Shifts In Cohesion And Coherence In English/Chinese Translation At The Textual Level

This thesis is an application of the concepts of cohesion and coherence in the study of English/Chinese translation. Here translation is viewed as a tort-oriented, not a sentence-oriented or even word-oriented process. The author redefines translation shifts in the light of linguistic and cultural considerations to cater for the nature of translation. In shift analysis, cohesion and coherence are placed in two categories. Shifts in cohesion are the reproduction of cohesion in the target text by redistributing the five cohesive devices. In this part, the mainline is the theory of Halliday and Hasan (1976). Shifts in coherence are the attempts to minimize the possible damage to the interpretation of coherence in the target text. Two primary concerns in this issue are thought patterns and culture specificity. This study draws on the theoretical insights from many interdisciplinary areas. Some possible strategies are identified to solve the problems caused by the linguistic and cultural discrepancies between the English and the Chinese language. Each strategy is arrived at through exemplary analysis of real-life data, with comments on why and how. They are intended to offer practical guidance to English/Chinese translation at the textual level.