Discourse Analysis Applied To Est Translation

In this thesis, the author proposes a new approach to EST (English forScience and Technology) translation——an approach which appliesdiscourse analysis to EST translation. This approach has obvious advantages: (1) It facilitates a thorough comprehension of the source text; (2) It helps to produce a smooth and equivalent target text; (3) It promotes cohesion and coherence in the target text.The thesis consists of an introduction, four chapters and a conclusion.Chapter 1 is literature review of discourse analysis.Chapter 2 gives a brief account of EST translation in China. EST Translation in our country has a long history and in the past two decades great achievements have been made in the field. It also points out that EST translation research has been long limited to stylistics and modern linguistics, and now it becomes necessary to introduce other disciplines into the field as many problems can't be solved by stylistics and modern linguistics.Chapter 3 sets the criterion for EST translation. The author agrees that different text types should be translated differently. EST discourse is an informative type. The purpose of EST is to inform. Therefore, EST discourse is expected to convey the original information as accurately and as equivalently as possible to target language text readers. That is, the target language text should have the same function as the source language text. Thus, functional equivalence is considered to be the criterion for EST translation. In this chapter, requirements for EST translators are also discussed. EST translators should be bilingually competent and have necessary knowledge of related science and technology.Chapter 4 is devoted to the application of discourse analysis to EST translation. In particular, we focus on two aspects of discourse analysis, theme/rheme and cohesion/coherence.Theme/rheme reflects where the thought starts and where it is going. In every sentence, there is a theme and a rheme. When there are more than...