换言之 翻译教=教程 第六章 笔记

Chapter 6 T extual equivalence: cohesion

In this chapter, we resume discussion of translation difficulties and strategies at the level of text by looking at cohesion, the second feature of text organization which was mentioned at the end of Chapter 4.

Cohesion is the network of lexical, grammatical, and other relations which provide links between various parts of a text.

Cohesion is a surface relation; it connects together the actual words and expressions that we can see or hear.

Halliday and Hason identify 5 main cohesive devices in English: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion.

6.1. Reference

The term reference is traditionally used in semantics for the relationship which holds between a word and what in points to in the real world.

Instead of denoting a direct relationship between words and extra-linguistic objects, reference is limited here to the relationship of identity which holds between two linguistic expressions.

Reference, in the textual rather than the semantic sense, occurs when the reader has to retrieve the identity of what is being talked about by referring to another expression in the immediate context. The resulting cohesion lies in the continuity of reference, whereby the same thing enters into the discourse a second time.

Reference is a device which allows the reader/hearer to trace participants, entities, events,etc, in a text.

One of the most common patterns of establishing chains of reference in English and a number of other languages is to mention a participant explic itly in the first instance, and then use a pronoun refer back to the same participant in the immediate context.

The relationship of reference may be established situationally:(分析如下)

For example, a given pronoun may refer to an entity which is present in the context of situation rather than in the surrounding text. The first- and second-person pronouns are typical examples in that they do not refer back to a nominal expression in the text but to the speaker and hearer(writer and reader) respectively. Third-person pronouns typically refer back or forward to a nominal expression in the text but may also be used to refer to an entity which is present in the immediate physical or mental context of situation.

Patterns of reference is also known as anaphora.

Fox(1986) examined patterns of reference in 3 genres of American English: spontaneous conversation, written expository prose and written fast-paced popular narratives.

6.2. Substitution and ellipsis

Unlike reference, substitution and ellipsis are grammatical rather than semantic relationships.

In substitution, an item/items is replaced by another item/items.

Ellipsis involves the omission of an item. In other words, in ellipsis, an item is replaced by nothing.

Substitution and ellipsis are purely grammatical relations which hold between linguistic

forms rather than between linguistic forms and their meanings.

There are different devices in different languages for creating texture and that a text hangs together by virtue of the semantic and structural relationships that hold between its elements.

6.3. Conjunction

Conjunction involves the use of formal markers to relate sentences, clauses and paragraphs to each other.

Unlike reference, substitution, and ellipsis, the use of conjunction does not instruct the reader to supply missing information either by looking for it elsewhere in the text or by filling structural slot. Instead, conjunction signals the way the writer wants the reader to relate that is about to be said to what has been said before.

A number of points need to be borne in mind here:

①The same conjunction may be used to signal different relations, depending on the context

②These relations can be expressed by a variety of means; the use of a conjunction is not the only device for expressing a temporal or causal relation

③Conjunctive relations do not just reflect relations between external phenomena, but may also be set up to reflect relations which are internal to the text or communicative situation.

For the purposes of translation, it takes more sense to take a broader view of cohesion and to consider any element cohesive as long as it signals a conjunctive-type relation between parts of a text, whether these parts are sentences, clauses(dependent or independent), or paragraphs.

The use of conjunction provides an insight into the whole logic of discourse.

English generally prefers to present information in relatively small chunks and to signal the relationship between these chunks in unambiguous ways, using a wide variety of conjunctions to mark semantic relations between clauses, sentences, and paragraphs. English also relies on a highly developed punctuation system to signal breaks and relations between chunks of information.

Some genres are generally more conjunctive than others and that each genre has its own preferences for certain types of conjunction. Religion and fiction use more conjunctions than science and journalism. Religion displays a particular preference for negative additive conjunctions. Smith and Fiawley explain this feature by suggesting that the high percentage of negative additive conjunctions...indicates a tendency toward falsification, the most consistent method of proof.

Whether a translation conforms to the source-text patterns of cohesion or tries to approximate to target-language patterns will depend in the final analysis on the purpose of the translation and the amount of freedom the translator feels entitled to in rechunking information and/or altering signals of relations between chunks. Following source-language norms may involve minimal change in overall meaning. On the other hand, noticeable deviation from typical target-language patterns of chunking information and signalling relations is likely to result in the sort of text that can easily be identified as a translation because it sounds foreign.

6.4. Lexical cohesion

Lexical cohesion refers to the role played by the selection of vocabulary in organizing relations within a text.

A given lexical item cannot be said to have a cohesive function, but any lexical item can enter

a cohesive relation with other items in a text.

Halliday and Hasan divide lexical cohesion into 2 main categories: reiteration and collocation.

Reiteration, as the name suggests, involves repetition of lexical items. A reiterated item may be a repetition of an earlier item, a synonym or near-synonym, a superordinate, or a general word.

Reiteration is not the same as reference, however, because it does not necessarily involve the same identity.

Collocation, as a sub-class of lexical cohesion in Halliday and Hasan's model, covers any instance which involves a pair lexical items that are associated with each other in the language in some way.

Lexical cohesion typically operates through lexical chains that tun through a text and are linked to each other in various ways.

The notion of lexical cohesion as being dependent on the presence of networks of lexical items rather than the presence of any specific class or type of item is important. It provides the basis for what Halliday and Hasan call instantial meaning or text meaning: each occurrence of lexical item carries with it its own textual history, a particular collocational environment that has been built up in the course of the creation of the text and that will provide the context within which the item will be incarnated on this particular occasion. This environment determines the instantial meaning, or text meaning, of the item, a meaning which is unique to each specific instance.

Lexical networks do not only provide cohesion, they also determine collectively the sense in which each individual item is used in a given context. The text provides the context for the creation and interpretation of lexical relations, just as the lexical relations help create the texture of the text.

The idea that the meanings of individual lexical items depend on the networks of relations in which they enter with other items in a text is now taken as axiomatic in language studies in general and in translation studies in particular. Snell-Hornby stresses the importance of this approach in translation, saying that in analysing a text a translator is not concerned with isolating phenomena or items to study them in depth, but with tracing a web of relationships, the importance of individual items being determined by their relevance and function in the text.

It is certainly true that individual lexical items have little more that a potential for meaning outside text and that their meanings are realized and can be considerably modified through association with other lexical items in a particular textual environment.

The lack of ready equivalents will sometimes require the translator to resort to strategies such as the use of a superordinate, paraphrase, or loan word. These naturally result in producing different lexical chains in the target text. Likewise, the grammatical structure of the target language may require the translator to add or delete information and to reword parts of the source text in a variety of ways.

Whatever lexical and grammatical problems are encountered in translating a text and what ever strategies are used to resolve them, a good translator will make sure that the target text displays a sufficient level of lexical cohesion in its own right. What the translator must always avoid is the extreme case of producing what appears to be a random collection of items which do not add up to recognizable lexical chains that make sense in given context.

Part of the lexical cohesion of any text is inevitably obscured by back-translation because it derives from the morphological structure of the language.

Reference, substitution,ellipsis, conjunction,and lexical cohesion are the devices identified by Halliday and Hasan for establishing cohesive links in English,

Cohesion is also achieved by a variety of devices other than those mentioned by Halliday and Hasan. These include continuity of tense, consistency of style, and punctuation devices such as colons and semi-colons, which indicate how different parts of the text relate to each other.

It might be the case that explicitation is a universal strategy inherent in the process of language mediation, as practiced by language learners, non-professional translators and professional translators alike.