| Research on discourse markers has been focused on their definition, theirfeatures, their classifications and their functions. Few studies have been done on thetranslation of discourse markers and even fewer have tackled the translations ofdiscourse markers from English to Chinese. With a view to fill this gap, the presentthesis aims to investigate the two discourse markers and and but, and theirtranslations in talk shows. This is done in order to explore what functions discoursemarkers and and but have, to what extent they are translatable and what translationstrategies can be applied. The choice of and and but as objects of study is justified bythe fact that not much research has been done on these two frequently occurringdiscourse markers.The data for this study is drawn from The Ellen DeGeneres Show. It consists ofthe fully transcribed soundtrack of48clips of the talk show, each with Chinesesubtitles. All in all, the data is made up by31,070words. The total occurrrence ofdiscourse marker and is130, and the total occurrence of discourse marker but is88in the data. The study has been conducted both quantitatively and qualitatively. Theanalysis of functions of discourse markers starts with an identification of bothdiscourse markers based on the features shared by discourse markers. The analysis iscarried out based on the three Hallidayan modes of functions of language, Brinton’slist of functions of discourse markers, Nida’s functional equivalence theory as wellas features of subtitling. The translations of discourse markers and and but areanalyzed from the perspectives of translations of discourse markers with textualfunctions and translations of discourse markers with interpersonal functions. There isalso a comparison between results of translations of and and those of but. Finally,translation strategies that can be adopted to translating discourse markers and andbut is discussed.The results obtained confirm the assumptions that both discourse markers andand but, can indicate both textual functions and interpersonal functions. Not every discourse marker whether it be and and but is translated into Chinese for variousreasons. This study shows that both discourse markers and and but are less translatedwhen they are with textual functions than when they are with interpersonal functionsin the data. In addition, the present study also finds that five translation strategies areapplicable when translating discourse markers and and but. These five strategies areomission, literal translation, explicitation, paraphrase and doubling of function. |
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