EXPLICITATION AS A MAJOR UNIVERSAL IN TRANSLATION OF LITERARY TEXT

Abstract

. The article deals with such translation universal as explicitation and its use in prose translation. The investigation of translation universals was caused by the research of linguistic universals in the twentieth century. The fundamentals of the theory of translation universals were laid out by such scientists as Gedeon Toury, Mona Baker, Sara Laviosa and more recently by Andrew Chesterman. Translation universals are defined as linguistic phenomena that typically charactеrize translations rather than original texts, and do not emerge in the translated text as the result of interference between the different language systems. The majority of scholars single out such translation universals: 1. lexical simplification; 2. explicitation; 3. adaptation; 4. equalizing. Besides, some scientists include interference suggested by G. Toury. One of the major universals, explicitation, is characterized as a translation technique for making implicit information of the source text explicit and clear to the reader of the target text. Explicitation should be distinguished from specification and explication as it is a wider term. Our investigation included the analysis of this technique in 10 short stories of the flash fiction and microfiction types and two novels of the contemporary writers Gary Braver and Nicholas Sparks. On the basis of the above definition, we suggest the division of this technique into two types: explicitation in rendering implicit allusions and explicitation in translating different means of stylistic device of foregrounding, in particular extended metaphor. Rendering implicit allusions requires certain redundancy in the target text : inserting explication of proper names and/or using footnotes. Translating the means of foregrounding, especially stylistic convergence and extended metaphor, is a more complex and challenging