Explicitation of Conjunctive Relations in Ghabraei’s Persian Translation of ‘The Kite Runner’

Explicitation has been one of the most important topics in recent translation studies. This research sought to investigate explicitation as a translation universal based on a contrastive analysis between Persian and English languages. The main focus of the study was to confirm the process of explicitation and to investigate the explicitation devices adopted in the Persian translation of the conjunctions between sentences and clauses in an English text. For the purposes of this research, one-third of a novel, namely The Kite Runner written by Khaled Hosseini (2003) and its Persian translation by Mehdi Ghabraei (2006) were scrutinized for any occurrence of shifts of conjunctions. The aim of the research was to test the explicitation hypothesis according to Blum-Kulka (1986) and the model which was followed for the analysis of conjunctive relations was that of Halliday and Hasan (1976). The results of the investigation indicated that the processes of explicitation, implicitation, and also the meaning change were observed in the corpus, although explicitation took a bigger portion in the target text. The analysis of the explicitated conjunctive relations indicated that two devices had been adopted by the translator, namely the addition of conjunctions and replacing punctuation marks with conjunctions. Furthermore, it was found that the translator had explicitated all four types of conjunctive relations, i.e. the additive, adversative, causal and temporal relations; however, from among these conjunctive relations, temporal ones were more explicitly portrayed in the target text.


Translation of Cohesive Markers
Translation is an act of transferring the understood message in one language, the source language, into another one, the target language.When translating a text, the translator should first of all understand the original text as a whole.Since translators are dealing with two different systems of languages, they will certainly observe many differences between the lexical and grammatical systems of the languages involved.Some of these differences are obligatory due to the systematic differences between the languages and are thus inevitable, but others are stylistic in nature, hence optional.Therefore, translators should be well aware of such differences and the best ways of dealing with them.
It is apparent that translation involves a shift from the source text concerning its structure or content.When translating a text, translators should pay attention to the target text readers' expectations and thus are forced to do some changes.Furthermore, systems of most languages differ overtly.For example, the apparent differences between English and Persian in the order of the components of their sentences will make translators shift the position of the sentence components.Likewise, the way in which cohesion and coherence show themselves in the text differs from one language to another; that is, cohesive markers (substitution, ellipsis, reference, lexical cohesion and conjunction) are used in different ways in different languages.Accordingly, if the text is literally translated, it may be unintelligible to its readers.Therefore, the task of the translator is both to explicitate what has been said implicitly in the source text in order to bring about textual cohesion and to increase the readability of the translated text.
One of the most important features that have been investigated under the heading of explicitation is the category of cohesive markers, which are used to create cohesion in the text.Cohesion is a semantic concept which refers to the relations of meaning that exist within the text.Blum-Kulka (1986) states that shifts in types of cohesive markers in translation can cause shifts in levels of explicitness, and/or shifts in text meanings.By the former, she means that "the general level of the target texts' textual explicitness is higher or lower than that of the source text"; and by the latter, she states that "the explicit and implicit meaning potential of the source text changes through translations" (ibid, p. 299) which means the rise of the target text's textual explicitness can show the process of explicitation while its fall can show the process of implicitation.
Conjunctions being ideal indicators of explicitation in translation, are also quite interesting to be the focus of study because any shift in the translation of conjunctions can bring about quite a considerable effect, and as Baker (1992, p. 197) states "adjusting patterns of conjunction in line with target-language general and specific text type preferences is less straightforward than adjusting patterns of reference.The problem with conjunction is that it reflects the rhetoric of the text and controls its interpretation." Taking into account the aforementioned points, the researchers chose to analyze the behavior of conjunctions when translated from English to Persian, and confined their study to Halliday and Hasan's (1976) classification of conjunctive relations which includes additive, adversative, causal and temporal types.Since analyzing shifts of cohesion is of utmost importance in the investigation of explicitation, the researchers, first of all, analyzed any shifts of conjunctions in the TT.Then they attempted to identify the explicitation devices used by the translator as well as the conjunctive relations which were explicitated.

Cohesion
The concept of cohesion is significant in any successful process of translation because cohesive ties are helpful in identifying semantic relations in the text and thus can contribute to their interpretation.According to Baker (1992), "cohesion is the network of surface relations which link words and expressions to other words and expressions in a text" (p.218).It is a semantic concept which refers to the relations of meaning that exist within the text.According to Blum-Kulka (1986), cohesion is "an overt relationship holding between parts of the text, expressed by language specific markers" (p.299), and Halliday and Hasan (1976, p. 4), contend that it occurs where "the INTERPRETATION of some element in the discourse is dependent on that of another", i.e. one element presupposes the other element, in the sense that "it cannot be effectively decoded except by recourse to it."(ibid) and therefore cohesion is established.
Cohesion is partly expressed through grammar and partly through vocabulary, and hence it is of two types, grammatical and lexical.Among the cohesive relations, reference, substitution and ellipsis are grammatical while lexical cohesion, as the name suggests, is manifested through lexical items.Conjunction, which is the focus of this study, is on the borderline of the grammatical and lexical cohesion.Actually, as Halliday and Hasan (1976, p. 6) state, conjunction is "mainly grammatical, but with a lexical component in it."Moreover, as it was stated above, cohesion is a semantic relation, so like all components of the semantic system, it is realized through the lexicogrammatical system.
The term cohesion is used in this research in the meaning that has been suggested by Halliday and Hasan (1976, p. 7); therefore, it refers specifically to the "non-structural text-forming relations", i.e. semantic relations.Cohesive relations can be found within a sentence and between sentences; however, because of the cohesive strength of grammatical structure, their occurrence within a sentence is of less importance.Halliday and Hasan (1976) argue that "cohesive ties between sentences stand out more clearly because they are the ONLY source of texture, whereas within the sentence there are the structural relations as well" (p.9).Furthermore, the type of relation that exists between sentences differs from that which exists among different parts of a sentence.And, it has also been stated that it is possible to specify a limited number of structures within the sentence, while we can not specify in the same way a set of possible structures for a text .Therefore, according to Halliday and Hasan (ibid,p. 13), the concept of cohesion refers to the semantic relations "whereby any passage of speech or writing is enabled to function as text", and it can be classified into five distinct categories, namely reference, substitution, ellipsis, lexical cohesion and conjunction.They also believe that sentence is the highest structural unit in the grammar and that it is the structure that cohere different parts of a sentence; however, there are no such structural relations between sentences.According to them, cohesion is not a structural relation and, therefore, it is not restricted by sentence boundaries and in its normal form it is the presupposition of something that has gone before.A form of presupposition that refers back to something that has gone before is called anaphoric, wherein what is presupposed may be located in the immediately preceding sentence or in some earlier sentence.However, as Halliday and Hasan (ibid,p. 16) point out, in conjunction, "the presupposition typically involves a passage longer than a single sentence."On the other hand, it is also possible that the presupposed element comes in the following sentence.This form of presupposition is called cataphoric.

Conjunction
Conjunction, one of the types of cohesive relations proposed by Halliday and Hasan (1976, p. 226), is "rather different in nature from the other cohesive relations."Conjunction is a different type of semantic relation which is "a specification of the way in which what is to follow is systematically connected to what has gone before" (ibid, p. 227).
Conjunction, as it was mentioned above, differs from the other types of cohesive relation in that it is cohesive by semantic connection.In fact, as Halliday and Hasan (ibid,p. 308) point out:

Some relation is established between the meanings of two continuous passages of text, such that the interpretation of the second is dependent on the relation in which it stands to the first. This relation may be one of two kinds; either it is present in the ideational meanings . . . or it is present in the interpersonal meanings …
There are some certain logical relations, which are embodied in linguistic structure in the form of coordination, apposition, modification, etc.Similar to these relations, there are some "certain non-structural, text-forming relations" that are referred to as conjunctive relations (Halliday and Hasan, 1976, p. 320).They represent semantic links between components of text and can be interpreted in a number of possible ways.In this research, however, we have focused on the fourfold scheme which has been proposed by Halliday and Hasan (ibid).
It should be further noted that conjunctive relations are not dependent on a particular order of expression; when a special form of conjunction is used to cohere two sentences into a text, it does not mean that the relation between them could survive only if, as Halliday and Hasan (ibid,p. 227) state, "they occur in that particular order", even in the case that we are dealing with a conjunctive relation which is "intrinsically ordered", such as succession in time.Since cohesion is about the relation between sentences in a text and the sentences of a text follow one another, the researchers were inevitably concerned with the actual sequence of sentences and focused on the function that the semantic relation performed in relating to each other the linguistic elements that occurred in succession but were not otherwise related by other structural means.

Shifts of Cohesion
Blum-Kulka (1986) in her article 'Shifts of Cohesion and Coherence in Translation' explains that shifts in the types of cohesion markers in the translated texts and inserting additional words in the target texts can both increase the target text's level of explicitness compared to the corresponding source text.According to Blum-Kulka (ibid) shifts of cohesive markers in translation can affect translations in one or both of the following ways: a) Shifts in levels of explicitness, and b) Shifts in text meanings.
By the former she means examining whether the general level of the TT's textual explicitness is higher or lower than that of the ST, and by the latter she means that "the explicit and implicit meaning potential of the source text changes through translations"(ibid, p. 299).Therefore, the rise of the target text's textual explicitness can show the process of explicitation while its fall can show the process of implicitation.
Studying shifts of cohesion through translation involves considering both the optional and obligatory cohesive ties.The latter refers to choices that are dictated by the grammatical systems of the two languages, while the former refers to the choices attributable to stylistic preferences.However, it is necessary to differentiate between obligatory and optional choices of cohesive ties.It is worth noting that these are the optional choices of cohesive ties that should be taken into account, because as Blum-Kulka (1986) states "only these can be legitimately used as evidence for showing certain trends in shifts of cohesion through translation."(p.312) Chesterman (1997, p. 98) lists cohesion change among the syntactic strategies as "something which affects intra-textual reference, ellipsis, substitution, pronominalization and repetition, or the use of connectors of various kinds" (as cited in Dimitrova, 2005, p. 42).Øverås (1998) investigates a number of different cohesion markers in translations between English and Norwegian.The findings of this study reveal that the number of explicitations exceeded the number of implicitations" (as cited in Pápai, 2004).The results, furthermore, demonstrate the addition of connectives and replacement of connectives over more explicit ones as forms of cohesive explicitation in translations.Øverås (1998) investigates various factors behind the phenomenon of explicitation for example, the process of interpretation inherent in translation, "the stylistic preferences of source and target languages, their systemic differences, and culture-bound translation norms" (Laviosa-Braithwaite, 2008, p. 123).Sidiropoulou (1995, p. 85) finds an overall tendency for explicitating implicit cause-effect relationships in the translation of newspaper texts from English into Greek (as cited in Dimitrova, 2005, p. 43).

Explicitation
One of the most important features of translated texts as compared to source language texts is explicitation.Explicitation, according to Klaudy (1993), is "the technique of making explicit in the target text information that is implicit in the source text" (cited in Baker, 1998, p. 80).Explicitation, according to Olohan (2002, p. 155), refers to "the spelling out in the target text of information which is only implicit in a source text".Explicitation and the introduction of extra information, according to Olohan and Baker (2000), can occur in different ways, such as the use of supplementary explanatory phrases in translation, expansion of condensed passages and the resolution of source text ambiguities.Séguinot (1988) states that additions that are not justified as structural, stylistic and rhetorical differences between the two languages will show explicitation in translation.Explicitation, according to Séguinot (1988, p. 108), can take three forms in a translation: Something is expressed in the translation which was not in the original, something which was implied or understood through presupposition in the source text is overtly expressed in the translation, or an element in the source text is given greater importance in the translation through focus, emphasis, or lexical choice.Klaudy (1998) introduces an interesting classification of different types of explicitation, namely obligatory, optional, pragmatic and translation-inherent explicitation.According to her classification, obligatory explicitation occurs when there are syntactic and semantic differences between the two languages involved.However, optional explicitations are due to different text-building strategies and stylistic preferences between languages.Adding connective elements to strengthen cohesive links, adding emphasizers for the clarification of sentence perspective and using relative clauses are some of the instances of optional explicitations.Pragmatic explicitations are due to different cultures and subsequently different world knowledge where translators, by adding explanations to translations, explicitate the implicit cultural information in the target language.Finally, translation-inherent explicitations are due to the nature of translation process itself.Saldanha (2008) explains explicitation as a "strategy that is not necessarily associated with implicitness in the source text, but with translators' assumptions about their readership and about their role as literary and cultural mediators."(p.28) According to Saldanha, explicitation "can be conceived as a translation strategy whereby translators spell out optional interpersonal, ideational or textual meanings in the target text" (ibid, p. 32).She believes that when explicitation is a conscious strategy, "it is likely to be made on the basis of their assumptions regarding the likely cognitive context and environment of their readers".However, she further says that the occurrence of subconscious processes of explicitation is also possible, but its explanation might be sought in the field of psycholinguists, and that the use of explicitation has an effect on the readability and ease of understanding of a text "in its own right, but not necessarily in relation to the source text" (ibid, pp.32-33).
Explicitation, according to Frankenberg-Garcia (2009), can be seen as either obligatory or voluntary.She explains that obligatory explicitation is used "when the grammar of the target language forces the translator to add information which is not present in the source text" (ibid, p. 48).On the other hand, voluntary explicitation "can occur voluntarily" with no compulsory grammatical reasons, when translators distance from the source text in order to increase the comprehensibility of the target text (ibid).Frankenberg-Garcia (2009) uses voluntary explicitation as a term for all those explicitations that are not obligatory and explains that voluntary explicitation can be either a result of a "conscious decision", to make the target text more understandable, or a "subconscious operation inherent in the process of translation" (p.49).
In her research, Pápai (2004) explains the notion of explicitation in terms of the translation process and the translation product.Explicitation, in terms of process, has been defined as "a translation technique involving a shift from the source text (ST) concerning structure or content."However, explicitation in terms of product "is a text feature contributing to a higher level of explicitness in comparison with non-translated texts" (p.145).

Blum-Kulka (1986) and the Explicitation Hypothesis
The first systematic study in the field of explicitation is that of Blum-Kulka (1986).She puts forward the explicitation hypothesis which postulates an observed cohesive explicitness from SL to TL texts regardless of the increase traceable to differences between the two linguistic and textual systems involved" (ibid, p. 19).According to her, the process of interpretation done by the translator on the source text might lead to a target text which has more redundancy than the source text.She further explains: This redundancy can be expressed by a rise in the level of cohesive explicitness in the target language text.This argument may be stated as "the explicitation hypothesis", which postulates an observed cohesive explicitness from SL to TL texts regardless of the increase traceable to differences between the two linguistic and textual systems involved (ibid, p. 300).Blum-Kulka (1986) explains that possible changes that occur through translation are either due to differences in stylistic preferences between two languages or to an explicitation process which is suggested to be inherent to translation.She further states that in order to establish the relative validity of these hypotheses, first of all a contrastive stylistic study should be carried out to identify cohesive patterns in both SL and TL, and then translations to and from both languages should be examined to investigate shifts in cohesive levels that occur through translation (cited in Venuti, 2000).Blum-Kulka (1986) says that "such studies will have to differentiate clearly between obligatory and optional choices of cohesive ties" (p.312).As it is clear, by obligatory choices she means those choices caused by the grammatical systems of the two languages and by optional choices she refers to those attributable to stylistic preferences.However, she further states that only optional choices should be taken into account, since only these can be used for showing shifts of cohesion in translation.
According to Blum-Kulka (1986) cohesive patterns can take three different forms in TL texts: a) cohesive patterns in TL texts tend to approximate the norms of TL texts of the same register; b) cohesive patterns tend to reflect norms of SL texts in the same register, which may be due to processes of transfer operating on the translation; c) cohesive patterns are neither TL nor SL norms oriented, but form a system of their own, possibly indicating a process of explicitation.

Research Questions
This research set out to answer three major questions as follows: 1. Does explicitation occur in translating conjunctions in the Persian translation of The Kite Runner?
2. What are the most common explicitation devices in the translation of conjunctions adopted by the translator?
3. What kind of conjunctive relation is more explicitly portrayed in the Persian translation of The Kite Runner?

Method and Materials
Descriptive research studies, according to Best and James (2006), have the following characteristics: a) they involve hypothesis formulation and testing, b) they use the logical methods of inductive-deductive reasoning to arrive at generalizations, c) they often employ methods of randomization so that error may be estimated when population characteristics are inferred from observations of samples, and d) the variables and procedures are described as accurately and completely as possible so that the study can be replicated by other researchers.Hence, this research claiming to be descriptive and objective, like any other empirical research, started from a set of hypotheses which are to be tested for either validation or rejection in the following process of research.The research material in this study comprised a parallel corpus including an original English novel, namely 'The Kite Runner' by Khaled Hosseini and its Persian translation by Mehdi Ghabraei.However, the focus of this study was on the first one-third of the whole work.Since the frequency of the occurrence of conjunctions is almost the same in the whole work, the researchers decided to choose only the first one-third of the whole book.One of the most significant features investigated under the heading of explicitation is the category of cohesive markers.However, from among the cohesive markers, the researchers chose to investigate conjunctions.The researchers, in fact, attempted to demonstrate that the translator had used explicitation in the Persian translation of 'The Kite Runner' and to identify the explicitation devices used by him when translating conjunctions of the English texts into Persian.
In order to collect various instances of conjunctions, it was necessary to follow some procedures.Firstly, the sample of the study, i.e. the first one-third of the source text and its Persian translation, were searched for the instances of the conjunctions in both ST and TT and then the found items were classified in both ST and TT, based on Halliday and Hasan's (1976) classification.Secondly, all the extracted conjunctions were aligned (manually) to identify types of shifts occurring according to Blum-Kulka (1986).In this phase, a bi-directional analysis was done, i.e. shifts of conjunctions were analyzed and calculated from ST to TT, and then from TT to ST.The former determined instances of additions in the TT, while the latter identified cases of omissions of conjunctions in the TT.While addition of conjunctions in the TT was considered as a consequence of explicitation in the translation, omission of conjunctions was discussed under the heading of implicitation.The main focus of the study was on explicitation as a translation universal, but since explicitation usually goes hand in hand with implicitation, both processes were identified and analyzed.Thirdly, instances of explicitation devices were identified and categorized into the relevant types and the frequency of their occurrence was calculated.

Results and Discussion
Shifts in the types of cohesive markers, following Blum-Kulka's (1986) explicitation hypothesis, can cause shifts in the levels of explicitness.The aim of the study was to investigate whether the general level of the target text's textual explicitness was higher or lower than that of the source text.Analysis of the extracted data, i.e. instances of shifts of conjunctions in TT indicated that all the processes of explicitation and implicitation, and also the meaning change were observed in the corpus.The frequency of these processes is represented in Table 1.As the table indicates, there is a significant amount of explicitation in the TT, with the frequency of 78, while the frequency of implicitation is 54, and the meaning change has the frequency of 6.As it is clearly shown in Figure 1, explicitation has the percentage of 57% of the total types of shifts in the TT; implicitation covers about 39%, and meaning change something about 4% of the total shifts occurring in the translation process.As it is clearly shown by the table, addition of conjunctions has the frequency 45, and the percentage of the occurrence of total explicitation devices in the TT is about 58.The frequency of the occurrence of replacing punctuation marks with conjunctions is 33 and its percentage is about 42.Hence, addition of conjunctions has the highest, while replacing punctuation marks with conjunctions has the lowest percentage of occurrence of the total explicitation devices in the TT. Figure 2 below indicates the percentage of the explicitation devices occurring in the TT:  As Figure 3 indicates, about 9% of the total added conjunctions is additive, 33% of them are adversative, 16% are causal and 42% are temporal and since continuatives were not added to the TT, its percentage is zero.Therefore, the most significant amount of added conjunctions in the TT, which covers about 42% of the total conjunctive relations, is related to the temporal type of relations, while the least number of explicitation is observed in the additive types of relations with a percentage of 9%, and most importantly, the translator has not explicitated the continuative relations.

Conclusions
According to Blum-Kulka (1986) the aim of investigating shifts of cohesion in translation is to examine "the effect of the use of cohesive features in translation on the TL text's level of explicitness and on the TL text's overt meaning(s), as compared to the SL text" (p.312).As the findings of this study clearly show shifts of cohesion, which include explicitation, implicitation and meaning change, occur in the target text; consequently, the answer to the first question of the study as to whether explicitation occurs in the Persian translation of 'The Kite Runner' is positive.
Investigation of the explicitation process in the corpus indicates that the translator has used different devices in order to make the translation more explicit.Hence the answer to the second question of the study is that two devices namely, a) addition of conjunctions, and b) replacing punctuation marks with conjunctions are identified as the most common explicitation devices adopted by the translator in the translation of the conjunctions.
In reply to the third question of the study, it must be said that the highest frequency of added conjunctions in the TT, which covers about 42% of the total conjunctive relations, is related to the temporal type of relations, while the lowest frequency of explicitation is observed in the additive types of relations, covering only 9% of the total conjunctive relations.
The findings of this study may have pedagogical implications for translator training courses.They may also be useful for improving the output of English to Persian translation software.In addition, they can be useful for those who are interested in translating children's literature.Furthermore, they may provide useful information for corpus-based translation studies and, last but not least, they may also be used in TAP (Think Aloud Protocols) studies.
It is worth stating that those shifts that cause meaning change in the translation of conjunctive relations can be further investigated to see whether they are considered to be instances of explicitation process.In order to do so, however, it is not enough to compare source and translation text.Rather, a larger amount of data is needed to be analyzed.Furthermore, restricting the study just to a parallel corpus is not enough; hence investigations (especially corpus-based ones) have to include comparable texts in the target language.Therefore, it is needed to integrate a comparable investigation into a parallel one in order to conclude comprehensive results.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Percentage of Types of Shifts of Conjunctive Relations in the TT

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Percentage of the Explicitation Devices in the TT

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Percentage of the Addition of Conjunctions in the TT

Table 1 .
The Frequency and Total Percentage of Types of Shifts in the TT

Table 2 .
Table 2 shows the frequency of each device: The Frequency of the Explicitation Devices in the TT