A Comparative Study Of Grammatical Cohesion In English And Chinese

As one of the important ties in composing a text, cohesion is a relation in which two or several elements which are structurally irrelevant to each other are joined together semantically. The interpretation of one element depends on that of other elements. The failure to understand the cohesive pattern of the source language as well as that of the target language is likely, to a large extent, to cause ambiguity or even misunderstanding.Hence, cohesion is an indispensable element for a translator to handle in the process of translation. Taking into consideration the cohesive differences, he should make appropriate adjustments according to the norm of the target language and produce a text that is cohesive and coherentThis paper is composed of seven chapters: Chapter One is a general introduction to the whole thesis. Chapter two is an introduction to the concept of text, texture and cohesion as well as to their respective functions in translation. Chapter Three, Chapter Four and Chapter Five cover a comparative survey of grammatical cohesive devices in English and Chinese and the influence of their differences on the translation between English and Chinese. Chapter Six is a quantitative analysis of the conjunctions based on the novel Rabbit Run. Chapter Seven is the conclusion.Because of the limitation of the author's knowledge and the pressure of time, this paper will only deal with the four grammatical cohesive devices identified by Halliday and Hasan in their book Cohesion in English (1976). Of course, there are other devices that are left untouched, whose use also contribute to the cohesion of a text, such as continuity of tense, consistency of style and punctuation. Therefore, this paper is only a preliminary study on the topic of cohesion and more work needs to be done in future.