A Contrastive Study Of English And Chinese Cohesive Devices And Translation Strategies

As an important device to realize coherence, cohesion in the text is the core of the text research. Since the 1960s, linguists have begun to regard the text as a unit of translation and plenty of researches have been done on cohesion. What really attracted the attention of language researchers to the study of cohesive devices in English is the publication of Cohesion in English by Halliday and Hasan.According to the classification of Halliday and Hasan, the cohesive devices can be categorized into reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion, which have their different application in English and Chinese. Based on numerous examples, incorporating theories of text linguistics, contrastive linguistics and translation, this paper attempts to study the differences between English and Chinese cohesive devices. By means of specific error analysis, this paper probes into the reasons which cause the problems. Strategies for translation of cohesive devices will also be put forward in the English and Chinese translation practices. As languages have different preferences for the use of specific devices, translators are voluntarily and consciously required to guide the translation practice with cohesive analysis approach and more appropriately deal with the textual cohesive relations on the basis of the cohesive requirements of different languages so as to provide a smooth and coherent translated version for target readers.