On The Translation Unit

The problem of the unit of translation is very important in translation studies. It also ranks among the most thorny and complicated issues in the theoretical world of translation studies and meanwhile constitutes an indispensable part of translation studies and practice. Many views have been expressed on this subject, including one that rejects the very possibility of its existence. According to Barchudarov, the unit of translation is an element in the source language text for which we can find an equivalent in the target language text, while its components, taken alone, have no equivalents in the target text. In other words, the unit of translation is the smallest unit of language in the source language text that has an equivalent in the target language text. On this issue, translators and translation theorists have done a lot of research work, but they tend to be of different opinions.This thesis holds that, in actual translating activities, the existence of the unit of translation cannot be denied. Theoretically, any length of language can be a unit of translation, including phoneme (grapheme), syllable, morpheme, word, phrase (or collocation), clause, sentence, sentence group, and in very rare and special case including the whole text or discourse. The selection of an appropriate translation unit is crucial to translation and its outcome. Considering from the theoretical andpractical aspects, the author put forward the idea of taking paragraph as a proper unit of translation. The author's solution to the problem of the unit of translation is based on the work by a number of translation theorists and practitioners.The thesis is organized in four chapters, in an attempt to present as many aspects of the unit of translation and relevant studies as possible.The first chapter is concerned with the central issues of translation, with the problem of definition, history, criteria and significance of translation, and with the question of relationship among language, culture and translation. This chapter also discusses the following: what is the unit of translation, different views on the unit of translation both at home and abroad, and the significance of research on the issue of the unit of translation.The second chapter deals mainly with the selection of the unit of translation. The unit of translation is discussed here at different levels, namely, phoneme (grapheme), syllable, morpheme, word, phrase (or collocation), clause, sentence, sentence group, text and theme/rheme combination, and illustrated by examples. In the last part of this chapter, the author discusses the merits and demerits of translating at various ranks.The third chapter introduces Dr. Nida's famous translation theory — Functional Equivalence. Following the principle of Nida's "FunctionalEquivalence", the author continues to expound on why the paragraph should be regarded as a unit of translation from various perspectives.The fourth chapter is a case study which examines the specific problems of translating at the level of paragraph.To sum up, translation is a process in which we segment the source text into units of translation on the basis of a thorough comprehension of it, then find their equivalents in the target language, and combine these equivalents into a target text according to the target language norms.