Explicitation as a Translation Universal: Some Controversial Issues

The historical trajectory of the field of translation studies has demonstrated the rapid expansion of this field in research methodology as well as in incorporating ideas from other disciplines in order to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomena of translation. Early studies in the field have limited themselves to comparing translated texts with their source texts. Even Zohar’s (1979) poly-system theory as well as Toury’s (1995) idea of the centrality of the translated texts opened new horizons in the field, one of which is to find specific features of translated texts or ‘universals of translation’ as Baker (1992) puts it. Recent developments in linguistics as well as the introduction of corpus linguistics have helped translation scholars to study translated texts independent from their source texts in order to find unique features of translation language. This study intends to review the idea of explicitation as a translation universal and propose some controversial issues regarding its nature and definition.