When and why do translators add connectives?

Abstract

Additions and omissions of connectives (e.g. conjunctions, connective adverbs, etc.) are a frequent phenomenon in translation. The present article reports on a study whose aim was to elucidate translators’ motivations for performing such shifts, focusing on the addition of connectives. The study was carried out on a bidirectional parallel corpus containing translations of business texts between English and German. Connective additions and omissions were identified, counted and analyzed taking into account the surrounding linguistic context of the shift in question, possibly associated shifts performed by the translator, alternative translation options, etc. It was found that the vast majority of identified shifts were attributable to previously established English-German contrasts in terms of syntax, lexis, and communicative norms. The findings suggest that it is unnecessary to assume that translators follow a “universal strategy” of explicitation, as it has often been done in the literature (cf. e.g. Blum-Kulka’s Explicitation Hypothesis).