A Research Of Two Chinese Versions Of The Catcher In The Rye Based On Thematic Progression

Thematic analysis studies language from the perspective of communicative function.The thematic theory was first proposed by the Prague School.It had made considerable progress after the publication of Halliday’s Notes on Transitivity and Theme in English and showed a significant impact in the academic world.The theme plays an important role in the composition of the text.It is not only an important starting point in the process of discourse formation but also an element that could connect the information flow in the discourse.The rheme is the main body of information,which contains the actual content that gradually develops around the theme.The distribution of different information in the discourse could be intuitively reflected by the thematic theory from a functional perspective.Since the 1980 s,with the intensive and expansion study of the thematic and thematic progression theories in domestic academic community,they were also widely used in the field of E-C translation research.Systematic analysis and comparison of the thematic structure of English and Chinese could make translators clearer about understanding the structural similarities as well as differences between the two languages.They could also play a certain guiding and promoting role in understanding the source language discourse and translation practice.In the past,discourse translation researches based on the thematic progression perspective were more focused on the genres of speech,news reports and so forth,while the research on novels involved fewer examples.Based on relevant theories and research achievements of thematic progression,the thesis would take The Catcher in the Rye and its two translations as research objects.The thesis aimed to explore the application of thematic progression theory in EnglishChinese translation and to discover literary translation strategies from the perspective of thematic progression through comparative research.The main research activities of this thesis include: 1.Briefly explained single theme,multiple theme,and clausal theme,by the use of Halliday’s thematic theory;2.Distinguished marked theme and unmarked theme;expounded the function of marker behavior in discourse;3.Prudentially evaluated the thematic progression in the original novel by the use of Halliday’s thematic theory and Xu Shenghuan’s four patterns of thematic progression;4.Analyzed a large number of examples of thematic progression patterns in both translations,thereafter compared the similarities and differences in translation strategies for dealing with the thematic progression of the original,summarized the strategies practically applicable to translating Chinese and English novels.