EXPLAINING EXPLICITATION

The general observation idea that translations are tend to be more explicit than non-translations (the broad “explicitation hypothesis”) is one of the few purported apparent discoveries that have been made by Translation Studies. Developed by Klaudy in relation to translation directionality and processes of implicitation, the hypothesis has been refined in such a way that we can now distinguish fairly well between explicitation required by different language systems (where explicitation in one direction is ideally matched by implicitation in the other) and explicitation as a feature of the translation situation itself (where the relation between explicitation and implicitation is asymmetric). In these terms, specifically asymmetric explicitation has been hailed as a potential translation universal. In its wider formulations, the explicitation hypothesis nevertheless remains hampered by conceptual imprecision and idealisms of stable meaning, as if there were just one thing, obvious to all, that could then be made explicit or implicit. These problems in turn lead to a wide range of possible reasons why explicitation cshould be a feature of translation. Many of these reasons can nevertheless be regrouped within the frame of By adopting risk management as an analytical frame. O, one can nevertheless thus posit that translators expand or contractorient reference systems in order to manage the risks of communicative failurenoncooperation in communication, and that they tend to be risk-averse because of the cultural reward system that often structures their professional tasks. This approach can offer a rationalist explanation for explicitation while doing away with considerable semantic ideal-