A Corpus-aided Study On Conjunction Compensation In The English Translation Of China's Central Government Documents

The translation of the government documents aims to introduce China to the outside world. Due to the improvement of its comprehensive national strength and the expansion of its international influence, China demands for higher quality of government documents'translation. Cohesion is an important factor in translation which determines the quality of the translation. Chinese is a more parataxis-oriented language while English is a more hypotaxis-oriented language. Compared with other cohesive devices, the use of conjunction shows the most significant difference between Chinese and English. Though some researches have been conducted on the translation of government documents, the study of conjunction compensation in the central government documents is very scarce. Therefore, the thesis attempts to study conjunction compensation in China's central government documents in the process of Chinese-to-English translation, explores the translation methods and helps the understanding of Chinese and English conjunctions in order to provide some guide for the future translation practice, especially the translation of government documents.The thesis uses the texts of the Reports on the Work of the Government and White Papers from 2000 to 2010 and their corresponding English texts to build a parallel corpus. With the help of Halliday's classification on conjunction in 1976, a combined qualitative and quantitative research is done to explore the conjunction compensation in China's central government documents. By comparing the categories and analysis, the following conclusions are reached:First, in the parallel corpus, the frequently used Chinese conjunctions appear 10746 times while in the corresponding English texts they appear 25154 times. By the statistical analysis, the conclusion can be drawn that Chinese is more parataxis-oriented while English is more hypotaxis-oriented.Second, (1) The frequently used Chinese additive conjunctions are'和','与''及','也','以及'and'或'The frequently used English counterparts are and, or, further, in addition and thus. (2) The frequently used Chinese adversative conjunctions are'但','但是','虽然'and'尽管'while the frequently used English counterparts are but, yet, however and instead. (3) The frequently used Chinese causal conjunctions are'由于','从而','为此'and'因此'while the frequently used English causal conjunctions are so, so that, so as to, as a result, therefore and because. (4) The frequently used Chinese temporal conjunctions are'同时','与此同时','首先'and'迄今'while the frequently used English temporal conjunctions are at the same time, meanwhile, next and later.Third, of the four categories, Chinese additive conjunctions occur most frequently in the source texts which appear 10189 times while English additive conjunctions occur most frequently in the target texts which appear 24029 times.Finally, in the process of Chinese-to-English translation, a large number of English conjunctions are added to explicate the implied logical relationships in the source texts. Conjunction compensation is inevitable in this process.