衔接理论在科技语篇英译汉中的应用（英文） .doc

本科生毕业论文衔接理论在科技语篇英译汉中的应用Application of Cohesion Theory to E-C Translation of Scientific Text院（系）名 称：外 语 系专 业 名 称：英 语学 生 姓 名： 指 导 教 师： AcknowledgementsI feel greatly indebted to many authors of cohesion study. This paper cannot be accomplished without reference to their works. Their works give me much insight and guidance.Meanwhile, my sincere gratitude goes to my supervisor, Associate Professor Wang Jiankun, who provides me with valuable materials and guidance during my thesis writing. Her patient proofreading of my draft really leaves me strong impression.The credit should also be given to all the teachers in Foreign Languages Department. They have enlightened me so much and provided me with generous assistance during my four years in college.Finally, my hearty thanks go to my family and friends. Their support and help accompany me all the time.AbstractThe publication of Cohesion in English by Halliday and Hasan in 1976 symbolizes the establishment of cohesion theory. Their pioneering work arouses the interest of many scholars in textual cohesion. Taking cohesion theory established by Halliday and Hasan as theoretical framework, this paper conducts a statistical study of the cohesive devices in English scientific texts and their corresponding Chinese translations. Through the study, the author finds out that each cohesive device generally has similar use frequency in both types of texts and lexical cohesion is the most frequently used. Despite the similarities, the study also finds out that the source texts show a slight preference for references while the target texts for lexical cohesive ties. The source texts and the target texts also differ from each other in the specific use of some cohesive items. Based on the statistical study, four translation strategies, namely retention, addition, omission and conversion, are found appropriate for the translation of cohesive devices. The study in this paper is intended to shed some light on learning and E-C translation of scientific text.Key words: cohesion theory; cohesive devices; scientific text; translation摘要1976年韩礼德和哈桑的著作英语的衔接的出版标志着衔接理论的创立。他们开拓性的工作激起了许多学者对于语篇衔接的兴趣。在韩礼德和哈桑的衔接理论框架下，本文对英语科技语篇及其对应中文译文的衔接手段进行了统计分析。本文的统计分析发现，英语科技语篇中各种衔接手法的使用频率与它们在对应的中文译文中的使用频率基本相同。而且，在两种语篇中词汇衔接都使用得最多。除了这些相似点，本文还发现源语篇稍微倾向于使用照应衔接，而目的语篇稍微倾向于词汇衔接。两种语篇在具体衔接项的使用上也有差别。在统计分析的基础上，本文总结出翻译衔接手段的四种策略，即保留、增译、省译和转译。本研究旨在为科技语篇的学习和英汉翻译提供一定的参考。关键词：衔接理论；衔接手段；科技语篇；翻译ContentsI. Introduction1II. Literature Review32.1 Cohesion Theory32.1.1 Text, Texture and Cohesion32.1.2 Cohesive Devices42.2 Other Relevant Research7III. A Statistical Study of Cohesive Devices in EST and Its Chinese Version93.1 Selection of Corpora93.2 Analysis of Corpora and Statistics Collected113.3 Comparison of Use of Cohesive Devices between Source Texts and Target Texts163.3.1 Similarities of Use of Cohesive Devices163.3.2 Differences of Use of Cohesive Devices17IV. Translation Strategies of Cohesive Devices204.1 Retention214.2 Addition224.3 Omission244.4 Conversion26V. Conclusion27Works Cited29I. IntroductionIt is widely acknowledged that the publication of M.A.K Halliday and Hasans masterpiece, Cohesion in English in 1976 symbolizes the formal establishment of cohesion theory. Halliday and Hasans initiative in this field has facilitated further research on cohesion. Works in this sphere are quite fruitful, to name a few, Discourse Analysis written by G. Brown and G. Yule, Discourse Cohesion and Coherence by Hu Zhuanglin, and A Contrastive Study of Cohesion in English and Chinese by Zhu Yongsheng, Zheng Lixin and Miao Xingwei. Cohesion in English is generally regarded as the most influential among these works for its systematism and originality.In regard to the application of cohesion theory, it is most commonly connected with English teaching by Chinese scholars. Some also probe into the application of cohesion theory to translation.Though some scholars have applied cohesion theory to translation, the previous studies are mainly based on literary text or other general text. Rare findings are gained from scientific text. Different genres have their own characteristics of cohesion. The findings from other texts may not be applicable to scientific text. This spurs the author on to carry out the present research.This paper takes Halliday and Hasans theory of cohesion in Cohesion in English as the theoretical framework. Based on nine English scientific texts (or EST, short form of English for Science and Technology) and their corresponding Chinese translations carefully selected from textbooks, this paper aims to find out the similarities and differences of cohesion between EST and its Chinese version and provide some possible causes. This paper also intends to propose several strategies for translating cohesive devices from English to Chinese in scientific text.The paper is composed of five parts. The first part is an introduction, which gives a brief account of the background, motivation, objectives and organization of the present study. The second part is a literature review of relevant concepts and studies. Based on the Halliday and Hasans theory of cohesion, the author in the third part makes a statistical study, intending to find out the similarities and differences of cohesive devices in EST and its Chinese version. In the fourth part, this author puts forward some translation strategies of cohesive devices and supplies an exemplification of these strategies on the basis of the statistical study. The last part is a conclusion, which summarizes the present paper and points out the limitations of this study.II. Literature Review2.1 Cohesion Theory2.1.1 Text, Texture and CohesionCohesion is a subsystem in the textual function of language. It is essentially a feature of text. Hence, to discuss cohesion, we must first clarify what is text. According to Halliday and Hasan, “the word text is used in linguistics to refer to any passage, spoken or written, of whatever length, that does form a unified whole” and “A text is best regarded as a semantic unit: a unit not of form but of meaning” (1-2). In other words, a text is a semantic unit of any genre, length and form. It is a closely connected whole rather than a collection of fragments of utterance.Texture is the defining feature of a text. There must be something that tells a text from what is not a text. And it is texture that makes a text a text. Beaugrande and Dressler proposed seven standards of texture, namely cohesion, coherence, intentionality, informativity, acceptability, contextuality and inter-textuality (37). As we can see, cohesion is one important part of texture.According to Halliday and Hasan, cohesion is a semantic concept which refers to the non-structural text-forming relations within the text and “cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some element in the discourse is dependent on that of another” (4). Sometimes, one item in a text cannot be sufficiently interpreted in its own right. It presupposes some other item for its interpretation. When this occurs, cohesion is established. In this way, cohesion contributes to the creation and coherence of a text. The presupposing item and the presupposed item construct a cohesive tie, which means “one occurrence of a pair of cohesively related items” (Halliday and Hasan 3). This is a very useful term which makes it possible to conduct the statistical study of cohesive devices in the following part of this paper. To make it more clear, one example is supplemented here:2.1 I bought some cheese today. Mother made me a delicious pizza with it.In this example, “it” presupposes “cheese” in the first sentence for its interpretation and they form a tie.2.1.2 Cohesive DevicesCohesion is realized by cohesive devices. Halliday and Hasan classify cohesive devices into grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion in their book Cohesion in English (6). Grammatical cohesion can be further divided into reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction. In order to show a general picture of the classification of cohesive devices, the author devises the following figure in accordance with Halliday and Hasans classification.Figure 2.1 Classification of Cohesion DevicesBefore the research is continued, a brief account of these cohesive devices is given below.Reference is set up where certain items cannot be fully interpreted semantically in their own right and “they make reference to something else for their interpretation” (Halliday and Hasan 31). In other words, they indicate that the information can be retrieved from somewhere else. Those items which have this property are personals, demonstratives and comparatives and reference is subdivided accordingly.Substitution and ellipsis are two intimately connected cohesive devices. According to Halliday and Hasan, we can regard “substitution as the replacement of one item by another, and ellipsis as the omission of an item” (88). In substitution, the substitute item occupies the place of what it substitutes. While in ellipsis, the item is substituted by nothing. It can be regarded as zero substitution. So a meaning slot is left. It is this slot that indicates something is presupposed elsewhere for its interpretation. In this sense, ellipsis contributes to the creation of text. Both of substitution and ellipsis have three subtypes in terms of the grammatical function of the substituted item: nominal, verbal and clausal.Conjunction is the last type of grammatical cohesive devices. It is rather different from reference, substitution and ellipsis, because a conjunctive does not directly presuppose an item or have a meaning slot indicating that the information can be retrieved elsewhere. “Conjunctive elements are cohesive not in themselves but indirectly, by virtue of their specific meanings; they express certain meanings which presuppose the presence of other components in the discourse” (Halliday and Hasan 226). Conjunction is categorized into four general types: additive, adversative, causal and temporal. Each has some subclasses.The last cohesive device discussed by Halliday and Hasan is lexical cohesion. The cohesive effect of that is “achieved by the selection of vocabulary” (Halliday and Hasan 274). Lexical cohesion can be subdivided into two types: reiteration and collocation. Reiteration “involves the repetition of a lexical item, at one end of the scale; the use of a general word to refer back to a lexical item, at the other end of the scale; and a number of things in between-the use of a synonym, near-synonym, or superordinate” (Halliday and Hasan 278). Collocation refers to all the other relations of lexical items which do not belong to any of those discussed in reiteration. Those lexical items have a tendency to co-occur. “The co-occurrence tendency is known as collocation” (Halliday 333). The relation between smoke and pipe is a case in point.2.2 Other Relevant ResearchCohesion in English is regarded as an important contribution to the study of text, though it has received criticisms from several linguists, such as H.G. Widdowson, N.E. Enkvist, J.L. Morgan, G. Brown and G. Yule (朱永生36-37). It is a pioneering effort which has exposed us many features of texts and pushed back frontiers of text linguistics study. Numerous works concerning cohesion study came out after the publication of Cohesion in English.Some Chinese scholars have contributed to the contrastive study of cohesive devices in English and Chinese. In 1994, Hu Zhuanglin published his masterpiece Discourse Cohesion and Coherence. In this book, Hu not only expanded the scope of cohesion, but also included Chinese corpora in the analysis of cohesive devices. Zhu Yongsheng, Zheng Lixin and Miao Xingwei have made an extraordinary contribution to the contrastive study of cohesion in English and Chinese by publishing their book, A Contrastive Study of Cohesion in English and Chinese. In this book, they made a detailed comparison of the cohesion in English and Chinese. Whats more, they attempted to explain the differences of cohesion between the two languages from the perspective of linguistics and culture.From the above discussion, we know many scholars have furthered the study of cohesion. Nevertheless, as for the application of cohesion theory to translation, the previous works are mainly based on literary text. The works based on scientific text are really scarce. All these lead to the present study which intends to apply cohesion theory to the E-C translation of scientific text.III. A Statistical Study of Cohesive Devices in EST and Its Chinese VersionAiming at comparing the cohesive devices between EST and it Chinese version, this statistical study takes Halliday and Hasans cohesion theory in Cohesion in English as theoretical framework. The whole process of the study includes selection of corpora, data collection and the comparison.3.1 Selection of CorporaSince this study is based on EST and its Chinese version, it is necessary to enunciate the concept of EST at the beginning. In accordance to Hutchinson and Waters, EST is one of the three larger categories of ESP, i.e. English for specific purposes (16). According to Trimble, “EST covers the area of written English that extends from the peer writing of scientists and technically oriented professionals to the writing aimed at skilled technicians. In between are learning texts and basic instructional discourse that can be thought of as intermediate between the two extremes” (6). The following figure shows the types of scientific texts. Figure 3.1 Spectrum of Types of Texts (Trimble 6)“Learning texts”, which lies in between, mainly refer to teaching texts together with supplementary reading on various levels of difficulty. Teaching texts are neither too difficult as “peer writing” nor too informal as “technician writing”. The corpora of this study are chosen from books of subject-based English for university students, thus belonging to advanced learning scientific texts.The corpora of present study consist of 9 English articles together with their Chinese translations carefully selected from three books, English on Telecommunication published by Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunication Press, English in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering published by Peking University Press and English for Material Science and Engineering II published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. As the titles of these books suggest, the data covers three subjects, telecommunication, mechanical and electrical engineering as well as material science and engineering.The choice of data from three different fields will greatly reduce the influence of inherent characteristics of use of cohesive devices by individual field, thus improving the accuracy of the stati