A Functional Perspective On English Text Structures And Information Processing

The previous researches and findings indicate that translation is the most controversial discipline. Nowadays, the furtherance in translation studies and modern linguistics requires that we should try to approach translation issues in terms of theories from many other disciplines, especially from the branches of linguistics, e.g. pragmatics, text linguistics and functional linguistics. Recently, a host of scholars, linguists and translation theorists home and abroad have contributed much to the polish of translation quality by employing some relevant theories from functional grammar and information science in the survey of structures, information distribution patterns of linguistic units and the like. The fruitful work done before may lead us to the conclusion that the arrangement of word order or structure in target language (TL) should be performed on the basis of the information distribution way in source language (SL) and in conformity with the expressing style of TL at once, which helps to arrive at translation equivalence.The present thesis is none other than an attempt at applying V. Mathesius's FSP, thematic structure in functional grammar and information structure to the analysis of theme-rheme orderings and given-to-new information sequences in English texts from a functional angle. And then, the author takes on a detailed treatment of the respective information-transmitting patterns and thematic progression modules for three basic relational structures in English raised by R. Quirk by referring to C. E. Shannon's "information theory" and F. Danes's "thematic progression" (TP) in this thesis. The afore-mentioned study is then followed by the applications of FSP, thematic structure, and information structure to the information processing of English texts. Based on the above theories and investigations, the author is convinced thatthematicity and givenness are not merely the features of sentences, that is, the theories of FSP, thematic structure and information structure are also applicable to the structural analysis, information processing and study of translation equivalence at text layer. Correspondingly, it is feasible and conducive to carry out the structural analysis on English texts in terms of theme + rheme, given + new information, or rather, to arrange the information of target text (TT) in line with the information distribution way of source text (ST) and the expressing way of TT, which plays a positive role in the realization of text-producer's communicative intentions and textual cohesion as well as in the achievement of functional equivalence.For the author, the chief value of this thesis lies in the following three aspects:(1) significance for a better understanding of particular syntactic structures in English.(2) significance for the realization of textual cohesion in TT which is consistent with Halliday's "textual function" theory.(3) significance for the attainment of translation equivalence, esp. functional equivalence and for the refinement of translation quality to certain degree which is also the primary goal of this thesis.However, the nature of translation activities determines that there, is no single theory or principle which can serve as a panacea for all translation issues. The author does hope that the tentative study done in this thesis could offer any possible insight into text translation as well as into the perfection of translation quality.