The Contrastive Analysis Of Cohesive Device In English And Chinese Product Instruction

The most important function of translation is communication, so we have totranslate the original language into target language. Since1950s, the textuallinguistics has been developing gradually, and Harris is the first linguist in this field.From then on, more and more scholars came into this field. The most famous work iswritten by Halliday and Hasan, named Cohesion in English. Comparison researchplays a very important role in the study of translation theory. By comparing with twolanguages, we can find out the elements that corresponded in the two languages, aswell as how the relationship demonstrates in the translation. This thesis can be dividedinto four parts. The first part mainly points out the importance of the analysis of thecohesion devices comparison between Chinese and English by telling thedevelopment of the cohesion theory at present. The second part reviews the pastworks about the cohesion theory, and the research results both at home and abroad atpresent. Meanwhile, the thesis analyzes the contributions as well as the limitations ofthe works, and releases the reason why the author regards the cohesion theory ofHalliday and Hasan as research subject. The third part makes a comparison analysison cohesion devices between Chinese and English in detail, including reference,substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion, by using lots of examples ofproducts’ instructions. This part also aims to summarize the translation strategiesthrough the comparison result—the reason leading to the similarities and differences.Each cohesion device is instructed by some examples of products’ instructions. It alsosummarizes the translation strategy briefly so as to provide a reference to the futurelinguistic research and practical translation. The last part analyzes the value and thelimitations of this thesis, and the author hopes that the thesis can be as a reference forfurther studies. Through the study and discussion, we can see that the classification ofcohesion devices between Chinese and English is similar though, the detailedapplication of each device in the two languages is different. We may find someinformation from the culture background and language features. Therefore, in the texttranslation, the translators should first master the characteristic of each cohesion devices accurately, and they will skillfully make the shift between the two texts so asto guide the practical translations.