A Comparative Study On Lexical Cohesion In Chinese Translations Of Bacon's Essays

As one of the hot issues in language research, cohesion is a vital component of discourse analysis. Cohesion theory is systematically put forward by Halliday and Hasan, which mainly consists of grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion. Lexical cohesion is a major device to achieve discourse coherence. The application of lexical cohesion devices can enhance the stylistic function as well as build discourse cohesion in both English and Chinese.Based on Halliday and Hasan's cohesion theory, this thesis takes Bacon's Essays, the classical essays in English literature, as the object of study. By compiling a bilingual parallel database, the study compares the characteristics of lexical cohesion in its two Chinese translations (Shui Tiantong's version, 1958; Cao Minglun's version, 2000). Then through a comparative study on the approaches of dealing with lexical cohesion in the two Chinese translations, some available translation methods to cope with lexical cohesion are summed up. The findings are as follows:1) Each essay in Bacon's essays expounds one subject which is often reflected in the title of the essay. In order to give prominence to the theme of each essay, lexical cohesion, such as repetitions, synonyms, and collocations which are related to the theme, occurs frequently.2) With regard to translation methods, equivalent translation is adopted most frequently; substitution comes next.3) From the perspective of the style of the two Chinese translations, Shui Tiantong is faithful to the original, and his translation inclines to classical Chinese; while Cao Minglun is adept in employing various translation methods to deal with lexical cohesion and his translation is well suited for contemporary readers.In conclusion,"faithfulness"is the most important principle in terms of translating lexical cohesion. Owing to the differences in idiomatic expressions between English and Chinese, some transformations should be made so as to make a coherent translation which accords with habits of target readers. In views of lexical cohesion, the two translations can not be considered as perfect, but most of the lexical cohesions are translated properly in the target language. In a word, a thorough understanding of lexical cohesion in the source and the target languages is necessary in translation for a translator. By doing so, a faithful, smooth, natural and coherent translation can be possibly created.