A Corpus-based Study Of Explicitation In English Translations Of Chinese Fiction

Explicitation has been seeing an extensive attention since the initial scholars Vinay and Darbelnet proposed it as one of various translation strategies in 1958. But afterwards, as opinions vary, each scholar sticks to his argument about its definition, methodology and motivations, which takes on an air of prosperity in the explicitation research field. In the 1990s, the rapid growth and boom of corpus linguistics enables the efficient means by which descriptive translators spare every effort to seek general norms in translations. This burgeoning marginal discipline makes use of a huge quantity of authentic original texts as well as translational texts as electronic materials, so that both the translating process and the translation product could be made a thorough exploration on the basis of an empirical study. This kind of study is known as the Corpus-based Translation Studies (CTS). Mona Baker, one of the representatives of this field, first postulates that verifying explicitation by means of corpus as a facilitating route has its great implication and regards explicitation as one of various translation universals.In recent years, the leading scholar having been systematically studying explicitation is supposed to be Huang Libo, who divides its standpoints into two types, intra-language explicitation and inter-language explicitation. In 2007, he published an influential work entitled A C-E/E-C Parallel Corpora Based Study of Translation Universals, in which he investigates conjunctions and subjects of personal pronouns in C-E/E-C translations by a methodology combining both parallel corpus and comparable corpus, under the premise of linguistic formalization degree, and then assumes a dialectical relation existing between the explicitation degree and translation directions or textual genres. The composite model not only sheds a great deal of light on the characteristics of translational texts, when regarded as a product, in comparison with its native language, but also probes into the regular handling rules of translators in their translation process, deeming the translating activity as a crucial factor against translation universals. Therefore, this kind of model certainly provides the explicitation study with a more comprehensive perspective, which is definitely to become an irresistible trend in the field of explicitation study from then on.Adding logical conjunctions can be usually realized as a major strategy at the lexical and syntactic level. In terms of this, scholars at home and abroad air their views in the term of explicitation motivation. Echoing previous works, Hu Xianyao and Zeng Jia generalize all the factors in both intra-language and inter-language perspectives, and assert that some optional factors including mother tongue of translators or social factors, in addition to obligatory language systematic factors, should all be considered.With the help of a self-built Chinese-English parallel corpus, this thesis investigates explicitation which has been realized by three types of conjunctions (conditional, adversative and causal conjunctions) in English translation texts by both native translators and non-native translators. The quantitative results show that a) conjunctions have a noticeable tendency of inter-language explicitation in both sub-corpora where translations by English native translators are significantly more apparent; b) conjunctions have an unnoticeable tendency of intra-language explicitation in both sub-corpora. The qualitative findings reveal that a) it is reasonable to ascribe inter-language explicitation to both obligatory language systematic differences and optional factors including mother tongue of translators and social factors; b) intra-language explicitation may be caused by "source language shining through".