A Comparative Study Of Textual Cohesion In Chang Hen Ge And Its English Version

Wang Anyi’s masterpiece Chang Hen Ge has obtained good repercussions in the Western world after it has been translated in English in 2008.In English version,the cohesive devices play an important role in improving the readability of the translation.This thesis attempts to explore the following three questions: What are the similarities and differences in the usage of cohesive devices in Chang Hen Ge and its English version? What are the characteristics or rules of these similarities and differences? As for some cases that do not conform to the general rules,whether the translators’ treatment can also achieve the effect of the source text?Based on Halliday and Hassan’s cohesion theory,this thesis uses the method of literature review and the method of comparative analysis,and combines the quantitative and qualitative methods to compare and study the textual cohesive devices in Chang Hen Ge and its English version.The research contents have two parts: grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion,the former contains reference,substitution,ellipsis and conjunction and the latter contains reiteration and collocation.Through the statistics and analysis of the frequency and usage tendency of cohesion devices in Chinese and English texts,this thesis aims to reveal the general distribution characteristics of cohesion devices in the two texts and gives some examples to explain the characteristics.The mismatched phenomena of few cohesive devices in the two texts are particularly studied and analyzed to grasp accurately whether the translators’ cohesive devices can achieve the effect of the source text successfully.The results of the study show that there are three kinds of phenomenon in the usages of cohesion devices in Chang Hen Ge and its English version.Firstly,the usages of many cohesive devices in the two texts are almost similar.These devices include: clausal ellipsis,adversative and temporal of conjunction,hyponymy of reiteration and lexical chain of collocation.Moreover,some very small changes in the usages of cohesive devices due to the morphological changes in vocabulary in English are also included.They are comparative reference,nominal substitution and antonym.Besides,verbal substitution with small differences is also included.Secondly,the usages of the most cohesive devices in the two texts are different,but they conform to the general rules of Chinese and English expression.These devices include the following five cohesive devices: first,due to the existence of expression and form in English expression and the occurrence of zero anaphora in Chinese expression,there are differences in the usage of personal reference in the two texts;Second,because the demonstrative referential items “this” and “that” in Chinese expression are affected by psychological and visual aspects,differences is caused;Third,since the subject in Chinese sentence can be omitted often,while influenced by sentence structure,it cannot be omitted in English,differences in the usages of nominal ellipsis have arisen.Besides,the existence of zero anaphora can also cause difference to a certain extent;Forth,the main difference in the usage of verbal ellipsis is that compared with Chinese,English is used to omitting predicates;Fifth,the difference in the usages of synonym is reflected in the idiomatic expression of Chinese and English.In source text,the vocabulary is rich and colorful,and the synonyms are used well,while the majority of the synonyms are treated as the same word or replaced by repeated means.Thirdly,the usages of several cohesive devices in the two texts are different,and it does not belong to the conventional rules of Chinese and English expression.There are two situations.On the one hand,the difference is the conversion between different textual cohesive devices in the two texts,which is mainly reflected in the conversion between substitution and repetition and other devices.On the other hand,the author has found that the usage of some commonly-used items in additive and causal of conjunction is much peculiar.These items are implicit in English text,but explicit in Chinese text,and the proportion is relatively large.The analysis of this study believes that for most cases that do not conform to the general rules of Chinese and English expression,the translations are appropriate,readable and can accurately convey the original meaning.Only in a very small number of cases,the translations cannot achieve the expected effects and express the meaning of the original text completely.In this thesis,the typical cases of the general rules of textual cohesion and the small number of key cases that violate the general rules in Chang Hen Ge and its English version can provide a new perspective for the cohesive research of translation and can further enrich the empirical corpus of textual cohesion.At the same time,the quantitative analysis and typical cases in the thesis can be used as a case to provide some ideas and inspiration for the translation of cohesive devices in novels.