Target-Text Explicitation Study Based On The Translators' Professional Levels

This dissertation applies the relative explicitation theory to conduct the experimental research on studying the explicitation tendency in target language in terms of the translators'professional levels. Explicitation is a technique of making what is implicit in the source text explicit in the target text, which involves addition of explanations, cohesive markers and specification of vague or obscure expressions. This always leads the target text to be more understandable, clearer in cohesive relations and unavoidably more redundant compared to the source text. The postulation and verification of"explicitation hypothesis"proves explicitation as one of the translation universals. The systematic classification of explicitation enriches the macro-research of the explicitation hypothesis. However, no one has ever conducted the experimental research from the micro-perspective to study the explicitation tendency in target language in terms of the translators'professional levels. Therefore, the author here attempts to make such a study with quantitative and qualitative analysis based on a case study.First, the author makes an overview of translation universals and the macro-research of explicitation to point out that micro-research of explicitation based on translators'professional levels has scarcely been conducted so far. In this way, the research purpose, approach and significance of this dissertation are presented.Then the relative explicitation theories are explored respectively to establish the theoretic basis of the following research. In the following, some tentative reflections on target-text explicitations based on the translators'professional levels are discussed, which triggers the need for scientific and systematic analysis in quantitative and qualitative way. Therefore the author scientifically and systematically explores explicitation tendency and its attributive factors through analyzing explicitations in target texts fulfilled by 30 subjects of non-professional, semi-professional and professional groups respectively.According to the research, the possible tendency is proved: the explicitation in target text declines as the translators'professional levels rise. This research is expected to help translators of different levels adjust their explicitation strategies to avoid the over translation in their further translating improvements and also to be contributive to the construction of translation teaching in which the different explicitation strategies will be focused and emphasized corresponding to translators in different professional levels.However, there still embrace some limitations in our research due to limited time and other realistic elements. Therefore the further and wider research is really needed to explore explicitations in target texts.