Cohesive Function And Conversion Of Dash

The source text of this report is selected from Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World,which details Dutch explorer William Barents’ s three daring Arctic journeys in the 16 th century.The author of this book is Andrea Pitzer,an American writer and journalist.This book contains ten chapters,of which the fifth and sixth chapters are the source text of this report.This book features many dashes,so how to translate the sentences with dashes become one of the difficulties in this translation practice.Dash plays a great role in discourse cohesion in both English and Chinese.But in these two languages,the usages of dash are very different.Thus,the dashes in the original sentences can not be copied into the translations directly in the E-C translation.Instead,it is necessary to analyze their cohesive functions at first and translate the dashes flexibly after taking into consideration the different usages of dash in English and Chinese and the standard of Chinese writing.Only in this way,can the final translations be readable for Chinese readers.This report introduces the background,significance and process of the task firstly.And then the report explores the researches on the cohesive functions of dash by scholars at home and abroad,compares the usages of dash in English and Chinese,and lists the supportive evidence to classify the cohesive functions of dash based on the former researchers’ classifications about the logico-semantic relations between clauses.After that,the report classifies the cohesive dashes in English samples into three types(elaboration,extension and enhancement)and illustrates their correspondent translation strategies and then summarizes the strategies for conversion of dash.The strategies include no translation,converting the dash,converting the second dash of double-dashes and converting the double-dashes.The last chapter concludes this translation practice.By rethinking the whole process of the task,the author deepens the understanding of the dash and finds some limitations.