Explicitation In E-C Translation

Explicitation seems to be an inevitable phenomenon in translation process. It is also an important question because it touches on many fundamental questions of translation. For years many scholars commit themselves to the contrastive linguistics studies or the corpus-based investigation of some two languages, trying to prove the hypothesis that there is a universal existence of explicitation in all translation process. This thesis explains the basic reason why explicitation exists in all translation from the perspective of information theory. What's more, this study explores the function of explicitation on the target text (TT) and the evaluation of different explicitation strategies by different translators of the same source text (ST). The present paper is actually an all-round study of explicitation in translation.According to information theory, the formation of explicitaion in translation process is due to the addition of necessary redundancy in order to overcome the interference of all kinds of noise (mainly from the linguistic and cultural boundaries between different languages) and to alleviate the contradiction between communication load and channel capacity. The transmission of information will not restrict in certain language pairs, so the conclusion of the universal existence of explicitation will apply to all translation process. However, the addition of redundancy does not mean we can rewrite the ST; also we can not add or delete any information at will. Explicitation refers to the explicitness of implicit information in the ST with the introduction of precise semantic details into the TT. In spite of some addition of vocabularies, there is no conveyance of more information. However, the informativity is downgraded, with the purpose of producing something the readers in the target language (TL) will be able to understand and accept.Judging from the definition and formation of explicitation and the detailed explicitation strategies, the function of explicitation is to satisfy the target readers' expectations and to raise the acceptability of the TT. In this sense, explicitation is used as an important means of achieving acceptability. In spite of the different explicitation strategies by different translators, their ultimate purpose is the same: to convey the ST intention effectively. It also requires a higher acceptability of the TT. On the other hand, different translators may differ in their means and degrees of explicitation. The question of which one is better should also be evaluated based on the criterion of acceptability.For a further study, the thesis makes a comparative study of three Chinese versions of Vanity Fair, respectively by Yang Bi (1957), Jia Wenhao & Jia Wenyuan (2000) and Rong Rude (2007), in the hope of having a close look at which one best conveys the intention of the ST author and conforms to the TT readers' acceptability. Among the three versions, Yang Bi's version has always been appreciated as an excellent translation by Chinese readers. This thesis attempts to find whether Yang Bi's adoption of explicitation strategies has a positive effect on raising the acceptability of the TT.This paper will take Klaudy's clarification of explicitation as a general framework to have a study of the adoption of the detailed explicitaion strategies in three Chinese versions of Vanity Fair. It is found that the adoption of these explicitation strategies is not only necessary but also very useful in producing a well acceptable Chinese text. The study also shows that the popularity of Yang's version has a close relationship with her adoption of explicitation strategies.