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The study adopts the principle of “faithfulness to the topic chain of the source text”proposed by Professor Zhong Shuneng during one of my discussions with him. It doesn’t meanthe English translation should rigidly follow the linguistic representation of Chinese topic chain.After all, it is impossible to do so. It means the information structure and pragmatic function ofthe topic chain in the source text should be kept to a maximum extent. A premise for faithfulnessto the source text is faithfulness to its topic chain. Without this premise, the translation couldnot meet the expectations of native speakers of English as its target readers.

The translation in the following example, unfortunately, doesn’t strictly abide by theprinciple of being faithful to the source text although its language is beautiful and vivid becauseit is translated into two paragraphs but there are three topic chains in the source text (markedwith numbers).

Example 40

ST: ①且说黛玉自那日弃舟登岸时，便有荣府打发轿子并拉行李车辆伺候。②这黛玉尝听得母亲说他外祖母家与别家不同；他近日所见的这几个三等的仆妇，吃穿用度，已是不凡，何况今至其家，都要步步留心，时时在意，不要多说一句话，不可多行一步路，恐被人耻笑了去。③自上了轿，进了城，从纱窗中瞧了一瞧，其街市之繁华，人烟之阜盛，自非别处可比。又行了半日，忽见街北蹲着两个大石狮子，三间兽头大门，门前列坐着十来个华冠丽服之人；正门不开，只东西两角门有人出入；正门之上有一匾，匾上大书“敕造宁国府”五个大字。(Cao Xueqin, A Dream of Red Mansions)

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Chapter Five Conclusion

5.1 Main Findings

As a paratactic and topic-prominent language, Chinese has a large number of topic chainscharacterized by the extensive use of zero subject. In contrast, English, as a hypotactic andsubject-prominent language, seems to have few sentences without a subject. From theperspective of language typology, the translation between Chinese and English cannot bebypassed by the translation of topic chains. The thesis has answered all the research questionsput forward in Chapter One.

Aiming at answering the first research question, this thesis argues that the cognitivemechanism of topic chain involves theprinciple of economy and accessibility. In essence, itserves as a device to connect two or more clauses and sentences by means of a topic, eithervisibly or invisibly. The chain leads an information structure, realizing pragmatic functions.

Regarding the second research question, this thesis makes a contrast between Chinese andEnglish topic chains. The main differences are: (1) a paragraph in Chinese can have more thanone topic chain, but that in English can only have one; (2) there are a large number of zerosubject sentences in Chinese, but there are few such sentences in English. The author arguesthat, in Chinese-English text translation, the transformation of topic chain is critical, and in asense, faithfulness to the s本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。