On Coherence Reconstruction In Academic Text Translation

With the rapid development of text linguistics,the focus of translation studies has shifted away from the level of words or sentences to the much broader level of texts.Coherence is a necessary requirement for texts,so studying how to achieve textual coherence of target texts is an important part for translation studies.According to Wang Dongfeng,coherence refers to relations between linguistics elements,and relations between linguistics elements and extra-linguistic environment.Many scholars hold that translation is a process of reestablishing and reconstructing the coherence of source text in the target text.However,few studies were carried out to explore translation strategies used in the course of coherence reconstruction.Based on the translation practice of the academic text Representing Women Myths of Femininity in the Popular Media,the author analyzes how to achieve coherence reconstruction in academic translation.To produce a coherent target text,translators should reconstruct coherence at three levels,namely,grammatical,semantic and pragmatic level.At grammatical level,translators can use translation strategies of omission,amplification and literal translation to change cohesive devices of reference,substitution,ellipsis and conjunction in source text into zero reference,lexical cohesion and conjunction in target text.At semantic level,translators first need to identify lexical cohesion and then determine the meaning of related words based on it.Besides,translators should clearly represent the logic in attributive and appositive clauses within context.At pragmatic level,translators can use the method of substituting cultural images or free translation to solve cultural default problems.In addition,sentence rearrangement and amplification can be used to better conform to expressions and thinking patterns in target language.This paper explores strategies in translating academic texts from the perspective of textual coherence,aiming at providing guidance and reference for similar translation practice.Since this report is based on the analysis of a single text,further studies are needed to explore whether these translation strategies can be used universally in translation of academic texts.