Cohesion in Chinese

[tooironic]

I'm currently studying a Masters Degree in Chinese Translation Studies, and as part of it we're required to study cohesion (that is, the 'glue' that holds a text together - grammatical and syntactical relationships, lexical strands, 'shared assumptions' stemming from cultural norms, etc).

I'm not sure if this is the right place to be asking this question as I understand this is mostly a language-oriented forum (as opposed to a translation one), but I know there must be a few Chinese translators hovering around. So my questions is has anyone done in research into Cohesion in Chinese, and if so, what have you found?

These are the kind of concepts I'm looking into at the moment:

- Anaphora (referring backwards)
- Cataphora (referring forwards)
- Repetition / recurrence
- Connecting words
- Parallel structures
- Connectors – Coordinators [English examples: And, For, So, But, Yet, Or, Nor; Chinese examples 和, 而(且), 並(且), 與, 但(是), 可(是), 不過, 或(者), 還是, 一邊…一邊…, 又…又…]
- Connectors – Subordinators [English examples: When, Before, If, Because, Although; Chinese examples: 黨, 當時, …的時候, …時, 以前, 如果(...的話), 要是, 因為(…所以), 雖然(…但是)]

Here's a couple of resources I managed to find in a cursory Google search:

"Notes Notes on Teaching Translation Between Chinese and English" by Chuanmao Tian: http://accurapid.com/journal/31chinese.htm


"The Importance of Teaching Cohesion in Translation on a Textual Level - A Comparison of test scores before and after teaching" by Aiwei Shi:
http://www.proz.com/translation-articles/articles/383/1/The-Importance-of-Teaching-Cohesion-in-Translation-on-a-Textual-Level---A-Comparison-of-test-scores-before-and-after-teaching

...but I'm not sure if they're particularly helpful.

Any ideas?

[emma chicola]

try professor ke ping from nankai university, he writes great works on translation theories. i think the book is named English-chinese and chinese-English translation course. Of course cohesion was mentioned there. i had read the book when i was studying advanced interpretation. great great book, very helpful, no kidding.

[HashiriKata]

From your list of concepts, some other came to my mind:

Zero Anaphora

Topicalisation

Contrast

Inversion

...