A Study On The Translation Of Political Public Speech Discourses From The Perspective Of Thematic Progression

Thematic progression is very important for the coherence and cohesion of a discourse, and it demonstrates the structure and the method of development of the discourse, shows the writer's intention and his/her way to develop the discourse. Therefore, thematic progression is crucial for a translator to analyze the original discourse and compose the target one. Political Public Speeches require well-knit structure and evocative language to effectively express the speakers'viewpoints and appeal the audiences. The analysis of thematic structure and progression of the original speech can help to better understand the original speakers'thought and textual mechanism.This thesis is intended to analyze political public speech discourses based on the theory of thematic progression and put forward some suggestions for its translation. It mainly analyses the thematic structure of the discourse based on Halliday's theme-rheme theory and then put stress on the translation of political public speeches discourse by mainly analyzing the translation of the five thematic progression patterns-constant theme progression, focused pattern, alternating pattern, cross-thematic pattern and derived pattern. Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 are the most important parts of this thesis. From the case analysis in the two chapters, we know that there are lots of similarities between English and Chinese political public speeches discourses and the four thematic progression patterns, constant theme progression, focused pattern, alternating pattern and derived pattern, is one of their similarities, which is helpful to achieve the equivalence of the content and the form in translation. But for the reason that English and Chinese belong to different language systems, they possess their own features in sentence structure and expressions, which will influence the preservation of the thematic progression patterns of the original discourse. So it's necessary for a translator to carefully read and analyze the original discourse and make clear of the writer's intention and train of thought and analyze its thematic progression so as to avoid unnecessary disorder in logic and expression, then the translator can maintain the original thematic progression patterns or adjust certain features of source text organization in accordance with preferred ways of organizing text in the target language to achieve textual equivalence.