The Shift Of Thematic Structure In English-Chinese Translation

On the syntactic level, English is a subject-prominent language while Chinese is a topic-prominent language (Li& Thompson 1976). When such a difference is examined from the perspective of thematic structure theory (Halliday 2000:37-67), it is clear that English abounds in subject themes and yet Chinese abounds in topic themes. The present article attempts to apply thematic structure theory to E-C translation practice, and to discuss the shift strategies adopted in the process so as to achieve the ultimate goal of code switch in terms of language function. All the examples analyzed in the article are taken from the translation of Humboldt, Worldview and Language (Chapters 11~12) (by James W. Underhill) done by the author. It is the author's belief that the use of a specific shift strategy should be pre-conditioned by a full understanding of the meaning of a sentence in relation to its context.