The Theme-rheme Theory And Its Application To The Choice Of Topic In English-chinese Translation

The thesis,based on the translation of energy report Latin Americans and Caribbean Scenarios,by deploying the theme-rheme theory,analyzes the choices of“topic” in target text in English-Chinese translation.With the theme progression structure of the source text taking into consideration,the suggestions for choosing the proper “topic” for the target text are given.The differences of source and target text theme progression structure are analyzed and the reasons of the differences are provided.Major method for the study is source and target text case study,and parallel text is also applied as an auxiliary method.Based on the analysis,the thesis concluded the suggestions for choosing the “topics” for target text.Analysis shows that,in English-Chinese translation,the theme progression structure of the source or target text must be taken into consideration in deciding target text’s “topic”.The study concludes three main methods.First,in the perspective of part of speech,the temporal adverbial in source text sentence should be part of the topic of target text sentence.Second,from the given and new information’s point of view,when the information focus involves quantity,new information other than quantity will be counted as “old information”,becoming a part of the “topic” of the target text sentence;and taking the context into consideration,old or secondary information shall be the choice of “topic”.Third,in regard to the types of noun,nouns other than abstract nouns(proper nouns,individual nouns,collective nouns,compound nouns and material nouns)shall be taken as the “topic”.And generally,in English-Chinese translation,source text information structure is difficult to be retained into the target text in the translation process except for parallel theme progression structure.Language differences are among the important contributors.