A Study On The Explicitation In John Minford’s English Version Of Liao Zhai Zhi Yi From The Perspective Of Cognitive Construal Theory

Although John Minford’s translation of Liao Zhai Zhi Yi is popular among English readers,only a few studies have been conducted on his version.Explicitation is one of the translation universals,and its research has mainly focused on translation strategies and linguistic devices,while its cognitive process is underexplored.Therefore,this study applies construal theory to analyze the phenomenon of explicitation in Minford’s version,trying to provide new insights into its definition,classification,manifestation,cognitive operation,and motivation.This study regards explicitation as a cognitive change that occurs in the translation through various cognitive operations,which can increase the degree of explicitness of the implicit and contextualized information in the original text.Based on Langacker’s construal theory(2008),this study selects the three dimensions of specificity,focusing,and prominence to establish a construal model for the cognitive operations of explicitation,and proposes the classification of explicitation: detail-specified explicitation,domain-foregrounded explicitation,and element-profiled explicitation.After the analysis and discussion of Minford’s translation of Liaozhai,it can be found that detail-specified explicitation is achieved by increasing the degree of detail,and it is manifested mainly by adding objective,encyclopedic background information independent of the content of the story,such as historical figures,places,and culture-loaded words.Domain-foregrounded explicitation is realized by adjusting the domain in the background of the original text to the foreground in the translation,which is shown by the manifestations of foregrounding the target and underlying domains in rhetorical expressions such as metaphors and allusions.Element-profiled explicitation is realized by altering the focus and range of prominence from the base to profile,whose manifestations are profiling the textual relation of the titles,the coherence of the plots,the characteristic of supernatural characters,and the accuracy of actions based on the content of the story.In addition,the motivation of detail-specified explicitation is to increase the authenticity of the stories;domain-foregrounded explicitation is motivated to provide a direct channel for English readers to understand the metaphors and allusions in the original texts;the motivation of element-profiled explicitation is to highlight the narrative features of the translated stories.In general,all three types of explicitation are oriented to increase the readability of the translated texts and attract English readers’ interest.Within the framework of construal theory,the descriptive and interpretative analysis of explicitation in Minford’s version through construal theory makes it possible to construct a construal model of explicitation in the English translation of classical Chinese short stories,which not only enriches the research of Minford’s translation of Liaozhai but also provides a cognitive perspective for the research of explicitation.