A Contrastive Study Of Lexical Cohesion In Chinese And English Legislative Texts And Its Translation

The cohesion theory of Halliday and Hasan has always been the focus oflinguists and translators since its inception. The theory is one of necessary factors fortext-forming, and cohesion is classified into grammatical cohesion and lexicalcohesion. Comparing the two forms, lexical cohesion enjoys a very close relationshipwith the translation between the Chinese and English legislative languages, and playsan irreplaceable role in accomplishing the legislative textual cohesion as a whole.Legislative text is one of the most rigorous written styles, which requires standardizedlanguage and exact wording, especially in lexical cohesive devices. The lexicalcohesive devices used in Chinese and English legislative texts are different from othertypes of texts. Therefore, the discussion of similarities and differences of lexicalcohesion between Chinese and English legislative texts not only provides guidance tolegal translation practice, but also promotes the legal translation theory.This paper, by using legislative texts as its research data, conducts a systematicand comparative study on lexical cohesive devices employed in the legislative texts soas to explore the similarities and differences of lexical cohesive devices in theChinese and English legislative tests, and draws the following conclusions: there liesa phenomenon of lexical cohesive devices frequently employed in the Chinese andEnglish legislative texts, among which mainly are lexical repetition, hyponymy andsynonymy. Chinese legislative texts emphasize lexical repetition while legislativetexts in English employ more devices of synonymy. Repetition achieved in forms oflexical inflection is a unique phenomenon in the legislative texts of English. Based onthe features of lexical cohesion in the legislative texts, this paper summarizes somebasic translation strategies for different lexical cohesive devices, specifically, addingcohesive devices, rearranging cohesive devices and omitting cohesive devices, makes a further investigation on the study in detail, and points out the existing problems andthe corresponding solutions from a pragmatic approach.It is an attempt to make a contrastive analysis of lexical cohesive devices andtheir translation of lexical cohesion in the legislative texts from Chinese to English.Although the conclusion is relatively superficial, it can serve as a trigger. I believe ourstudy helps legal translators further understand the similarities and dissimilarities oflexical cohesive devices in the legislative texts. I also believe that my study providesan insight into future study.