becher_2011__02bec

8112019 becher_2011__02bec

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullbecher201102bec 123

Tis is a contribution from Target 231

copy 2011 John Benjamins Publishing Company

Tis electronic file may not be altered in any wayTe author(s) of this article isare permitted to use this PDF file to generate printed copies tobe used by way of offprints for their personal use onlyPermission is granted by the publishers to post this file on a closed server which is accessible

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8112019 becher_2011__02bec


When and why do translators addconnectives

A corpus-based study

Viktor BecherUniversitaumlt Hamburg

Additions and omissions of connectives (eg conjunctions connective adverbsetc) are a frequent phenomenon in translation Te present article reports on astudy whose aim was to elucidate translatorsrsquo motivations for performing suchshis focusing on the addition of connectives Te study was carried out on abidirectional parallel corpus containing translations of business texts betweenEnglish and German Connective additions and omissions were identi1047297edcounted and analyzed taking into account the surrounding linguistic context of

the shi in question possibly associated shis performed by the translator al-ternative translation options etc It was found that the vast majority of identi1047297edshis were attributable to previously established English-German contrasts interms of syntax lexis and communicative norms Te 1047297ndings suggest that it isunnecessary to assume that translators follow a ldquouniversal strategyrdquo of explicita-tion as it has oen been done in the literature (cf eg Blum-Kulkarsquos Explicita-tion Hypothesis)

Keywords explicitation implicitation connective addition omission shitranslation universals

983089 Introduction

Explicitation may be de1047297ned as the verbalization of information that the addresseemight be able to infer (eg from the preceding discourse) if it were not verbal-ized Explicitation may then be de1047297ned as an increase in explicitness in translation

(Becher 2010a 3) Te present article reports on a study that was carried out inorder to elucidate when and why translators explicitate Like previous studies thepresent study makes use of a bidirectional translation corpus in which additionsand omissions of connectives were identi1047297ed and counted But unlike previous

arget 983090983091983089 (983090983088983089983089) 983090983094ndash983092983095 983140983151983145 983089983088983089983088983095983093target983090983091983089983088983090bec983145983155983155983150 983088983097983090983092ndash983089983096983096983092 983141-983145983155983155983150 983089983093983094983097ndash983097983097983096983094 copy John Benjamins Publishing Company

8112019 becher_2011__02bec


When and why do translators add connectives 983090983095

studies the present study does not depart from Blum-Kulkarsquos Explicitation Hy-pothesis for reasons which will be detailed in the next section Previous studies on

explicitation have tended to be quick to ascribe seemingly unexplainable occur-rences of explicitation to an allegedly ldquouniversal strategy inherent in the process oflanguage mediationrdquo (Blum-Kulka 1986 21) Te present study is very different inthat it goes to great lengths to 1047297nd less esoteric reasons for when and why transla-tors explicitate taking into account general pragmatic considerations as well ascross-linguistic differences in syntax lexis and communicative norms A mainaim of the study was to show that we do not need the assumption of a translation-inherent process of explicitation in order to explain the ubiquity of explicitationin translation (Te study presented here is part of a much larger study in which I

analyzed some two thousand explicitating and implicitating shis including manyother kinds of shis than connective additions and omissions See Becher (2011a)Te results presented in this article may be seen as a representative subset of the1047297ndings of the larger project)

Te article is structured as follows Section 2 provides a brief and critical overview of previous research on explicitation In Section 3 details of the aim andmethodology of the study reported in this article will be given Sections 4 and 5feature the quantitative and qualitative results obtained from the study Finally

Section 6 and 7 round off the article by drawing some more general conclusions

983090 A very brief (and very critical) overview of previous research on

explicitation

Most studies on explicitation so far have been carried out under the umbrella ofShoshana Blum-Kulkarsquos famous Explicitation Hypothesis which postulates thatldquoexplicitation is a universal strategy inherent in the process of language mediationrdquo(1986 21) As Becher (2010a) has pointed out however this hypothesis suffersfrom three serious problems

First the Explicitation Hypothesis is unmotivated because it does not give areason why translations should be ldquoinherentlyrdquo more explicit than non-translatedtexts Why should the cognitive process underlying translation favor explicitation(and not implicitation for example) Or in other words which exact property ofthe translation process is responsible for the occurrence of translation-inherentexplicitation Te young 1047297eld of translation process research (see Goumlpferich and

Jaumlaumlskelaumlinen 2009 for a recent overview) might provide an answer to this questionone day But as long as the question remains unanswered mdash and it is not clearwhether there is an answer in the 1047297rst place mdash the Explicitation Hypothesis willremain a wild speculation that can hardly be called a scienti1047297c hypothesis

8112019 becher_2011__02bec


983090983096 Viktor Becher

Second the Explicitation Hypothesis is unparsimonious because it postulatesthe existence of a distinct language pair-independent type of explicitation Every-

body will agree that any given translation corpus will almost inevitably contain anumber of explicitations necessitated by differences between the source and targetlanguage (cf eg the examples of ldquoobligatory explicitationrdquo given by Klaudy 2008)Te concept of translation-inherent explicitation on the other hand is far fromobvious since it requires the assumption that there is something special about thetranslation process that causes an additional language pair-independent type of ex-plicitation But Occamrsquos Razor postulates that the number of assumptions in scienceshould be kept to a minimum Te Explicitation Hypothesis violates this principle

Tird and 1047297nally the Explicitation Hypothesis has been vaguely formulated

Te different formulations that Blum-Kulka provides contain a number of non-trivial terms that are in need of a de1047297nition For example Blum-Kulka states thatexplicitation is due to a ldquouniversal strategyrdquo (1986 21) where we have to ask whatkind of strategy she has in mind (conscious subconscious) and what ldquouniversalrdquois supposed to mean (followed by all translators followed by most translators)

Becher (2010a) concludes that these problems are so fundamental that the Ex-plicitation Hypothesis in its present form is unscienti1047297c and should not be inves-tigated anymore Despite the three problems (which are generally not addressed

in the literature) there have been quite a few studies on Blum-Kulkarsquos hypothesisand almost all of them claim to offer evidence in support of it Cf the followingquotations for example

ndash Oslashverarings (1998 16) ldquowithin the framework of the present analysis Blum-Kulkarsquosexplicitation hypothesis is con1047297rmedrdquo

ndash Paacutepai (2004 157) ldquoexplicitation is likely to be a universal feature of translatedtexts ie this set of data supports Blum-Kulkarsquos hypothesisrdquo

ndash Konšalovaacute (2007 31) ldquoTe results of this study are in line with the 1047297ndings

of other authors whose research offers data in support of the explicitationhypothesis [hellip]rdquo

But this conclusion has been wrong in all cases As Becher (2010a 2010b 2011a)has shown studies of the Explicitation Hypothesis such as the ones quoted abovesuffer from at least one of the following grave problems

1 Tey have failed to control for interfering factors eg language pair-speci1047297ctypes of explicitation source language interference effects of other putative

translation universals such as simpli1047297cation etc2 Tey have relied on an inadequate de1047297nition of explicitation or have providedno de1047297nition (If there is a de1047297nition at all it is not applied to corpus data in aconsistent way)

8112019 becher_2011__02bec



Te two problems have the same detrimental effect namely that shis are countedas explicitations that should really be treated as totally different phenomena Tis

counting of pseudo-explictations of course means that studies suffering from theabove problems can hardly be taken to support the Explicitation Hypothesis Ionly know of a single study on the Explicitation Hypothesis to which the abovetwo points of criticism do not apply Hansen-Schirra et al (2007) Out of severalphenomena investigated Hansen-Schirra and colleagues have identi1047297ed a singlephenomenon (a rise in lexical density from source to target text) that ldquomight bedue to the translation processrdquo (2007 261) It can hardly be a coincidence that themost methodologically stringent study has come to the most careful conclusion

In search of a better alternative to the Explicitation Hypothesis Becher (2010a)

has argued that future studies should depart from Kinga Klaudyrsquos (2009) Asym-metry Hypothesis instead In its formulation by Klaudy and Kaacuteroly (2005 14) thehypothesis postulates that

explicitations in the L1 rarr L2 direction are not always counterbalanced by im-plicitations in the L2 rarr L1 direction because translators mdash if they have a choice mdashprefer to use operations involving explicitation and oen fail to perform optionalimplicitation

We see that the Asymmetry Hypothesis does not assume the existence of a dis-tinct translation-inherent type of explicitation Rather it claims that among thelanguage pair-speci1047297c types of explicitation (cf Klaudyrsquos 2008 ldquoobligatoryrdquo ldquoop-tionalrdquo and ldquopragmaticrdquo types of explicitation) whose existence is uncontrover-sial explicitations tend to outnumber the corresponding implicitations1 Withrespect to the present studyrsquos object of investigation this means that connectivesshould tend to be added more frequently by translators than they are omitted mdash ahypothesis that can easily be tested on any given (bidirectional) translation cor-pus (Note that the Asymmetry Hypothesis is not only more parsimonious than

the Explicitation Hypothesis but may also be motivated with recourse to typi-cal properties of the communicative situation underlying translation mdash see Sec-tion 55 below)

983091 Study aim data method and object of investigation

Te present study has two aims As a primary objective it aims to test Klaudyrsquos

Asymmetry Hypothesis as it has been formulated above which in the contextof the present study amounts to the claim that the corpus under investigationcontains more additions than omissions of connectives As a secondary objec-tive the study aims to show that we do not need the assumption of a mysterious

8112019 becher_2011__02bec



translation-inherent type of explicitation in order to explain the addition of con-nectives in translation by pointing out when and why translators add connectives

Te study was carried out on a bidirectional English-German translation cor-pus consisting of the following four quantitatively comparable subcorpora

1 English texts (21222 words)2 Teir German translations (21808 words)3 German texts (21253 words)4 Teir English translations (24474 words)

Te texts contained in the corpus are business texts (mostly letters to sharehold-ers sampled from international companiesrsquo annual reports) that were published

between 1993 and 2002 Te corpus is quite small in terms of word count butsince the lexical material is distributed across quite a large number of texts (86short texts in total) mostly by different authorstranslators reliability should notbe a problem

urning to the studyrsquos object of investigation connectives are a good startingpoint for the investigation of explicitation in translation since they are regularlyadded and omitted by translators and their additionomission is generally easyto spot A connective is a conjunction sentence adverbial or particle that assigns

semantic roles to clauses sentences or larger stretches of discourse (eg CausendashEffect) (cf Pasch et al 2003 Bluumlhdorn 2008) It is important to see that this is afunctional (semantic) de1047297nition of the term connective It includes many differentkinds of expressions to which we intuitively ascribe a connective function (eg first hellipsecond however as a result ) Nevertheless the de1047297nition is precise and easyto operationalize

Finally let us turn to the method that has been pursued in the present studyIn a close reading of all source texts contained in the corpus connectives wereidenti1047297ed manually For each sentence containing a connective the correspond-ing target text sentence was searched carefully for possible translation equivalentstaking into account not only obvious lexical equivalents (eg and mdash und lsquoandrsquo)but also syntactic constructions word order patterns etc that might be taken asreproducing the semantic effect of the connective in question In this way im-plicitations (= connective omissions) were identi1047297ed Next using the same close-reading approach all target texts were manually scanned for connectives that haveno equivalent in the corresponding source text segment In this way explicitations(= connective additions) were identi1047297ed Te procedure was applied to both trans-

lation directions represented in the corpus

8112019 becher_2011__02bec



983092 Quantitative results

able 1 lists the frequency of connective additions and omissions in the two trans-lation directions represented in the corpus

Table 1 Frequency of connective additions and omissions in the corpus investigated

Eng rarr Ger Ger rarr Eng

additions 114 48

omissions 32 51

Te table allows us to make the following two principal observations

1 Te German target texts exhibit both more additions and fewer omissions ofconnectives than the English target texts Tis con1047297rms a trend that has beenobserved in a number of contrastive investigations on the language pair Eng-lish-German namely that speakers of German tend towards a greater degreeof cohesive explicitness than speakers of English (Becher 2009 Behrens 2005Fabricius-Hansen 2005 House 2004 Stein 1979) Given this cross-linguisticcontrast in communicative preferences the English-German translatorsrsquostronger tendency to explicitate weaker tendency to implicitate (as comparedto the German-English translators) is not surprising Certain well-knowngrammatical differences between English and German should contribute tothis tendency For example German does not have a construction equivalentto the English ing -adjunct so we should expect English-German translators tolsquocompensatersquo by adding connectives (see Section 53 below)

2 Explicitations are not counterbalanced by implicitations ie the quantitativeresults confirm the Asymmetry Hypothesis for this data set A null hypothesiswould postulate that what gets added in one translation direction should be

omitted in the other2 With respect to able 1 we should expect that since thereare 114 connective additions in the direction English-German there should beabout the same number of omissions in the direction German-English Tis isbecause if explicitation and implicitation were only due to the pragmatic andlexicogrammatical contrasts noted above German-English translators shouldthrow out connectives to exactly the same extent that English-German trans-lators put them in However this is not the case In the following we are goingto 1047297nd out why

8112019 becher_2011__02bec



983093 Qualitative Results

All additions and omissions of connectives were scrutinized in their respectivecontexts in order to 1047297nd out why translators have performed the shis in questionTe results suggest that we do not need the assumption of mysterious subcon-scious processes in the cognition of the translator (Olohan and Baker 2000) oras Blum-Kulka (1986 21) has put it a ldquouniversal strategy inherent in the processof language mediationrdquo in order to explain the frequent addition and omission ofconnectives in translation In total 1047297ve different triggers of explicitationimplicita-tion involving connectives were identi1047297ed In short translators addomit connec-tives in order to

1 Comply with the communicative norms of the target language community 2 Exploit speci1047297c features of the target language system3 Deal with speci1047297c restrictions of the target language system4 Avoid stylistically marked ways of expression5 Optimize the cohesion of the target text

In the following I am going to present examples illustrating these 1047297ve explicita-tionimplicitation triggers Due to lack of space I am only going to present exam-

ples showing the addition of connectives Note that the same principles are at workin the omission of connectives (see Becher 2011a where the 1047297ndings presentedhere are discussed in more detail)

983093983089 Complying with communicative norms

Te following example illustrates how translators sometimes insert connectivesin order to comply with the communicative conventions of the target languagecommunity

(1) EngOrig We outperformed the S amp P 500 for the second consecutive yearand wersquove now beaten the index nine years out of the past 11

GerTrans Zum zweiten Mal in Folge haben wir ein besseres Ergebnis erzieltals der S amp P 500 und den Index damit 3 9 Mal in den letzten 11 Jahrengeschlagen

Why did the translator of (1) add the causal connective adverb damit In a previousstudy using largely the same data as the present study I found that causal connec-

tives seem to be considerably more frequent in German than in English businesstexts (Becher 2009) Te item damit was found to be particularly frequent whileEnglish equivalents such as thus and therefore were found to hardly occur at allTus it should come as no surprise that English-German translators regularly add

8112019 becher_2011__02bec



connectives among them damit which seems to be particularly popular amongauthors of German business texts Shis such as the ones evidenced in (1) should

be seen as resulting from translatorsrsquo application of what House (1997) has calleda cultural 1047297lter

983093983090 Exploiting features of the target language system

In this section we will look at some examples which suggest that translators some-times add connectives in an effort to make full use of the syntactic and lexicalfeatures that the target language system offers

(2) EngOrig Medical Systems used it to open up a commanding technologylead in several diagnostic platforms [hellip] GerTrans Medical Systems zB [lsquofor examplersquo] hat dadurch seine

technologische Fuumlhrungsposition bei diversen Diagnosesystemen erlangt[hellip]

In (2) the translator has added the connective zum Beispiel lsquofor examplersquo (abbre- viated as zB) in a speci1047297cally German syntactic slot called the Nacherstposition (lsquoaer-1047297rst positionrsquo) As its name suggests an element occupying the German

Nacherstposition appears to be lsquotagged onrsquo to the 1047297rst constituent of the sentencesince elements 1047297lling this syntactic slot are integrated into the sentence prosodi-cally and syntactically (Breindl 2008) Te syntax of English on the other handdoes not offer a Nacherstposition Tus the insertion of for example in the secondposition of the English source text sentence would either be ambiguous seman-tically ( Medical systems for example used ithellip)4 or would require a prosodicallyweighty and syntactically disintegrated parenthetical ( Medical systems for example used ithellip) From this we see that the syntax of German due to the availabilityof the Nacherstposition allows a more flexible use of certain connectives than Eng-

lish syntax Tus it should come as no surprise especially in connection with theabove-mentioned norm of cohesive explicitness in German that English-Germantranslators make use of this speci1047297cally German syntactic option as the translatorof (2) has done

Here is another example of a translator exploiting a syntactic slot offered byGerman that is not available in English

(3) EngOrig Product services consisted of less-exciting maintenance of ourhigh-value machines mdash turbines engines medical devices and the like

GerTrans Produktbezogene Dienstleistungen umfassen hingegen [lsquoincontrast on the other handrsquo] weniger aufregende Aufgaben zB die Wartunghochwertiger Maschinen wie etwa urbinen oder medizinischer Geraumlte

8112019 becher_2011__02bec



Te translator of (3) has inserted the connective hingegen lsquoin contrast on the otherhandrsquo right aer the 1047297nite verb a syntactic position that the grammar of English

does not offer (cf Product services consisted in contrast of less-exciting mainte-nancehellip and Product services consisted of in contrast less-exciting maintenancehellip)Te availability of this position is representative of a more general contrast be-tween English and German While the syntax of English makes it difficult at timesto integrate adverbials into the syntactic frame of the sentence without interferingwith information structure the German sentence is capable of absorbing a mul-titude of optional adverbials without problems (Doherty 2002 Fabricius-Hansen2007 73)

Both English and German strive to follow the principles lsquoGiven before Newrsquo

and lsquoBalanced Information Distributionrsquo (Doherty 2001 2002) But as Dohertyshows German due to its relatively free word order is better able to comply withthese principles Example (3) illustrates this If we try to insert in contrast (or acomparable one-word connective such as however ) into the English source textsentence of (3) we note that no matter where we put the connective the discourseassumes a somewhat choppy quality either because one of the two above prin-ciples is violated or because the connective appears in a syntactic position that isprosodically and syntactically disintegrated (cf eg Product services in contrast

consisted ofhellip) Te syntax of German on the other hand offers a prosodicallyintegrated syntactic slot right behind the verb where the insertion of a connectivedoes not interfere with information-structural principles Tus it seems plausibleto assume that it is this speci1047297c feature of German syntax that (in connection withthe German preference for cohesive explicitness noted above) has encouraged thetranslator to add hingegen o put it somewhat informally one of the reasons whythe translator of (3) has added hingegen is because he could

Te next example to be discussed here illustrates the case where a translatorexploits a speci1047297c lexical feature of the target language in adding the connectivenamely the connective itself

(4) EngOrig Te bear market has undermined some investorsrsquo faith in stocksbut it has not reduced the need to save for the future

GerTrans Das Vertrauen einiger Anleger in Aktien hat zwar [lsquocertainlyrsquo]angesichts der ruumlcklaumlu1047297gen Boumlrsenmaumlrkte gelitten aber der Gedanke derZukunssicherung bleibt weiterhin das Gebot der Stunde

Te connective added in (4) zwar does not have a direct equivalent in English

Its meaning can only be approximated by paraphrases such as lsquocertainlyrsquo or lsquoit istrue thatrsquo In German discourse zwar has the speci1047297c function of serving as an op-tional precursor to a concessive connective such as aber lsquobutrsquo or jedoch lsquohoweverrsquomarking the conceded part of the concessive structure (Koumlnig 1991) Tus upon

8112019 becher_2011__02bec



encountering zwar a German reader knows that a concessive connective has tofollow (Primatarova-Miltscheva 1986) In this way zwar serves as an (additional)

marker of discourse structure potentially easing processing for the reader (Becher2011b)In the corpus investigated translators regularly add zwar and this is anything

but surprising Since English source texts do not contain expressions that couldpossibly be translated by means of zwar (except maybe rare occurrences of cer-tainly it is true that and the like) English-German translators who want to avoidlsquotranslationesersquo and make their target texts conform with what is considered agood style of writing in German have to insert the connective even in the absenceof source text triggers In other words it seems plausible to assume that English-

German translators insert zwar simply in order to make use of the full potential ofthe German lexicon

In this connection it has to be pointed out that the case of zwar is represen-tative of a much more general contrast between English and German Germanis a lsquoconnective languagersquo the Handbook of German Connectives (Handbuch derdeutschen Konnektoren Pasch et al 2003) listing 334 such items (Waszligner 2001)mdash an impressive number o my knowledge there is no comparable statistic forEnglish5 but the number of connectives will be much lower for this language

not least because English has many fewer connective adverb compounds (such astherefore) than German (Becher 2010c) Tis leads us to an important point Wesee here a neat correspondence between the communicative norms the lexiconand the syntax of German Te communicative norms of the language demand ahigh degree of cohesive explicitness the German lexicon provides a multitude ofconnectives that speakers may use to comply with these norms and the syntax ofGerman offers a number of prosodically integrated syntactic slots that speakersmay exploit to accommodate connectives elegantly

Of course there are also cases where the lexicogrammar of English offers aconstruction that German lacks While these cases are not as frequent as the onesdiscussed above they do lead to explicitation occasionally Cf the following ex-ample

(5) GerOrig Inzwischen werden konzernweit mehr als 1000 Projektebearbeitet der Wissens- und Erfahrungstransfer innerhalb des Konzernswird von ag zu ag intensiver [hellip]

Gloss lsquoBy now more than 1000 projects are worked on the knowledge andexperience transfer inside the Group is becoming more intensive from dayto dayrsquo

8112019 becher_2011__02bec



EngTrans With more than 1000 projects now running throughout theGroup the exchange of knowledge and experience among Group companiesis intensifying daily [hellip]

Te German source text of (5) has two asyndetically connected clauses whichmeans that the reader has to infer the semantic connection between them Read-ers of the English target text on the other hand do not have to draw such aninference since the translator has inserted the connective with which 1047297xes thesemantic relation between the two connected clauses as one of lsquoconcomitancersquo6 Iwould argue that the translator has done this because she saw herself in a positionwhere she could actually improve on the source text by exploiting a unique option

of English lexicogrammar (the in1047297nite with-clause)o see where this argument goes let us try to back-translate the English targettext sentence to German First of all we note that German does not have a connec-tive equivalent in syntax and semantics to the English with-clause We could try aconnection with waumlhrend lsquowhilersquo but that would be too lsquostrongrsquo a translation sincewaumlhrend is more speci1047297c semantically than with (see Becher 2011a) We could alsotry a paratactic connection by means of und lsquoandrsquo but that would be too lsquoweakrsquo atranslation since und is even less speci1047297c than with (cf Lang 1991 614f) Tus forexample und may be taken to encode a relation of similarity (Bluumlhdorn 2010) an

interpretation that with lacks Te brief discussion above is intended to illustratethat no matter what we do we cannot exactly reproduce the meaning of with inGerman

I do not want to digress into further discussion of possible German transla-tion equivalents of the English with-clause Rather my point here is that the lexi-cogrammar of German does not offer a connective that matches the interpretivepotential of the German source text But the German-English translator has actu-ally come up with a connective that exactly 1047297ts the context at hand namely with

Tus we can say that 1047297rst the translator of (5) has managed to convey a meaningin the English target text that would be very difficult (if not impossible) to conveyin German Second in doing so the translator has exploited a lsquotypically Englishrsquolexicogrammatical item Both of these observations suggest plausible reasons forthe addition of with by the translator

983093983091 Dealing with restrictions of the target language system

Another trigger of explicitation that qualitative analysis has identi1047297ed is the lackof certain target language features ranslators tend to add connectives when theyface certain source language constructions that do not have a close equivalent inthe target language One of these constructions is the English ing -adjunct which

8112019 becher_2011__02bec



regularly motivates explicitation in English-German translations (see also Becher2010b Becher 2011a) Te following example illustrates this

(6) EngOrig Troughout the world our operating divisions are sharing servicefacilities and administrative offices wherever appropriate saving tens ofmillions in field operating costs

GerTrans Uumlberall in der Welt nutzen unsere BetriebsabteilungenEinrichtungen und Buumlros gemeinsam wo immer dies sinnvoll ist undsparen dadurch Millionen an Betriebskosten vor Ort ein

Gloss lsquohellipand in this way save millions in 1047297eld operating costsrsquo

Te English source text sentence of (6) contains an ing -adjunct (savinghellip) a con-

struction whose vague meaning covers a broad spectrum ranging from temporalsequence to concession (cf Quirk et al 1985 1124) In this case the construc-tion invites a causal reading (see Behrens 1999 on how this comes about) and thetranslator is faced with a problem the lexicogrammar of German does not offer aconstruction syntactically and semantically equivalent to the English ing -adjunctShe thus decides to lsquopromotersquo the ing -adjunct to a regular 1047297nite main clause whichshe coordinates to the preceding clause by means of und lsquoandrsquo In order to pre-serve the causal interpretation invited by the source textrsquos ing -adjunct she decides

to add the causalinstrumental connective dadurch lsquothus in this wayrsquo Tis is ofcourse an explicitation since the ing -adjunct does not have to be read as express-ing causation mdash although this is the most plausible reading But what else couldthe translator have done Not adding a connective such as dadurch would haveresulted in a loss of linguistically encoded meaning so explicitation seems to bethe most sensible option here Te above considerations suggest that the translatorof (6) has added dadurch primarily in order to compensate for a restriction of Ger-man morphosyntax (as compared to English) namely the lack of a constructioncomparable to the English ing -adjunct in its semantics

Let us now have a look at an example of a compensating connective additionin the other translation direction German-English

(7) GerOrig [Wir haben eine uumlberschaubare Zahl globaler Marken auf derenPflege wir uns konzentrieren] [hellip] Strategische Akquisitionsmoumlglichkeitenwerden wir nutzen

Gloss lsquoOpportunities for strategic acquisitions will we usersquo EngTrans [We have a manageable number of global brands and we

concentrate on managing and developing them] [hellip] We will also take

advantage of opportunities for strategic acquisitions

Why did the German-English translator of (7) add the connective also o an-swer this question we need to have a close look at the word order of the German

8112019 becher_2011__02bec



source text sentence (which has been preserved in the gloss provided) We see thatthe object of the sentence strategische Akquisitionsmoumlglichkeiten lsquoopportunities for

strategic acquisitionsrsquo comes 1047297rst in the linear ordering of syntactic constituentsTis is possible because German is not an SV (SubjectndashVerb) language like Eng-lish but what may be called an XV language In German not only the subject but(almost) any syntactic constituent (represented by lsquoXrsquo) may precede the verb andthus form the 1047297rst part of the sentence (Koumlnig and Gast 2009 181) When anotherconstituent than the subject precedes the verb in a German sentence (eg objectoptional or obligatory adverbial etc) one speaks of fronting or topicalization thefronted consituent being called a sentence topic or simply topic Tis syntacticallydetermined notion of topic is not to be confused with the topic of a discourse or

discourse topic (see below)When speakers of German topicalize a syntactic constituent they generally do

this for a speci1047297c pragmatic purpose Buumlring (1999) distinguishes between threedifferent kinds of sentence topics according to their pragmatic function contras-tive topics partial topics and purely implicational topics In (7) we are dealingwith a partial topic Te topicalization of the constituent preceding the verb heresignals that the sentence topic forms part of a larger group of things to be talkedabout in the discourse In other words the topicalization signals that the sentence

topic addresses only part of the overarching discourse topic Cf the following (in- vented) discourse

(8) Speaker A Hast du den Abwasch gemacht den Muumlll rausgebracht und deineHausaufgaben gemacht

Gloss lsquoDid you wash the dishes take out the garbage and do yourhomeworkrsquo

Speaker B Den Abwasch habe ich gemacht Den Muumlll habe ichrausgebracht Aber meine Hausaufgaben habe ich nicht gemacht

Gloss lsquoTe dishes I washed Te garbage I took out But my homework I didnot dorsquo Suggested English translation I washed the dishes I also took out the

garbage But I didnrsquot do my homework

In the little discourse given in (8) speaker A establishes the discourse topic lsquothingsI told you to dorsquo by asking a question In her answer speaker B uses a topicalizedobject (functioning as a partial topic) in every one of her three sentences She usespartial topics in order to signal that each sentence answers only part of the dis-

course topic Partial topics may thus be seen as a genuine cohesive device mdash akinto connectives In English topicalization is not available as a means of signalingthat a sentence forms part of a list-like structure that addresses a single discoursetopic Tus an English translation of speaker Brsquos utterance either has to do without

8112019 becher_2011__02bec



explicit topic management devices or it can make use of a connective such as also which makes explicit that the sentence containing the connective forms part of a

larger list-like complex addressing a single discourse topic Tis is what the trans-lator of (7) has doneTe discourse topic of (7) may be taken to be lsquothings that the company author-

ing the report intends to dorsquo with each of the two sentences addressing one partof the discourse topic First the company plans to manage and develop its globalbrands second it wants to take advantage of opportunities for strategic acquisi-tions In the German source text of (7) the fact that the second sentence (Strate- gische Akquisitionsmoumlglichkeiten werden wir nutzen) continues the discourse topicof the preceding one is marked by means of topicalization Te German-English

translator however does not have access to this purely syntactic cohesive deviceHe has to stick with SV word order but he inserts a connective (also) to preventa loss of cohesion vis-agrave-vis the source text mdash a skilled translation choice perfectly

justi1047297able by the English-German syntactic contrast discussed above We can thussay that the addition of a connective evidenced in (7) was performed by the trans-lator in order to compensate for a lsquomissingrsquo feature of the target language system

983093983092 Avoiding stylistically marked ways of expression

Several translation scholars have suggested that translations tend to be more ldquoho-mogenousrdquo ldquoconventionalrdquo or ldquostandardizedrdquo than non-translated texts ie theytend to ldquogravitate towards the center of a continuumrdquo and to ldquomove away fromextremesrdquo (Baker 1996 185f) Baker (1996) has referred to this alleged tendency oftranslators as ldquoleveling outrdquo Laviosa (1998) has used the term ldquoconvergencerdquo andoury (1995) assumes a ldquolaw of growing standardizationrdquo for translated text7 In-deed there is some evidence suggesting that translations make use of more high-frequency words and fewer ad-hoc word coinages than non-translated texts (Lavi-osa 1998 Olohan 2004 108ff) While I think it would be misleading to call levelingout a (possible) ldquotranslation universalrdquo (Baker 1996)8 the translators in my corpustoo do exhibit a tendency to explicitate in order to make their texts comply withstandard conventional target language usage Cf the following example

(8) EngOrig We are better prepared today than at any other time to competeto balance the paradoxical demands of the future marketplace to earn theloyalty of consumers worldwide

GerTrans Wir sind heute besser denn je darauf vorbereitet im Wettbewerbmitzuhalten die widerspruumlchlichen Anforderungen kuumlniger Maumlrktezu erfuumlllen und [lsquoandrsquo] uns weltweit das Vertrauen der Verbraucher zu

verdienen

8112019 becher_2011__02bec



Te English source text of (8) makes use of asyndesis as a mdash stylistically markedmdash rhetorical device intended to highlight three alleged capabilities of the company

in question (to compete mdash to balance mdash to earn) Te English-German transla-tor however has turned asyndesis into syndesis by inserting und lsquoandrsquo thus doingaway with the rhetorical markedness of the text It is plausible to assume that thetranslatorrsquos main aim behind this move was to make the target text appear moreconventional or lsquonormalrsquo in this way avoiding the risk of delivering a translationthat does not meet the acceptance of clients or readers (cf the next section)

983093983093 Optimizing the cohesion of the target text

Te data investigated were found to contain some instances of explicitation thatcould not be explained with recourse to the four reasons discussed above In thissection I am going to argue that this should not worry us at all In fact we shouldexpect to 1047297nd such instances of explicitation in most (but not all mdash see below)translated texts Let us begin by looking at a concrete example

(9) GerOrig Flexible Preismodelle und Biet-Verfahren sind unter Kaufleutenseit jeher uumlblich Mit der Globalisierung der Maumlrkte ist ein Verfahren noumltigmit dem Produkte weltweit angeboten werden koumlnnen

EngTrans Flexible pricing models and bidding procedures have always beenthe norm among business people However the globalization of the marketsmeans that a procedure is now necessary whereby products can be offeredworld-wide

We do not see an immediate reason (eg in terms of cross-linguistic differences)why the translator of (9) has inserted however But that does not need to worry ussince we should expect translators to add a connective once in a while Te reasonfor this is that translators are mediators between cultures Teir job is to ensure

understanding between the source text author and her target text readers If un-derstanding does not occur clients and readers will tend to blame the translatorfor not having done his job properly If the source text itself is not understandablethat is the translatorrsquos problem Clients and target language readers oen do notcare about the source text they just want an understandable translation Te taskof the translator is thus characterized by a great deal of risk mdash the risk of losing cli-ents of receiving complaints from target language readers etc (Pym 2005 2008)It follows that translators will go to great lengths to ensure understanding not

hesitating to deviate from the source text where intelligibility could be improvedIn particular translators should not hesitate to add connectives

o understand a text as an intentional communicative act means to recog-nize its coherence ie to understand what every individual segment (eg sentence

8112019 becher_2011__02bec



paragraph etc) contributes to the overarching communicative purpose of the textor ldquodiscourse purposerdquo (see Grosz and Sidner 1986 for some insightful consider-

ations on what constitutes a textdiscourse and how to de1047297ne coherence) If a read-er fails to see the connections between individual segments and the discourse pur-pose the result is a failure to understand the text as a purposeful communicativeevent Connectives are an important means of making such connections explicita means of making the reader see the coherence of a text Te view of translatorsas risk-avoiding mediators between cultures proposed by Pym (2005 2008) andadopted here should make us expect that translators tend to be very concernedabout cohesion which may be de1047297ned as the overt marking of coherence relationsAnd this in turn should make it come as no surprise that translators (a) insert

cohesive devices mdash such as connectives mdash more frequently than they leave themout and (b) insert connectives even in places where there is no speci1047297c trigger ormotivation to do so (such as in (9))

In recent conference presentations that I have given on the topic of explicita-tion I have heard the complaint that Pymrsquos notion of translators as risk-avoiderswould be just as mysterious an explanation for instances of explicitation such as (9)as the assumption of a ldquouniversal strategyrdquo (Blum-Kulka 1986) or ldquosubconsciousprocessesrdquo (Olohan and Baker 2000) of explicitation However this objection to

my line of argumentation is not valid Te notion of translators as risk-avoidersis supported by general pragmatic properties of human communication In gen-eral communicators should tend to be too explicit rather than too implicit whereunderstanding might be at risk (Heltai 2005 67 Becher 2010a 18ff) In contrastthe assumption of certain cognitive properties of the translation process that aresupposed to cause explicitation is not supported at all given the current state ofresearch in psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics

983094 Putting everything together

Let us now put together the quantitative and qualitative results discussed in theprevious sections In Section 4 (Quantitative Results) we made two observationsFirst we found that in the corpus investigated there are considerably more explic-itations in the direction English-German than in the direction German-EnglishTe qualitative analysis presented in Section 5 has suggested two reasons for this

a Te discourse norms of the German language in general and of the businessgenre in particular demand a higher degree of cohesive explicitness than thecorresponding English norms

8112019 becher_2011__02bec



b Te lexicogrammatical system of German favors the use of connectives Onecould say that it invites the use of connectives both by providing a large lexi-

cal inventory of connectives and by offering a variety of syntactic slots for ac-commodating them (Tis of course 1047297ts in nicely with the observation that thecommunicative norms of German demand a high degree of cohesive explicit-ness)

Second we found that in both translation directions explicitations are not coun-terbalanced by implicitations as predicted by Klaudyrsquos Asymmetry HypothesisAgain our qualitative analysis has suggested two reasons

a As risk-avoiding mediators between cultures translators should tend to go to

great lengths to optimize cohesion thus trying to reduce the risk of misunder-standing

b Tere are certain constructions that tend to trigger the addition of connec-tives For example the English ing -adjunct regularly prompts the additionof connectives in translations into German (see Section 53) In contrast theomission of a connective is never prompted ie there are no speci1047297c triggers forconnective omissions For example a German-English translator may omit aconnective and substitute an ing -adjunct (eg in an effort to make use of the

full range of lexicogrammatical options that English offers cf Section 52)but she does not have to In contrast an English-German translator facing aning -adjunct has a problem since German does not offer an equivalent con-struction and the insertion of a connective is one of the most salient solutionsif not the most salient one

983095 e bottom Line

In the introduction to this article I said that a main aim of the study presented herewas to show that we do not need a mysterious notion of translation-inherence agrave laBlum-Kulka (1986) in order to explain the frequent occurrence of explicitation intranslation and I hope that the little synthesis of quantitative and qualitative re-sults provided above has at least partly accomplished this aim In particular I hopeto have shown that many instances of explicitation that may seem enigmatic at1047297rst in fact go back to not-at-all-enigmatic previously established cross-linguisticdifferences in terms of syntax lexis and communicative norms And it is our task

as translation scholars to be aware of these contrasts and to identify their effects inthe corpora we investigate

Clearly this is not an easy task It involves 1047297nding and reading literature fromneighboring disciplines such as linguistic typology contrastive linguistics and

8112019 becher_2011__02bec



cross-cultural pragmatics And unfortunately it also involves carrying out onersquosown contrastive investigation once in a while where previous research is not avail-

able But I hope to have shown that this task is unavoidable if we want to 1047297nd outwhat is really inherent to translation and what is not (Another task that needsto be accomplished in translation studies viz in the 1047297eld of translation processresearch is to devise models of the cognitive processes underlying translation thatare supported by psycholinguistic evidence Once we have such models we canuse them to generate well-motivated hypotheses concerning the cognitive founda-tions of explicitation and implicitation)

I am sure that there will be readers who disagree with some of my qualita-tive analyses in Section 5 and with the con1047297dence with which I ascribe certain

observations to lexicogrammatical and pragmatic contrasts between English andGerman I invite these readers to voice their criticism and to propose alternativeanalyses But I would also like to point out that this kind of criticism will not con-cern the main point that has been made in this article namely that in any givensource languagendashtarget language pair there will be a number of deep-seated non-trivial lexicogrammatical and pragmatic contrasts mdash many of which we do noteven know yet mdash which will inevitably lead to instances of explicitation that aredifficult or even impossible to explain given the current state of research Nev-

ertheless it is wrong (and somewhat lazy) to simply attribute these instances toan allegedly universal strategy inherent in the process of language mediation apseudo-explanation that does not explain anything but only raises new problemsInstead we should dig deeper and try to come up with real explanations namelyexplanations in terms of language-speci1047297c discourse norms (Section 51) lexico-grammar (Sections 52 and 53) and the sociolinguistic parameters influencingtranslatorsrsquo choices (Sections 54 and 55) Only if this does not succeed should weturn to more complex and elusive cognitive explanations such as the one envis-aged by Blum-Kulkarsquos Explicitation Hypothesis

Acknowledgements

Te study presented in this article was carried out within the project Covert ranslation (prin-cipal investigator Juliane House) located at the University of Hamburgrsquos Research Center onMultilingualism Te center is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinscha (German Re-search Foundation) whom I thank for their generous support I would also like to thank JulianeHouse Svenja Kranich Kirsten Malmkjaeligr and Erich Steiner for their valuable comments on an

earlier version of this article

8112019 becher_2011__02bec



Notes

983089 Implicitness may be de1047297ned as the non-verbalization of information that the addressee mightbe able to infer (cf the de1047297nition of explicitness offered at the beginning of this article) Implici-tation may then be de1047297ned as an increase in implicitness in translation

983090 An exception to this are cases where explicitations are obligatory in one translation directionwhile implicitations in the other direction are optional For example Hungarian-English trans-lators regularly have to add subject pronouns (to achieve a grammatical sentence) while theirEnglish-Hungarian colleagues may mdash but do not have to mdash omit these items (Klaudy 2009)Such cases did not occur in the present study

983091 Te connective additions under consideration have been italicized in the corpus examples

983092 Te ambiguity is between the following two readings lsquoMedical Systems is an example of acompany who used ithelliprsquo vs lsquoAn example of how Medical Systems used it ishelliprsquo In the 1047297rst read-ing several businesses have used x (the referent of it whose identity is not important here) andMedical Systems is an example of such a business In the second reading Medical Systems hasput x to different uses and lsquoto open up a commanding technology leadhelliprsquo is an example of sucha use In the German translation of (2) the ambiguity does not arise because the occurrence ofzB lsquofor examplersquo in the Nacherstposition unambiguously selects the 1047297rst reading

983093 Halliday and Hasan (1976 242f) list 122 examples of ldquoconjunctive elementsrdquo available in Eng-lish Halliday and Matthiessen (2004 542f) provide a list of 119 ldquoconjunctive Adjunctsrdquo and

Quirk et al (1985 634ndash636) list 144 ldquocommon conjunctsrdquo for English When comparing these1047297gures to the number of German connectives given in the Handbook of German Connectives (334 items) it is important to note that the inclusion criteria used by the authors of the Hand-book are much stricter than the ones used by the above-quoted authors writing on English Onthe other hand the latter authors did not aim for completeness in compiling their lists Tus itremains unclear how far the statistics cited are comparable

983094 With may also be lsquooverinterpretedrsquo as encoding a causal relation (cf Quirk et al 1985 564)but this does not need to concern us here since asyndetic connections such as the one presentin the German source text of (5) may also be interpreted causally (cf Breindl and Waszligner 2006)

983095 Cf also Kennyrsquos (1998) notion of ldquosanitizationrdquo

983096 I think the very notion of lsquotranslation universalrsquo itself is misleading since much of what hasbeen assumed to be universally characteristic of translation may in fact be attributed to general(non-translation-speci1047297c) pragmatic features of linguistic communication (House 2008 Pym2008 Becher 2010a)

References

Baker Mona 1996 ldquoCorpus-based translation studies Te challenges that lie aheadrdquo HaroldSomers ed erminology LSP and translation Studies in language engineering in honor of

Juan C Sager Amsterdam-Philadelphia John Benjamins 1996 175ndash186

8112019 becher_2011__02bec



Becher Viktor 2009 ldquoTe explicit marking of contingency relations in English and German textsA contrastive analysisrdquo Paper presented at the 42nd annual meeting of the Societas Linguis-tica Europaea workshop Connectives across languages Explicitation and grammaticaliza-

tion of contingency relations httpwwwfrancaisugentbeindexphpid=19amptype=1047297le (13May 2010)

Becher Viktor 2010a ldquoAbandoning the notion of lsquotranslation-inherentrsquo explicitation Against adogma of translation studiesrdquo Across Languages and Cultures 111 1ndash28

Becher Viktor 2010b ldquoowards a more rigorous treatment of the Explicitation Hypothesis intranslation studiesrdquo trans-kom 31 1ndash25

Becher Viktor 2010c ldquoDifferences in the use of deictic expressions in English and Germantextsrdquo Linguistics 48(4) 1309ndash1342

Becher Viktor 2011a Explicitation and implicitation in translation A corpus-based study ofEnglish-German and German-English translations of business texts PhD dissertation Uni-

versity of HamburgBecher Viktor 2011b ldquoVon der Hypotaxe zur Parataxe Ein Wandel im Ausdruck von Konz-

essivitaumlt in neueren populaumlrwissenschalichen extenrdquo Eva Breindl Gisella Ferraresi andAnna Volodina eds Satzverknuumlpfungen Zur Interaktion von Form Bedeutung und Diskurs-

funktion Berlin-New York Walter de Gruyter 2011Behrens Bergljot 1999 ldquoA dynamic semantic approach to translation assessment ING-parti-

cipial adjuncts and their translation in Norwegianrdquo Monika Doherty ed Sprachspezifische Aspekte der Informationsverteilung Berlin Akademie-Verlag 1999 90ndash112

Behrens Bergljot 2005 ldquoCohesive ties in translation A contrastive study of the Norwegian con-nective dermed rdquo Languages in Contrast 51 3ndash32

Bluumlhdorn Hardarik 2008 ldquoOn the syntax and semantics of sentence connectivesrdquo MannheimInstitut fuumlr Deutsche Sprache unpublished manuscript httpwwwids-mannheimdegratexteblu_connectivespdf (24 August 2010)

Bluumlhdorn Hardarik 2010 ldquoSemantische Unterbestimmtheit bei Konnektorenrdquo Pohl Inge edSemantische Unbestimmtheit im Lexikon Frankfurt am Main Peter Lang 2010 205ndash221

Blum-Kulka Shoshana 1986 ldquoShis of cohesion and coherence in tanslationrdquo Juliane Houseand Shoshana Blum-Kulka eds Interlingual and intercultural communication uumlbingenGunter Narr 1986 17ndash35

Breindl Eva 2008 ldquoDie Brigitte nun kann der Hans nicht ausstehen Gebundene opiks im

Deutschenrdquo Eva Breindl and Maria Turmair eds Erkenntnisse vom Rande Zur Interak-tion von Prosodie Informationsstruktur Syntax und Bedeutung Zugleich Festschri fuumlr Hans Altmann zum 65 Geburtstag [Temenhe Deutsche Sprache 12008] 2008 27ndash49

Breindl Eva and Ulrich H Waszligner 2006 ldquoSyndese vs Asyndese Konnektoren und andereWegweiser fuumlr die Interpretation semantischer Relationen in extenrdquo Hardarik BluumlhdornEva Breindl and Ulrich Hermann Waszligner eds ext mdash Verstehen Grammatik und daruumlberhinaus BerlinndashNew York Walter de Gruyter [Jahrbuch des Instituts fuumlr Deutsche Sprache2005] 2006 46ndash70

Buumlring Daniel 1999 ldquoopicrdquo Peter Bosch and Rob van der Sandt eds Focus mdash linguisticcognitive and computational perspectives Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1999

142ndash165Doherty Monika 2001 ldquoDiscourse relators and the beginnings of sentences in English and Ger-manrdquo Languages in Contrast 32 223ndash251

Doherty Monika 2002 Language processing in discourse A key to felicitous translation LondonndashNew York Routledge

8112019 becher_2011__02bec



Fabricius-Hansen Cathrine 2005 ldquoElusive connectives A case study on the explicitness dimen-sion of discourse coherencerdquo Linguistics 431 17ndash48

Fabricius-Hansen Cathrine 2007 ldquoDreimal (nicht) dasselbe Sprachliche Perspektivierung im

Deutschen Norwegischen und Englischenrdquo Zeitschri fuumlr Literaturwissenscha und Lin- guistik 145 61ndash86

Goumlpferich Susanne and Riitta Jaumlaumlskelaumlinen 2009 Process research into the development oftranslation competence Where are we and where do we need to go Across Languages andCultures 102 169ndash191

Grosz Barbara J and Candace L Sidner 1986 ldquoAttention intentions and the structure of dis-courserdquo Computational Linguistics 12 175ndash204

Halliday Michael AK and Ruqaiya Hasan 1976 Cohesion in English London LongmanHalliday Michael AK and Christian MIM Matthiessen 2004 An introduction to functional

grammar 3rd edition London Arnold

Hansen-Schirra Silvia Stella Neumann and Erich Steiner 2007 Cohesive explicitness and ex-plicitation in an English-German translation corpus Languages in Contrast 72 241ndash265

Heltai Paacutel 2005 ldquoExplicitation redundancy ellipsis and translationrdquo Krisztina Kaacuteroly andAacutegota Foacuteris eds New trends in translation studies In honour of Kinga Klaudy BudapestAkadeacutemiai Kiadoacute 2005 24ndash74

House Juliane 1997 ranslation quality assessment A model revisited uumlbingen Gunter NarrHouse Juliane 2004 ldquoExplicitness in discourse across languagesrdquo Juliane House Werner Koller

and Klaus Schubert eds Neue Perspektiven in der Uumlbersetzungs- und Dolmetschwissen-scha Bochum AKS 2004 185ndash208

House Juliane 2008 ldquoBeyond intervention Universals in translationrdquo trans-kom 11 6ndash19Kenny Dorothy 1998 ldquoCreatures of habit What translators usually do with wordsrdquo Meta 434

515ndash523Klaudy Kinga 2008 ldquoExplicitationrdquo Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha eds Routledge Ency-

clopedia of ranslation Studies LondonndashNew York Routledge 104ndash108Klaudy Kinga 2009 ldquoTe asymmetry hypothesis in translation researchrdquo Rodicia Dimitriu and

Miriam Shlesinger eds ranslators and their readers In Homage to Eugene A Nida Brus-sels Les Editions du Hazard 2009 283ndash303

Klaudy Kinga and Krisztina Kaacuteroly 2005 ldquoImplicitation in translation Empirical evidence foroperational asymmetry in translationrdquo Across Languages and Cultures 61 13ndash28

Koumlnig Ekkehard 1991 ldquoConcessive relations as the dual of causal relationsrdquo Dietmar Zaefferered Semantic universals and universal semantics BerlinndashNew YorkndashDordrecht Foris Publi-cations 1991 190ndash209

Koumlnig Ekkehard amp Volker Gast 2009 Understanding English-German contrasts Berlin ErichSchmidt

Konšalovaacute Petra 2007 ldquoExplicitation as a universal in syntactic decondensationrdquo Across Lan- guages and Cultures 81 17ndash32

Lang Ewald 1991 ldquoKoordinierende Konjunktionenrdquo Arnim von Stechow and Dieter Wun-derlich eds SemantikSemantics Ein internationales Handbuch der zeitgenoumlssischen Forsc-hung Walter de Gruyter Berlin-New York 1991 597ndash623

Laviosa Sara 1998 ldquoCore patterns of lexical use in a comparable corpus of English narrativeproserdquo Meta 434 557ndash570Olohan Maeve 2004 Introducing corpora in translation studies London and New York Rout-

ledge

8112019 becher_2011__02bec



Olohan Maeve and Mona Baker 2000 ldquoReporting that in translated English Evidence for sub-conscious processes of explicitationrdquo Across Languages and Cultures 12 141ndash158

Oslashverarings Linn 1998 ldquoIn search of the third code An investigation of norms in literary transla-

tionrdquo Meta 434 557ndash-570Paacutepai Vilma 2004 ldquoExplicitation a universal of translated textrdquo Anna Mauranen and Pekka

Kujamaumlki eds ranslation universals Do they exist Amsterdam-Philadelphia John Ben- jamins 2004 143ndash164

Pasch Renate Ursula Brauszlige Eva Breindl and Ulrich H Waszligner 2003 Handbuch der deutschenKonnektoren Berlin and New York Walter de Gruyter

Primatarova-Miltscheva Antoinette 1986 ldquoZwar hellip aber mdash ein zweiteiliges KonnektivumrdquoDeutsche Sprache 142 125ndash139

Pym Anthony 2005 ldquoExplaining explicitationrdquo Krisztina Kaacuteroly and Aacutegota Foacuteris eds Newtrends in translation studies In honour of Kinga Klaudy Budapest Akadeacutemiai Kiadoacute 2005

29ndash34Pym Anthony 2008 ldquoOn ouryrsquos laws of how translators translaterdquo Anthony Pym Miriam Sh-

lesinger and Daniel Simeoni eds Beyond descriptive translation studies AmsterdamndashPhila-delphia John Benjamins 311ndash328

Quirk Randolph Sidney Greenbaum Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik 1985 A comprehensive grammar of the English language London Longman

Waszligner Ulrich H 2001 ldquoKonnektoren und Anaphorika mdash zwei grundlegende sprachliche Mit-tel zur Herstellung von Zusammenhang zwischen extteilenrdquo Alain Cambourian ed ext-konnektoren und andere textstrukturiernde Einheiten uumlbingen Stauffenburg 2001 33ndash46

Stein Dieter 1979 ldquoZur Satzkonnektion im Englischen und Deutschen Ein Beitrag zu einerkontrastiven Vertextungslinguistikrdquo Folia Linguistica 13 303ndash319

oury Gideon 1995 Descriptive translation studies and beyond Amsterdam-Philadelphia JohnBenjamins

Authorrsquos address

Viktor BecherUniversitaumlt HamburgSFB 538 MehrsprachigkeitK4 Covert ranslationMax-Brauer-Allee 6022765 HAMBURG (Germany)

viktorbecheruni-hamburgde

8112019 becher_2011__02bec


When and why do translators addconnectives

A corpus-based study

Viktor BecherUniversitaumlt Hamburg

Additions and omissions of connectives (eg conjunctions connective adverbsetc) are a frequent phenomenon in translation Te present article reports on astudy whose aim was to elucidate translatorsrsquo motivations for performing suchshis focusing on the addition of connectives Te study was carried out on abidirectional parallel corpus containing translations of business texts betweenEnglish and German Connective additions and omissions were identi1047297edcounted and analyzed taking into account the surrounding linguistic context of

the shi in question possibly associated shis performed by the translator al-ternative translation options etc It was found that the vast majority of identi1047297edshis were attributable to previously established English-German contrasts interms of syntax lexis and communicative norms Te 1047297ndings suggest that it isunnecessary to assume that translators follow a ldquouniversal strategyrdquo of explicita-tion as it has oen been done in the literature (cf eg Blum-Kulkarsquos Explicita-tion Hypothesis)

Keywords explicitation implicitation connective addition omission shitranslation universals

983089 Introduction

Explicitation may be de1047297ned as the verbalization of information that the addresseemight be able to infer (eg from the preceding discourse) if it were not verbal-ized Explicitation may then be de1047297ned as an increase in explicitness in translation

(Becher 2010a 3) Te present article reports on a study that was carried out inorder to elucidate when and why translators explicitate Like previous studies thepresent study makes use of a bidirectional translation corpus in which additionsand omissions of connectives were identi1047297ed and counted But unlike previous

arget 983090983091983089 (983090983088983089983089) 983090983094ndash983092983095 983140983151983145 983089983088983089983088983095983093target983090983091983089983088983090bec983145983155983155983150 983088983097983090983092ndash983089983096983096983092 983141-983145983155983155983150 983089983093983094983097ndash983097983097983096983094 copy John Benjamins Publishing Company

8112019 becher_2011__02bec









explicitation




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additions 114 48

omissions 32 51





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Acknowledgements



8112019 becher_2011__02bec



Notes










References



8112019 becher_2011__02bec























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ledge

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explicitation




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additions 114 48

omissions 32 51





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Acknowledgements



8112019 becher_2011__02bec



Notes










References



8112019 becher_2011__02bec























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ledge

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8112019 becher_2011__02bec







additions 114 48

omissions 32 51





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verdienen

8112019 becher_2011__02bec













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8112019 becher_2011__02bec














8112019 becher_2011__02bec








Acknowledgements



8112019 becher_2011__02bec



Notes










References



8112019 becher_2011__02bec























8112019 becher_2011__02bec
























ledge

8112019 becher_2011__02bec



















8112019 becher_2011__02bec













8112019 becher_2011__02bec












8112019 becher_2011__02bec







additions 114 48

omissions 32 51





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