Implicitness in Translation and Interpreting

This article discusses the notion of implicitness in translation and interpreting. It first links implicitness to the fundamental underdeterminacy of language and discusses two perspectives for analyzing the phenomenon. In order to lay the theoretical groundwork, the article then discusses how implicitness has been conceptualized in the two major linguistic frameworks of Anglo-American pragmatics and cognitive linguistics. Following this, the focus is narrowed to concentrate on implicitness in translation and interpreting. The related concept of implicitation (which results in implicitness in translation/interpreting) is then introduced, and various reasons for, and linguistic manifestations of, implicitation in translation/interpreting are discussed.