Connectives as indicators of explicitation in literary translation: A study based on a comparable and parallel corpus

Josep Marco
Universitat Jaume I (Castelló)

This study aims to answer three questions: (1) whether there are differences in the frequency of use of connectives between translated and non-translated Catalan literary texts; (2) whether these differences (if they exist) are sensitive to the type of semantic relation conveyed; and (3) to what extent they are due to explicitation or other factors. Quantitative analysis reveals that there is no significant difference in the overall frequency of occurrence of connectives in translations and non-translations, but the behaviour of connectives in translations is sensitive to the type of semantic relation conveyed. Moreover, the higher frequency of connectives expressing consequence in translations seems to be related to explicitation. Qualitative analysis suggests that explicitation is strongly associated with two factors: the semantic relation conveyed by the connective being part of the common ground shared by participants, and the predominance of the procedural function of the connective.

Publication history

Date received: 3 March 2016

Date accepted: 12 December 2017

Published online: 5 January 2018

Table of contents

The aim of this study is to analyse the behaviour of Catalan connectives in a comparable corpus of literary translations (from English) and non-translations, and to account for possible differences by looking at the source texts matching the translations. Results will be examined in the light of the explicitation hypothesis, “which postulates an observed cohesive explicitness from SL to TL texts regardless of the increase traceable to differences between the two linguistic and textual systems involved” (Blum-Kulka 1986, 19). It must be noted, however, that no matter how central the notion of explicitation may be in our discussion, the present study does not purport to test out the hypothesis as such, for reasons that will be explained in the methodology section. The overall aim just formulated could then be broken down into the following partial aims: (a) to identify differences in the use of connectives between translated and non-translated Catalan literary texts; (b) to find out whether, and to what extent, such differences are sensitive to the type of semantic relation conveyed by the connectives and to specific connectives; (c) to determine to what extent such differences are due to explicitation or to other factors. In order to answer the second question, connectives expressing result/consequence and contrast/concession will be dealt with. There is a neat, one-to-one correspondence between these three partial aims and the three questions listed in the abstract. All in all, the present article intends to contribute new evidence to the ongoing debate on explicitation in general and, more particularly, on the extent to which explicitation is at play in the area of connectives.

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