A Contrastive Study of Hard Times and the Two Versions from the Perspective of Textual Cohesion

Abstract

Cohesion is the semantic concept of discourse. And the key to coherence of discourse is to use various cohesive devices rationally. Due to the different ways of thinking between China and the West, English and Chinese have great difficulties in textual cohesion. In order to better carry out translation practice, it is necessary to understand the cohesive devices of the text. Both English and Chinese use cohesive devices, but they are different. The complicated work of English-Chinese translation is the treatment of cohesive devices and the quality of the translation depends on the proper handling of the cohesive devices. This paper is based on a book cohesion in English by Halliday and Hasan in 1976, whose research methods are comparative analysis and descriptions. Choosing the works hard times of Charles Dickens, a famous British critic of the 19th century as well as Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press Mu Run and China Books Publishing House Wu Sujun two versions as the research object. By analyzing the differences between English and Chinese texts, the author tries to find out the reasons for the differences and hopes to provide some help for English-Chinese translation.