A Study Of Dash Translation Under The Guidance Of Cohesion Theory

This paper,based on Global Competitiveness Report 2019,explores the role of the Cohesion Theory in guiding the translation of dashes in English-Chinese translation practice.Global Competitiveness Report 2019 is an economic report issued by the World Economic Forum.Based on the Global Competitiveness Indexes,which include 12 competitiveness factors such as Institutions and Infrastructure,the World Economic Forum evaluates the competitiveness of 141 economies on a comprehensive basis and launches the annual Global Competitiveness Report.With its concise language feature,Global Competitiveness Report 2019 of over 20,000 words contains total 66 dashes,including single and double dashes.Although dashes are a common punctuation mark in both Chinese and English,there are obvious differences in their use.In terms of frequency,the use of dashes in English is much higher than that in Chinese.Therefore,English dashes cannot be directly kept in the Chinese context during translation.How to properly deal with dashes has become a major focus and difficulty in this translation practice.Punctuation is essentially a means of connecting text and sentences,and dashes are no exception.This paper starts with the cohesion between the dash-led contents and the main sentence,classifies and analyzes the single and double dashes under different semantic contexts according to the 11 semantic classification methods proposed by Professor Huang Guowen,and puts forward two necessary conditions for the translation of dashes and the translation ideas of single and double dashes.By analyzing 23 translation examples of 6 semantics in both single and double dashes,this report summarizes three categories of translation methods,namely zero translation,conversion and sentence restructuring along with specific translation methods under various semantics,thus providing feasible suggestions for the translation of English dashes.