The Explicitation Strategies Of English-Chinese Literary Translation

Explicitation,as a common phenomenon in translation,was initially raised by Vinay and Darbelnet.It is a method of introducing into the target language details which are implicit in the source language,but which become clear from the context or the situation.Later on,scholars developed further researches through different approaches,such as corpus comparative analysis,and summed up explicitation strategies,which aim at expressing the implicate and abstract information and information difficult to understand due to different cultural background and writing styles in a more explicit way.Adopting these strategies may cause the translated text longer than the original,but it enables readers to understand the text better.The translation material used in this thesis is Lands Beyond the Sea,a novel written by Tamara Mckinley,an Australian writer.The novel describes the changes in Australians'life after their country became the British colony.The author has translated the prologue part and the eighth chapter to translate.The prologue part is an introduction of the aboriginal history in a literary writing style.Since life at that time is not familiar to us,there might be difficulties in understanding many culture and customs without explicitation,and thus affect readers' understanding of the whole book.The thesis adopted texual analysis and case study methods as research methods to discuss about the application of explicitation strategies used in historical-based literary translation.The explicitation strategies analyzed and concluded are:add annotations,specification,add conjunctions,add adverbs,expand condensed sentences,reorganize sentence structures,convert punctuation marks and imagery transformation.