The Application Of Explicitation Strategy In The Translation Of Social Science Texts

These years,a large number of foreign social science works were introduced into China through translation,which has advanced China’s academic development,enhanced Chinese people’s knowledge about western societies and culture,and also broadened their horizons.Humanism and the Death of God is written by American professor of philosophy Ronald E.Osborn.This book is based on social reality in today’s America,namely moral concerns caused by lack of belief,and criticizes the fraught implications of philosophical naturalism for humanistic values.Given the influence of the introduction of western naturalist theory on Chinese society,the writer thinks the Chinese translation of this book may trigger Chinese readers’refection on some social problems within China.The report adopts case analysis and takes the practice of translating Chapter 1 and part of Chapter 2 in Humanism and the Death of God as an example to discuss the application of explicitation strategy in social science translations.The writer hopes it can serve as a reference for later social science translation practice.Explicitation means the process of making explicit the implicit information according to the context or situation and clearly representing the original meaning.To achieve explicitness in the translation,the translator needs to have a thorough understanding of the source text and make explicit implicit information,which can impro ve the accuracy of social science translations by bridging the semantic gap and make sure the meaning is delivered clearly.Besides,according to explicitation,translators have to consider target readers’ acceptance,and translations should follow the stylistic preferences of the target language and get rid of clumsy and unnatural expressions,which can increase the readability of social science translations.The report introduces the background,purpose and significance of the translation task,gives a brief introduction to the translation process,and then concludes the lessons acquired in this translation practice.It analyzes the source text on the level of word,sentence and text,and then summarizes the difficulties the translator faces in the translation.At the word level,there are a large number of semantically condensed noun phrases and some adverbs which contain abundant meaning in the source text,which brings difficulties to the translation.Besides,social science texts are usually written on one certain subject,so there are plenty of terms in these texts.At the sentence level,there are abundant long and complex sentences in English social science texts,which constitute a huge challenge.At the text level,the text-building way of the source text is quite different from that of the Chinese text.Besides,as English social science texts belong to expositions,their translations should present the demonstration process clearly.Based on these difficulties,this report discusses the application of explicitation in translating social science texts and concludes findings as follows.At the word level,the techniques which can be used to achieve explicitness include addition,shift of part of speech and annotation.These techniques can enhance the accuracy of the translation,ensure the meaning is delivered in a clear way and decrease understanding difficulties of target readers.At the sentence level,the techniques applied to achieve explicitness include the addition of conjunctions and division.The application of these techniques can enhance readability and help produce a natural,smooth and clear translation.At the text level,shift of cohesive devices is used for the reestablishment of textual cohesion in the translation and to avoid ambiguity.Besides,the addition of conjunctions and prepositional phrases are used to display the logic of argumentation clearly.Lastly,the report concludes that explicitation strategy can greatly enhance the accuracy,readability and clearness of the translation,and make the translation more understandable as well.So it can be widely applied to guide E-C translation of social science texts.