Explicitation vs. implicitation : discourse markers in English-into-Arabic translation

Abstract EN

The present paper aims to examine Blum-Kulka’s (1986) claim that cases of explicitation in the target text (TT) correspond to cases of implicitation in the source text (ST).

A corpus of three discourse markers (DMs) in an Arabic translation is examined against the DMs in the English ST.

The findings show that there are three types of correspondence in DMs: explicitation to explicitation, explicitation to implicitation, and explicitation to zero equivalents.

The paper concludes that the syndetic nature of Arabic discourse, unlike the asyndetic nature of its English counterpart, accounts for the presence of several cases of DMs which do not correspond to implicit DMs in the ST and whose sole function is to improvise smooth and cohesive discourse.