The Application Of Theme/Rheme Theory To English-Chinese Translation

Translation, which is about the information decoding between two languages and cultures, is also a transfer of two texts and cultures. Translation is a discipline that often inters with other disciplines. Since the1960s, translation began to take a cross-discipline method. Translation study began to employ the theories and findings in other disciplines to explain and solve phenomena and problems concerned. However, traditional translation usually focuses on the research at word, phrase and sentence level,’which might be not helpful to solve problems at discourse level. For this reason, translation study gradually absorbs theories in textual linguistics.Theme/Rheme theory was firstly proposed by Czech linguist Mathesius to explain the message structure in discourse. Later, British linguist M. A. K. Halliday further developed the theory. In China, it is Xu Shenghuan who firstly introduced Theme/Rheme theory to China in1982. Linguists at home and abroad began to apply Theme/Rheme theory to linguistic study, translation research, teaching and other fields.Linguists held that Theme/Rheme theory is of guiding effect to English-Chinese and Chinese-English translation, and a translator should try to follow the original Theme/Rheme structure in his/her translation. However, as English and Chinese are so different in language systems, language using habits and message processing models, it is hard to apply the same Theme/Rheme structure in translation. This paper hypothesizes that translator could employ the Theme/Rheme structure in the original language in translation. Then the author tries to take examples in four types of sentence patterns and compare the translation versions of the same and different Theme/Rheme structures of the original language. And it could be found that it is applicable to use the original Theme/Rheme structure in target language. And the paper ends with the explanation of the advantages of employing the same Theme/Rheme structure---Theme/Rheme as a translation unit is helpful to the understanding of the implied meaning and the strategies of the organization of the text; Keeping the same Theme/Rheme can not only keep the style of the author, but also realize the cohesion and coherence of the translation.