Cohesion And Coherence In Translation Applications

Translation Studies is multidisciplinary in nature and is related with various disciplines of human knowledge. Those insights and helpful approaches in other disciplines, if appropriately applied, may benefit both translation theories and practice in various significant ways.Cohesion and coherence are two important concepts in text-linguistics. How to introduce them in to translation theory is the main content of this dissertation. We think that a text is the basic macro-unit for translation. It resembles a small world, containing both textual elements and non-textual factors. In this sense, the text acts as a connector and a unifying factor. De Beaugrande and Dressier proposed seven parameters for a text to be a text. Cohesion and coherence are two of them and they are the two most essential factors in translation study at the same time.Through the analysis of related literature and examples, the dissertation offers the following assumptions: cohesion, in different forms as words, clauses/sentences and themes, may function as the translation unit in the cognitive process of the translator; coherence, a key factor for a text to be a text, may function as the translation standard, which seems to be more operational than others.The whole dissertation falls into five chapters. Introduction is a brief review of the development of translation theories. Chapter one discusses definitions of cohesion and coherence with the help of others' theory. In chapter two, various forms of cohesion are examined and with reference to Halliday and Hasan's cohesion model. Chapter three is devoted to make clear that cohesive devices may function as translation unit in different forms. Chapter four involves an analysis of coherence and its status in translation. We propose here that coherence be a standard for translation. Chapter five, with a diagram, generalizes the whole dissertation.