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A Study Of Thematic Progression Patterns Of English-Chinese Translation In Scientific And Technical Texts

Posted on:2015-01-06Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y L LiuFull Text:PDF
GTID:2255330422969727Subject:English Language and Literature
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Because of the rapid development of world economy and the prosperity of internationaltrade, the communication of scientific and technical information between China and othercountries is getting increasingly frequent. A lot of advanced scientific and technicalinformation is constantly brought in from abroad which calls for the translation work oftechnological materials. Therefore the study of English-Chinese translation of scientific andtechnical text is becoming increasingly crucial.From the1960s, some domestic and foreign scholars started the study of translationusing theories like modern linguistics, communication theory, and psychology theory and soon. Domestic scholar Li Yunxing proposes that the discourse analysis is a useful tool in thestudy of translation. The theme-rheme theory and thematic progression pattern are twoimportant theories of discourse analysis, with which many scholars have studied translationmainly focusing on literature, and there are few studies on English-Chinese translation ofscientific and technical texts. The purpose of English-Chinese translation of scientific andtechnical texts is to convey information to target readers and make the target readersunderstand the information as well as the source readers. This thesis will apply Halliday’stheme-rheme theory and Danes’ thematic progression pattern, with Nida’s functionalequivalence theory as a guide to analyze English-Chinese translation of scientific andtechnical texts. The author will explore how to deal with the thematic progression patterns ofthe English-Chinese translation in scientific and technical texts under the guidance offunctional equivalence theory, and the conditions and reasons for preserving or deviating.This thesis will provide a new perspective for English-Chinese translation in scientific andtechnical texts.The scientific texts come from Scientific American and its Chinese version Huan Qiu KeXue from2012to2013. The author selects50texts by the method of systematic sampling,and then finds out their translations. These texts are all original scientific texts having high authority and representativeness. By analyzing these texts, the author reaches the conclusionthat the themes and thematic progression patterns should be preserved under certainconditions, and sometimes they need to be adjusted. The reasons for preserving include thesame English-Chinese sentential patterns and the pursuit of maximum equivalence oftranslation; while different thinking modes and expression habits contribute to the deviationfrom the patterns.This thesis contains five parts: the first part is the introduction; the second part is theliterature review; the third part is the standard of English-Chinese translation of scientific andtechnical texts; the fourth part is the core of this thesis, which analyzes the conditions andreasons for preserving or deviating from the thematic progression patterns from sententiallevel and sentence group level; the fifth part is the conclusion.
Keywords/Search Tags:Theme/rheme, Thematic progression, Functional equivalence, Scientific and technical texts, English-Chinese translation
PDF Full Text Request
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