Translating Dashes In Social Science Texts From The Perspective Of Cohesion Theory

With the rapid development of the economy,people’s cultural and spiritual demands are getting higher.Thus,the average per capita amount of reading is also increasing year by year.And social science texts cover a wide range of content,which is the first choice for people to broaden their horizons and cultivate their interests.Foucault and the Art of Ethics is a typical social science book written by Timothy Leary.The book consists of ten chapters,in which the author elaborates Foucault’s philosophical thoughts from the perspective of ethics.This report is based on the eighth chapter Philosophical Practice and the ninth chapter The Art of Freedom,which respectively discusses the importance of philosophical practice and freedom to Foucault’s ethics.Based on the translation of chapter 8 and chapter 9,this report focuses on the translation strategies of dashes from the perspective of the Cohesion Theory.As one of the important punctuation marks,dash is an indispensable part of texts,and its cohesive function plays an important role in the process of using and understanding language.Based on Huang Guowen’s development of the Cohesion Theory,this report classifies the semantic cohesion functions of dashes into six categories:enumerative relation,supplementary relation,adversative relation,explanatory relation,equivalent relation and cause relation.And the translator tries to summarize translation strategies of dashes under different semantic relations through the case analysis.This report is divided into five chapters.The first chapter briefly introduces the research background and analyzes the characteristics of the source text.The second chapter expounds the process of translation practice,including three stages: pre-task work,while-task work and post-task work.Chapter three focuses on the development of the cohesion theory and its guiding significance to dashes conversion.Chapter four classifies dashes according to their semantic and logical relations,and summarizes five translation methods: literal translation,omission,restructuring,substitution and amplification.Chapter five summarizes the whole report and points out shortcomings and limitations in translation practice.