A Quantitative Study on the Cohesion Problems in English Majors’ Chinese Translation of English Texts
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1205.11Keywords:
cohesion, English-Chinese translation, English major, translation instructionAbstract
Cohesion is an important means to achieve textual coherence. In translation instruction, it is important to raise students’ awareness of textual cohesion in order to improve their translation competence. However, few studies have been conducted to investigate the problems of cohesion that may exist in students’ translated texts. This article compares the cohesive devices used in the Chinese texts translated from English by 38 junior English majors studying in a major university in China with those in a reference Chinese version, for the purpose of revealing the cohesion problems that may exist in the students’ Chinese translation and providing reference for translation instruction. The results show that the major problems include overuse of personal reference and conjunction, especially additive conjunction, insufficient use of ellipsis and repetition which are common cohesive devices in original Chinese texts. The problems reveal, on the one hand, that students may still be under the influence of the source language negative transfer, and on the other hand, that they may have insufficient understanding of Chinese textual cohesion and the differences between English and Chinese in this regard.
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