Patterns Of Situations: The Operable Units In Translation

The issue of UT has troubled translation theorists and practitioners over a very long period, but the solution is still far from satisfactory. In this paper, the author approaches the UT problem from the perspective of text structure theory proposed by Prof. Xu Shenghuan. According to his theory, the text is a combination of situations that progress from start to consequence and finally to result. This feature of text structure is significant to the analysis of source text and to the reconstruction of a natural target text, especially to translation activities between such non-related languages as English and Chinese. Based on the understanding of text as combination of patterns of situations, the translator is able to cut a source text into separable subtexts that are logically related, thus ensuring that it is the text that is being translated but we do have operable units to work on. The author further discusses the significance of the theory to the creation of a natural and pragmatically adequate target text.