On why translations are longer than source texts.

Bartosz Kumanek

Introduction

The phenomena of explicitation and implicitation are often perceived as translation universals. The general tendency, usually described as asymmetry hypothesis, is that translated texts are more explicit than non-translated texts, because translators tend to make things more explicit and to include additional pieces of information, which did not appear in the original texts. What is more, translators are reluctant to do the opposite, namely to make meanings implicit and to omit information. This tendency occurs in different language pairs and does not depend on the direction of translation. What is more, it also appears in both simultaneous and consecutive interpretation.

The examples below present the eight most common types of explicitations, and also implicitations corresponding to these types. The source fragments come from texts published in American and British press, and target fragments come from the Polish weekly magazine Forum, which publishes translations of foreign press articles. This article was composed of the fragments from the article's author's MA thesis entitled The characteristics of explicitation and implicitation on the basis of translations of articles from American and British press published in the Polish weekly magazine Forum.

Qualitative results

1. Explicitation: meaning specification

   Meaning specification consists in filling out textual and situational ellipses, in which the information added is also inferrable from other parts of the text or from the world knowledge. The example below is the case of filling out textual ellipsis. The pronoun when? was translated as kiedy ta korekta nastąpi?, which provides additional information which might be recovered from the previous sentence:

   ST (13):	A correction in the US economy was bound to occur as soon as unrealistic expectations about profits, productivity and growth were falsified. The question had been when? The answer was 2001.
   TT:	Korekta w gospodarce amerykańskiej stała się nieuchronna od czasu, kiedy okazało się, jak bardzo nierealistyczne były prognozy dotyczące stóp zysku, produktywności i wzrostu. Jedynym pytaniem było: kiedy ta korekta nastąpi? Teraz znamy odpowiedź: w 2001 roku.
   BT:	A correction in the US economy was became unavoidable since it turned out, how unrealistic was the prognosis concerning profit rates, productivity and growth. The only question was: when will this correction take place? Now we know the answer: in the year 2001.

   Implicitation: meaning generalization

   The creation of a textual ellipsis in the process of translation occurs much less often than the process of filling out such ellipses:

   ST (1):	After a long-running storyline about landmines, listeners to New Home, New Life were found to be statistically less likely to be killed by a landmine than non-listeners.
   TT:	Słuchacze "Nowego domu, nowego życia", zaznajomieni z wątkiem dotyczącym min lądowych, byli znacznie mniej narażeni na utratę życia w wybuchu.
   BT:	The listeners of "New home, new life", who were familiar with the storyline concerning landmines, were much less exposed to loss of life in an explosion.

2. Explicitation: addition of modifiers and qualifiers

   This explicitation is usually optional in the process of translation. Added adverbs are often used to describe a particular manner of speaking, as if to specify how a particular verb should be construed. Such shifts in translation seem to appear when the translator uses explicitation in order to minimize the risk of an undesired interpretation (Pym 2005: 7).

   ST (17):	Short (...) tried to probe him indirectly. He once asked if he knew a certain obscure Mexican player.
   TT:	Short (...) usiłował dowiedzieć się tego pośrednio. Kiedyś zapytał go mimochodem, czy zna pewnego mało znanego meksykańskiego szachistę.
   BT:	Short (...) tried to learn about it indirectly. He once asked him casually, if he knew a certain obscure Mexican player.

   Implicitation: omission of modifiers and quantifiers

   In the example below, the omission of below in TT did not result in the loss of meaning, because this preposition was to a large degree redundant. It is obvious from the context that the person lives in a tall building, so the streets and sidewalks she saw from the window of her apartment had to be placed below:

   ST (18):	(...) when her skycraping home becomes a cloudscraper (...) And there are those days when the streets and sidewalks below are hidden by cloud, (...)
   TT:	(...) jej podniebne mieszkanie tonie w chmurach (...) Są też takie dni, gdy mimo że ulice i chodniki skrywa warstwa chmur, (...)

3. Explicitation: Shifts from referential to lexical cohesion

   Such shifts contain the cases when a pronoun in the ST is substituted with the word it referred to in the TT, usually a noun or a verb. In the example below, a noun was translated into a commentary phrase it referred to, even though this particular phrase does not appear in any part of the text:

   ST (12):	Poland now has 80,000 troops in operations around the world and plans to keep it that way.
   TT:	W różnych operacjach na świecie bierze obecnie udział 80 tys. polskich żołnierzy, a rząd zamierza w przyszłości utrzymać ten poziom zaangażowania.
   BT:	In different operations around the world take part 80,000 Polish troops and the government plans to keep this level of involvement in the future.

   Implicitation: shifts from lexical cohesion into referential cohesion

   Such process of implicitation takes place much less often and is usually associated with the intention on the side of the translator to avoid repetition. The example below presents substitution of a paraphrase with a pronoun:

   ST (8):	I was kind of a sissy at first, in a playground situation, and the kid who is scared is the one the bullies go after. I used to get beat up pretty badly.
   TT:	Początkowo na placu zabaw byłem trochę maminsynkiem, a wystraszony dzieciak zawsze najbardziej obrywa od podwórkowych sadystów. Tak było i ze mną.
   BT:	At first in the playground I was kind of a sissy, and the scared kid is the one the bullies always go after the most. That was also my case.

4. Explicitation: Lexical specification

   Lexical specification is the process of substituting a word with general meaning with a word with more specific meaning. The process of lexical specification often occurs in verbs related to the manner of speaking. The reason for this may be the stylistic differences between the languages – in this case Polish favours diversity of vocabulary, while in English the word say is more common and acceptable:

   ST (12):	"(...) We have trained the 8th Iraqi Division. Iraqis are getting back more and more of the control of the city and we find we are getting good intelligence," Mr Sikorski said.
   TT:	Wyszkoliliśmy 8 dywizję iracką. Irakijczycy odzyskują kontrolę nad miastem. Mamy dobre informacje wywiadowcze - chwali się minister Sikorski.
   BT:	We have trained 8th Iraqi Division. Iraqis are getting back the control of the city. We have good intelligence – boasts Minister Sikorski.

   Implicitation: lexical generalization

   Implicitation of this kind consists in substituting a word with specific meaning with a word with general meaning. In this case, some part of the meaning of the phrase was omitted in the translation process. In the ST, two terms appeared: RV – the American version used by the interviewee and [camper van] – its British equivalent (most probably added by the interviewer or the editor, due to the fact that the target audience of the newspaper this article appeared for was British). In the TT, only the word samochód was used, even though in Polish there is a direct equivalent for an RV – samochód kempingowy:

   ST (8):	At that point I took an RV, [camper van], up into the mountains and (...)
   TT:	Wsiadłem w samochód, pojechałem w góry i (...)
   BT:	I got in the car, went into the mountains and (...)

5. Explicitation: filling out elliptical constructions

   Some of the filled ellipses constituted a whole clause. It is illustrated by the example below, where the omitted clause had resultative function: the second part of the sentence is the result of the first part:

   ST (8):	There is something about the sea, I can't be away from it too long.
   TT:	Jest w morzu coś takiego, co sprawia, że nie mogę za długo być z dala od niego.
   BT:	There is something in the sea, that makes it that I can't be away from it too long.

   Implicitation: creation of elliptical constructions

   The implicitation of this type consists in creating the ellipses in the process of translation. This usually occurred when the repetition of a particular element in the ST might be perceived as redundant, and therefore the translator used structural ellipsis in order not to repeat one element twice:

   ST (12):	"It was a problem for many Polish people. We were not the victims and we were not the villains.
   TT:	Wielu Polaków ma ten problem. Nie byliśmy ani ofiarami, ani katami.
   BT:	Many Poles have this problem. We were neither the victims nor the villains.

6. Explicitation: Addition of connectives

   Explicitation of this kind is usually optional and stemmed from the wish of the translator to make the cohesive relations between the sentences clearer. In the sentence below the structural relation between the clauses is vague in the ST, because there is no connective word to indicate it. In consequence, this sentence might be difficult to comprehend without longer consideration. As for the TT, the word ale explicitly states what that relation between the clauses is:

   ST (8):	So we took off through the canals to France, I didn't want Nell to cross the Atlantic, too dangerous (...)
   TT:	Ruszyliśmy więc kanałami do Francji, ale nie chciałem, żeby Nell płynęła przez Atlantyk, to zbyt niebezpieczne.
   BT:	So we took off throught the canals to France, but I didn't want Nell to cross the Atlantic, it [is] too dangerous (...)

   Implicitation: omission of connectives

   There are very few examples of omitting connectives in the process of translation, because connectives are vital in enhancing the cohesive and structural relations of the text, and therefore in increasing the clarity of the text. Implicitation of this type can be illustrated by the example below, where the word both was omitted in the process of translation. However, this change did not distort the meaning of the text, because another connective was preserved, namely i, to indicate the relation between the two presented words:

   ST (11):	Benedict opposes secularism because it is both absolute and arbitrary.
   TT:	Benedykt sprzeciwia się sekularyzmowi, ponieważ jest on w swej istocie absolutny i arbitralny.

7. Explicitation: Disambiguation of metaphors

   In the example below, the translation of no-brainer into pytanie jest bezsensowne was an obligatory process, because there is no metaphorical phrase in Polish that could serve as an alternative. On the other hand, the translation of zealots into zagorzałych zwolenników is optional, because the translator had the possibility to use an alternative lexical item in TL - fanatycy:

   ST (3):	A complete no-brainer for the privatising zealots.
   TT:	Dla zagorzałych zwolenników prywatyzacji pytanie jest bezsensowne.
   BT:	For the staunch supporters of privatisation this question has no sense.

   Implicitation: creation of metaphors or replacement of similes with metaphors

   Sometimes the translator chose to translate a casual phrase into a metaphor in the TL. It usually happened in the cases when the metaphor was commonly recognizable by the TT readership. An additional effect in the following example is that the phrase in question is more emphasized in the TT than in the ST:

   ST (12):	On almost all the subjects most troubling London, Paris and Berlin (...)
   TT:	W niemal wszystkich kwestiach, jakie spędzają sen z powiek w Londynie, Paryżu i Berlinie (...)
   BT:	On almost all the subjects that give London, Paris and Berlin sleepless nights. (...)

8. Explicitation: distribution of the meaning of a ST unit over several units in the TT

   This type of explicitation stems from the fact that very often short, set phrases convey additional meaning, which in the process of translation is sometimes explained more clearly with the use of more lexical items. In the first example, the phrase but one was replaced with a long explanatory clause in brackets. The reason for this is that there is no direct equivalent of this phrase in the TL:

   ST (2):	Polls suggest too that the Senate, which Republicans have controlled for all but one of the past 12 years, is much closer to falling (...)
   TT:	Z sondaży wynika również, że Senat, w którym republikanie panowali praktycznie niepodzielnie przez ostatnie 12 lat (w tym czasie demokracie sprawowali nad nim kontrolę tylko przez rok), może także paść łupem (...)
   BT:	Polls suggest too that Senate, in which the Republicans controlled practically invariably for the last 12 years (at this time the Democrats controlled it only for a year), may fall (...)

   Implicitation: distribution of the meaning of several target text units over fewer units in the target text

   The following examples confirm the claim that also the phenomenon that is opposite to explicitation may facilitate the understanding of translated text. The cases presented below have a common feature – the Polish phrases are usually set phrases, which naturally carry more meaning than casual phrases. In the example below, the ST version contained some redundant words, which may be perceived as impediments in the understanding process. Therefore, the ST version was translated into a short, plain phrase in the TT:

   ST (15):	It's something to do with the way in which you come home to your computer after a four-hour break to find that (...)
   TT:	To tak, jakbyś wrócił do domu po czterogodzinnej nieobecności i dostał wiadomość, że (...)
   BT:	It's as if you came back home after a four-hour absence and got the message, that (...)

Quantitative results

For 20005 words of the source text, there were 1686 cases of explicitation, what amounts to one explicitation per every 12 words. Only 599 implicitations occurred, what amounts to one implicitation per every 33 words. On the whole, 2285 shifts occurred, out of which 74% were explicitative and 26% - implicitative. These findings are in line with the asymmetry hypothesis presented by Klaudy. As to what the reason for this tendency may be in the case of this corpus of data, the wish of the translator to facilitate the understanding of the TTs might be suggested. In informative texts, such as presented in this article, a translator is usually given a free hand with regards to introducing minor changes in the TT - all in all, the readers of the TTs will not expect the text to be faithful to the original, but rather easy to read and understand.

Of all the explicitations, 71% were optional and 29% - obligatory. Optional explicitative shifts usually stem from stylistic reasons – they are used when the translator chooses the more explicit version over a less explicit one, usually in order to stay on the safe side and avoid misunderstanding of the TT. The fact that the large majority of the shifts were optional indicates that explicitation is not usually necessitated by the differences between languages.

61% of explicitations were of the quantitative type, and 39% were qualitative. These results may serve as an explanation for the tendency that translated texts are usually longer than non-translated texts. In case of implicitations, the difference was not so significant – 53% of shifts were quantitative and 47% - qualitative. It seems that translators seem to be prone to adding rather than omitting lexical units, what invariably causes higher explicitness of the TT.

Conclusions

This article was inspired by two quotations from an article by Anthony Pym. One of them presented a critical opinion on explicitation, by stating that it is something that happens when translators know no better (Mounin 1963 after Pym 2005: 8). Pym, in turn, disagreed with this statement by saing that if translators do it, it is probably because they are translators, not necessarily because they are stupid (unless, of course, all translators are stupid) (Pym 2005: 8). This difference of opinions between two eminent linguists and researchers suggests that explicitation is a matter of a heated debate – some consider it to be the gravest problem of translation, and the cause of shapeless translated texts – while others perceive it as a useful and necessary tool in the process of facilitating the presentation of the source text to a target readership.

In general terms, I concur with the latter group. Explicitation needs to take place in translation, because languages are not based on logical or predictable foundations and therefore they usually use different means of presenting the sense of the words. It occurs due to non-equivalence, which takes place, for example, because a cultural association is understandable to one language community, but not to the other, or a certain grammatical construction is characteristic of one language, but not of another. Such discrepancies between two language systems simply necessitate the use of different tools and techniques in translation, and explicitation is one of the crucial ones.

Bibliography

Mounin, G. (1963) Les Problèmes théoriques de la traduction. Paris: Gallimard. Olohan, Maeve and Mona Baker (2000) "Reporting that in translated English: Evidence for subconscious processes of explicitation?'. Across Languages and Cultures 1(2).
Pym, A (2004) 'Text and risk in translation' in New Tendencies in Translation Studies, ed. K. Aijmer and C. Alvstad. Göteborg: Göteborg University.
Pym, A. (2005) 'Explaning Explicitation' in: Károly, K. & Fóris, Á. (eds.) New Trends in Translation Studies. In Honour of Kinga Klaudy. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.

Sources

Adams, T. (2006) 'Zen and the art of Robert Pirsig' in: The Observer, 19.11.2006, ('Zen dla początkujących': Forum (2006), no. 50, p. 38). (ST 8)
Baker, G. (2006) 'Listen: Democrats are sharpening their knives' in: The Times, 6.11.2006, ('Demokraci ostrzą noże' Forum 2006, no. 45, p. 8). (ST 2)
Blond, P. & Pabst, A. (2006) 'Benedict's post-secular vision' in: International Herald Tribune, 29.11.2006, ('Ćwiczenia z cierpliwości' in: Forum (2006), no. 49, p. 4). (ST 11)
Brockes, E. (2001) 'A long way from Ambridge' in: The Guardian, 23.10.2001, ('Afgańscy Matysiakowie' Forum 2001, no. 48, p. 40. (ST 1)
Elliott, L. (2001) 'The free market tide has turned' in: The Guardian, 20.09.2001, ('Wolny rynek w odwrocie' Forum 2001, no. 42, p. 40). (ST 3)
Fukuyama, F (2001) 'The end of America's exceptionalism' in: Financial Times, 15.09.01, ('Stany znów Zjednoczone': Forum (2001), no. 41, p. 25). (ST 19)
Glancey, J. (2001) 'Reaching for the sky' in: The Guardian, 15.09.01, ('Granicą jest niebo': Forum (2001), no. 41, p. 44). (ST 18)
Hearst, D (2006) 'Not all truth leads to reconciliation in Poland' in: The Guardian, 07.11.2006, ('Łódź na fali': Forum (2006), no. 46, p. 4). (ST 12)
Morris, S. (2001) 'Lost genius of chess returns - or is it just a case of fool's mate?' in: The Guardian, 10.09.2001, ('Supermózg w sieci': Forum (2001), no. 41, p. 53). (ST 17)
Rosen, M. (2004) 'Kafka was right' in: The Guardian, 11.10.2004, ('Kafka online': Forum (2006), no. 50, p. 64). (ST 15)
Wolf, M. (2001) 'Time for action' in: Financial Times, 19.09.2001, ('Spirala niepewności': Forum (2001), no. 41, p. 36). (ST 13)