Application Of Theme-rheme Structures In The English Version Of Complaints Of A Snake-catcher: A Linguistic Approach

This dissertation employs the thematic theories to translate subjectless sentencesin Chinese classic texts and explore ways to construct a cohesive discourse throughthematic progression. After an analysis to the subjectless sentences in Complaints of aSnake-Catcher and different types of Chinese and English thematic structures, it holdsthat the transformation of thematic progression with proper translation methods canhelp to resolve the non-cohesive text caused by subjectless sentences.The thematic structures of English and Chinese are different from each other.English is a subject-prominent language, so themes in most of English clauses areacted by subjects for they appear in the initial position as is defined by Halliday.However, Chinese is a topic-prominent language and in most cases, the subjects ofChinese clauses may be not consistent with their topics. Therefore, most of themes inChinese are topic themes. In the process of transformation between two languages,Chinese topic themes should be transferred into English subject ones with the literaltranslation method. However, as subjectless sentences exist in Chinese texts, thethematic progression is different in these two languages. Though the omitted subjectin a Chinese clause can be complemented as an English subject in translation in somecases, we cannot do so as a usual practice because the subject is often ambiguous. Inthis case, translators should employ amplification method and choose from the rhemeposition a proper subject for its English version to make an English sentence complete.As a result, the thematic progression pattern has been altered, so the coherence of thewhole text may be broken. Since thematic progression focuses on the relationsbetween themes and rhemes, we can find an element as theme related to the previousor following themes or rhemes. And it is reasonable to claim that thematic progressionis a cohesive device in reproducing a cohesive target text. Due to the differencesbetween English and Chinese, we have to employ conversion methods to preserve orreconstruct the original thematic progression in accordance to make the text cohesive.