Cohesion Shifts In Chinese Translation Of General Theory Of Law And State

This thesis, based on “Cohesion Theory” proposed by Halliday and Hasan, is to have a comparative study on cohesion shifts in Shen Zongling’s Chinese translation of Hans Kelsen’s General Theory on Law and State. Through analyzing how cohesive devices in the source texts are shifted in Shen’s translation, the author intends to explore the influence of these shifts on the Chinese translation and summarize the strategies the translator adopts.With both quantitative and qualitative approaches adopted, the author will code all chapters in the original book, pick out ten sections from each chapter randomly as the source texts; then mark all cohesive ties found in the source texts to analyze how they are shifted in Shen’s translation, the results will be presented by tables; after that, the author will summarize the strategies Shen Zongling adopts in handling these shifts by case study and explore the shifts’ influence on the Chinese translation.This thesis consists seven chapters: Chapter One is introduction, introduces research background, significance, research questions and methodology; Chapter Two is literature review, briefs the groundbreaking position of Hans Kelsen’s General Theory on Law and State in the field of jurisprudence and the significant role of Shen Zongling’s translation in the book’s promotion in China, reviews the development of “Cohesion Theory” in the West and East, illustrates the importance of cohesion in translation and differences between cohesion in Chinese and English; Chapter Three introduces the theoretical framework of the thesis, elaborates on how “Cohesion Theory” proposed by Halliday and Hasan will be applied in this study; Chapter Four demonstrates the cohesion shift pattern in Shen’s translation by tables; Chapter Five and Six elaborate on how the translator makes the shifts and their influence on the Chinese translation by case study; Chapter Seven concludes the major findings, answers research questions, points out limitations of this research and provides some suggestions for further studies.Based on quantitative analysis and case study, the following conclusions can be reached: Shen Zongling preserves most cohesive ties in the source texts; the rate of shift varies between the five cohesive types, among which “substitution” tops the list while “lexical cohesion” stands at the bottom; the author mainly adopts four methods in handling cohesion shifts, they are repetition, omission, restoration and transformation. By these four methods, the translator transfers the use of synonyms and diversified linguistic forms frequently seen in the source texts into repetition in his translation; omits some original explicit cohesive ties and restores several verbal structures deleted in the source texts. The influence of cohesion shifts on Shen’s translation, in turn, reflects a transformation process from a hypotaxis-oriented language to a parataxis-oriented language.In conclusion, cohesion and the linguistic difference between English and Chinese are influential to translation of all text types. In legal translation, the translator should strike a better balance between “faithfulness” and “expressiveness” to improve the quality of the translation.