The Translation And Conversion Of English Personal Reference Cohesive Devices

This is a translation project report on The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac, of which Chapter10and Chapter11are the source texts. The story is mainly about how young Marguerite resisted her father who was tempted deeply by chemistry, how she kept the house and dealt with personal emotion while she paid her father’s huge debt. The original version of the novel is written in French. In this project the source text to be translated into Chinese is an English version of the French original. The total numbers of word of the source text and the Chinese version are respectively more than10thousand and15thousand. In addition, the translation platform developed by the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (FLTRP) has been used. Due to cultural differences between Chinese and western society, especially the differences between Chinese and English, the translator noticed a phenomenon that many personal reference cohesive devices exist in a long sentence or the same personal reference repeats itself several times in a sentence. In order to translate properly, three methods are used to solve these problems. They are methods of ellipsis, replacement and restoration. This thesis is divided into four parts:Chapter One is an introduction of the translation project, including the project background, objectives, significance and the structure of the thesis. Chapter Two is a description of the process of the translation project, including the preparatory phase, the translation phase and the testing phase. Chapter Three is a case analysis, including the introduction of the source text and translation strategy. Chapter four is a conclusion, including the experience and lessons the author has learned from the translation project.