94), “cohesion is the foundation on which the edifice of coherence is built”, and “the basis for textual coherence lies in cohesion” (Hasan 1984, p. According to Halliday and Hasan ( 1985, p. The study of coherence is always closely related to cohesion. Research on coherence can be applied in translation studies.Ĭoherence is referred as the property of “unity” and of “hanging together” (Hasan 1984, p. The model should be able to depict characteristics of coherence both in the Chinese ST and English TTs. Since this study aims to provide a perspective on distinguishing the realization of coherence and also coherence in translation, a highly operational and plausible model of analysing textual coherence needs to be set up to make the results practical, comprehensive and reliable. To compare the ways that the source and target texts realize coherence, the study will elaborate how the two English target texts handle the transference of coherence and how they are different from the Chinese source text and from each other based on the different properties of systemic functional linguistics. The description can therefore set the two language texts in the same framework, which provides a basis for a comparative study. One benefit of systemic functional linguistics is that it can provide an overall view of different languages, and can describe both Chinese and English texts from a multi-dimensional view. It is necessary to examine the feasibility of systemic functional linguistics applied in analysing the realization of coherence in both Chinese and English. The present research chooses the perspective of coherence from a systemic functional linguistic view as the entry point to compare a source Chinese text and its two English translations, so as to illuminate the differences in the realization of coherence in both the Chinese source text and the English target texts and how coherence is kept and achieved in translation. The object of study is therefore not whether they are coherent or not, or to what extent they are coherent, but how they differ in realizing coherence. In this research, the Chinese source and English target texts are coherent in nature. 272) claims that “‘oherence is the essential condition to distinguish text from non-text”, so being coherent is the basic characteristic of a source text which can be understood and translated into another language. Chinese and English are two quite different languages, with their own ways of construing coherence. Hasan, 1985 Seidlhofer and Widdowson 1999 Taboada 2004) however, there has been little research on coherence in Chinese-English translation from functional linguistic perspectives. The research shows that there are both similarities and differences between the ST and the TTs on the one hand, and between the TTs on the other, and that the differences are related to the styles of translators.Ĭoherence has been the focus of text linguistics for a few decades (e.g. This research aims to explore the realization of coherence in a Chinese novel Hong Lou Meng and its two English translations, The Dream of the Red Mansions (by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang) and The Story of the Stone (by David Hawkes), or more specifically, the distribution of logico-semantic types in both the Chinese (ST) and the English texts (TT). The clauses that are involved in cohesive chains take a more important role in forming a coherent text than others, and thus have the potential to reveal the features of coherence realization. Clause complex reflects the logical development of the text, while cohesive chains are the threads of a coherent text. Coherence is realized through clause complexes and cohesive chains at the lexicogrammatical level from the logical and textual meanings. The logical and textual metafunctions together contribute to the coherence of a text. Coherence can be studied from both logical and textual perspectives in systemic functional linguistics.
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