The E-C Translation Of Swinburne’s The Age Of Shakespeare:Textual Cohesion And Translation

This report is on the translation of Algernon Swinburne’s The Age of Shakespeare,a critical monograph on nine writers and their works in the age of Shakespeare.Due to its unique content and well-knit argumentation,the source text not only frequently involves comparative analysis of different writers and their works,but also has a large number of long and difficult sentences with complex structures,which create great difficulties for translators to understand the text and re-present the meanings in the target language,and thus challenge their translation.According to the theory of discourse analysis,a discourse is a semantic whole which is logically organized by certain meaning-related sentences through cohesive devices.In order to make the translation more coherent and conform to the expressive habits of the target language on the basis of fully understanding the original text,the translator must master related cohesive devices and translation methods of the discourse.Using the cohesion theory of H.A.K.Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan as the analytical framework,the author sets out to explore the cohesive problems and translation methods of the discourse.Based on this theory,the author,starting from the five cohesive devices(reference,substitution,ellipsis,conjunction and lexical cohesion)and combining it with the linguistic characteristics of literary criticism,analyzes and explores the cohesive devices involved in the text and their translation by investigating more than 20 specific cases of the translation.This report aims to find out appropriate translation methods that are suitable for analyzing and solving the cohesive problems in translating literary texts,so as to better guide the translator’s translation practice,making the target text more acceptable to the readers while reproducing the essence of the source text,and to promote cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries.Through analyzing the above-said translation project,the author summarizes the methods for dealing with cohesive devices in texts of literary criticism.The present analysis will show that these methods not only have a certain guiding significance for literary translation,but will also be helpful for applying cohesion theory to other relevant practices.