A Contrastive Analysis Based On C-E Topic Structures And Exploration Into Strategies In The C-E Translations Of Chinese Classics

“Overseas promotion of Chinese culture” has become one of the hottest topics in the new era.As a unique carrier of traditional Chinese culture,Chinese classics and their translations play an important role in the overseas promotion of Chinese culture.One of the central tasks of Chinese classic translation is to deconstruct or reconstruct textual structures,and one of the core elements relating to the Chinese textual structure is topic chain.Topic chain,as a major means to construct a Chinese text,appears frequently in a text.From the perspective of topic chain,this dissertation attempts to make a distinction between Chinese and English topics,which may open a new vision for the contrastive study between the Chinese and English languages,and thus,provide some help for C-E translation of Chinese classics.Firstly,this thesis combines descriptive ways with interpretative ones to discuss the features of Chinese topic chain and English topic structure,analyzes the ellipsis of subject and equivalence of zero anaphora in the system of Chinese topic chain and explores the constructive mechanism of Chinese topic chain on the basis of economical principle and theory of accessibility.Besides,this thesis,by adopting Wang Wenbin’s point of view(2016),divides types of Chinese topic chains into typical,inserted and embedded topic chains.In the analysis of the features of English topic structure,description via examples is shown relevant to explicit anaphora in English topic structures which are different from the zero anaphora in Chinese.This thesis sums up the similarities and differences concerning structures between Chinese and English compound sentences and textual structures by means of contrastive analysis.At the level of a compound sentence,Chinese constructs sentences on the basis of semantic relationship,while English refers to both semantic relationship and syntactic structures.The strategies used in the construction of Chinese and English ??texts differ greatly.Chinese values ??the meaning connection while English embodies semantic associations via different sentence patterns.In terms of the structure of a text,Chinese prefers to employ topic chains to build texts while the linkage among English sentences is expressed through words and referential connectors.Based on the comparative results above,this thesis explores the strategies to bridge Chinese-English topic structures from the perspective of topic chain in the process of C-E translation of Chinese classics.The strategies are reconstruction of topic chains,transformation from zero anaphora to explicit anaphora,exchange of subject and object,and metonymy projection mechanism.Last but not the least,in the analysis of translation examples,this thesis expounds the typical,inserted and embedded topic chains in Chinese paragraphs and then connects their typical features with relevant translation strategies.The case analysis demonstrates the rationality of the comparative result,and verifies the feasibility of the aforementioned translation strategies,which contributes to the research of English translation of Chinese classics and relevant C-E translation theories and practice.