| The rapid development of text linguistics has enriched the theories of translation. The unit of translation has been extended from the sentence to the sentence group and the text. It is true that translators have to operate with lexical items and grammatical structures at various stages of the translation process. It is nevertheless imperative that we view text as a whole from the beginning to the end of the process. Once the source text is understood, the translator has to tackle the task of producing a target version, which can be accepted as a text in its own right. Textual translation or discourse translation attracts more and more attention from translation theorists as well as translators at home and abroad.Text and discourse are used interchangeably in the present thesis to refer to any stretch of language as a meaningful whole in certain context not completely confined within sentential grammar. Cohesion is one of the linguistic features of text and it, together with coherence in discourse, is regarded as the core of the study of text linguistics or discourse analysis. Each language has its ways of building up a cohesive text. According to Halliday and Hasan (2001), cohesion is one of the important text-forming components in the linguistic system. It is the means whereby elements that are structurally unrelated to one another are linked together through the dependence of one on the other for its interpretation. There are five kinds of cohesive ties in English: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion (Halliday, 2001: 29) among which the former four cohesive ties are more or less connected with grammatical representation (Wang and Shen, 1999: 86). In China, Li Yunxing (1995:115), commenting on the case of English and Chinese, remarks to the point that it is widely assumed that both of the languages share more or less the same cohesive devices although the devices are distributed differently. The use of cohesive devices is language specific, and the different distribution of cohesive devices between English and Chinese deserves a translation focus. When translating, we have to study the cohesion patterns in the original text carefully, and then employ appropriate cohesive devices in the target language so as to reproduce an equally cohesive translated text. To achieve cohesion in translation, one primary task of the translator's is to explore the underlying reasons for the discrepancies in distributing cohesive devices and adopt appropriate strategies in cohesion transfer. This task is the kernel question discussed in the present thesis. Discrepancies in cohesion distribution between English and Chinese mainly derive mainly from two aspects. On one hand, the grammar system of each language encourages the use of certain devices in preference to others. On the other hand, language, as a part of culture of each nation should be under the influence of particular thinking modes in each culture. And this in turn, gives birth to differences in language, and, to be more specific, on conjoining language by use of cohesive devices. According to He Shanfen (2002:470), differences in discourse between English and Chinese consist in two aspects. One is difference in discourse structure derived from their respective thought patterns, therefore, being "internal" and the other is difference in conjoining text, shown in the distribution of devices for cohesion and coherence, therefore, being "external". These two respects interact with each other, with the former as the macro and decisive level and the latter the micro and subordinate level. Our focuses here are the influences of different thought patterns on the arrangement in reaching cohesion.As far as the thought patterns are concerned, Chinese text tends to differ in their flow of ideas on the same subject from English one. The difference is reflected in the discourse structure, progression of text and the subject of the text. English text is usually complete in form, logic and objective in presenting the...
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