Thematic Progression In English-Chinese Translation Of Academic Texts ——A Case Study Of Women In The English Novel 1800-1900

The thematic progression pattern is the links and changes in different sentences between themes and rhemes.According to M.A.K.Halliday’s definition,the theme is the element that comes first in a clause or that takes the initial position in a clause and the rheme is the remaining parts of the sentence.Scholars from China and abroad have proposed lots of thematic progression patterns.They have also conducted research on the thematic progression patterns and the application in English-Chinese translation,but what specific translation strategies are applied in this process is not widely discussed.Based on a case study,this report aims to fill in the blank of previous research.The translator conducts a case study on the English-Chinese translation of Women in the English Novel 1800-1900 from the perspective of thematic progression.The book selected as translation material is written by Merryn Williams,a female scholar in English literature.The book is about the female characters in 19th-century novels,and the selected chapters introduce the overall situation of women in that age.The long sentences and dense information of the book make it necessary to choose thematic progression as the perspective of the translation project.The translator applies the definition of theme and rheme of Halliday and the translation strategies proposed by Lu Danmi.In her case study on thematic progression,Lu proposed translation methods of keeping the original thematic progression pattern and changing the original pattern.The specific strategies that could be applied when the progression pattern should be changed include adjusting word order,breaking the original sentence and reorganizing them,changing the hidden subject to an obvious one,changing the passive voice to the active voice,and indicating hidden messages.The translator deletes the strategy of changing the passive voice to the active voice and adds a new strategy of constructing a new logic into Lu’s analytical framework to fit the translator’s case analysis.This project leads to the following three findings through the method of the case study.First,in some cases,the thematic progression pattern should be kept in the target text to maintain the original logic and thoughts.Second,when keeping the original pattern leads to incoherent text,the translator should alter the thematic progression pattern by applying the translation strategies.Strategies of changing word order as well as breaking down the original text and reorganizing them should be first applied.Besides,sentences with a formal subject should be treated by pointing out the real subject.When these strategies fail,the translator should try improving the text by indicating hidden messages and constructing a new logic in the target text.Third,in other cases when changing the thematic progression pattern by the intuition of translation also results in incoherence,the original patterns should still be kept.The report is based on the case study of the English-Chinese translation of one specific material of Women in the English Novel 1800-1900.All the translation strategies the translator applies in the case study are aimed at the examples from the translation material.As the book author organizes sentences and arranges information differently from others,the case analysis of her work cannot be always suitable for any other materials.The conclusion drawn from this report is thus not universal for all academic texts.Translators should alter their translation strategies according to specific situations.