A Comparative Study Of Lexical Cohesion Between Chinese And English And Its Implications On Translation Practice And Teaching

This research is a comparative study of lexical cohesion in Chinese and English and its implications on the translation between the two languages. In this essay, I draw on the particularities of Chinese and work out a new solution for lexical cohesion through restratification, namely, categorizing the realizations of lexical cohesion according to form, pronunciation and semantic properties of lexes. The findings of discrepancies are followed by a discussion on their significance on translation practice and teaching.The Introduction part states the purpose of my research and a rationale as well as the scope of discussion.Chapter One reviews the previously established theories of lexical cohesion. It starts from Hallidayian model with the concept of cohesive devices, and evolves to the chain model of cohesion proposed by Hasan which still bases itself on the features of English. Michael Hoey's theory of Link Triangle to some extent patches up the disputes that the chain model is put into when applied to Chinese. After the presentation of the three theories, corresponding Chinese theories are discussed. At the end of this chapter, an example with typical properties of the Chinese text shows the difficulties in conducting an effective analysis with the existing cohesive devices.In Chapter Two, an improved chain model comes into being with reshuffling and redefinition of its components - identity chain, similarity chain and collocation chain. For identity chain, there are two parts - repetition and substitution; for similarity chain, emphasis is put on redefinition and beefing up with ample examples; the collocation chain consists of three parts - universal collocation, culture-specific collocation and instantial collocation. In this chapter, a corpus-based data analysis is done with tables and charts.Chapter Three first addresses the problems which the improved chain model of lexical cohesion fails to remove. It is tentatively argued that the model should be extended to a wider scope in terms of the three aspects of properties in which a lexical item functions. The integrated and extended model exercises stimulating implications on translation practice and teaching as a complete scenario.Finally in the conclusion I present an overview of the whole thesis and its possible limitations in the application to a third language.