Discourse Coherence Reconstruction In EST Translation

Nowadays,translation of English for Science and Technology(EST)is the route we have to take to learn advanced science and technology from the West.However,the quality of many translated versions of EST in China is still very poor.The disconnection between theory and practice is a bottleneck of EST translation.This thesis attempts to establish a practicable coherence theoretical framework for EST translation,offering a new insight into EST translation practice.Coherence is an umbrella term,covering the relations at all the layers of a discourse.Since the coherence theory was put forward,it has made great contributions to the further development of linguistics and translation studies.According to the textual characteristics of EST,the coherence of EST discourse is divided into grammatical coherence,semantic coherence,professional knowledge coherence and general knowledge coherence in this thesis.The first two layers are intratextual coherence,and the latter two extratextual one.An ideal translation of EST discourse should reconstruct the discourse coherence at these four layers.Based on this theoretical framework,this thesis analyzes many examples at these four layers respectively in order to verify the practicality of the theoretical framework.Finally,this thesis puts forward that,in order to achieve the coherence reconstruction at these four layers,the translator should strive to improve their grammatical knowledge,and learn to analyze the semantic relations in co-text.Moreover,they should spare no effort to make themselves acquire professional knowledge in certain fields and to train themselves to be “versatile” in daily life.