Cohesion And Translation

Translating means translating meaning. Translation consists of transferring the meaning of the source language into the receptor language. This is done by going from the form of the first language to the form of a second language by way of semantic structure. To achieve the meaning transfer, translation should be done on the text level. A text is not simply the combination of sentences, but a unit of meaning. A cohere text has texture, i.e. cohesion and coherence as its chief contents. Cohesion is the visible net of a text, reflecting itself on the surface of the text; coherence is the invisible net of a text at the bottom through logic and reason. A text would never be a text if there is no cohesion and cohesion is a necessary though not a sufficient condition for the creation of a text. As one of the textures cohesion is the network of lexical, grammatical, and other relations which provide links between various parts of a text, for instance by requiring the reader to interpret words and expressions by reference to other words and expressions in the surrounding sentences and paragraphs. Different language has different preference for using cohesive devices. Therefore, at the text level in translating, translator should achieve cohesion in order to make the translation cohesive.The paper argues that text consciousness is important and that the application of the achievement of text linguistics is instructively beneficial to the translator. Though understanding of the cohesive devices used in the text, translator is clear about the difference between the source text and the target text which will contribute to a cohesive translation. Being a hypotaxis language, English is different from parataxis Chinese in the usage of cohesive devices. The paper deals with the concept of cohesion and the difference in its usage between English and Chinese and the ways of producing cohesive translation. Comparison of the devices has been made in the paper on five aspects: reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction, lexical cohesion (reiteration and collocation). Overt and covert translation as translation strategies are discussed in the paper.