Translating From The Perspective Of Information Structure

In translation practice translators tend to syntactically analyze and interpret clauses/sentences for the correspondence in form and meaning between the source and target languages. This thesis, however, has made an attempt to apply Halliday's functional approach to transferring messages at the level of clauses/sentences. In his view, each natural language enjoys functions to express ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings and, therefore, not only ideational and interpersonal meanings but also textual meaning should be smoothly transferred into the target language.Textual meaning is realized through the coordination of information structure, thematic structure, and cohesive ties. Information Structure is the dichotomy of Given Information and New Information on the part of the listener/reader. Usually, the speaker/writer chooses a Given element as the departure of a message followed by the New, but it is also possible to take the New as the starting point of a clause/sentence for special effect. In other words, the information organization in a clause/sentence is subject to the communicative goals. This perspective makes it feasible for translators not only to satisfactorily comprehend clauses/sentences of the source language text but also to consciously rearrange clausal/sentential elements in the target language text in a proper way.The role of Given Information is twofold: connecting back to previous stretches of language and introducing the New. For this reason, an important aspect of translating from the perspective of Information Structure is to maintain on the initial position of a clause/sentence the Given Information and to adjust the sequence of information chunks to comply with the given-plus-new principle. As Information Focus is the core of the New that the speaker/writer purposely emphasizes, it is essential to comprehend the speaker/writer's communicative goals and reproduce Information Focus by optimal devices but the original Information Focus should not be distorted and the cohesion and coherence of the translated text should not be affected.Information Structure makes up for the deficiency of the static analysis of formal structures, but the syntactic dissimilarities of languages cannot be overlooked. So a better strategy for a translator is to analyze and translate clauses/sentences from the functional side as well as from the grammatical side.The main part of this thesis is composed of four chapters. Chapter One gives a brief introduction to the research background, the status quo of the appreciation and translation of clauses /sentences, the research methodology and the significance of this thesis. Chapter Two is literature review. A brief introduction is made of the basic concepts of Information Structure, its application, its status quo and development as well as its limitation.Chapter Three mainly undertakes a survey of the nature of Information Structure between English and Chinese. The result of comparison and contrast shows that the devices to signal Given Information, New Information and Information Focus are similar, but that the syntactic resource in English is more plentiful than that in Chinese. A sound knowledge of these similarities and dissimilarities can serve as a good foundation for the successful transfer of messages contained in clauses/sentences.Chapter Four forms the main body of the thesis. The author discusses strategies to maintain the original Information Structure in the target language. The Given as the fulcrum in text progressing should not be distorted in the target language. New Information or Information Focus is what the speaker/writer purposely conveys, so it is essential for a translator to identify it and reproduce it by the optimal devices. Besides, the author makes a brief discussion of relevant problems relevant to information arrangement which arise from the syntactical dissimilarities between English and Chinese.At last comes the conclusion. After a review of the thesis, the author points out that Information Structure is of much significance to translation in the theoretical and practical sense. However, due to the existence of dissimilarities of languages, its application to translating is limited and needs to be further developed and improved.