Spatial deictics in translation

Abstract

Recent research on deictic elements has made extensive use of translation corpora to demonstrate that asymmetries between translational paradigms signal subtle contrasts from a systemic and pragmatic perspective. The purpose of the present study is to identify translation correspondences of the English spatial demonstrative this in Lithuanian and to discuss the contrastive features within the analytical framework of translational explicitation and implicitation. The results indicate that in the prototypical situational usage there is a high degree of correspondence between this and its Lithuanian translation, while textual uses demonstrate low formal equivalence. A tendency to implicitate stems from the null subject construction and object ellipsis in Lithuanian and is also a result of the availability of facultative deictic words in Lithuanian. The apparent systemic difference between the deictic systems of English and Lithuanian indicates a tendency towards optional implicitation and stylistic variation in literary translation.