Coherence In Literary Text Translation

In this thesis, I have done a contrastive study of various grammatical cohesive devices and their functions in constructing a unified coherent text in English and Chinese. Based on a systematic analysis of the features of coherence constructed by various grammatical cohesive devices in both English and Chinese literary texts, as an important feature of text, this thesis explores the possibility of inter-lingual translation at text level between English and Chinese, the potential problems, and possible solutions to them.In the first chapter, the purpose, rationale, scope and significance of the thesis are specified. In the second chapter of literature review, a brief theoretical review of coherence is made. The merits and demerits of various theories of coherence i.e. Halliday and Hasan's Theory of Register and Cohesion, Van Dijk's Theories of Macrostructures (1977), Widdowson Illocutionary Acts Theory (1978), Danes and Fries' Thematic Progression Theory (1974), and Brown and Yule's Cognitive Frame Theory (1983) are evaluated respectively. In the third chapter, coherence, as an important feature of text is discussed and the relationship between cohesion and coherence is elaborated. Cohesion is a semantic relations and it is overtly signaled. Cohesion contributes a lot to the coherence of a text. A text with cohesive relations is normally a coherent one. Various cohesive relations that are overtly displayed by formal features often contribute to the coherence of a text. However it cannot be said that a text with good cohesive devices is necessarily a coherent one. On the other hand, a text without good cohesion can be a coherent one. Register is also a semantic concept. It is a particular situational configuration of field, mode and tenor. It is closely associated with the context of situation and relates text with the context, enabling cohesion to conform to coherence. The interpretation of the coherence of a text is subjected to the context of situation. The fourth chapter is a general contrastive study of various grammatical cohesive devices, i.e. reference, substitution, ellipsis,conjunctions, and their functions in constructing a unified coherent text in English and Chinese. English enjoys a higher frequency of pronominal reference in building the cohesive ties in a text, making the text coherent, whereas in Chinese, where pronouns are used much more sparingly, the continuity of reference is achieved by omitting the subjects of following sentences. From the point of view of textual cohesion, substitution is mainly endophoric and the vast majority of all instances are anaphoric, although we come across the possibility of cataphoric substitution under certain circumstances. Substitution results in linguistic brevity. Though three types of substitution, i.e. nominal substitution, verbal substitution and clausal substitution can be found in both English and Chinese texts, they are different from each other here and there. Like substitution, ellipsis is a form of relation between clauses and sentences, where it is an important feature of the essential texture. Therefore ellipsis plays a part of grammatical cohesion. Unlike reference, substitution and ellipsis, conjunction is a logical-semantic relation holding between elements of a text. Conjunctions are cohesive not in themselves, but in the specific meanings they express. In a text, conjunctions perform functions which relate each element of a text by its logical-semantic relation. Comparatively, since English is a hypotactic language, conjunction is shown explicitly, while in Chinese it is expressed implicitly since Chinese is a paratactic language. In the fifth chapter, case studies of coherence of inter-lingual translation between English and Chinese are presented and potential problems in achieving coherence in inter-lingual translation (English and Chinese in particular) translation are explored and corresponding solutions are suggested. For example, in English-Chinese translation, pronouns are often translated into nouns with the same referents or simply omitted...