English-Chinese Translation Practice Of Discourse Cohesion—Report On The Translation Of How To Read Dragons

Cohesion theory has drawn much attention since Cohesion in English(authored by Halliday & Hasan) was published, and it has a major impact on discourse analysis.Cohesion has important effects on enhancing logic of a text and keeping meanings coherent, and it also plays a key role in correctly understanding the source text and is an important means in conveying the original's information and creating its target text.Whether the appropriate cohesion is built or not directly affects translation quality and the readers' understanding on the target text. Achieving as much meaning equivalence and form equivalence as possible is the ultimate goal of text translation. Therefore,translators should not only comprehend the contents and logical relations in the source text, but also create a faithful and elegant target text which has same semiotic logic with its source text. For the purpose of being faithful to the original, many cohesive devices are used in the process of translating the text, and thereafter cohesive devices in the source text and those in the target text are briefly analyzed, and the report on translation practice is written.This paper consists of three parts. Chapter one briefly introduces the selected translation text in this translation practice and describes preparations for the text translation, and it reviews the latest studies of cohesive devices from scholars at home and abroad and expounds the reasons for choosing cohesive devices as translation strategy. In order to accomplish the goals of summarizing features in English and those in Chinese, deciding translation strategy, improving translation quality and providing some references in the studies of English and Chinese text translation practice, chapter two, based on the cohesion theory, lists some examples in the translation text in which such cohesive devices as repetition, synonym, antonym,substitution, ellipsis and reference are used, and briefly compares and analyzes similarities and differences between cohesive devices in English discourse and those in Chinese discourse. Chapter three briefly summarizes the translation strategies used in this translation practice. After comparing and analyzing some cohesive devices in the source text and the target text, the translator finds that if English and Chinese share same or similar cohesive devices, the source text can be literally translated,otherwise, adjustments should be made.