A Comparative Study Of The Grammatical Cohesion In Translated Reports On The Work Of The Government And The State Of Union Addresses

Grammatical cohesion, as an important aspect of a text, is essential in text analysis and text understanding. The translated Reports on the Work of Government (translated RWGs, for short) are not only an important window for the world to learn about China but also models of Chinese-English translation. Similarly, the State of Union Addresses (SUAs, for short) not only depict the outlook of the United States, but also serve as important learning materials for English learners. Comparing the grammatical cohesion between translated RWGs with SUAs, therefore, can help translators to find the differences between translated RWGs and texts written in the target language with similar functions, and to find ways improving the grammatical cohesion of translated RWGs.By building two corpora of more than100,000words, one formed by the translated RWGs from2007to2013, and the other by the State of the Union Addresses from1997to2013, the present study tends to find out the characteristics of translated RWGs and SUAs in grammatical cohesion, their differences and possible reasons for the differences, so as to know how translators can improve the grammatical cohesion of translated RWGsAfter comparison, the study finds that though the grammatical cohesive devices in the translated RWGs and the SUAs are mainly references and conjunctives, the use of grammatical cohesive devices in the translated RWGs is less frequent and diversified than that of the SUAs. Besides, no third personal pronouns or adjacency pairs are used as cohesive devices in the translated RWGs. The most frequently used grammatical cohesive device in the translated RWGs is also different from that in the SUAs.Such differences are mainly caused by differences between collectivism and individualism, different purposes and styles of RWGs and SUAs, and differences between Chinese and English languages. When translating RWGs, translators are advised to see a text as an organic structure, add suitable cohesive devices such as "we" and conjuncitves based on the relations between different parts, and avoid the influence of Chinese language, so as to improve the cohesion of translated RWGs and facilitate the understanding of the texts.