中译英过程中的语篇衔接研究

1、 语言学课程论文 Introduction “Cohesion is an important field of study in discourse analysis. It refers to the grammatical and/or lexical relationships between the different elements of discourse. This may be the relationship from different sentences or between different parts of a sentence” (刘润清&文旭 175).We

2、 can see clearly that cohesion actually concerns the question of how sentences are explicitly linked together in a discourse by different kinds of overt devices. Such cohesive devices include reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion. In the following we present “five types

3、 of cohesive devices” (qtd. in 刘润清&文旭 175-178). Reference A very common cohesive device is the use of reference words which include pronouns, demonstratives, the definite article and items. Reference consists of two types of reference: endophora and exophora. And endophoric reference can be divided

4、into two subtypes: anaphora and cataphora. Substitution The process or result of replacing one word by another at a particular position in a structure is called substitution. There are three types of substitution:nominal, verbal, clausal substitution. Ellipsis Leaving out a construction of a sentenc

5、e for reasons of economy, emphasis or style, and the omitted parts can only be recovered by the reader from the previous discourse. There are three types of ellipsis:nominal, verbal and clausal ellipsis. Conjunction An item or a process whose primary function is to connect words or other constructio

6、n. The conventional subclassification of these connective items include coordinator conjunctions, subordinator conjunctions, and conjunctive adverbs. Lexical cohesion It refers to repeating the same words, or general nouns, or other words sharing the majority of semantic features. There are three ki

7、nds of lexical cohesion: repetition, synonym, and superordinate. . Literature Review Research of discourse cohesion theory starts in the early 1960s, but it is Halliday and Hasans book Cohesion in English that has arose peoples wide attention. With the development of the research, discourse cohesion

8、 theory has been further developed and then formed a few set of theories, such as Halliday & Hasans cohesion theory, Van Dr Dijks macrostructure theory, Widdowsons illocutionary act theory, Manns rhetoric theory, Brown & Yule psychological frame theory and so on, which appropriately make comments on

9、 the achievements and problems of our predecessors. In the whole, they have almost involved all aspects related to the discourse coherence, but a common defect of them is that they havent separately formed a complete and more concrete Theoretical models and analysis frameworks.Now, Halliday and Hasa

10、ns definition of cohesion in Cohesion in English has been widely accepted in the academic circles, which is also regarded as the most authoritative in the field. They think “the concept of cohesion is a semantic one and it refers to relations of fancy that exist within the text, and that define it a

11、s a Text” (qtd. in 张琦 13). In 1985, Hasan attributes further to the development of linguistics, “he divides cohesion into structure cohesion and non-structure cohesion in his book Language, Context and Text” (qtd. in 张琦 14). And in the non-structure cohesion, he thinks, there are mainly five devices

12、 of discourse cohesion, thats reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion.II. Discourse Cohesion in Chinese-English Translation Illustrated by Mo Yans Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech A. Reference Halliday points out that when the meaning that some words refer to must depend on

13、the context, and different references have the same idea, we call this phenomenon reference. The main function of reference is to set semantic relation. The commonly used reference words include pronouns, demonstratives, items, and the article “the”. There are two types of references: endophora and

14、exophora, while endophora can be further divided into anaphora and cataphora. Reference is often used in English writing. In terms of frequence, the pronoun & demonstrative reference is greatly used, while Chinese often employs zero-reference and repetition to indicate context link. When doing C-E t

15、ranslation, we should add some content that is omitted in Chinese in proper place. Following are some examples quoted from Mo Yans speech:a. 原文：但是有一个此刻我最想念的人，我的母亲，你们永远无法看到了。我 获奖后，很多人分享了我的光荣，但我的母亲却无法分享了。 译文：But the person who is most on my mind at this moment, my mother, is someone you will never see

16、. Many people have shared in the honor of winning this prize, everyone but her. In this sentence, the author uses “最想念的人” ,“我的母亲”, which is a kind of reference to emphasize the importance of his mother. In English, we can see the words “my mother” “someone” and “her”. Here uses exophora, without the

17、 former context, we cannot know whom “she” refers to. a. 原文：有一段时间，集市上来了一个说书人。我偷偷地跑去听书。 译文：A storyteller once came to the marketplace, and I sneaked off to listen to him. Here the Chinese employs zero-reference, while the English uses pronoun “him” to indicates “storyteller”, it is a reflection of an

18、aphora.b. 原文：自己的故事总是有限的，讲完了自己的故事，就必须讲他人的故事。 于是，我的亲人们的故事，我的村人们的故事，以及我从老人们口中听到过 的祖先们的故事，就像听到集合令的士兵一样，从我的记忆深处涌出来。 译文：A person can experience only so much, and once you have exhausted your own stories, you must tell the stories of others. And so, out of the depths of my memories, like conscripted soldie

19、rs, rose stories of family members, of fellow villagers, and of long-dead ancestors I learned of from the mouths of old-timers.Here Chinese uses “亲人们的”, “村人们的”, “祖先们的” to denote “他人的”, and English uses “family members”, “ fellow villagers”, “long-dead ancestors” to refer to the former word “others”,

20、 which is an employment of cataphora. In this example, we can see the Chinese and English are almost correspond to each other.B. SubstitutionSubstitution is a relation on the lexico-grammatical level, a relation between words and constructions, and they have same function. It mainly happens in the l

21、ater text. Substitution includes three types: nominal, verbal, and clausal substitution. To avoid repetition and excellently connect context, we make use of substitution that is always applied in oral English, so in Mo Yans speech which is a written passage we can not find many noticeable instances.

22、 We should take English features into consideration when doing C-E translation, changing some repeated words into substituted words. a. 原文：在这本书的卷前语上，我写下了“献给母亲在天之灵”的话，但这本 书，实际上是献给天下母亲的，这是我狂妄的野心，就像我希望把小小的“高 密东北乡”写成中国乃至世界的缩影一样。 译文：Though I wrote “To the spirit of my mother” on the dedication page, the

23、novel was really written for all mothers everywhere, evidence, perhaps, of my overweening ambition, in much the same that I hope to make tiny Northeast Gaomi Township a microcosm of China, even of the whole world.In this sentence, Mo Yan uses “the same” to replace “ambition”. It is an example of nom

24、inal substitution. In English, frequently used nominal substitutions are “one”, “ones” and “the same”. There isnt corresponding Chinese to match them, but “的”, “者” may have the same function .b. 原文：我希望你们能耐心地读一下我的书，当然，我没有资格强迫你们读我 的书。即便你们读了我的书，我也不期望你们能改变对我的看法。 译文：I would like you to find the patience

25、to read my books. I cannot force you to do that, and even if you do, I do not expect your opinion of me to change. In this two sentences, the author uses “do” to substitute “find the patience to read my books”; this is verbal substitution. “Do” is usually used as verbal substitution, and we may use

26、Chinese“来”, “干”, “弄”, “搞” to correspond to “do”. As for clausal substitution, we dont find such kind of example. Referring to some contexts, we know that in clausal substitution, what is replaced is not any element but a complete sub-clause. Affirmative word “so” and negative word ”not” are the main

27、 clausal substitution word, and in Chinese we use “这样”, “这么”, “是”, “如此”, “等等” to match corresponding English words.C. Ellipsis It is known that English is the language of hypotaxis while Chinese parataxis, which is especially apparent when talking about the application of the cohesive devices in the

28、 sentences or the discourses. In term of Ellipsis, Chinese scholar Tan Lihua thinks it often appear along with the mark of form in English, while in Chinese, ellipsis intends to pursue the expressive. Chinese is the language that often omit its subject. Sometimes, we may hear or see a series of sent

29、ences without subjects. However, it is rare for Chinese to omit the predicate (qtd. in 谭丽华 89). ellipsis means all the omitted information is expected to be found in the context. In order to avoid redundancy in English discourse, ellipsis is often chosen to reach the coherent. So in the translation

30、from Chinese into English, we should also considered English habits and use the form of ellipsis where repeated words appear in Chinese. For instance, the following are the examples found in the Mo Yans Nobel Prize acceptance speech.原文：你们也许看到了我的九十岁的老父亲，看到了我的哥哥姐姐、我的妻 子女儿，和我的一岁零四个月的外孙子。 译文：You may hav

31、e seen my ninety-year-old father, (have seen)as well as my brothers, my sister, my wife and my daughter, even my granddaughter, now a year and four months old. b. 原文：聆听了许许多多神鬼故事，历史传奇，逸闻趣事，这些故事都与当地 的自然环境，家庭历史紧密联系在一起，使我产生了强烈的现实感。 译文：my ears filled with tales of the supernatural, historical romances, a

32、nd strange and captivating stories, all (the stories) tied to the natural environment and clan histories, and all of which created a powerful reality in my mind. The words “have seen”, “the stories” in the brackets have been omitted in order to ignore the given information and the redundancy and to

33、highlight the new information.D. Conjunction Conjunction is one of the biggest difference as far as the cohesion devices between English and Chinese languages. In the Chinese language, the semantic relationship between sentences or paragraphs is not connected by the linking expressions directly but

34、the logical relationship and the words order. It is quite common that the implicit connected components in the Chinese language, while the majority of connected components of discourse in English language are explicit. Conjunction means that the discourse could use the conjunction in context to esta

35、blish some kind of language semantic relationship. Modern Chinese scholar Wang Rui puts forward three means about the conjunction device in Chinese-English translation: (1) adding associated words; (2) readjust the word order; (3) explicit connection (qtd. in 王锐 84). The following are some examples

36、selected to illustrate the device of Conjunction.a. 原文：我小学未毕业即辍学，因为年幼体弱，干不了重活，只好到荒草滩上 去放牧牛羊。当我牵着牛羊从学校门前路过，看到昔日的同学在校园里打打 闹闹，我心中充满悲凉，深深地体会到一个人，哪怕是一个孩子，离开群体 后的痛苦。 译文：After dropping out of elementary school, I was too small for heavy labor, so I became a cattle- and sheep-herder on a nearby grassy river

37、bank. The sight of my former schoolmates playing in the schoolyard when I drove my animals past the gate always saddened me and made me aware of how tough it is for anyone even a child to leave the group. Because there is no obvious time conjunctions in Chinese language, we still can deduce the time

38、 order according to the the common sense. When it was translated into English, the words like “after”“so”“when” were added to enhance the logical relationship.原文：去年，一条铁路要从那儿穿过，我们不得不将她的坟墓迁移到距离村 子更远的地方。 译文：Last year we were forced to move her grave farther away from the village in order to make room f

39、or a proposed rail line. The method of “readjust the words order” often used when the cohesion device are non-equivalence. In order to conform with the grammar habits of English, readjusting the words order can make the sentences or the paragraphs more natural. So “we were forced to move her grave f

40、arther away from the village” is put forward, while “make room for a proposed rail line” following it whose order is opposite.to the original Chinese sentence.b. 原文：她是个勤劳的人，讨厌懒惰的孩子，但只要是我因为看书耽误了干活， 她从来没批评过我。 译文：By nature hard working, she had no use for lazy children, yet I could skip my chores as lo

41、ng as I had my nose in a book. For the explicit connection of Chinese-English translation, we adopt the method of literal translation. Just like the Chinese word “但”, “只要”, they were translated into “yet” and “as long as ” .E. lexical cohesion Lexical cohesion refers to lexical items which work on t

42、he organization of coherent discourse. “It can be either short or long that is, the lexical devices can cross short large pieces of the discourse. In some cases, the same word or a synonym is used and repeated throughout the discourse. In other cases, related words (such as superordinate or general

43、words or general words) are used, and “this repetition of the same concept strengthens the cohesion of the discourse” (刘润清&文旭 177-178). The major way of lexical cohesion is reiteration. Reiteration Reiteration is the occurrence of one or more items in a sentence that by themselves tell the reader or

44、 listener nothing new but reinstate some elements from the earlier sentences so that something new can be said about. Reiteration includes the repetition of an identical lexical item, the use of general word, synonym or near-synonym, superordinates, hyponyms, co-hyponyms and meronyms. Lexical reiter

45、ation is generally easy to recognize. Here are some examples from Mo Yans Nobel Prize acceptance speech.(1) Synonym a. 原文：掘开坟墓后，我们看到，棺木已经腐朽，母亲的骨殖，已经与泥土混 为一体。我们只好象征性地挖起一些泥土，移到新的墓穴里。 译文：When we dug up the grave, we saw that the coffin had rotted away and that her body had merged with the damp earth ar

46、ound it. So we dug up some of that soil, a symbolic act, and took it to the new gravesite.(2) Repetition b. 原文：我记忆中最早的一件事，是提着家里唯一的一把热水壶去公共食堂打 开水。因为饥饿无力，失手将热水瓶打碎，我吓得要命，钻进草垛，一天没 敢来。 译文：My earliest memory was of taking our only vacuum bottle to the public canteen for drinking water. Weakened by hunger, I dropped the bottle and broke it. (3) Superordinate c. 原文：多年之后，当那个看守麦田的人成为一个