The Conveyance Of Textual Meaning In Translation Between English And Chinese

This thesis attempts to study the conveyance of rhetoric meaning and stylisticcharacteristics manifested by the surface text organizing and developing method intranslation between English and Chinese.Following their principle of function, the school of systemic functionallinguistics proposes that the meaning systems of all languages comprises three typesof meaning: ideational meaning, interpersonal meaning and textual meaning. Meaningis determined by context. In actual process of communication, the information sendermakes choices from the language system made up of these three types of meaningsaccording to context of situation. The text is directly restricted by context of situation,which in turn is only embodiment of context of culture. Translation study should giveenough attention to context, analyzing translation phenomena from the aspect ofcontext.In the meaning system, textual meaning is the most important one, since it showshow the author edits his /her text, which renders the ideational meaning andinterpersonal meaning, as well as the internal relationships of the message. Text is asemantic unit rather than a grammatical one with all its comprising linguisticselements (words, sentences) closely interrelated. By making choices on how toorganize all his ideas in a linear manifestation, the author fulfils certain intention,creates certain effect or makes certain information outstanding. So in order to conveythe author's intention faithfully, and create similar effects on target readers, thetranslator has to make decisions on how to deal with textual meaning.Textual meaning is realized by thematic structure, information structure andcohesion from the lexicogrammatical level. This thesis mainly studies the handling ofthematic structure and cohesion. A contrastive discription of them between Englishand Chinese is firstly made. Based on this discription, different translation strategiesunder different circumstances concerning this are summarized by means of analyzinga great deal of translation data. After that, reasons are explored from aspects oflanguage systems, cultures and mode of thinking so as to justify them.The theme is the point of orientation in the linear arrangement of information.The choice of certain thematic structure shows the authors intention and style, and atthe same time it is restricted by language system itself. In translation, different waysof handling should be adopted according to different text type and different translationpurpose. If the original thematic structure can be preserved without affecting fluencyor distorting meaning, it should be kept unchanged in the process of translation.However, because of the difference between culture and language systems, someadaptation might be employed to produce acceptable translation for target readers.Cohesion is another embodiment of textual meaning. Similar with thematicstructure, cohesion not only makes different parts of text hang together and facilitatestext development, but it also has rhetorical function: the function of promotingefficiency and reflecting the author's intention. The translator should have a fullknowledge of the similarities and differences in organizing text between sourcelanguage and target language, giving due respect to the norms of the target languageand conveying the cohesive flexibly to achieve the utmost equivalence of underlyingmeaning.