The Asymmetry Hypothesis

An alternative to the Explicitation Hypothesis would be the Asymmetry Hypothesis firstly proposed by Klaudy (2001b), where she examined the relationship between explicitation and implicitation in operations carried out by translators translating literary works from Hungarian into English, German, French and Russian, and vice versa. In its formulation by Klaudy and K´aroly (2005: 14), this hypothesis postulates that

Explicitations in the L1 >L2 direction are not always counter balanced by implicitations in L2>L1 direction because translat-ors —if they have a choice— prefer to use operations involving explicitation, and often fail to perform optional implicitation.

(ibid.)

On the one hand, obligatory explicitation shifts are generally symmetrical, that is, explicitation in one direction is matched by implicitation in the

other. On the other hand, optional explicitation in one direction may also be in a symmetrical relationship with implicitation in the opposite direction.

However, due to its optional nature, this last type of explicitation is not always counterbalanced by optional implicitation in the opposite direction.

Klaudy (1996) demonstrated that translators carrying out English-Hungarian back translation do not omit elements added in Hungarian-English trans-lations. Quantitative analysis of semantic variability of reporting verbs in English-Hungarian and Hungarian-English translations indicate that, while translators tend to choose more specific reporting verbs in translations from English into Hungarian (for example, ‘say’ would be replaced by the equivalent of ‘mutter’, ‘burst on’, ‘accuse’, etc.), they do not choose more general verbs in the Hungarian into English direction (Klaudy and K´aroly 2005). These findings seem to verify the Asymmetry Hypothesis postulated by Klaudy (2001b), according to which explicitation in the L1>L2 direction is not always

counterbalanced by implicitation in the L2 >L1.

Should this hypothesis be verified, it would underpin the assumption that explicitation is a universal strategy of translation, independent of the language-pair and the direction of translation.

3.7.1 Discussion

The Assymetry Hypothesis does not assume the existence of a distinct, translation-inherent type of explicitation. Rather it claims that among the language pair-specific types of explicitation (see Section 3.4), whose exist-ence is uncontroversial, explicitations tend to outnumber the corresponding implicitations.

Another positive approach to Klaudy and K´aroly’s formulation of their Asymmetry Hypothesis is that it only states a tendency i.e. not always on the part of the translators as it does not claim that explicitations outnumber implicitations in each and every case. However, one of the main shortcomings for this hypothesis is that its formulation may be a bit problematic, because it does not become quite clear which kinds of explicitation are covered: Klaudy’s types 1 to 3 or only optional explicitations?

When formulating this hypothesis, the authors use the term prefer which seems to evoke the impression of a conscious decision on the part of the translator. According to Klaudy and K´aroly’s hypothesis, it seems that there is no room for the possibility of subconscious explicitation behaviour. As pointed by Becher (2010a: 17) the use of the termfail in this hypothesis adds a prescriptive flavour to it. We cannot blame translators for being more explicit than authors of non-translated texts. Becher (2010a: 17) reformulation proposal of the Asymmetry Hypothesis to overcome the above mentioned

problems would be this one:

Obligatory, optional and pragmatic explicitations tend to be more frequent than the corresponding implicitations regardless of the SL/TL constellation at hand. (ibid: 18)

Thanks to the Asymmetry Hypothesis it is possible to claim that trans-lators display a tendency to explicitate without the need of postulating a separate translation-inherent type of explicitation (Occam’s Razor principle) and working only with Klaudy’s explicitation types 1 to 3, which are un-problematic and uncontroversial when finding explanations for explicitation phenomena in translation.

As pointed out by Becher (2010a), the only remaining problem with Klaudy and K´aroly (2005) is that they do not provide a motivation for the postulation of the Asymmetry Hypothesis. Taking as a starting point that translation can be described as an act of performance, of parole and not oflangue or competence, Becher (2010a) supports the idea that human communication is driven by two competing principles (adapted from Horn 1984: 13; Atlas and Levinson 1981, Fabricius-Hansen 2005, Grice 1975):

1. The Q principle: ”say as much as possible” (explicitness) 2. The R principle: ”say no more than you must” (implicitness)

The Q and R principles can thus be regarded as the two virtual end-points of an explicitness/implicitness scale inherent to linguistic communication. It is obvious that strictly speaking, the two principles contradict each other:

“[a] speaker obeying only Q would tend to say everything she knows on the off-chance that it might prove informative, while a speaker obeying only R would probably, to be on the safe side, no open her mouth.” (Horn 1984: 15) Speakers have to decide which principle to follow and to which degree when preparing their messages. In other words, the speaker has to find the most favourable trade-off between the two principles.

In face-to-face communication, the exchange will tend towards the implicit end of the scale: if the hearer signals that my message turned out to be too implicit, I can then elaborate on it, i.e. make it more explicit ex post. In written texts, on the other hand, the communication exchange will seems logical to tend towards the explicit end of the scales since we do not have direct access to the hearer feedback in this case. When in doubt, anyone should tend to be too explicit rather than too implicit.

In terms of the explicitness-implicitness scale, translations are written texts par excelance and thus they should tend to be located even farther towards the explicit end of the scale than non-translated texts. This is due to two

properties of the communicative situation typically underlying translation: i) the communicative situation underlying translation is typically characterized by cultural distance between (SL) author and (TL) reader (House 1997). The main task of the translator is to ensure understanding between SL author and TL reader while avoiding misunderstanding between SL author and TL reader;ii) The communicative situation underlying translation is typically characterized by a great deal of risk (Pym 2005), the risk of not being understood.

Accordingly to these two properties, it is not surprising that translators will do everything to ensure understanding, and this is where explicitation comes into play. It seems plausible to assume that translators will move up on the Q-R scale, i.e. they will tend to be too explicit rather than too implicit when in doubt. From this perspective defended by Becher (2010a), and originally by House (2008), the tendency of translators to avoid risk cannot be called “translation-inherent”. First, it depends on individual translators and how much risk they are willing to take. This means that explicitation, insofar as it is caused by the tendencies of translators to compensate for cultural distance and to avoid risk, seems to be neither “translation-inherent”

(translators do not do anything translation-specific, they only do what authors of non-translated texts do) nor fully “universal” in the strict sense (there will always be situations on which translators do not display the mentioned tendencies).