Topic Management In English-Chinese Text Translation

In recent years, the field of linguistic study has been witnessing strong interests in the topic study. With a substantial amount of empirical and theoretical research in this field, the topic study has yielded many convincing research findings, which has also been applied to solve more and more other issues in the linguistic field and has got many irradiative conclusions. However, the study of applying the topic theory to text translation remains an unexplored area. Based on the previous study on topic and especially the study on discourse topic and the scales in the coding of topic accessibility, the present paper tries to find out the methods to the topic management in English-Chinese text translation from the perspective of topic introduction, topic maintenance and topic change. These conclusions are significant in our practice and teaching of English-Chinese translation.At first, a text cannot be created without topic introduction. Those topics which are introduced into texts for the first time are called new topics, which include brand new topics and predictable topics. Brand new topics and predictable topics introduced into English texts for the first time usually take the forms of indefinite noun phrases and bare noun phrases respectively in the translated version. Secondly, after a topic is introduced into a text, and if the writer wants to talk about the same topic in the following part, topic maintenance will take place. Compared with topic introduction, the phenomenon of topic maintenance is more complicated. Based on the analysis in this thesis, we arrive at the following conclusions: for those topics with high topic continuity and high semantic continuity, they are usually translated into zero pronouns; for those topics with relatively lower topic continuity and especially lower semantic continuity, they are usually translated into pronouns; for those topics with divergence in semantic development, they are usually translated into noun phrases; for those topics to achieve a special rhetorical effect by repeating the topic language form itself, they are usually preserved in its original language form in the translated version.At last a coherent text usually has a global topic, which cannot develop effectively without the support of several sub-topics. Thus the writer has to move from one sub-topic to another sub-topic, which is called topic change or topic shift. For those topics which indicate the topic change, they are usually translated into noun phrases.In conclusion, the proper use of these principles to manage topics in original texts is helpful in obtaining equivalence in coherence, hence improving the quality of the translated version. In addition, through analyzing the translated versions given by English foreign language (EFL) students, we find that they have more difficulties in the management of topic maintenance. Therefore, the management of topic maintenance should be our main concern in our teaching of English-Chinese translation.