A Contrastive Analysis Of Thematic Structure Of The Last Leaf And Its Chinese Version

The realization of the equivalence and the shift in translation recently has been popular within the field of translation in practice applied with thematic theory. Some studies about three sub-branches which are thematic structure, information unit and cohesion about clauses and vocabulary have been made from the abroad and the domestic linguists. Those achievements have been made for the purpose of the contrastive analysis and the comparative analysis in the perspective of linguistic and the translation research. This new perspective gives a linguistic explanation to the translation research. The Last Leaf has been regarded as a corpus known for its surprising ending. However, its translation studies mostly are investigated with subjective experiential theories or aesthetic theories. In fact, linguists consider that an objective analysis to the discourse expresses more differences between the source text and target text in novels or poetry.Under the thematic framework, data collection and a descriptive analysis, the thesis attempts to discover distinctions of Theme-Rheme structure and thematic progression between the original text and the translation version of The Last Leaf as well as explore the textual influence affected by their distinctions.It chiefly discusses three research questions:firstly, are there any distributions between the original text of The Last Leaf and its translation in terms of Theme-Rheme structure referring to simple Theme, multiple Theme and clausal Theme respectively? And what are their characteristics? Secondly, are there any distributions between two versions of The Last Leaf in terms of thematic progression? And what characteristics are there? Thirdly, are there any equivalences or shifts in thematic analysis between the two texts? If they exist, where are they and what are their features?For this purpose, this thesis employs the approach of data collection and a descriptive analysis to interpret their differences of distributions with the Halliday’s classification (2004/2008). The classification will provide identification about three Themes:simple Theme (including participant, circumstance and process), multiple Theme (including topical Theme or experiential Theme, interpersonal Theme and textual Theme) and clausal Theme. Next it mainly adopts the descriptive analysis and Zhu’s classification (1990/1995) to define and interpret thematic progression namely a continuous Theme, a continuous Rheme, a simple linear coupled with a cross linear progression. In addition, the appearance of four leaves manifests the character’s destiny. Thus those leaves will be put as entry points to explore whether differences of progression exist in the main line or not between the source text and the target text together with discovering their characteristics. Furthermore, the striking feature of a textual function’s approach is to convey maximum information and the effective cohesion. In light of that, the thesis will take maximum information and effective cohesion as the criterion to make a contrastive analysis about equivalences and shifts in translation.Studies indicate that on the one hand the distribution of thematic structure shows some equivalences in both texts of The Last Leaf, simple Themes in two texts hold a dominant role among three types of Theme which accounts for 65.42% and 80.77% respectively, far beyond other two types. It embodies that the author and the translator employ simple thematic structure to express their inherent function of information, so that it produces a simple and concise contextual effect, closer to the common people. On the other hand, there are always some shifts in the process of translation. By the horizontal view, simple Theme in the Chinese text is higher than that of the English text. And multiple Theme (19.23%) and clausal Theme (0%) in the Chinese text has reduced 15.35% than that of the English text. Exactly, the number 15.35% is the difference between simple Themes in two texts. It reflects that those complicated information structure such as the multiple Theme and clausal Theme in the translation version have been decreased while the simplicity of reading language is increased in the translation with increasement of simple Theme, inclining to the contextual effect with the characteristics of simplification. From the perspective of thematic progression’s distribution, on the one hand, a similar progression has remained, namely equivalences in translation:the author and the translator adopt the type of continuous Theme and continuous Rheme to develop major plots with four symbolized leaves. The same position with Theme or Rheme (the description of the last leaf) is repeatedly emphasized to convey information that strengthens contextual effect of Theme or Rheme. And the original information in the source text is highly recognized as well as Johnsy’s psychological forces that the last leaf gives and gradually enhanced. One the other hand, some shifts of progression can also be found in the text. In the English text, the type of progression is too single and it exists a continuous Theme and continuous Rheme. It manifests that Theme is used as the given information to provide a dramatic understanding that Johnsy knows something about life and death. However, in the Chinese text, the type of progression is inclined to diversity, four progressions are presented respectively. It demonstrates the interchange among the last leaf, Johnsy and other things which is shown with different angles by the translator and reveals a complicated interaction between human and nature, instead of a single direct influence. This is better than the original scheme because it embodies an objective relation between life and death of nature. All in all, although some parts of thematic structure and thematic progression are transformed, they retain the completeness of information which namely splits a long clause into a loose structure clause. In this case, the textual information achieves a coherence and cohesion from the surface level to the deep level. In other words, clauses in English pay attention to strictness of structure while Chinese more emphasizes the coherence of a topic. Thus some shifts of language made by the translator are for the purpose of keeping the original information and the coherence of a topic. This exactly serves for equivalences of the textual effect. In summary, in order to achieve the original narrative textual effect, the translator adopts that translation strategy. Hence with that way, the main information of this novel can be retained and transmitted and its textual effect will reach the maximum degree.