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Gabriela Saldanha

Explicitation Revisited: Bringing the Reader into the Picture

1 I ntroduction
Olohan and Baker (2000: 142) suggest that among studies dealing with translation
“universals”, also known as “features of translation” (see Olohan 2004: 90-92), the
general preference has been to focus on explicitation. This seems to be corroborated
by a quick search on St Jerome’s Translation Studies Abstracts and Bibliography of
Translation Studies database, 1 where a simple search for the terms explicitation/
explicitating, normaliz/ sation, simplification, standardiz/ sation produces 65, 42, 41 and
6 hits, respectively. These studies mostly report on quantitative studies of explicitation
(for example, Shlesinger 1995, Olohan/ Baker 2000, Olohan 2001, Øverås 1998, Nilsson
2002, Puurtinen 2004, Klaudy/ Károly 2005, Kenny 2005) and tend to rely on previous
definitions of explicitation (for example by Vinay/ Darbelnet 1958/ 1977, Blum-Kulka
1986 or Baker 1993), without actually engaging with those definitions and their impli-
cations for their findings. Notable exceptions are Séguinot (1988) and House (2004).
However, as it is argued below, the definition of explicitation is not unproblematic.
The first aim of this paper is to question two of the fundamental assumptions
underlying the definitions offered so far. These assumptions are that (1) instances of
explicitness in the target text correspond to instances of implicitness in the source text,
and that (2) there is increased “informativeness” in the target text as a result of that
implicitness/ explicitness relationship. Examples are discussed that challenge these
assumptions. The examples have been grouped into three categories according to the
linguistic features under consideration: optional connectives, instances of self-
referentiality and culture-specific items (discussed in sections 2, 3 and 4 below).
The second aim is to argue that, if we are to fully understand the phenomenon of
explicitation in translation, we need to go beyond mere descriptions and dig deeper
into translators’ motivations for using explicitation as a strategy. Looking at the
diversity of approaches taken by translators working in similar conditions and with the
same languages might enable us to identify more clearly the factors influencing their
decisions. The examples offered in this paper come from the Corpus of Translations by
Peter Bush and the Corpus of Translations by Margaret Jull Costa; both include
contemporary English translations of Spanish and Portuguese narrative and their
source texts. I t is argued that, when seen as forming consistent patterns across

1
http:/ / www.stjerome.co.uk/ tsaonline. This search was carried out on 5 March 2008. The database is
continuously updated and these figures are bound to change in a short space of time.

trans-kom http:/ / www.trans-kom.eu

t r ans-kom ist eine w issenschaft liche Zeit schrift f ür Translat ion und Fachkom m unikat ion.
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translations by the same translator, instances of explicitation can be explained with

reference to relevance theory and the concept of audience design (Saldanha 2005).

2 The Problem of Defining Explicitation in Relation to Source Text

I mplicitation: Optional Connectives
One of the defining characteristics of explicitation as a translation strategy seems to be
a correspondence between explicitness in the target text and implicitness in the source
text. Vinay and Darbelnet’s (1958/ 1977: 9) definition, one of the first offered in the
literature, describes it as a: “procedé qui consiste à introduire dans LA des précisions
qui restent implicites dans LD, mais qui se dégagent du contexte ou de la situation”,
that is, literally: ‘a procedure that consists in introducing in the target language
information (precisions) that remain implicit in the source language, but that are
apparent from the context or the situation’ (my translation). This requirement for
implicitness in the source text is a recurring feature of other definitions of explicitation,
such as that by Blum Kulka (1986), Shuttleworth and Cowie (1997: 55), Øverås (1998:
574) and Olohan and Baker (2000: 142). Øverås refers to the explicit rendering of
“ implicit, co-textually recoverable ST material” (Øverås 1998: 574, my emphasis).
Olohan and Baker define explicitation as “the spelling out in a target text of informa-
tion which is only implicit in a source text” (Olohan/ Baker 2000: 142, my emphasis).
A clear example where explicitation in the target text (TT) is not necessarily linked
to implicit information in the source text is where a certain connective (or any other
function word) is optional in the target text but not in the source text. This is the case
of the connective that following verbal processes to introduce the reported clause
(verbiage) in English: that is optional in constructions such as “I said that I hadn’t
finished it yet” (in JCSCTT2), compared to the (unattested) “I said I hadn’t finished it
yet”. The use of this connective in translation has been studied in some detail by
Olohan and Baker (2000), Kenny (2005) and Saldanha (2005). Olohan and Baker
(2000) report that the use of the optional that after the reporting verbs SAY3 and TELL is
far more frequent in translations of narrative into English than in non-translated
English narrative, and interpret this as evidence of explicitation, although they also
mention other possible conditioning factors. The figures reported by Olohan and Baker
are compelling, the that -connective is far more frequent in the translated corpus (a
subset of the Translational English Corpus), 4 where it also tends to occur more often
than the zero-connective for most forms of the verbs. I n the non-translated corpus (a

2
Unless otherwise indicated, all examples in this paper come from the Corpus of Translations by
Margaret Jull Costa (CTMJC) and the Corpus of Translations by Peter Bush (CTPB). These are parallel
corpora containing Spanish and Portuguese texts translated into English by the respective translators,
compiled by the author. Reference to the texts is made using abbreviations starting with JC or B,
corresponding to Jull Costa and Bush respectively, followed by the author’s initials, and ending in ST
or TT, for source text or target text.
3
SMALL CAPI TALS are used here and elsewhere to represent lemmas.
4
The Translational English Corpus is held at the University of Manchester, for information and free
access visit http:/ / www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/ ctis/ research/ english-corpus/ (25 March 2008).
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subset of the British National Corpus), 5 the zero-connective is more frequent for all
forms of the verb.
However, not all instances where the optional that has been spelled out in the
translation are instances where there is implicitation in the source text. The
Translational English Corpus (TEC) contains texts translated from a range of source
languages, but some of them are better represented than others, so potential source-
text interference is not excluded either. This is precisely the possibility explored by
Kenny (2005), who looks at the use of that in reporting structures with the verb SAY in
a parallel corpus of literary texts translated from German into English (GEPCOLT).
German, like English, has an optional connective ( dass) which can be used to introduce
reporting structures. Kenny's (2005) results show that when that is used in reporting
structures with SAY in the English translations, roughly only half the time is there a
corresponding dass in the source texts. I n other words, the use of optional that in
English translations from German does not seem to be determined by the use of the
dass-connective in German. Furthermore, the replacement of dass with that was more
common than the replacement of dass with zero, which suggests that the tendency is
to explicitate rather than implicitate.
The situation in translations from Spanish and Portuguese is rather different:
reported speech introduced by the verbs DECI R and DI ZER (the closest equivalents to
SAY and TELL in Spanish and Portuguese, respectively) actually requires the use of the
connective que in most cases. 6 Thus, the use of that in translations from Spanish and
Portuguese into English does not necessarily imply a shift whereby something that is
implicit in the source text is made explicit in the target text. I n examples (1) and (2),
the link between the reporting verb and its object is made explicit in the source text by
the (obligatory) use of the connective que in Spanish.
(1) La madre perdonó a su hijo; pero el niño dijo que quería ser disecador…
(JCSFST)
The mother forgave her son, but the boy said that he wanted to be a
taxidermist… (JCSFTT)
(2) … y tuvo que irse de la escuela porque el maestro decía que daba mal ejemplo.
(JCSFST)
… had to leave the school because the teacher said he was setting a bad
example. (JCSFTT)
Still, it is possible to talk about explicitation as a preferred strategy in translation in
relation to other possible alternative renderings in the target language. I n example (1),
it would have been possible to say the boy said he wanted to be a taxidermist , and this
option is realised in other similar cases in the same translation (as in example 2). I t
should also be noted that the use of that after a reporting verb in English translations
from Spanish and Portuguese is not always triggered by the use of a reporting verb

5
For more information and to access the British National Corpus visit http:/ / www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/
(25 March 2008).
6
See Butt/ Benjamin (2000: 288, 446, 450), and Mira Mateus et al. (1983: 414-416) for a description of
the rare exceptions to this rule.
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followed by the connective in the source language. I n a parallel corpus of five book-
length English translations (136,534 words) from Spanish and Portuguese source texts
(123,494 words) by Margaret Jull Costa (CTMJC), it was found that of the 34 instances
where that was optional after SAY in the target texts, only 23 cases corresponded to
instances where the connective que was used in Spanish and Portuguese (Saldanha
2005). Of the 11 instances where the reporting structure with SAY in English did not
correspond to a reporting structure with que in the source texts, that was used in the
target text in 6 cases. An example (3) is provided below, where direct speech is used
in the source text and indirect speech in the target text.
(3) en el Ministerio de Defensa se dice ‘La cosa no pasará de acá’ (JCVST)
in the Ministry of Defence it is said ‘The matter will go no further’ (literally)
in the Ministry of Defence it is said that the matter will go no further (JCVTT)
I n brief, the examples in this section show that explicitation can be said to occur in
relation to other less explicit options in the target text, even when there is no clear
shift from an implicit connection to an explicit connection as in examples (1) and (3).

3 The Problem w ith Assuming an I ncreased “I nformativeness” as a Result

of Explicitation: Self- referentiality
Blum-Kulka explains that “the translator simply expands the TL text, building into it a
semantic redundancy absent in the original” (Blum-Kulka 1986: 21, my emphasis).
Séguinot criticizes Blum-Kulka’s definition as “too narrow” because “explicitness does
not necessarily mean redundancy” (Séguinot 1988: 106). She then goes on to describe
three forms explicitation can take:
[ ...] something is expressed in the translation which was not in the original, something
which was implied or understood through presupposition in the source text is overtly
expressed in the translation, or an element in the source text is given greater importance in
the translation through focus, emphasis, or lexical choice. (Séguinot 1988: 106)
Séguinot thus seems to distinguish between the repetition of information (redundancy)
and the addition, clarification or emphasis of information. I n any case, the assumption
is that the target text will be more informative than the source text. This assumption is
echoed in Olohan and Baker who refer to “the introduction of extra information”
(Olohan/ Baker 2000: 142). However, describing what is implicit or explicit in terms of
the meaning of a word (not to mention of a sentence, or text) would be controversial
in any one language, and even more so if we compare meanings across languages.
The examples in this section, apart from not fulfilling the requirement of implicit-
ness in the source text as those in the previous section, also challenge the assumption
of increased informativeness in the target texts as a result of explicitation. These are
examples of what Hermans (1996) calls cases of self-reflexiveness or self-referentiality
involving the medium of communication itself. These are instances of what is generally
known as meta-language, that is, language used to talk about language. Metalinguistic
uses of language do not always pose a problem for the translator. I n example (4), the
second instance of reconocerlo is used to refer to the word itself but because there is
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no reference to the linguistic system the word belongs to, or to other signifiers in that
system, it can be easily translated by the English word recognize.
(4) [ …] enciende rápido la lámpara sobre la mesita de luz y sonríe aliviada al
reconocerlo a Alfredi. Y reconocerlo es la palabra porque el médico-taxista lleva
puesta (mal) una barba postiza blanca. (JCVST)
[ …] she quickly turns on the bedside light only to smile with relief when she
recognizes Alfredi. And ‘recognize’ is the right word since the doctor-cum-taxi
driver is at this point wearing a (clumsily applied) false white beard. (JCVTT)
Metalinguistic uses of words present problems only when there is an explicit or implicit
reference to the linguistic system the word or expression belongs to (see example 5).
These are instances where texts “affirm being written in a particular language” or
“exploit their idiom through polysemy, wordplay and similar devices” (Hermans 1996:
29). As a result:
[ ...] translations run into contradictions and incongruities which challenge the reader’s
willing suspension of disbelief; or the translated text may call on the explicit intervention of
a Translator’s Voice through the use of brackets or of notes, and they then remind the
reader of this other presence continually stalking a purportedly univocal discourse.
(Hermans 1996: 29)
Examples (5) and (6) come from a translation by Margaret Jull Costa, The Mandarin, of
a novel by Eça de Queiroz. They are taken from a conversation between a Portuguese
man, Teodoro, and General Camilloff, Russian ambassador to Peking. They are in
China and the latter asks Teodoro whether he speaks any Chinese. Teodoro replies
that he knows “two important words… ‘mandarin’ and ‘chá’”. The general then goes on
to explain (despite several interruptions by his interlocutor, which have been omitted
here) that ‘mandarin’ is not a Chinese word and comes from the Portuguese ‘mandar’,
and that the word for tea may not be enough:
(5) “Mandarim” [ …] É o nome que no século XVI os navegadores do seu país, [ …]
deram aos funcionários chineses. Vem do seu verbo [ ...] Do seu lindo verbo
“mandar”... (JCQST)
Mandarim [ ...] I s the name that in the 16th century the sailors from your country
[ …] gave Chinese officials. I t comes from your verb [ …] From your nice verb
“mandar” [ ...] (literally)
“Mandarin” [ …] I t’s the name the sixteenth-century navigators from your country
[ …] gave to Chinese officials. I t comes from the verb [ …] From that lovely verb
of yours “mandar” – to command. (JCQTT)
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(6) Resta-lhe portanto “chá”. É um vocábulo que tem um vasto papel na vida
chinesa, mas julgo-o insuficiente para servir a todas as relações sociais. (JCQST)
Thus you are left with “chá”. I t is a word that has a vast role in Chinese life, but I
find it insufficient to serve you on all social relations. (literally)
So that leaves you with the word for tea, “chá”, a word that does indeed play an
immensely important role in Chinese life, but would still not be enough, I fear, to
deal with all social occasions. (JCQTT)
These seem to be clear instances of explicitation, where the translator, Margaret Jull
Costa, provides a gloss for the Portuguese words mentioned. Presumably, the intention
is to clarify information that is assumed not to be part of the cognitive store of the
reader. However, the meanings of mandar and chá are not in any way “implicit” in the
source text, they do not need to be co-textually or contextually recovered. What is
more, talking of increased redundancy or informativeness in the target text would
involve assuming that there is at least some degree of semantic content conveyed by
the foreign words in the target text. This, in turn, involves assuming that the meaning
of the words are inscribed in the word itself without any consideration for the situation
in which it is uttered/ written. These assumptions are clearly problematic and are
further discussed in Section 4 in relation to pragmatic and semantic meanings.
As mentioned above, instances of self-referentiality do not always prompt the
translator to intervene with his or her own voice, but then it is likely that the
translation will result in incongruities that will nevertheless challenge the reader’s
willing suspension of disbelief. This is the case in example (7) below, where the author,
writing in Spanish, compares the terms for ‘firefly’ in Spanish and Catalan. The
translator, Peter Bush, leaves the words in the original language and in doing so
disturbs the illusion of transparency: sudden departure from the language of the
translation is bound to remind the readers that they are not reading Goytisolo’s writing.
Nevertheless, he does not intervene to explain to the reader what the terms mean, i.e.
he does not resort to explicitation.
(7) [ …] la belleza misteriosa del término “luciérnaga” frente a la grosería y miseria
del “cuca de llum” local (BGST)
[ …] the mysterious beauty of the term luciérnaga as opposed to the miserable
obscenity of the local cuca de llum (BGTT)
These examples show that explicitation is optional concerning instances of self-
referentiality and that it does not necessarily correspond to implicitation in the source
text. I n fact, when foreign words are used in any text, there seems to be little point in
attempting to measure how explicit or implicit their meaning might be. A more
interesting question with regard to the examples above is what has prompted the
translators to explain or not the meaning of the foreign words. I n example (5),
knowing that mandar means ‘to command’ is necessary to make a connection with
Mandarin as someone who commands. I n example (6), the sarcasm in the General’s
answer would be lost on a reader who does not know that chá means ‘tea’. I t could be
argued that the meaning of the foreign words in the target text in example (7) are not
so relevant to understand the text, since the comparison concerns purely their
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aesthetic qualities. On the other hand, maybe comparing firefly with a literal translation
for cuca de llum as light bug would give the reader a better appreciation of what
Goytisolo and Bush mean when they refer to the “misery” of the term, even though its
“obscenity” would still be left unexplained ( cuca in Catalan is slang for ‘penis’).

4 Culture-specific I tems
Apart from cases of self-referentiality and optional connectives where there is no
correspondence between ST-implicitness/ ST-explicitness, there are cases where,
although it could be argued that certain meanings are implicit in the source text and
explicit in the target text, the question about increased semantic redundancy, in the
sense of a more “informative” rendering, is still not clear cut. When dealing with
culture-specific items, for example, the question of the “informativeness” of an item
clearly depends on the cognitive store of the reader.
(8) En un rincón había una montaña de botellas, color guardia civil, cubiertas de
polvo. (JCSFST)
I n one corner there was a pile of bottles, guardia-civil colour, covered in dust.
(literally)
I n one corner there was a pile of dusty bottles, green as a guardia civil’s uniform.
(JCSFTT)
I n the source text in example (8), guardia civil modifies color ‘colour’, and it is an
unusual collocate for that word, an instance of what Kenny calls ‘creative collocation’
(Kenny 2001: 134-141). Jull Costa borrows the Spanish term and, although she does
not define it, she provides two important pieces of information, namely, that a guardia
civil wears a uniform, and that this uniform is green. What is more, the metonymy in
the source text is rendered as a simile7 in the target text, so the comparative element
is also more explicit (see Weissbrod 1992). So, there is explicitation at several levels.
Nevertheless, if we bring the source- and target-text readers into the picture, can we
really argue that explicitation has resulted in increased informativeness? What is a
“guardia-civil green”? A bright, dry, pale or dark green? Assuming for a moment that
we can actually locate readers in a specific culture, common sense would say that
“guardia-civil colour” is much more specific from the source-culture reader’s point of
view than “green as a guardia civil’s uniform” from the target-culture reader’s
perspective.
I t is also interesting to note that although explicitation seems to be triggered by
the presence of a culture-specific item, the translator’s solution is not to explain the
meaning of the item itself but – probably on the basis of assumptions concerning the
cognitive store of the readers – to provide a minimum amount of information that
enables them to work out the function of the lexical item even without a clear under-
standing of its semantic meaning. The target-text readers may still not know what

7
A simile is a comparison where the similarity is directly expressed using terms such as ‘like’, ‘as’ or
‘similar to’. Metonymy is a figure of speech where a thing, concept, person, or group is represented
by something closely associated with it.
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guardia civil actually means, but they do not need to, because they will know that here
it is used to describe a “colour” and that the colour in question is some sort of green.
Another example is provided by Peter Bush’s rendering of chicha as chicha beer in
the translation of a text by Luis Sepúlveda:
(9) [ …] cuando éstos se adormecían bajo los efectos de la chicha y de la natema…
(BSST)
[ ...] when they would fall asleep under the effects of the chicha and the
natema… (literally)
[ …] once they had fallen asleep, overcome by chicha beer and natema… (BSTT)
Chicha is a fermented beverage, traditionally made from maize and sometimes from
rice. I ts alcohol percentage can vary, sometimes it can be made as a soft drink,
although in the particular context where chicha is used in Sepúlveda’s text, it refers to
an alcoholic beverage. I n this case, there is a certain piece of information that is
implicit in the source text and is made explicit in the target text: chicha contains
alcohol. Nevertheless, the item chicha, on its own, is likely to be much more
informative to a source culture reader than chicha beer to an Anglo-saxon reader.
I ndeed, a reader who has been acquainted with chicha may find it rather misleading
that it should be called a type of ‘beer’.
At this stage, a distinction between pragmatic and semantic meanings might be
thought useful: semantic meaning being what is encoded in the text, and contained
within the text, and pragmatic meaning that which is inferred by reference outside the
text (see, for example, Widdowson 1998: 17). Klaudy, following Pym (1993), describes
as pragmatic explicitation cases where “members of the target language cultural
community may not share aspects of what is considered general knowledge within the
source language culture” (Klaudy 1998: 83). One of the risks of thinking along these
lines, as pointed out in passing above, is that we might end up assuming too much
about readers and their cultural contexts. When references are highly specific to a local
culture, as in this case, establishing a degree of informativeness even among native
speakers is difficult. A source-text reader from Spain, for example, may not be at all
familiar with chicha.
Another problem with categorizing explicitation along those lines is that the
distinction between what aspects of meaning can be said to be semantically inscribed
in the text and what aspects can only be pragmatically inferred by reference outside
the text is not clear cut (see, for example, Widdowson 1998, Fetzer 2004). According
to Widdowson (1998: 21), semantic meaning constitutes only a range of delimiting
coordinates which are given pragmatic meaning in association with contextual
assumptions. I n other words, the meaning encoded in the text allows us to delimit the
range of possible contexts it could apply to, but it is not until we go from text to
context that the pragmatic potential is realised. Bianchi (1999: 74) goes even further
and argues that a conception of autonomous linguistic meaning does no longer seem
reasonable, and should be replaced by a context-dependent conception, whereby
words have semantic potential, that is, a set of applications to situations, objects, or
contexts that are accepted by the linguistic community. The notion of context still
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needs some elaboration within translation studies (see Baker 2005), and this is not the
place to attempt further refinements. For the purposes of this paper it is sufficient to
recognise that the meaning potential of an utterance is not realised until it is applied to
a specific context, shared by a certain linguistic community, and therefore distinguish-
ing between semantic and pragmatic meanings will not be of assistance in refining the
notion of explicitation when looking at texts without considering an immediate field of
reception.
The solution I would like to propose here is to explain explicitation as a strategy
that is not necessarily associated with implicitness in the source text, but with
translators’ assumptions about their readership and about their role as literary and
cultural mediators.

5 Exploring Motivations: I mplicit and Explicit for Whom?

I n example (10) the definitions of explicitation provided in the literature work quite
well: there is a piece of information that is explicit in the TT but only implicit in the ST,
and that is the fact that the doce reales are Alfanhuí’s payment for his work as oxherd.
I t is interesting to note, however, that even if the definition holds in relation to the pair
con/ earning, this only helps us describe the shift without explaining it, since it remains
to be seen whether it is the implicitness in the preposition itself ( con , whose closest
equivalent in English is ‘with’) that has triggered the shift. Another candidate that may
have worked as a trigger in this case is the foreign item reales (a Spanish form of
currency no longer in use) appearing in the same sentence. I t is possible that rather
than explaining the meaning of the term reales itself, or risking misunderstanding, the
translator has rendered the whole sentence in such a way that the meaning of reales
can be more easily derived from the co-text (as in example 8) than if she had trans-
lated the preposition con literally.
(10) Así entró Alfanhuí de boyero en Moraleja, con doce reales cada día. (JCSFST)
Thus became Alfanhuí an oxherd in Moraleja, with twelve reales a day. (literally)
And so Alfanhuí became the oxherd in Moraleja, earning twelve reales a day.
(JCSFTT)
Several hypotheses have been presented as to why and when translators resort to
explicitation. Communicative preferences across languages are one of the factors to
consider. Contrastive German-English discourse analyses suggest that German speakers
and writers tend to present information in a more explicit manner than their English
counterparts: “they tend to (overtly) encode or verbalize propositional content rather
than leave it to be inferred from the context” (House 2004: 187). Therefore, according
to House, a tendency to explicitate among English to German translators would simply
be a reflection of German communicative preferences. House’s hypothesis that
explicitation reflects differences in linguistic-textual conventions between source and
target texts is presented as “in stark opposition” to that postulated by Blum-Kulka, who
argues that it is the constraints of the translation process which causes greater
cohesive explicitness in the translation relative to its original (House 2004: 193). I t
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could be argued, however, that these two hypotheses are not necessarily mutually
exclusive: cognitive constraints inherent in the translation process and textual-linguistic
conventions can be seen as two of the probably many more factors that influence the
translators’ choice. Explicitation in translation from English into German could still be
directly associated with the translation process if a heavier tendency to explicitness
was to be found in translated than in non-translated comparable German corpora.
House (2004) does not dismiss the role of context and its influence on the reader’s
interpretation, but argues that an adequate description of decisions taken by the
translator on the basis of an assessment of the addressee’s contextual resources
[ ...] can only be achieved in the framework of a psycholinguistic theory. For the purposes
of our objective of coming to grips with the notion of ‘explicitness in texts’, a
psycholinguistic framework seems less appropriate than for instance the linguistic one
suggested by Halliday [ ...] (House 2004: 191)
Following Halliday, House distinguishes between three types of explicitation, depending
on whether it relates to the ideational, interpersonal or textual functional component.
I n each of these types, explicitness can take three different forms:
• elaboration , when the clause or part of it is elaborated upon by using other words,
specifying, commenting or exemplifying;
• extension , when there is expansion via the addition of a new element, provision of
an exception, or offer of an alternative,
• enhancement , when some circumstantial, temporal, local causal, or conditional
element is used to embellish or qualify the clause.
This systemic functional framework is useful to describe instances of explicitation but
less so to explain them. House herself acknowledges that in order to gain a complete
picture of the many factors influencing explicitation across discourse, we must take
non-linguistic factors into account, such as translator variables, situational variables
and translation-task variables (House 2004: 203). When it comes to explore motiva-
tions underlying translator’s choices, relevance theory does indeed seem to be more
apt.
The main thesis in relevance theory is that human communication creates an
expectation of optimal relevance: “An assumption is relevant in a context if and only if
it has some contextual effects in that context" (Sperber/ Wilson 1986: 122). However,
relevance is a matter of degree, and having contextual effects is not sufficient for
optimal relevance. Two conditions have to be fulfilled: the contextual effects have to
be large and the processing effort required small (Sperber/ Wilson 1986: 125). The
principle that
I n aiming at relevance, the speaker must make some assumptions about the hearer’s
cognitive abilities and contextual resources, which will necessarily be reflected in the way
she communicates, and in particular in what she chooses to make explicit and what she
chooses to leave implicit. (Sperber/ Wilson 1986: 218)
seems particularly suitable to explain examples (5), (6), (8), (9) and (10) above.
However, as argued in Saldanha (2005) on the basis of a detailed analysis of the
choices made by translators working from and into the same languages, with a similar
Gaby Saldanha trans-kom 1 [ 1] (2008): 20-35
Explicitation Revisited: Bringing the Reader into the Picture Seite 30

genre and in similar conditions, assumptions about the cognitive environment of the
addressee are not always enough to explain different tendencies in the use of
explicitation as a strategy.
The results presented in Saldanha (2005) were obtained from the same two
corpora of translations by Margaret Jull Costa and Peter Bush from where the
examples analysed here have been taken. The results showed that Jull Costa was less
likely than Bush to use cultural borrowings as a strategy for dealing with culture-
specific terms, and that when she did, she provided contextual information that
facilitated their understanding (as in examples (5), (6), (8) and (10) above). A look at
patterns in the use of the optional connective that after reporting verbs SAY and TELL
showed that Jull Costa tended to use the that -connective far more often than Peter
Bush. Jull Costa also tended to add emphatic italics in her translations (a strategy that
was noticeably absent in Bush’s translations), which could be indicative of a tendency
to facilitate readability. I t was therefore suggested that there was a more marked
tendency towards explicitation in translations by Margaret Jull Costa than in translation
by Peter Bush, and that this was the result of the two translators’ different stylistic
preferences (Baker 2000) since the different patterns could not be explained by
different constraints in terms of languages involved, genres or cultural backgrounds.
What was particularly interesting was that the translators seemed to opt for different
strategies even when presented with rather similar cases, as in examples (11) and
(12).
(11) Siempre, en todo caso, nos trataremos de usted. (BOST)
[ …] we must always use usted to each other. (BOTT)
(12) [ …] eu e Ricardo não nos tratávamos por tu, (JCSCTT)
[ …] Ricardo and I never addressed each other as ‘tu’, (JCSCTT)
Both Portuguese and Spanish distinguish between a formal and informal form of
address, which are used in these examples self-referentially. Although both translators
reproduce in the translations the actual source language forms ( usted and tú in
Spanish and você and tu in Portuguese), they generally differ in the choice of verb
introducing them. The Spanish trataremos de and the Portuguese tratávamos por both
mean 'address as'. The lemmas in the two languages are cognates; surface differences
in the examples below are explained partly by the fact that the Spanish verb is marked
for future tense, while the Portuguese verb is in the past tense. Bush translates the
Spanish as use ‘usted’ to each other , whereas Jull Costa opts for the more explicit
address each other as ‘tu’, making clear that what is being discussed is a form of
address. Technically, this does not count as explicitation, since the idea of ‘addressing’
is also present in the Portuguese tratar por , and in the Spanish tratar de. I t is only
when contrasted with the choice of use in the translation by Bush (and therefore with
the choices available in the English language in general), that Jull Costa's lexical choice
strikes us as more explicit.
I n order to find an explanation for these tendencies, Saldanha (2005) looked at
Peter Bush’s and Margaret Jull Costa’s own writing about translation and interviews
with both translators. On the basis of a detailed analysis of the translators’ position ,
Gaby Saldanha trans-kom 1 [ 1] (2008): 20-35
Explicitation Revisited: Bringing the Reader into the Picture Seite 31

horizon , and project (Berman 1995), it was argued that what may explain the use of
different strategies was not so much the translator’s different assumptions about their
reader’s contextual resources, but their own different conceptions of their roles as
intercultural mediators in relation to their audience.
According to Bush (2002a: 30), it is not possible to analyse the experience of the
source text readers, and it is not possible to re-create those imponderables in a reader
in another language. Bush’s position is that:
[ ...] although the translator will inevitably think about the eventual readerships for his
translation, the reader he must translate for is himself, as no-one else will be so embedded
in the struggle between original and nascent text. (Bush 2002a: 23)
Another point made by Bush is that readers are patronised; he points out that some
readers may like to have to reach for a dictionary to understand what they are reading
(personal communication). We can read in Bush’s comments a willingness to challenge
his readers. Jull Costa, on the other hand, sees it as her challenge “to make them stop
thinking that translations are not worth reading, that they are not, somehow, the real
thing” (personal communication). Her strategy, however is not to challenge her readers
but to reach out to them. I n doing so, she also has the author’s interest at heart:
Any good translator feels a huge responsibility towards his or her author [ …] Since English
is the main world language and therefore the biggest market in the world, authors are
obviously keen to be translated into English. I am very aware that my translations are their
entrée into this market and this new readership. (Jull Costa, personal communication, my
emphasis)
When we associate the patterns of explicitation with the translators’ own views of their
role in relation to their readers, it seems plausible that we could explain explicitation as
a feature of audience design (Mason 2000). The basic tenet of audience design is that
style is oriented to people (a response to an audience) rather than functions (Bell
2001). Applying Bell’s notion to translation as an extension of skopos theory, Mason
postulates that:
[ …] in many cases, according to their skopos, translators will wish their output to conform
to the expectations of users and to be accepted as viable instances of the established
practices of the target culture. I n others [ …] it is the element of source language cultural
and socio-textual practices which the translation skopos seeks to preserve. (Mason 2000:
18)
I would not go as far as saying that Jull Costa and Bush have different readerships in
mind. They both translate for an educated English-speaking readership that is prepared
to read translated literature, including “difficult” writers such as Goytisolo or Saramago.
They differ, however, in terms of how far they will go to meet the audience on its own
terms and their willingness to align themselves occasionally with the source culture and
present translated language as the language of an “out-group”.
Jull Costa wants her translations to be acceptable in the terms established by the
target culture, her translations are driven by a desire to make their reading a
pleasurable experience, which is not interrupted by encounters with information, such
as source language words, that the readers cannot process in their own cognitive
environment. This does not mean that the target text will have been simplified or that
Gaby Saldanha trans-kom 1 [ 1] (2008): 20-35
Explicitation Revisited: Bringing the Reader into the Picture Seite 32

it will be more informative than the source text. However, when there is a cultural gap
that would prevent the target text reader from making relevant assumptions, then she
is likely to mediate, providing an intratextual gloss or adding contextual information.
Bush, on the other hand, is driven by a desire to introduce new foreign authors to
Britain’s literary market (see Bush 2002b), and is ready to challenge readers to shift
out of their usual patterns to read them. Describing his experience of translating
Onetti, Bush talks about resisting “the weight of conventional English pressing down on
the brain” (Bush 1999: 182). This does not mean that he is prepared to sacrifice
idiomaticity, but here and there, he will diverge from the reader’s language and
confront them with a language that is not their own, reminding them that the text has
originated in another language.
A clear advantage of seeing explicitation from this point of view, is that the same
explanation can be offered in relation to instances of implicitation. I n example (13), Jull
Costa adds information that specifies that a fado is a tune (something that is implicit in
the Portuguese repenicando à viola), but omits another piece of information: the title
of the song. From the target reader’s perspective, however, this does not hinder
comprehension. I f anything, it facilitates comprehension by restricting the number of
unfamiliar elements that the reader will be confronted with, and therefore is in line
with the explanation given above concerning Margaret Jull Costa’s tendency to use
explicitation.
(13) [ …] o mesquinho tenente de quinze mil réis de soldo, ria com a D. Augusta,
repenicando à viola o “Fado da Cotovia”. (JCQST)
[ …] the insignificant lieutenant of fifteen mil-réis a month, laughing with D.
Augusta, picking out on his guitar the “Fado da Cotovia”. (literally)
[ …] that happy and insignificant lieutenant with his fifteen mil-réis a month,
laughing with Dona Augusta and picking out the tune of a fado on his guitar.
(JCQTT)

6 Conclusion
Explicitation can be conceived as a translation strategy whereby translators spell out
optional interpersonal, ideational or textual meanings in the target text. When this is a
conscious strategy, it is likely to be made on the basis of their assumptions regarding
the likely cognitive context and environment of their readers. Patterns in the use of
explicitation seem to be related also to how individual translators see their role as
intercultural and literary mediators. I f regularities in the use of this strategy were
established within a certain socio-cultural field we might be able to make certain
generalizations as to how the role of translators in relation to their audience is
conceived within that field. I t is possible that subconscious processes of explicitation
are also at work in translation, but explanations for these might have to be found in
the field of psycholinguists and have not been explored here.
The frequent use of explicitation is bound to have an effect upon the readability
and ease of comprehension of a text in its own right, but not necessarily in relation to
Gaby Saldanha trans-kom 1 [ 1] (2008): 20-35
Explicitation Revisited: Bringing the Reader into the Picture Seite 33

the source text. I t has been argued here that the informativeness of a text cannot be
postulated a priori because it cannot be measured outside specific contexts of
reception. Although translations are products of the target culture, little research has
been carried out on the reception of translations across different socio-cultural
contexts. Research along these lines may prove useful in order to find out how
accurate are translators’ assumptions about their readership and their preferences.

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Author
Gabriela Saldanha is Lecturer in Translation Studies at the Centre for English Language Studies,
University of Birmingham, UK. She has co-edited, with Mona Baker, the new revised edition of
the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (in press).
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: http:/ / www.cels.bham.ac.uk/ staff/ saldanha.htm