A Study On The Relationship Between Inconsistency Of Thematic Structure And Information Structure And Translation Equivalence

This paper discusses mainly about how to use Halliday's "Theme-Rheme" theory and Nida's "Dynamic Equivalence" theory to solve the translating problems in the situation of inconsistency between thematic structure and information structure, that is, the thematic structure and the information structure are not overlapped. Thematic choices and patterning have been discussed widely in linguistic literature, especially within Prague School and Systemic-Functional grammar. Linguists consider the benefits of thematic analyses to be extensive.Among the benefits, this paper deals with the role of thematic analyses in a special situation—the inconsistency between thematic structure and information structure, and its parallel, the translations. Because such a kind of inconsistency always expresses some special meaning and has particular functions, of course, just formal equivalence between the original (source language) and the translation (target language) are not enough, we introduce the concept of Nida's "Dynamic Equivalence", which regards the "receptor's response" as its nature and emphasize the same manner and same degree when the receptor in the target language reacted as the reader in the source language did. Combing with these two theories, the author launches into the topic of the paper.Through discussion and analysis from many examples, when the thematic structure and information structure are not corresponded, the author (1) classify the different situations in which the inconsistency will happen and their functions; (2) discover some rules that governing the translation practice in each situation and almost guarantee the receptor in the target language reacted as the reader in the source language did in the translation process. Thus, we can solve actual problems with these rules later.