（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）衔接理论在医学英语汉译中的应用.pdf

iii 摘摘 要要 语篇的衔接是语篇的语言特征之一，是话语分析或篇章语言学研究的核 心。自从韩礼德和哈桑于 1976 年首次提出衔接理论，长期以来围绕这一理论 展开了许多研究，研究者们发现英汉语篇衔接方式存在着诸多差异。因此，在 翻译时我们必须仔细研究原文的衔接方式， 研究源语和译语中各自都有什么可 资利用的衔接手段以及它们之间的差异， 从而在译语中运用恰当的衔接手段来 获得相对连贯的译文。 随着语篇翻译研究的不断深入, 衔接理论对翻译的指导作用也逐渐受到 研究者们的重视，近年来研究这方面的论文和专著逐渐增多。但多数只注重对 于一般文体的研究，而忽视了科技英语，尤其是医学英语的翻译。基于这种情 况，本文试图运用衔接理论，对英汉医学语篇衔接手段进行对比研究，用以指 导翻译活动。 本论文主要包括以下六个部分: 第一章：引言。包括研究背景、研究意义 和研究目的。第二章：相关领域的文献综述。包括语篇与翻译、衔接与翻译以 及医学英语翻译等领域的研究现状和研究成果。第三章：医学英语语篇分析。 作者从词汇、句法和篇章的角度对医学英语的具体特征进行了详细分析。第四 章：英汉医学语篇衔接手段对比研究。从对比语言学的角度，通过大量的语料 对比，总结出医学语篇英汉衔接方式的异同，为医学英语汉译提供语篇学研究 理论基础；第五章：医学英语汉译的原则及具体策略。医学英语汉译应遵循以 下原则：忠实医学内容，符合医学风格，信息对等，贴近译语等原则。作者从 英语世界 、 科技英语学习 、医学英语读写译教程等杂志或著作中精 心挑选实例，针对英汉医学语篇衔接手段的异同，总结出以下四种医学英语汉 译过程中衔接方式处理技巧：保留、转换、增补和删减；第六章：结论。 关键词关键词: 衔接；医学英语；英汉对比；翻译 iv on application of cohesion theory in translation of medical english abstract cohesion is one of the linguistic features of text and the core of the study of text linguistics or discourse analysis. cohesion theory was first put forward by halliday medical english; contrastive study between english and chinese; translation 原创性声明 本人声明， 所呈交的学位论文是本人在导师指导下进行的研究工 作及取得的研究成果。尽我所知，除了论文中特别加以标注和致谢的 地方外，论文中不包含其他人已经发表或撰写过的研究成果，也不包 含为获得南华大学或其他单位的学位或证书而使用过的材料。 与我共 同工作的同志对本研究所作的贡献均已在论文中作了明确的说明。 作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 关于学位论文使用授权说明 本人同意南华大学有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，即：学校有 权保留学位论文，允许学位论文被查阅和借阅；学校可以公布学位论 文的全部或部分内容， 可以采用复印、 缩印或其它手段保留学位论文； 学校可根据国家或湖南省有关部门规定送交学位论文。 作者签名： 导师签名： 日期： 年 月 日 1 chapter one introduction the last sixty years or so in 20th century has witnessed steadily increasing interest in text linguistics. the continuing research into text linguistics has shifted the focus of language study including e-c translation from the level of word and sentence to the level of text. text, recognized as the basic unit of information, is the ultimate linguistic unit to do with communication in any language. language can only be understood and analyzed within text, while cohesion is an important concept in text study. therefore, it is of great value and significance to study cohesion theory in the research of translation. 1.1 background of the study in 1962, for the first time, halliday put forward the concept of cohesion. cohesion, as one of the most important components of a text, contributes much to the coherence of a text and has aroused the interest of many linguists and scholars. the definition of cohesion has been proposed by various linguists (for instance, gutwinski, 1976; halliday de beaugrande and dressier, 1981; hoey, 1991), but the best-known interpretation of cohesion is that of halliday and hasan. in 1976, halliday and hasan published the famous work cohesion in english, in which they made a systematic study of the linguistic resources that contribute to the construction of cohesive relations in english linguistic system, thus a complete theoretical system came into being and the word cohesion became a widely accepted term in textual analysis and translation, attracting growing attention from linguists of different schools. translation is a communicative activity getting two languages-source 2 language and target language-involved. the nature of translation as interlingual performance makes it necessary to make translation studies connected with other branches of modern linguistics, especially text linguistics for the translator doesnt translate words or individual sentences, but texts. in this sense, translation is a text-oriented event. text is the central defining issue in translation. and in text linguistics, much study has been made on the two concepts: cohesion and coherence, and the relationship between cohesion theory and translation. the analysis of cohesive device of the source language will help lead to a coherent version in the target language. 1.2 significance of the study despite the dynamic and fruitful research in the past decades, the focus has been on literary field and little attention is paid to scientific especially medical texts. as is known to all, during the course of economic globalization, translation has played an increasingly critical role in the exchange of science and technology information, while medicine is an important branch of it. to keep up with the latest development of world medical field, to conduct theoretical research or to instruct medical practice, chinese medical workers have to obtain the latest medical materials from abroad in time. therefore, it is of great value and significance for us to shift part of our attention to the e-c translation of medical text. as a branch of scientific text, medical text is of a kind of information stylistics which characterizes mainly in clarity, conciseness, logic, coherence both in english and chinese. however, there are still discrepancies between these two language systems. the cohesion theory is obviously quite useful to e-c translation of medical english. it can help the translator get a better understanding of the characteristics of cohesive devices of the source language and thus produce equivalent version in target language to ensure a readable and coherent translation. 3 1.3 aims and objectives of the thesis this thesis attempts to make a research from a comparative perspective and a textual perspective on cohesion, in terms of e-c translation of medical english. relevant research on text linguistics, cohesion, the stylistic features of medical english, the comparison of cohesive devices between english and chinese and useful strategies in tranlating cohesive devices in medical texts will shed light on translation studies and instruct translation practice. theoretically, the research will develop mainly on the the basis of cohesion theory put forward by halliday and improved by hu zhuanglin and zhang delu and its application in translation. when analyzing different types of cohesion in english text and also their functions, to make it more updated, the author has selected elaborately all the examples from magazines or books published in the recent five years. 4 chapter two literature review literature review is indispensible to the study of a certain field. in this chapter, we will have an overall review of related research including text linguistics and translation, cohesion and translation and general review on studies of medical english translation. 2.1 text linguistics and translation traditionally, sentence has been thought of as the largest unit of language, either in language study or in translation. the reason for this, as guy cook supposes in his discourse (1989:5), is perhaps that the treatment of language in terms of sentences has been quite successful in revealing how language works. however, just as guy cook (1989:3) argues further, not all sentences are interesting, relevant, or suitable; one cannot just put any sentence after another and hope that it will mean something. n.e. enkvist (1978:178) also believes that a sentence is not autonomous, it does not exist for its own sake but as part of a situation and part of a text. and one of the most important functions of information dynamics is precisely to link a sentence to its environment in a manner which allows the information to flow through the text in the desired manner. grammar (or syntax, as it is sometimes called) deals mainly with the structure of individual sentences, and is basically about how words are combined to form sentences, while text linguistics or discourse analysis is about how sentences are combined to form texts. 2.1.1 text, texture and tie the concept of cohesion has been fully formulated by halliday and hasan 5 (1976) in their cohesion in english, which is based on hallidays theory of language functions. we should clarify such terms as text, texture and tie before illustrating the concept of cohesion. the word text is used in linguistics to refer to any passage, spoken or written, of wahtever length, that does form a unified whole (halliday how to translate the title, cohesion in dialogue and punctuation. he also gives advice on how to translate connectives such as cohesion, linguistic synonyms and contrasts. from functional sentence perspective he points out that the translator should reconcile the functional, semantic and syntactic aspects of each sentence and establish their priorities by considering the text as a whole. as to translating referential synonyms he suggests the translator should reproduce the new information and they should not be afraid of repetition, in particular of repeating the most specific term or the proper name to avoid any ambiguity. wolfram wilss has discussed some problems concerning text-linguistics in translation in his book the science of translation: problems and methods. he suggests that text-linguistically focused translation research must develop a frame of reference which views a text as a communicatively-oriented configuration with a thematic, a functional, a text-pragmatic dimension; these three text dimensions can be derived from the respective text surface structure. eugene a. nida and charles r. taber address problems of discourse in transfer, which is considered as the second step of translating in the book the theory and practice of translation. the problems include direct and indirect discourse, distinctive uses of pronominal forms, the way in which the receptor language handles the identification of participants and sequence of tense. nida has discussed the major organizational features of texts involving time, space, class, connectivity, gradation, dialogue and literary formulas, major content feature of texts and rhetorical features of a text in his later book entitled language and 8 culture-context in translating. in china, li yunxing (2001) has discussed in some detail how interlingual description can be conducted with regard to the ranks of discourse, text types and the translation process in his research. luo xuanmin(1990) establishes the school of discourse translation. he applies the principle and method into translation study. based on the analysis of the seven principles of creation of a text, he puts forward seven standards on operationability of translation: intentionality, acceptability, situationality, informativity, coherence, cohesion, and intertexuality. he states that readability of the translation is affected if cohesion of the source text is not reflected in the target text. the rapid development of text linguistics or discourse analysis has greatly enriched the theories of translation. the unit of translation has been extended from the sentence to the sentence groups, and the text. the criterion of translation has been changed from preserving the verbal beauty of the original text to achieving faithfulness to the content, language and style of the original, which is, according to liu zhongde (1991), the generalization of the three principles of translation -faithfulness, expressiveness and closeness. the principles of translation have been changed from preserving the form, namely stressing the order of words and sentences, of the original text to the transference of the total meaning of the original text. as translators, we have to operate with lexical items and grammatical structures at various stages of the translation process. it is nevertheless imperative that we view the text as a whole both at the beginning and at the end of the process. a good translator does not begin to translate until he/she has read the text at least once and got a gist of the overall message. but this is only the first step: once the source text is understood, the translator then has to tackle the task of producing a target version which can be accepted as a text in its own right. the phraseology and the collocational and grammatical patterning of the target version must conform to 9 target-language norms, but even then the translation may still sound foreign or clumsy. worse still, it may not even make sense to the target reader. acceptable collocational patterns and grammatical structures can only enhance the readability of individual sentences, but proper cohesive devices can ensure that sentences and paragraphs add up to a readable or coherent text. 2.2 cohesion and translation 2.2.1 cohesion theory the term cohesion has been discussed by many linguists, which is most commonly used in linguistics to refer to inter and intra-sentence relations by which a text is bound together as a unified whole. quite a few linguists have explored the area of cohesion and have suggested several categories of cohesive devices. among them are leech, halliday and hasan, gutwinski, winter, hoey, geoff thompson, mona baker, hu zhuanglin, zhang delu and zhu yongsheng. leech (1970:120) defines cohesion as the way in which independent choices in different points of a text correspond with or presuppose one another, forming a network of sequential relations. halliday and hasan (1976)s cohesive model is based on the assumption that a text is coherent with respect to itself and its context of situation (the linguistic environment in which a text comes to life). in their cohesion in english (1976:4), cohesion is defined as a semantic one; it refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text, and that define it as a text. they identify cohesive devices into five main categories: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. it has almost been stereotyped since 1976 when the book was published. most of the later linguists would more or less mention them when talking about the issue of cohesion. in addition to the factor of order of items, gutwinski (1976:57) also divided 10 the cohesive features into two groups, grammatical and lexical. his listing of cohesive features follows in essence the listing of what halliday referred to as the principal categories subsumed under the heading of cohesion. it differs from the halliday and hasans in the manner of classification and in some details. most writers on cohesion may provide a detailed classification of cohesive devices when talking about cohesion. winter doesnt do so. his interest is in how the grammar of sentences contributes to their interpretation in context. he considers it much more important to recognize the common function of the variety of cohesive ties than to distinguish them. in his opinion, the common function is to repeat. in other words, what he counts as repetition is broader than that of others winter (1979). hoey (1991) has also written quite a few papers and books about cohesion in discourses. in his book patterns of lexis in text, hoey doesnt focus on itemizing cohesive features but on observing how they combine to organize text. according to him, lexical cohesion is the only type of cohesion that regularly forms multiple relationships though occasionally reference does so too. hoey considers lexical cohesion as the dominant mode of creating texture. in other words, in his book, the study of the greater part of cohesion is the study of lexis, and the study of cohesion in texts is to a considerable degree the study of patterns of lexis in texts. geoff thompson (2000:147) defines cohesion as the linguistic devices by which the speaker can signal the experiential and interpersonal coherence of the text, and is thus a textual phenomenon. and british scholar mona baker (2000:180) thinks that cohesion is the network of lexical, grammatical and other relations which provide links between various parts of a text. in china, in discourse cohesion and coherence, professor hu zhuanglin (1994) enlarges the scope of his researches on cohesion and pushes its development into a new field. his contributions mainly lie in the following aspects: 11 a) he has developed the scope of structural cohesion and absorbed the transitive structural relation as one of the cohesive methods. b) he has put forward a new thought that there are several layers in cohesion and coherence in a text. c) he has provided for the first time the cohesion on the level of phonology and put the sound and intonation pattern into his scope of study. d) he has treated text structure as a kind of cohesive method. professor zhang delu and zhu yongsheng have also made a study on the conditions of textual coherence and their viewpoints enrich the cohesion theory. in spite of the differences among the linguists definitions on cohesion, all of them agree more or less that cohesion is a kind of significant connection arising from the semantic relations between the sentences of the text. to sum up, there are five ways by which cohesion is created in english: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical organization, which will be discussed in detail in the following chapters. 2.2.2 cohesion and coherence cohesion and coherence are two key concepts of text linguistics. we identify a stretch of language as a text partly because of its coherence, the underlying semantic relations which establish continuity of sense, partly because of its cohesion, a property of the linguistic surface of the text (baker, 2000: 113). cohesion refers to the use of various linguistic devices (including grammatical, lexical, etc.) to link up the different components of the surface text, that is, the actual words we see. coherence comes from the latin word cohaeree, which means to stick together. coherence is an invisible network of a text and at the same time is a necessary character of the structure of the text. it can be analyzed from two spheres: formal cohesion of the discourse structure and continuation of 12 the meaning of the discourse. according to halliday on the other hand, the text without noticeable cohesion is sometimes coherent in context. in