Cohesion In The English Translation Of Fortress Besieged

Discourse is the object and basic unit in practical translation. Some linguistic theorieson discourse analysis are good for translators to make use of when doing translationpractice. According to Beaugrande and Dressler, discourse is a communicative occurrenceand should be composed of seven principles: cohesion, coherence, intentionality,acceptability, situationality, informativity and intertextuality. A discourse would fail tocommunicate without one of them. Among these seven principles, cohesion and coherenceare the most important principles because they are the basic devices to ensure theemployment of the other principles.Based on Halliday and Hason’s theory of cohesive devices, this thesis is intended toexplore the basic converting principles of cohesive devices between two languages byanalyzing the extracted examples the famous novel Fortress Besieged. The English versionof which is worked by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K. Mao. Qualitative research anddescriptive methods will be employed. This thesis will compare different forms ofreference, substitution and ellipsis in the Chinese and English versions of the novelFortress Besieged. By analyzing the translation methods of them respectively, this thesis isintended to testify the differences of cohesive devices between Chinese and Englishthrough certain amount of data accumulation. This thesis will conclude the general rules ofconverting cohesive devices which include reference, substitution and ellipsis in theprocess of translating Chinese into English.Analyzing linguistic cohesion in the process of translating Chinese into English willhelp to have a better understanding of the similarities and differences of cohesive devicesbetween two languages and the cohesive theory; it is a way to conclude the generaltranslation principles of grammatical cohesive devices through a large amount of sampleanalysis on reference, substitution and ellipsis. The inter-language converting principles ofgrammatical cohesive devices haven’t been paid much attention in translation study untilnow. To have a systematic and complete knowledge of grammatical cohesive devices intwo languages will help translator do better in translation. It also helps to have a betterunderstanding of the classical literary work Fortress Besieged and to promote interculturalcommunication.