| This thesis is meant to study why the translators should recognize the thematic progressions in translating English political speeches and how to deal with them by cases of speeches.In this thesis, previous study of theme-rheme theory and thematic progression theory are reviewed. Theme-rheme theory was first proposed by Prague School scholar Mathesius, and found its development by Halliday. However, theme-rheme theory confines to sentence boundaries. The notion of thematic progression proposed by Danes gets rid of this sentence-orientedness with its references to the way in which subsequent discourse reuses previous themes and rhemes. Later, many scholars made classifications of thematic progressions. In Danes’point of view, it falls into five categories. In Xu Shenghuan’s, it falls into the following four:parallel, continuous, concentrated and alternative pattern. In this thesis, thematic progression of Xu Shenghuan is used. E-C political speeches are to be studied by examples in the following cases:to reuse the thematic progressions of English speeches or reconstruct them.In conclusion, it is of great significance to recognize the thematic progression of the source text when translating English political speeches. And it is better to follow the thematic progression of the source text. When it is not able to, translators should reconstruct one according to the rules of Chinese language. |
