The Application Of The Theory Of Cohesion To English-Chinese SI Practice

Since the publication of Cohesion in English by Halliday and Hassan(1976),the theory of cohesion has been hot in linguistics and applied linguistics,and has been involved in the leading researches in different fields of study,for instance,foreign language education,stylistics and translation.Halliday mainly discussed two kinds of cohesion:grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion.What is of the focus of his discussion are the five cohesion devices,namely,reference,substitution,ellipsis,junction and lexical cohesion.Simultaneous Interpreting(SI)is famous for its characterization of being synchronized and timely.Generally speaking,a SI interpreter in interpreting does not have much effort or time to spend on discourse and logic.As a result,cohesion is mostly ignored as part of interpreting and as a research topic in simultaneous interpreting.Although being ignored,admittedly,cohesion is part of any interpreting and simultaneous interpreting.The study of cohesion is of importance and the consciousness of applying the theory of cohesion is necessary in the practice of interpreting.For interpreters who have mastered the theory of cohesion,his or her interpreting could be more logical and complete.This report aims to study the possibility of utilizing the theory of cohesion into analyzing one SI practice.This report takes a scientific speech from the 9th Session of 2016 NEU Forum on Rock Mechanics for example.The speech is "Low Surface Gravity on Mars-Implications for Topography,Volcanism,and Hydrology".It highlights the impact of low surface gravity on topography,volcanism and hydrology.The conclusion of this report is that applying the theory of cohesion to SI is positive and helpful for simultaneous interpreters to make the output in the target language more logical and cohesive under the guidance of the five cohesion devices of reference,substitution,ellipsis,junction and lexical cohesion.