A Comparative Study On Cohesive Devices Of Two English Versions Of The Peony Pavilion From The Perspective Of Compensation

The Peony Pavilion is the representative work by Tang Xianzu,who is a famous play writer in Ming Dynasty.It is true that it is hard to reproduce the original language style of The Peony Pavilion in translation and to convey the equivalent meaning and style as well as logical relationship because it is abundant in poetic language and omissions of cohesive devices.So,a translator has to possess proficient skills to use cohesion devices and to make analysis of the original text carefully and correctly.Certainly,it is a big challenge for a translator to compensate for the loss which occurs in the transference from source language(SL)to target language(TL)in general,and cohesion in particular in the process of translation of The Peony Pavilion.In the process of translation practice,language couldn't be transmitted perfectly and correctly in the language surface due to the different surface structure between SL and TL.If the relationship between SL and TL couldn't be processed properly,translation loss that refers to the loss of semantics and pragmatic function as well as logical coherence will occur.When Chinese focusing on the para-taxis is translated into English focusing on the hypo-taxis,the semantic coherence loss will easily occur because of improper or insufficient cohesion.Therefore,based on the original text,translators reconstruct text coherence in the target language with different cohesion devices in the translation process.This paper will be based on the two English versions of The Peony Pavilion,respectively translated by Cyril Birch and Wang Rongpei,to analyze the different cohesion devices used by the two translators from the perspective of compensation theory.With Halliday and Hason's cohesion theory in text linguistics as the main theory and compensation as a supplementary theory,the author of this paper established corpora based on the electronic texts of Wang Rongpei and Cyril Birch.The instruments of the MonoConc Pro.2.2 and SPSS 16.0 are respectively employed to calculate frequencies and check significant difference.The purpose of the present study is to make the first attempt to investigate the different cohesion devices used in the two English versions of The Peony Pavilion with quantitative and qualitative analysis.By painstaking efforts,it is hoped to come up with some new ideas and methods in translating Chinese classical works from the perspective of cohesive devices.Moreover,the researcher intends to investigate what cohesive devices and compensation strategies are adopted to reconstruct coherence in target text so as to achieve functional equivalence in aspects of logical coherence between SL and TL.Through specifically comparing the two English versions of The Peony Pavilion,the major findings can be concluded as follows:First,in general,the two translation versions have basically compensated for the cohesive devices omitted in the ST.Due to the different historical backgrounds,cultural atmospheres and thinking modes of the two translators,the total number of cohesive devices in Birch's version is larger than that of Wang's version.During the translation process,Wang Rongpei is more likely influenced by Chinese paratactic features and Cyril Birch is easily affected by English hypotactic features.Second,both Wang Rongpei and Cyril Birch adopt such techniques as compensation by integration,namely,amplification,displace,information,etc,.In using compensation by isolation,Wang Rongpei favors annotation within text while Cyril Birch prefers annotation outside text.Third,on the linguistic level,when the source text contains complicated structures and cultural connotations,compared with Wang Rongpei,Cyril Birch is not inclined to compensate for the logical cohesive devices in most case.Last but not least,on the translation strategies,with the purpose of vividness in description and faithfulness in meaning,Wang Rongpei mainly adopts free translation,that is to say he pays more attention to the deep meaning expression.He also gives consideration to equivalence in the rhythm and rhyme as well as sentence structure.When the form and meaning can not be achieved at the same time,Wang Rongpei usually abandons form and retains deep meaning.On the contrary,Cyril Birch mainly employs literal translation,that is to say he gives more considerations to surface meaning.