On Thematic Structure And Translation Of Essays

The thesis conducts a contrastive study on Theme distribution and configuration of TP patterns of English and Chinese essays and their corresponding Translats. It finds that configuration of TP patterns is the inherent feature of the text concerning a particular genre irrespective of the influence of transition between languages. In general, the configuration of TP patterns of essays, either English or Chinese, either in the original or in the Translats, is the same, but the research reveals that the features in each minor type such as argumentative, narrative, descriptive and exposition are different. Therefore, the configuration of TP patterns can decide genres of text.The Theme distribution in English and Chinese original essays is different, and Theme distribution of the Translats, both E-C and C-E, tends to be more consistent with that of the target original. Based on this finding, the thesis presents a criterion of judging the quality of translation according to the consistence of Theme distribution of the translation with that of the target original. The consistence of Theme distribution is examined by the proportion of Unmarked Theme to Marked Theme as well as the rate of groups or phrases of different word-classes serving as Themes between the Translats and the target language.The findings are worked out through the contrastive study by first comparing the four Chinese and four English original essays and then comparing them with their corresponding Translats from the perspective of Halliday's Thematic theory. The results are supported by detailed analysis and statistics, thus they are amenable to examination.The study on configuration of TP patterns has practical values (though limited in the scope of essays), for it discovers that configuration of TP patterns is the inherent feature of typical texts, thus it can decide the genre of a typical text. This discovery implies that, the study can be extended to other scopes like the study on novels or dramas etc.The study on transference of Theme distribution has practical values as well, for the transferring forms in E-C or C-E Translats can be taken as examples by others for reference when they are translating such kind of essays.The limitation lies in that the data selected do not cover all the sub-type of essays, therefore the findings are restricted to the scope of argumentative, narrative, descriptive and exposition, and the suggestions are applicable only to translating of the four types of essays too. Therefore, a further study is needed to examine and extend the research findings.