Contrast Of English And Chinese Textual Cohesive Devices And Their Translation In The Perspective Of Hypotaxis And Parataxis

English language lays an emphasis on hypotaxis while Chinese language on parataxis. As a comprehensive language, English discourse lays emphasis on overt cohesion, complete structure, which controls its meaning by form; while as a analytic language, Chinese discourse on covert coherence, function, which controls its form by meaning. Hypotaxis and parataxis are also the commonly used devices of English and Chinese texts.Owing to the differences between the two languages, the ways of using cohesive ties differ. The root of differences lies between Chinese and western ways of thinking. In Cohesion in English, Halliday and Hasan divided English textual cohesion into reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion. And reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction are totally referred to as grammar cohesion. But language has much in common sometimes. The five kinds of cohesion also exist in Chinese language, and make it coherent.Based on the theories of Halliday and Hasan, by means of practice of some translation materials, the paper will make a comparative analysis of sentence structures on the textual cohesions so as to remind the translators of the factor that in translation between English and Chinese, the distinction among some translation strategies should be made in accordance with the unique characteristics of the two languages.