Explicitation in translation: A case of screen translation

Abstract

Explicitation is a method of clarifying into the TT what is implicit in the ST. Blum-Kluka (1986) formulated explicitation hypothesis and regarded explicitation as a translation universal, i.e. a feature that is mainly existed in the translated texts. So, the present study considers expliciation in screen/film translation, and tries to investigate the most frequent explicitation type and subtitling strategies used by the Persian subtitlers. To achieve the goals of the study, the three original English films subtitled into Persian language were selected and the first 20 minutes of them was studied and compared with their Persian equivalents through sentence-by-sentence comparison. The subtitling strategies were identified and their percentage was calculated. The findings indicated that translation-inherent explicitation was used mostly in subtitling, and expansion was the most frequent subtitling strategy employed by the Persian subtitlers in subtitling English original films into Persian.