Klaudy’s Explicitation Typology

Klaudy (1998) classified explicitation into four sub-categories, namely: Obligatory Explicitation; Optional Explicitation; Pragmatic Explicitation; Translation-inherent Explicitation.

Obligatory Explicitation:

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Motivated by linguistic differences between the source and target languages that necessitate the addition of more information in the target language.

E.g. "Brother" in English, in most circumstances, can only be translated into "弟弟"

(younger brother) or "哥哥" (older brother).

The first example illustrates how one must specify if a "brother" is younger or older if translated into Chinese from English. While some might argue that "兄弟" (brothers) could technically fit the bill, it is a word that carries slightly different connotations and often only applicable in other contexts, such as in the case of references to fraternal groups.

E.g. "To be" in English can only be translated into either "ser" or "estar" in Portuguese (also applicable to Spanish). For instance “I am Brazilian” when translated into Portuguese is

“Eu sou brasileiro”, in which the verb “ser” is used instead of “estar”.

The second example serves as an example of how grammatical differences between two languages can result in more explicitation in the target language. When translating "To be" from English into Spanish or Portuguese, a translator must identify the correct verb form, which is either "ser" (for more intrinsic, permanent characteristics) or "estar" (for conditions and states of a more temporal nature).

Optional Explicitation:

Motivated by stylistic differences between two languages

E.g. "我國" (our country) is usually not directly translated, instead the name of the country in question is used.

If the country in question is Taiwan, "我國的政策" (our country) may be translated as

"Taiwan's policy".

11 Pragmatic Explicitation:

Motivated by differences in common knowledge possessed by the source language and target language readers.

E.g. "珠三角" in Chinese is usually translated as Pearl River Delta.

E.g. "The Esplanade"

"Pearl River Delta" is the preferred choice when writing in English, which could be considered a form of pragmatic explicitation since the most common Chinese term for it, "珠三 角", does not contain the word "river". "River" is added, understandably as a means of helping English readers to immediately identify the term as a river-based geographical term. On the other hand, most Chinese readers would already have knowledge of this since the term is used often by the Chinese media.

Translation-inherent Explicitation:

In Becher’s paper on explicitation, he has noted that, while Klaudy had provided plenty of examples of obligatory, optional and pragmatic explicitation, she did not provide any for translation-inherent explicitations, perhaps due to the difficulties of finding proper examples, which was a problem that Becher also encountered (Becher, 2011, p.23). This illustrates the difficulty of defining and finding supporting evidence for the existence of translation-inherent explicitations, hence a lot more explicitation-related research has to be conducted before any conclusive findings can be made.

12 2.3.1 Explicitation Hypothesis

With the emergence of the explicitation concept came Blum-Kulka's Explicitation Hypothesis. The Explicitation Hypothesis postulates an increased level of cohesive explicitness in the target text, as was discovered by Blum-Kulka (1986) when a discourse analysis was carried out on translations from English to French. Blum-Kulka goes further to claim that explicitation could be a universal translation strategy not limited to any language pairs, and in her own words:

The process of interpretations performed by the translator on the source text might lead to a TL [target language] text which is more redundant than the source text. This

redundancy can be expressed by a rise in the level of cohesive explicitness in the TL text.

This argument may be stated as “the explicitation hypothesis”, which postulates an observed cohesive explicitness from SL [source language] to TL texts regardless of the increase traceable to differences between the two linguistic and textual systems involved.

It follows that explicitation is viewed here as inherent in the process of translation.

(Blum-Kulka 2001: 300; qtd. in Pym 2005. p.2)

In other words, Blum-Kulka is hypothesising that additional explicitation in translations is a universal phenomenon, a translational universal, and this applies regardless of language pair and cultural differences, hence the concept of a translation-inherent form of explicitation, which Kulka would later expand on with her typology for explicitation.

13 2.3.2 CTS Studies on Explicitation

Given the strength and versatility of CTS, there have been many CTS-based studies on explicitation (Øverås, 1998; Olohan and Baker, 2000, 2001; Chen, 2004, 2007; Cai, 2007; Kuo, 2010; Duan, 2010; Li, 2014). Of these, I covered the ones I believe to be most relevant to this study.

Øverås (1998) tested Blum-Kulka’s Explicitation Hypothesis by analysing a corpus consisting of English-to-Norwegian and Norwegian-to-English literary translations. All instances of explicitations and implicitations occurring in these sentences were manually identified by Øverås, with those of an obligatory nature being excluded from the study. 347 instances of explicitation and 149 instances of implicitation were discovered within the English-Norwegian sub-corpus, while 248 instances of explicitation and 76 instances of implicitation were

discovered within the Norwegian-English sub-corpus. This led Øverås to conclude that the Explicitation Hypothesis has been confirmed in her study, and she also pointed out that the explicitation tendency was stronger in English-Norwegian translations than in Norwegian-to-English translations.

Olohan and Baker (2000) looked at the optional use of the cohesive marker “that” being used in combination with the reporting verbs “say” and “tell” in translated and non-translated English texts. In this study, Olohan and Baker utilised the Translational English Corpus (TEC) and a comparable sample from the British National Corpus (BNC). Details on the exact

composition of source languages were not specified in the study and the two corpora contained approximately 3.5 million words. Their studied revealed a higher volume of “that+verb” usage in translated English as opposed to non-translated English, which led them to propose that there were indeed “subliminal processes of explicitation in translation”.

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Chen (2004, 2007) carried out studies on the use of connectives in English source texts, their corresponding Chinese translations, and comparable Chinese texts. Constructed by Chen himself, the English-Chinese Parallel Corpus (ECPC) contained the 2.5 million words that make up the source texts and translations used in his studies. Each English source text was

accompanied by two Chinese translations, one translated by a Taiwanese (R.O.C) publisher and the other translated by a Chinese (P.R.C) publisher. For his reference Chinese corpus, Chen drew from the Sinica Corpus. The results of his studies indicated that, compared to non-translated texts, there is a greater tendency for connectives to be used in translated Chinese texts.

Cai’s (2007) study was one which sought to determine the characteristics and existence of English translations of journalistic texts. Made up of a sub-corpus of Chinese-to-English journalistic texts and another sub-corpus of non-translated journalistic texts, the corpus itself came close to 550,000 words. In the study, she scrutinised different variations of

explicitation, including the use of "that" with reporting verbs (much like Olohan and Baker), connectives and transitional words and phrases. The results of the study indicated that explicitation occurred with a higher frequency in the translated texts, thus leading to her conclusion that the "explicitation feature indeed exists in Chinese-to-English translations".

Cai also added a qualitative component to her study with the implementation of a survey.

The results from the survey, in which 33 native English speakers partook, indicated that readers did indeed feel that explicitation in translated texts facilitated comprehensibility.

Li's (2014) study utilised an English-Chinese parallel corpus consisting of roughly 260,000 words to examine explicitation patterns. The parallel corpus (termed by Li as the Parallel Corpus of Scientific American) was made up of a sub-corpora of non-translated English

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texts from the Scientific American and a sub-corpora of translated Chinese texts from the same magazine. The research findings from this study showed that there were various types of explicitation patterns in the PCSA, which helped support the validity of the Explicitation Hypothesis in the context of English-to-Chinese translations of popular science texts.

Although the literature that we have covered seems to indicate a wealth of evidence in support of the Explicitation Hypothesis, we should nevertheless remain cautious. Most of these studies are focused on specific types of texts such as journalistic or scientific texts, which means that there is still room for more exploration with regard to the explicitation phenomenon. Since few studies out there have examined explicitation specifically in the field of legal translation, this is an area worth more scrutiny should we desire to expand the scope of explicitation studies.

2.4 Pym's Risk Management Theory

Pym (2005) proposed a theory and framework of risk management as a possible

explanation for the occurrence of explicitation during the process of translation. Pym’s position is that translators face the risk of “undesirable outcomes” that often manifest in the form of soured relationship with the people they work with and perhaps events such as the loss of paid work. In response to this, translators may be inclined to err on the side of caution and pick an explicitation-oriented translation strategy to avoid such risks.

This is further substantiated by Pym’s (2000) opinion that translation can be seen as an act of cooperation, in which mutual benefits are sought by the parties involved. Given that a translator is almost always a cross-cultural communicator, it is reasonable to assume that he or she would want to avoid misunderstandings arising from the lack of information in the translated message. Suppose the communicating party is seeking to communicate its message with clarity,

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the party receiving the message wants to understand said message fully, and the translator wants to be recognised as one who is competent in his or her roles; in this situation, it is completely understandable if the translator chooses to an explicitation-oriented strategy since this would maximise the probability that all these “benefits” can be achieved.

From a psychological perspective, Pym, channelling the position of Chesterman (2004), is of the opinion that translators put themselves in the shoes of a reader and view their own translations from a reader’s perspectives. Since a translator is always the first reader of his or her own translation, much like an explorer cutting a path through an uncharted piece of territory, he or she would be inclined to place down “markers” that serve to provide clearer information on the path, and thus make the reading experience a smoother one for readers.

It is also interesting to note that Pym also cautioned against proclaiming that explicitation is a translation universal, believing that other factors also play a part in influencing translation strategies.

All these points are very applicable to the translation of legal judgments, as we know that any mistakes in the translations of such texts are corrected promptly and require a separate corrigendum notice to be issued. Clearly, the Hong Kong Judiciary takes such incidents very seriously. While the majority of these corrigendum mistakes tend to be factual mistakes (e.g.

2012 written as 2013 in the translation) as opposed to grammatical errors, disagreements over the tone of a message or the lack of emphasis on certain aspects of a sentence that the vetting party believed to be necessary, it remains likely that translators are faced with a high degree of stress over the possibility and consequences of making mistakes. Under such circumstances, it is not a far stretch to imagine that a translator would take all precautions to ensure that all information

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within the source text is represented clearly and “beyond the shadow of any reasonable doubt” in the target text. Moreover, the translator may consider the position of his or her readers, who would most likely be people involved in the legal field, such as judges, lawyers, law school students and other legal professionals. Since these people are probably not reading these

judgments for enjoyment, a translator may prioritise the clarity of information over other factors that may influence his or her translation strategy.

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Chapter 3 Methodology

In this paper, we are studying various forms of explicitation by building a comparable corpus and using corpus processing tools to analyse it. The aim of this chapter is to explain, in a clear and easily understandable manner, the thought process and rationale behind the way this study was structured, as well as the resources that went into it. For methodology, we will cover:

corpus selection; corpus design; typology and keyword search criteria; and corpus processing and concordance tools.

3.1 Corpus Selection

Corpora come in many forms, and it is only through careful selection that we can find the ideal corpus to suit a specific study. Much has already been written about the different types of corpora which exist out there and how we should categorise them, some of which are touched on briefly in the paper. Baker (1995) has said that there can be many ways to categorise corpora depending on the characteristics of the texts being used, this includes distinguishing between:

general language and restricted domain texts; written and spoken language; typicality in terms of ranges of sources and genres; geographical limit or scope; monolingual, bilingual or multilingual corpora.

Another commonly cited typology for corpora is Laviosa's (2002) four level classification system and typology for corpora used in translation studies, which cover aspects such as time span, register, presence of specialised language, number of languages and mediums of

communication. This allows for highly detailed profiles to be drawn up for any corpus, which

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will therefore facilitate future comparisons between the corpora used in various studies. The specific details on the four levels are as follows:

Level 1 Coverage:

Full texts (unabridged texts); Samples (Parts of texts selected based on a set of criteria);

Mixed (full and sample); Monitor (full texts that are reviewed and updated regularly) Time Span:

Synchronic (texts created within a relatively limited period of time); Diachronic (texts created over a relatively long period of time)

Register:

General (texts written in non-specialised language, e.g. general news articles;

Terminological (texts written in specialised language, e.g. legal statutes, medical research papers) Number of languages:

Monolingual (texts made up of only one language); Bilingual (texts made up of two languages; Multilingual (texts made up of more than two languages)

Language:

English, Chinese, Japanese, etc.

Mediums of communication:

Written (texts written primarily to be read, e.g. newspaper articles); Spoken (texts transcribed from speech or texts written primarily to be spoken, e.g. collection of transcribed political speeches, film scripts); Mixed (written + spoken)

Level 2

20 Monolingual Corpus:

Single (all texts in one language only); Comparable (one translational monolingual sub-corpus and one non-translational monolingual sub-sub-corpus, both of which should be constructed based on the same principles, e.g. one sub-corpus consisting of English texts and one sub-corpus consisting of Chinese-to-English texts, both of which should be from the same or similar genres) Bilingual Corpus:

Parallel (texts in one language and their translations in another language. E.g. English texts and their English-to-Chinese translations); Comparable (two sets of texts in two different languages, texts should be from the same or similar genres, e.g. English texts and Chinese texts) Multilingual Corpus:

Parallel (texts in a range of different languages and their translations in other languages);

Comparable (texts in a range of different languages) Level 3

Single Corpus:

Translational (translated texts in one language, e.g. corpus consisting of English-to-Chinese texts); Non- translational (original texts in one language, e.g. corpus consisting of Chinese texts)

Bilingual Parallel Corpus:

Mono-directional (one or more texts in one language and their translations in another language); Bi-directional (one or more texts in language A and their translations in another language + one or more texts in language B and their translations in language A)

Multilingual Parallel Corpus:

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Mono-Source-Language (one or more texts in one language and their translations in more than one other language, e.g. English texts and their translations in Chinese and Japanese); Bi-Source-Language (one or more texts in two language and their translations in two other

languages, e.g. English and Chinese texts and their translations in Japanese and Korean); Multi-Source-Language (one or more texts in more than two language and their translations in more than two other languages.)

Level 4

Translation Corpus:

Mono-Source-Language (texts translated from a single language, e.g. a set of texts translated from English); Bi-Source-Language (texts translated from two languages, e.g. a set of texts translated from English and Chinese); Multi-Source-Language (texts translated from more than two languages, e.g. a set of texts from translated from English, Chinese and Japanese)

3.2 Breakdown of Corpus Characteristics for this Study

Extracted from the Hong Kong Judiciary's online reference system, the corpus will primarily be monolingual and comparable, making it suitable for the study of explicitation. The judgments which make up the corpus can be found under the Legal Reference System

(http://legalref.judiciary.gov.hk/lrs/common/ju/judgment.jsp) of the Hong Kong Judiciary's website (http://www.judiciary.gov.hk/en/index/). Available in the Legal Reference System are judgments written in Chinese and English, as well as judgments translated from Chinese into English. For judgments that were translated, both the source text Chinese and target text English

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are available for download. Although judgments translated from English into Chinese should theoretically be available on the website, none were found there.

The corpus for this study was created from one translational sub-corpus (Chinese-to-English) and one non-translational sub-corpus ((Chinese-to-English). The translational corpus consists of 50 judgments written in English (173,910 English words) and the non-translational corpus is made up of 60 judgments translated from Chinese into English (177,583 English words). All of these judgments are judgments from Hong Kong's Court of Appeal of the High Court. To be more specific, these judgments are in fact reasons for judgments. A reason for judgment is the

document which provides an explanation on why a particular court judgment was made. This is in contrast to an actual judgment, which would be much shorter since it is the official legal order issued by the court regarding the rights and liabilities of parties in a legal action or proceeding.

But for the purpose of this study, these reasons for judgments shall be referred to as judgments for simplicity's sake.

The following table outlines the basic profile of my corpus based primarily on Laviosa's four level typology.

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Table 1 - Profile of corpus used in this study Judgments written in Chinese (Traditional),

translated to English

Judgments written in English

177,583 words/tokens 173,910 words/tokens

Level 1:

Full Text; Synchronic; Terminological*; Monolingual (English); Written

Level 2:

Monolingual Comparable; Non-translational (English) + Translational (Chinese-to-English)

Level 3: Single Non-translational (English) + Single Translational (Chinese-to-English)

Level 4: Partial Mono-Source-Language (applicable to the translational sub-corpus)

Level 1 Characteristics of Corpus Coverage:

Although the texts used in this corpus do not represent the entirety of what is available on Hong Kong Judiciary website, each individual judgment contains fully complete, unabridged content that can stand alone on its own, hence I have classified the corpus as a full-text type corpus.

Time span:

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When trying to decide if a corpus is synchronic or diachronic, it can be difficult to determine what exactly a “long span of time” is. With respect to judgments made in the Hong Kong legal system, I would consider the period after the handover of Hong Kong (control over Hong Kong and its territory was transferred by the United Kingdom back to China (represented by the People's Republic of China) in 1997) to be the starting period since Hong Kong's existing legal system essentially began at that point. With this in mind, the corpus is largely synchronic since the judgments I have selected consist mostly of judgments published only within the last five years.

Size:

These two sub-corpora, one translational and the other non-translational, are each made

These two sub-corpora, one translational and the other non-translational, are each made