Testing explicitation in translation: Triangulating corpus and experimental studies

Abstract

During recent years, scholars have stressed the need to combine corpus-based translation studies (CBTS) and cognitive translatology to gain insights into the cognitive foundation for the general features of translated language (Halverson 2010; Alves and Vale 2011). This paper responds to previous calls to test explicitation phenomena on different translation modalities and types (Chesterman 2004a:47), and their cognitive basis (Halverson 2010, 2003). The paper presents a triangulation model on the basis of which hypotheses from descriptive corpus-based studies are generated, testing instruments are developed using previous corpora and the results of experimental studies are triangulated using these same corpora. The empirical study departs from two previous comparable corpus studies that focus on corporate (Jiménez-Crespo 2011a) and social networking sites (Jiménez-Crespo 2013). It uses their results and corpora to develop an experimental design to test the explicitation hypothesis. The study tests and compares explicitation on two production processes (1) translating segments directly or (2) selecting the translation from a range of valid non-translated lexical units identified in the previous study to accomplish the same communicative function. If explicitation is a general or even a universal tendency, it should be similarly present regardless of the genre, translation modality or specifics of the translation process. Although the explicitation hypothesis was confirmed in Jiménez-Crespo (2011a), the results of the present study show that the levels of explicitation vary between different production conditions, with the selection condition producing higher levels of explicitation than the regular translation condition. The results suggest procedural aspects are at play during the production stage.