Textual Coherence Strategies In The Chinese To English Translation Of Footsteps Of A Trailblazer-Tracing Xi Jinping’s Career In Shanghai

Translation involves identifying the coherence of the source text and transferring and reconstructing it in the target language.The differences between Chinese and English present challenges to a translator in reconstructing coherence.This thesis is based on a case study on the translation from Chinese to English of the book Footsteps of a Trailblazer – Tracing Xi Jinping’s Career in Shanghai.This thesis presents and illustrates the difficulties in the reconstruction of coherence in the case.By comparing the first-draft translation with the revised version and drawing on previous studies,the author proposes strategies to achieve textual coherence,emphasizing the pragmatic perspective,the topic of discourse and the structure of discourse.This thesis examines four major problems of coherence above sentence level: out-of-context conversations,redundant information,incoherence between paragraphs,and poorly formulated structures.Solutions are put forward accordingly.Firstly,for out-of-place conversations,translators should read between the lines,if not between the paragraphs.Secondly,it’s advisable to edit out information that is irrelevant to the topic of discourse and sees no reference throughout,to guarantee the continuity of information.Thirdly,cohesive ties could be used in the translated text,to make explicit the inter-sentence/textual coherence.To cope with incoherence in the text structure of the original,it’s necessary to change the way information is organized according to the norms of the target language.