Strategies For Translating Cohesive Devices

With the rise of text linguistics,an increasing number of translation theorists has realized the importance of text-based translation.As the basic unit of communication,to achieve effective communication,a text must ensure that it can be clearly understood.In this sense,the utilization of cohesive devices is of paramount importance.The awareness of cohesion and coherence enables a translator to better comprehend a text,thus producing qualified translation.Actually,both English and Chinese have many cohesive devices.However,due to the differences between the two languages' culture and thinking mode,their use of cohesive devices also varies.Thus,during translation,a translator should use proper cohesive devices to produce clear and fluent translation.This report is based on the translation of Analysis of Tonal Music:A Schenkerian Approach.With the help of Halliday&Hasan's cohesion theories,the report analyzes the translation of cohesions from the perspective of reference,substation and ellipsis and summarizes the strategies to translate such cohesive devices.Through the translation practice,the thesis finds that,being a hypotactic language,English mainly uses grammatical devices to realize cohesion.As for Chinese,it is paratactic and deals with cohesions in a more flexible manner.During translation,we can choose the following strategies:(1)to retain the original cohesive device directly and repeat it in Chinese;(2)change the word order or use synonyms in Chinese that can produce the same cohesive effect without sacrificing the fluency of the target text;and(3)omission.Generally speaking,repetition can be used to translate cohesive items like personal reference,nominal substitution and ellipsis.When translating comparative reference,adversative conjunction,casual conjunction and temporal conjunction,we can use method(2)as mentioned above.As for omission,it can be applied to translate cohesive items including personal reference,addictive conjunction,adversative conjunction and casual conjunction.It should be noted that this should not be followed strictly as there will always be exceptions.