On Discourse Coherence In Wen Jiabao's Speeches And Its English Translation

Coherence is a decisive factor in identifying a text and plays a crucial role in text-based translation. The direct object and the final product of translation are the discourse, so the process of translation is the process of recognition and reconstruction of discourse coherence. Therefore, the application of discourse coherence theory in translation study has not only theoretical value but also great potential in practice. Most of the scholars pay more attention to Chinese written language as a corpus when they do researches. However, as is known to all, spoken language is prior to written language. Thus, here this thesis especially chooses the formal spoken language—Premier Wen's speeches—and the English translation as the research objects, having some innovative significance.The thesis reviews the previous researches on discourse coherence both at home and abroad, clarifies the relationships between coherence and cohesion, coherence and translation and introduces the features of speech language. The theoretic basis of this thesis is Halliday's functional systemic linguistics and Zhang Delu's division of internal and external aspects on discourse coherence. The thesis analyses the internal and external factors that affect coherence of Premier Wen's Chinese speeches from the semantic and pragmatic perspectives and then proposes the effective translation strategies. The whole thesis falls into six chapters. Chapter One is an introduction of the research background, aims, significance and methods. Chapter Two offers literature review on discourse coherence. Chapter Three provides theoretic elaboration on coherence, clarifying relationships between cohesion and coherence, coherence and translation. Chapter Four analyses the realization of coherence of Premier Wen's Chinese speeches. Chapter Five proposes translation strategies to reconstruct coherence in English translation of Premier Wen's speeches. Chapter Six draws the conclusion. The thesis connects Halliday's systemic functional approach with Zhang Delu's classification of internal and external factors and chooses Premier Wen's typical Chinese speeches and the corresponding English versions as corpus for systematic research. By means of the combination of theoretical elaboration and practical analysis of versions, the thesis reveals that in the translation process, establishing the analysis steps based on coherence realization is valuable in instructing translation practice.The research result demonstrates that discourse coherence theory in the application of English translation of Premier Wen's speeches is operational and practical, presenting an objective standard for speech translation. The translation strategies based on coherence theory offers an instructive guidance for translation practice to achieve the best translated version. It provides the basis for the future study of applying the theory of text linguistics to other styles of spoken language translation as well.