach,this report selected and analyzed 24 examples of explicitation and explained the decision-making process and the effect of explicitations.It can be concluded that,explicitation can be employed in subtitling to improve readability,overcome cultural and linguistic barriers by explaining implicit messages or providing extra information.It is a tool for the subtitler to strike a balance between delivering necessary messages and keeping the concision of subtitles. |
