On The Translation Of Loose Sentences In Academic Writing From The Perspective Of Rhetorical Structure Theory

Landmarks in Linguistic Thought: The Western Tradition from Socrates to Saussure is an academic writing written by Roy Harris and Talbot J. Taylor, which introduces those main ideas and topics that leads the development of western linguistics, and in turn, from this we can master the development of western linguistics. The chapters are characterized by loose sentences, which is to hide implicit logical semantic meanings, with which, it is hard for the writer to master the logic of the writing, so the writer uses the Rhetorical Structure Theory(RST) to solve the problems in the translation of loose sentences.Based on RST, this thesis tends to translate those sentences full of implicit logical semantic meaning. Firstly, this thesis makes a brief introduction to RST, and presents a brief literary review of the translation in academic writings; then the writer analyzes the sentences from the perspective of RST, and translate these sentences with some other translation methods; Finally, the thesis reviews and summarizes the above mentioned issues. It argues that RST has a far-reaching significance to academic translation.The thesis points out that when translating the sentences full of semantic meanings, translators can use RST to make clear the logic in these sentences, and use some suitable translation methods such as recasting and amplification to translate those sentences. Though, the thesis only talks about the translation of two chapters in Landmarks in Linguistic Thought: The Western Translation from Socrates to Saussure, the writer thinks this thesis will make some contributions to the translation of other academic writings.