Translation Strategies For Reference In Social Science Texts From The Perspective Of Cohesion Theory

The report described a case study of translating Spy Chiefs-Volume 1: Intelligence Leaders in the United States and United Kingdom,a book offering a comprehensive account of the intelligence officers and intelligence history of the United States and United Kingdom in the 1940 s.The chapters selected from the book as the source text mainly focus on the history of Office of Strategic Services(later the Central Intelligence Agency)and its leader,William Donovan,and a secret intelligence organization,the Pond,which was headed by Grombach.Translating this book is of great practical significance in promoting the spread and exchange of history and culture,and helps readers interested in it to understand the real intelligence history.The translation of social science texts focus on the rigorous logic and text cohesion.When translating the book,the translator found that the original text contains a large number of cohesive devices.Belonging to different language families,English and Chinese differ in cohesive expressions,which bring various difficulties to translation practice.In the translation practice,the translator noticed that how to deal with the different patterns of reference between English and Chinese turns out to be the key to a clear target text.Differing in culture,thinking patterns and language structure,English and Chinese references have varied preferences for reference patterns in terms of reference items,reference functions and usage frequency.Chinese and English cohesion system is different.Due to the differences in language structure,the use frequency of personal reference in English text is much higher than that in Chinese text.Owing to the differences between English and Chinese thinking patterns,“this/that” in English is not always equal to “ ? / ? ” in Chinese,the proximity between the referent and reference item is determined by mental feelings in Chinese language and,in most cases,by actual facts in English.The definite article in English is not found in Chinese,it is important to deal with this situation when translating.Based on Halliday &Hasan's cohesion theory,the cohesive devices can be divided into reference,substitution,ellipsis,conjunction and lexical cohesion.The report makes a comparative study of these differences and summarizes five strategies for reference translation so as to improve the coherence and accuracy of information transmission and avoid misreading ormisunderstanding caused by unclear reference.The report is divided into six chapters.The first chapter provides an overview of the background of the project.The second chapter is the task description,which introduces the source text,language features of the source text and task requirements.The third chapter describes the translation process,including pre-translation preparation,translation process and proofreading.The fourth chapter elaborates the classification of reference from the perspective of cohesion theory,namely personal reference,demonstrative reference,and comparative reference,and discusses the differences between English and Chinese reference pattern.The fifth chapter puts forward five kinds of strategies for the translation of English reference,that is,literal translation,omission,repetition,substitution and free translation,and illustrates them with examples from the translation project.The sixth chapter summarizes the project and discusses the limitations in the translation practice.