From S-explicitation to T-explicitation? Tracing the development of the explicitation concept

Abstract

This paper sets out to investigate the coexistence of two different versions of explicitation in translation studies, which, with reference to Chesterman’s distinction between S-universals and T-universals, are called S-explicitation and T-explicitation in the first part of this article. Following a brief survey of the major strands in explicitation research, the specific characteristics of S-explicitation and T-explicitation are discussed. By tracing the development of the explicitation concept from its origins in Vinay and Darbelnet’s comparative stylistics to its widespread application in corpus-based translation studies, the circumstances leading to the emergence of T-explicitation are identified and it is shown that T-explicitation has developed in the wake of the more general paradigm shift from source-text orientation to target-text orientation. Looking at the issue from the conceptual side, several arguments for a profound conceptual difference between S-explicitation and T-explicitation are then laid out. The terminological implications of subsuming the two concepts under a common designation are discussed and it is argued that, after all, T-explicitation is not a form of explicitation proper but rather a form of comparative explicitness, since it lacks the necessary criterion of translational intertextuality and thus falls outside the cognitive reality and the translational action of the translator.