Information Focus And English-Chinese Translation

Recently, many concepts of information- theories such as information structure, given information, new information, information focus and so on have been applied to the study of translation.In the light of information theories, discussion is made on the similarities and differences between English and Chinese in the setting of information focus and their influence on English-Chinese translation (E-C translation). The fruitful work done before and the study of this thesis lead us to the conclusion that the arrangement of word order or syntactic structures in target language (JL) should be made on the basis of the information focus in source language (SL) and in conformity with grammatical features of TL at once, which helps to arrive at translation equivalence.The present thesis is none other than a tentative attempt to approach E-C translation in terms of information focus at clausal and textual level. At clausal level, the author first analyzes the similarities and differences between English and Chinese in the setting of information focus with regard to word order and syntactic structures. Then the thesis analyzes transmission of the information focus of the original sentence to its target version and the rearrangement of word order and syntactic structures in E-C translation. At textual level, the author argues that focus pattern plays an important role in organizing a coherent text. In translation, the overall focus pattern of ST should be preserved to the greatest extent in TT in order to realize translation equivalence.Below are the major findings of the thesis:1. At clausal level, there exit similarities and differences between English and Chinese in the setting of information focus with regard to word order and syntactic structures.2. These similarities and differences might bring about rearrangement of word order and syntactic structures in the translated text.3. The focus pattern in the original text can affect the treatment of focus in the target version.Based on these specific findings, this thesis concludes that E-C translation should take into consideration the notion of information focus, with the help of which, we can not only arrive at the equivalence of information focus but also realize the coherence of TT.