On Explicitation in Literary Translation

Since translation studies gained a fresh impetus from the use of the techniques and tools of corpus linguistics, the search for translation universals, explicitation in particular, has rapidly developed into a new field of endeavor and experienced a surge of research interest. Published in 1981, Gan Xiao Liu Ji is Yang Jiang's long reminiscences of the life she shared with her husband in a cadre school during the Cultural Revolution. This book draws on the two English versions of Gan Xiao Liu Ji respectively produced by Geremie Barme and Howard Goldblatt to make a comparative study in terms of lexis, syntax and pragmatics with a view to analyzing the way explicitation is manifested and prompted in each translation as well as the effect it has on conveying the original meaning and style. The analysis should contribute to the research on explicitation in literary translation and provide some beneficial suggestions for the future practice of literary translation.