On Chinese Translation Of English Reference

Traditional translation studies put too much emphasis on the ―fidelity‖ to the source text. Translators frequently focus their mind on the equivalence of word or sentence level and neglect the vitally important roles played by cohesion and coherence, and that leads to rigid or even ambiguous translated versions. Since text linguistics emerged as a new discipline in the twentieth century, translation studies have no longer been limited to word or sentence level. Scholars have a gradual shift to focus on text level, regarding text as the important unit of translation, which enriches the translation field.As a linguistic feature of text, cohesion is an indispensable element in creating a logical and fluent text.(Beaugrande & Dressler, 1981) Likewise, cohesion plays a significant role in text translation. In Cohesion in English, Halliday and Hasan divide cohesive devices in English into five types, i.e. reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, lexical cohesion, and make detailed illustration of each type. As the mutual explanation relationship between reference item and referent in the text, reference is an important kind of cohesive devices, and it is of high research value for its crucial role in interpreting a source text and creating a target text.Grounded on Halliday and Hasan‘s cohesion theory, choosing Hemingway‘s The Old Man and the Sea and Eileen Chang‘s version as the study corpora, this thesis makes a combination of both quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis to explore the underlying differences of references between English and C hinese. And then based on the differences, the proper strategies for translating English references are put forward. Last, it further proves the feasibility of these strategies which are used frequently in Chang‘s version.There are five chapters in the thesis. Chapter One serves as an introduction, which includes the research background, the purpose and the method of the study. Chapter Two mainly reviews the literature of the previous studies on cohesion from the perspectives of both linguistics and translation. C hapter Three functions as the theoretical framework of the thesis, cons isting of the definition and classification of reference put forward by Halliday and Hasan in their book Cohesion in English in 1976. Chapter Four with both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the result of the contrastive study, some main strategies for reference translation are provided. And the thesis further proves these strategies are feasible in text translation since they are adopted frequently in Chang‘s version. Chapter Five is the conclusion of the study in which major find ings, limitations and directions for future studies are presented.By making a comparatively systematic analysis, some results are acquired and listed below:1) As can be seen from the data, reference does play a significant role in both the original text and the target text. Not contributing enough attention to reference may result in il ogical and unreadable translated version.2) Compared with the English text, the C hinese text enjoys a much lower frequency of reference. In C hinese, the referential relationships can be more flexibly realized through its own textual modes of coherence, such as lexical repetition and zero reference. The flexibility of C hinese reference decides the variety of translation strategies.3) Although the translation strategies proposed eventually ca n be found their large usages in C hang‘s version, different genres may have different textual features and thus may rely on different translation strategies. Translators should always keep in mind that a comprehensive and thorough understanding of the source text is the first essential step to translation. Based on the interpretation, translators can reorganize the language and produce a satisfying target text by adopting proper strategies.The purpose of this thesis is to deepen the study of reference and its translation and provide some guidance for future translation practice.