Chinese Topic Structure And Its Translation

Abstract: English and Chinese, respectively belong to different language types. Chinese belongs to the 'topic-prominent' language and English the 'subject-prominent' language. On English translation of Chinese topic structures, the exploration of previous scholars lacks systematicity. Especially in the level of text, little research is contributed. The paper explores the characteristics of Chinese topic structure and puts forward four English translation methods: 1 corresponding method, because topic is sometimes merge with subject; 2 adding method because omittance phenomena exist in Chinese; 3 adjusting method, because in Chinese actions go in the direction from topic to comment; 4 separating-based method, because in some Chinese topic structures, topic and comment can have two different ways of separation, thereby resulting in ambiguity. Lastly, three modes of translation of Chinese topic structures in terms of textual cohesion, from the perspective of information structure, respectively, repetition of the topic in the previous sentence, production of a new topic from the comment of the previous sentence and production of a new topic from the topic and the comment together in the previous sentence.