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Article published In:
Target
Vol. 23:1 (2011) ► pp.3–25

The future of general tendencies in translation

Explicitation in web localization

| Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Explicitation has long been considered a tendency in translation and has been empirically investigated by a number of scholars. This paper responds to Chesterman´s (2004a: 47) call to test explicitation phenomena on different translation modalities and types, and tests the explicitation hypothesis against a comparable web corpus containing 40m words. The fast evolving field of web localization was selected given that (1) if explicitation is a potential universal or general tendency, it should be equally present in current and future translation types; (2) localization is a specific case of translation in which explicitation might not be expected due to space constraints and web usability guidelines; (3) research using comparable web corpora has produced evidence contradicting other proposed general tendencies, such as conventionalization (Jiménez-Crespo 2009a; Kenny 2001). The results of the study confirm that despite specific constraints, localized texts show explicitation if contrasted with non-translated web texts belonging to the same digital genre.

Keywords: explicitation, tendencies in translation, universal hypotheses, web localization, corpus-based translation studies, comparable corpora
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Translation universals, explicitation and web localization
  • 3.Explicitation and web localization
    • 3.1Web localization and space constraints in translation
  • 4.Corpus-based methodologies and the study of explicitation
  • 5.Methodology: The Spanish Web Comparable Corpus
    • 5.1The Spanish Web Comparable Corpus
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1Personal pronoun explicitation
    • 6.2Navigation menu terminology
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 August 2011
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.23.1.01jim
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