On Translation Of English And Chinese Reference Items

Reference items are among the most frequently used words in English and Chinese. They play a vital role in coherence and transition and make the language economical and precise. The reference items in English and Chinese have some in common which makes them translatable. But because of the differences in language itself, national culture and thought patterns, they are quite different in properties and usages, which makes the translation between English and Chinese difficult. The aim of this thesis is to analyze the differences and to discuss the solutions to these problems in translation practice.The methodology stresses the contrastive study and the analysis of examples. First, adopting the theories proposed by Halliday and Quirk and those on contrastive linguistics, the contrastive study on reference items are made and the characteristics of personals and demonstratives in two languages are discussed. Then, based on a number of examples, efforts are made to analyze the influence of the differences to the understanding and expression in translation and the reasons and the solutions. The aim is to discuss the differences of reference items in usage and the translation strategies. The methodology is contrastive study. And the relevant theories areadopted for the interpretation.As Halliday & Hasan wrote that reference is an important kind of cohesive devices. There are three types of reference: personal, demonstrative, and comparative. Different cohesive devices have different functional loads in English and Chinese as English and Chinese are heterogeneous. Comparatively speaking, pro-forms are indispensable in English and repetition of referents and omission are more common in Chinese. And even the same reference item in English and Chinese is not one-to-one correspondence in translation. Personals can not be rendered mechanically in many situations and some accommodation has to be made. In translating anaphoric personals, one has to retain, add, omit and change the personals in different situations and sometimes the referents have to be repeated. In translating cataphoric personals, one has to omit the reference items, prepose or repeat the referents, and even change the cataphora to anaphora. As for the demonstratives, remote demonstratives are used much more frequently than near ones in English and the opposite case seems to be true in Chinese. For the Chinese mind is inclined to bring the distant near. The choice of near and remote demonstratives is determined more by other factors (psychological distance, focus of attention, social distance, assumed familiarity, textuality etc.) than by real-world time and space, as is the case in English. It suggests that many remote demonstratives in English have to be rendered to near ones in Chinese. If they are weak in distinguishing or used as non-specific modifiers, the Chinese demonstratives may be rendered to indefinite pronouns or the.The underlying reasons for the differences need to be investigated, further.