ABSTRACT

Some scholars have suggested that there is a link between explicitation and translation expertise, but the studies conducted until now offer conflicting evidence. Building on a previous publication by the same author, this contribution addresses that research gap, reporting on the findings of an empirical case study on Danish professional translators’ use of explicitation techniques in their translations of an excerpt from a Spanish judgment. The data consisted of a Spanish source text and ten translations into Danish by five experts and five non-experts, as defined according to parameters proposed in previous literature. The translations were analysed using qualitative methods (i.e. contrastive text analysis) followed by a quantification. The results showed that the expert group explicitated significantly more than the non-expert group did, which suggests that explicitation is indicative of translation expertise. However, although the non-expert group as a whole explicitated less than the expert group did, two of the non-experts performed the same number of explicitations as the experts did, suggesting that the definition of expertise be revised. Thus, the study reminds us that translation expertise is a complex concept in need of further research and clarification.