Explicitation as a universal in syntactic de/condensation

Abstract

The aim of this study was to test the explicitation hypothesis (Blum-Kulka 1986) on the morpho-syntactic level. A bi-directional comparable corpus of popular texts on history, as well as German and Czech parallel corpora were analysed in order to investigate the tendency in translations to use more explicit modes of expression instead of syntactic condensation devices. At the first stage of the study, the frequencies of finite verbs in main and subordinate clauses, participial phrases and infinitive constructions, and deverbative nouns and adjectives in original Czech and German texts were contrasted. Results showed that Czech prefers more verbal/explicit modes of expression in contrast with the more nominal/implicit German style. The second stage of the study consisted of the examination of explicitating and implicitating shifts in both German-to-Czech and Czech-to-German translations. The findings fully confirm the explicitation hypothesis, with explicitation exceeding implicitation by 40.6% in Czech and by 47.8% in German translations. The word count analysis also supports the hypothesis. At the third stage, translations were subjected to the same quantitative analysis as was conducted at stage one on original texts. The frequencies revealed in translations were then compared with those obtained from original target language texts. The German comparable corpus proved to have a higher degree of explicitness in translations while the Czech comparable corpus did not show any clear-cut explicitation tendencies in translations.