On Textual Cohesion In Ancient Chinese To English Translation

Text analysis has been one of the most active areas of linguistic research for the past few years. Its object of study is language above sentence level. Therefore, it is also called super-sentential analysis. To study the language from the level of text contributes revealing the essence of text. Text analysis possesses interdisciplinary features, interweaving with pragmatics, cognitive science, social psychology and so on. Since 1990s, the findings of text analysis have combined with translation and brought new vitality to translation studies.Translation activities concern both understanding the original text and outputting the target text, the latter part being the ultimate aim. As one of the seven criteria for the communicative occurrence of textuality, cohesion is a priority research area in text analysis. It is embodied in the surface structure of the text and reflects the adhesiveness of language elements with the help of grammatical and lexical devices. On the basis of comprehending the cohesive devices of the original text, the translator needs to select the corresponding cohesive devices in the target language to reconstruct the cohesive relations of the target text.According to the research by Professor Zhu Yongsheng, English and modern Chinese have significant differences on cohesion. Compared with modern Chinese, the cohesive system of ancient Chinese is much more distinctive. As a rarely used language in modern society, its cohesive devices are rather difficult to understand.As a result, when translating Chinese classics, the translator is obliged to have a good command of the cohesive systems of both English and ancient Chinese well in order to translate more smoothly and accurately. Otherwise the translated text might be obscure with a low readability.In recent years, there is a loud outcry for promoting our Chinese cultural soft power. Accordingly, abundant Chinese classics have been translated and introduced to western countries. Tea culture is a crucial part of Chinese traditional culture. Joseph Needham, the world-renown historian of science and technology, regarded the tea as the fifth major contribution that China made to the world in his book Science and Civilization in China. As the momentous records of Chinese tea culture, The Classic of Tea and The Sequel to the Classic of Tea have played an indispensable role in spreading Chinese tea culture.This paper aims at making a comparative study on the cohesive devices of the ancient Chinese and English, focusing on their translation strategies accordingly. The first chapter will present the background, purpose and significance of this study to provide the readers with a general knowledge about the research. The second chapter summarizes the findings on cohesion home and abroad, introducing the definition of cohesion and the classification of cohesive devices, and sums up the findings of Chinese-English translation in terms of cohesion. The third chapter focuses on the frequently-used cohesive words and phrases in ancient Chinese. The fourth chapter deals with the discrepancies of the two languages in terms of the adoption of cohesive devices on the basis of the data collected. Some corresponding translation strategies are proposed accordingly. The fifth chapter analyses the findings of this study and concludes this research paper. In addition, the limitations of this study and some recommendations to relevant future research are proposed.