Reconstructing Textual Coherence In Fictional Translation

Translation is an interdisciplinary subject. The subject has extended its horizons and cross-fertilized itself by synthesizing the insights it has gained from other fields of knowledge.Among all the disciplines, linguistics is undoubtedly the closest one to translation. The development of text linguistics has particularly put new vigor into the translation field and the two key concepts in text linguistics have attracted much attention from translation scholars. In recent years, many scholars have come to take translation as reconstruction of textual coherence in an inter-textual context and carried out researches on coherence from the perspective of cohesion. However, some researches in the area center around cohesive devices and the researchers seem to lack adequate knowledge about the relationship between the two concepts. Mona Baker declares that it is the motivations behind the use of a particular cohesive device, rather than the device itself, that ought to be considered in translation.Cohesive principles govern the usage of cohesive devices and consequently uncover the motivations. The paper chooses to make a research from the perspective of cohesive principles, in order to reaffirm the relationship between cohesion and coherence and illustrate the role that cohesion plays in reconstructing coherence of fictional translation. The idea of choosing fictional translation as its domain comes from Susan Bassnett's description of the situation where fictional translation is trapped, that"far less time has been spent studying the specific problems of translating literary prose."Chapterâ… explains the reason for choosing the perspective of cohesive principles to investigate how to reconstruct textual coherence in translation, and introduces the framework of the paper. Chapterâ…¡surveys two researches that can typify the study on coherence from the perspective of cohesion, and points out that most researches center on cohesive devices. Chapterâ…¢focuses on the introduction of some cohesive principles which can be applied to specific problems in the translation of novels.