A Research On The Translation Of EST Materials From Cohesion Analysis Perspective

The concept of cohesion is a semantic concept, which refers to the formation of the meaning of discourse. When a meaning of component in the discourse needs to rely on the interpretation of other component, cohesion occurs. Cohesion is part of the system of a language. Like other semantic relations, cohesion is expressed through the stratal organization of language. The concept of cohesion is to explain the basic semantic relations, which makes any oral or written text a text. Cohesion falls into several categories: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion, technically termed as cohesive devices. Cohesive device forms a theoretical framework and offers an effective way for text analysis. English and Chinese are different in the use of cohesive devices to make a text coherent. While English tends to be hypotactic and use explicit cohesive devices, the Chinese language tends to be paratactic and adopt implicit cohesive devices. A reasonable awareness of the differences between the two languages helps the translator in translating texts, including English for science and technology purpose (EST). Application of cohesive devices to a text is to make that text semantically coherent. Comparative analysis on the differences in cohesive devices between English and Chinese deepens the translator's understanding of how a text is formed in the two languages, and thus offers a bases on which the source text is translated into a target text in a cohesive and coherent way.EST is a type of English characterized by being objective, accurate, clear, tight, and concise, which is popularly adopted for scientific description and discussion. In EST texts, much attention has been paid to accuracy of concepts and the logic of text development; in translation, EST texts are normally required to be translated in a way the target texts shall be of accurate, fluent, and concise. And the original texts shall be translated faithfully. This calls for literal translation and adaptation. A sound command of cohesive devices in EST texts helps the translator to translate the EST texts accurately; in translating EST texts, translators should adopt flexible ways of cohesion in the target language to make the translated version cohesive. Researches suggest that the approaches like omitting, adding and substitution could be adopted for EST translation.