| EST translation is selected as the topic of this study, because it is a problematic area that has not been discussed thoroughly and systematically, owing to the age-old bias on literary translation. The thesis thus describes a statistical approach, augmented with linguistic knowledge regarding semantic, syntactic, functional, stylistic and pragmatic dimensions, to EST translation, aiming at charting the distribution patterns of PP and exploring their textual contributions to the distinctive styles of EST. The discoveries achieved in the thesis would undoubtedly offer a stronger expressive power than the previous impressionistic and monotonous studies both on the explication of the hidden reasons for the frequent occurrences of PP and on the EST translation criteria and paradigm.Consisting of 6 chapters, the thesis is a self-contained research entity. After the brief literature review both at home and abroad, chapter 1 lays the framework of the present study, including theoretical foundations, research methodology, instrumentation, data collection and processing, testifying to the fact that PP are statistically significant in terms of their high frequency in EST. Following the acquisition of the hard facts of PP, chapter 2 to chapter 4 constitute the multi-disciplinary approach to PP in hope of unraveling the enigma of the frequent occurrences of PP in EST by gaining a panorama of their contextual effects. Chapter2 approaches the hard facts of PP from a semantic and syntactic perspective, chapter3 a functional and stylistic perspective, and chapter 4 a pragmatic perspective. All these disciplinary analyses account for the hard facts about PP's high frequency in EST. After the textual interpretations of PP in EST are combed through, the findings are thus applied to EST translation cases in pursuit of a better translation equivalence in chapter 5. And at last, the thesis ends with chapter 6, also known as a conclusive chapter.The multi-disciplinary approach to the textual interpretations of PP in EST has produced rewarding results: 1) the semantic and syntactic approach finds that PP exhibit diverse meanings and syntactic roles as a modifier, a complement, or anadjunct; 2) the functional and stylistic approach finds that PP in EST engender the formation of various thematic types and marked themes, as well as rhematic structures, whereby achieving the formal and informative stylistic effects in EST by means of stylistic foregrounding as style markers; 3) last but not least, the pragmatic approach reveals PP's great contribution to the attainment of optimal relevance in EST. The crux of these findings is that PP, instead of idle phrases, are indeed great contributors in EST on account of their dominant part both in number and in effect. Additionally, the implications of this study are manifold in practical translation cases: 1) the Chinese-English translators of EST are supposed to comply with the typological conventions of EST, at least in terms of the high frequency of PP; 2) translators involved should take multi-disciplinary factors into account to achieve better translation equivalence while dealing with PP in translations; 3) it is desirable that translators adopt various strategies to seek proper PP equivalents in light of PP's typical textual attributes found in the research.The findings in this study, as is believed, may shed some light on the study of the distinctive features of EST. Moreover, the findings should also produce a significant impact on EST translation. The thesis is nothing but a tentative research and it remains open to further discussion or improvement. Follow-up work could be the application of this model to accounting for other empirical phenomena of EST, such as nominalization and passivization. Another immediate direction is to implement this model in exploring PP's non-textual interpretations from cognitive perspective, politeness principle and the like. On the whole, this study is believed to be conducive both to EST translation researchers and their practitioners.
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