Two Major Factors Of Text Coherence And Its Application In Translation

Linguistic communication always appears in textual form. Translation, as an inter-lingual and cross-cultural communicative activity, should therefore take text as its object. Since the rise of text linguistics or discourse analysis, the focus of translation study and practice has shifted from the level of words or sentences to the level of text. And textual awareness is a must in translation.With the development of text linguistics, more and more scholars have applied its achievements to the research of translation theory and translation practice. The scope of text linguistics involves various aspects of research, in which text coherence is an important one with wide concern. In recent twenty years, scholars of linguistic field at home and abroad have attached more and more importance to text coherence and carried out valuable research on the factors influencing the coherence of text, which is a decisive factor in distinguishing a text from a non-text.The author of the paper agrees with Professor Zhu Yongsheng (1996) in dividing the conditions of text coherence into"internal conditions"and"external conditions". Professor Zhang Delu agrees with Professor Zhu Yongsheng in considering coherence as a semantic concept in a broad sense and made a detailed explanation of these conditions. The"internal conditions"consist of cohesive devices, while the"external conditions"involve"context of situation"and"context of culture". The author believes that both inner factors and outer factors of a text play crucial rules in organizing a coherent text. The paper analyzes in a detailed manner the factors of text coherence and their applications in translation practice with abundant examples.The paper concludes that in the entire process of translation, correct comprehension of the source text and appropriate adjustment of coherence in the target text depend on the understanding and analysis of the factors of cohesion. Negligence of these factors of coherence may lead to misunderstanding and mistranslation.