Textual Cohesion and Coherence in Translation of Historical Text: An E-C Translation Case Study of The Revolution of 1848 (Excerpts)

Focusing on the differences between English and Chinese cohesive and coherent means, this paper studies the E-C translation strategies for transferring coherence in the Chinese version of the selected chapters of the historical book The Revolution of 1848. With Wang Dongfeng’s four types of coherence and Halliday and Hasan’s theory of text cohesion as a theoretical framework, some typical translation cases from the excerpts are analyzed. It is found that the major differences in grammatical cohesion between English and Chinese make it necessary to use different translation methods to achieve grammatical coherence. Secondly, for some means of reiteration, their semantic coherence should be reproduced in the target text; the translation strategies of complicated co-occurrence relations need to be adopted based on the specific context. Thirdly, in addition to the fidelity rule, the word selection should align with different stylistic features on the translation of various writing types, forming stylistic coherence. Fourthly, the cultural information hidden in the source text (by default) could be restored with annotations added to produce pragmatic coherence concerning the preciseness of historical books and cultural differences between East and West.

Introduction

The Revolution of 1848, with 38 chapters totaling 81,430 English words, is themed on the French Revolution of 1848. This historical event, also known as the French February Revolution, was jointly initiated by the French proletariat and the bourgeoisie, which overthrew the July Dynasty, representing the interests of the financial oligarchs and established the Second Republic of France (Sun, 1983, p. 19). Besides its base on the Revolution, the book’s content covers a wide range of aspects, including politics, economy, culture and military, to name a few. It mainly narrates France’s social landscape in 1848 and a host of events triggered by the Revolution concerning other series of revolutionary events and national conditions in other European countries. As the research object of this report, the first eleven chapters, with a total of 19,970 words, mainly describe the stories concerning the turbulent royal family, the Chamber of Peers and the House of Commons accompanied by frequent debates, the cabinet on the verge of reorganization, and the incompatible politicians before the Revolution.

Difficulties in Translation

First, the first eleven chapters include many long and difficult sentences, which skillfully use cohesive devices with abundant pronouns and deixis. Consequently, the greatest challenge is to accurately translate the meanings indicated by these words and present them in idiomatic Chinese expressions.

Secondly, the source text is rich and ingenious in vocabulary application, such as the repetition of words for emphasis and the recurrence of terms with synonymous relations to avoid monotonous wording; particularly polysemous words therein are highly demanded for interpreting their semantic features in a specific context.

Furthermore, this book covers a variety of styles when describing historical events, including speeches from the throne, house debates, and religious hymns, to name a few. Accordingly, it is a tough job to maintain the original styles, achieve stylistic coherence and make the translation readable.

The final one lies in the political, military, and cultural information of France and other European countries. To be specific, when it comes to some terms related to the background, the information the source text readers acquiesce in or share is omitted in some contexts. Because of the differences between Chinese and Western cultures, it is not effortless to interpret and restore the missing cultural elements.

Textual Cohesiveness and Coherence

In their book An Introduction to Text Linguistics, the famous textologists De Beaugrande and Dressler (1981, p. 3) put forward seven criteria of textuality: cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality and intertextuality. Among them, cohesion and coherence are the prime. Neubert, a foreign translation theorist, believes that translation is a textual process combining linguistic form with process, and text must be regarded as the first object of translation research (Neubert & Shreve, 1992, p. 48). Thus, it can be seen that the sheer weight of textual cohesion and coherence in translation is axiomatic.

Textual Cohesion of English and Chinese Languages

Cohesion theory was formally marked by Halliday and Hasan (1976) in their Cohesion in English in the 1970s. Five types of cohesive devices are presented in the book, namely, reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion, and the first four belong to grammatical cohesion (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p. 29). Reference is divided into personal reference, demonstrative reference and comparative reference; substitution is classified into nominal substitution, verbal substitution and clause substitution; ellipsis also includes nominal, verbal and clause types; conjunctions fall into additive, adversative, causal and temporal; lexical cohesion embraces reiteration and co-occurrence, and the relation of reiteration refers to the recurrence of original word, synonym, superordinate, subordinate and general word (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, pp. 37, 90, 146, 239, 288). Hu (1994, p. 4) points out that Halliday and Hasan’s cohesion theory is based on English corpus, but the cohesion phenomenon also exists in Chinese counterpart. Cohesive devices of Chinese text can also be subsumed into these five categories, while there are still a plethora of differences in this aspect between the two languages (Zuo, 1995, p. 37).

To be specific, the main points of comparisons between them are as follows. For one thing, the four sides of grammatical cohesion are associated. English uses personal pronouns much more frequently than Chinese, and this usage is restricted by grammar, while Chinese is influenced by habit and thereby tends to use zero reference and lexical cohesion to express reference (Wang, 2009, p. 108). English demonstrative pronouns and Chinese counterparts fail to have the same cohesive effect, such as “that” and “那” while in Chinese, the nouns they indicate are more likely to be restored (Wang, 2009, pp. 108–109). Substitution: In Chinese, the use of non-referential substitutes is not as developed and frequent as that in English, and the repetition of the original noun is favoured (Wang, 2009, p. 111). Ellipsis: Chinese is parataxis, where the omission of the subject is most common and that of the predicate infrequent, mainly conveying the meaning by the repetition of the original word or other lexical means, while English is hypotaxis and the notional verb is mostly omitted by morphological markers (Zhuet al., 2001, p. 73). Conjunction: The above four types of devices exist in both texts, but English uses connectives more frequently than Chinese because it relies heavily on explicit forms, as witnessed by its logical and temporal relations shown in explicit grammatical form, while they are normally converted into implicit word order in the other language (Wang, 2009, p. 116). For another thing, when it comes to lexical cohesion, the initial one is reiteration: synonymous cohesion is another form of reiteration relation; synonymous relation (in broad concept) here includes the aspects in terms of synonymy, near-synonymy, hyponymy and meronymy (Wang, 2009, p. 179). It is a common phenomenon in the two languages to use synonymous words to realize the cohesion of meaning (Zhuet al., 2001, p. 147). Secondly, there is also an indication in co-occurrence: English and Chinese collocation habits are affected by their respective linguistic features and cultural factors (Zhuet al., 2001, p. 209). English is a language dominated by polysemy, so E-C translation is a process of disambiguation (Wang, 2009, p. 187).

Textual Coherence in Translation

From Halliday’s perspective (1994, pp. 38–39), the sentence is the product of integrating conceptual meaning, interpersonal meaning, and textual meaning, and the last one serves as textual coherence. Cohesion connects article ideas and structure through lexical or grammatical means, establishing a tangible network; coherence means that semantic coherence is achieved by reasoning based on the situation that both sides of a dialogue mutually understand, thereby forming an invisible network of a text (Li, 2012, p. 39). In the book Coherence and Translation, published by Wang (2009, pp. 15, 102), there are four categories concerning coherence: stylistic, grammatical, semantic and pragmatic types; grammatical cohesion is included in grammatical coherence and lexical cohesion in semantic coherence.

The difficulties in the translation project The Revolution of 1848 mainly lie in four aspects: the analysis of grammatical cohesion, the interpretation of semantic relations, the mastery of stylistic styles, and the restoration of cultural deficiency. In the process of translation, the theory of textual cohesion and coherence offers tremendous guidance, as the former provides an analytical way for the deconstruction of cohesive devices in the source text, and the latter is another guiding principle besides faithfulness.

Grammatical Coherence

Wang (2009, pp. 97–101) claims that grammatical coherence is the relational network of grammatical dimensions in a text, and cohesion acts as the adhesive, especially grammatical cohesion as an explicit link, which remains a cardinal means to construct textual coherence. The grammatical cohesive devices proposed by Halliday and Hasan, namely, reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction, are also subsumed under the category of grammatical coherence for research by him (Wang, 2009, p. 98).

Reference

In a text, if a reader fails to understand a word from itself, he or she must seek the answer from the object indicated by it, which contributes to the reference relation (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p. 31). Halliday and Hasan (1976, pp. 30–31) mainly divide this into three categories: personal reference, demonstrative reference and comparative reference. Personal pronouns and demonstrative pronouns are widely used in the source text, such as the use of “it” and “that”, which becomes one of the major challenges in the translation process. The differences between English and Chinese texts in these two aspects must be considered in the corresponding translation.

First and foremost, one of the axioms in the international linguistic circle is that in contrast to Chinese, a topic-prominent language, English is a subject-prominent one, where the subject plays an essential role since it even determines the arrangement of sentence components according to their relations with it (Zhong, 2016, p. 85). In English, a subject dominates multiple actions, and pronouns are often used to refer to it, while in Chinese, parataxis is emphasized to highlight the theme, thus resulting in the usual use of zero anaphora (Feng & Shao, 2004, p. 97). This term, also known as zero reference, refers to the omission of reference words that should have appeared in a text, which is a common phenomenon in Chinese (Hu, 1994, p. 64). Accordingly, the frequency of personal pronouns used in English is considerably higher than that in Chinese, and their usage is restricted by grammar, while Chinese is influenced by habit and tends to use zero reference and lexical cohesion to express reference (Wang, 2009, p. 108). Therefore, as regards the comparison of personal preference between the two languages, most common pronouns in English discourse are more likely to be omitted (zero reference) in Chinese translation to highlight the topic or to be converted into nouns (lexical cohesion) for the purpose of presenting their meanings completely and avoiding unclear indication.

Secondly, in terms of demonstrative reference, English demonstrative pronouns and Chinese counterparts fail to have the equivalent cohesive effect, such as “that” and “那” and Chinese often restores the nouns they indicate (Wang, 2009, p. 108). Chinese text rarely uses “这” (this) or “那” (that) corresponding to English deixis, and its demonstrative reference often remains a hidden state, so in E-C translation, the cohesion achieved by this reference needs to be transformed from explicitness to implicitness (Li, 2001, p. 150).

In short, in the process of translation, the personal reference and the demonstrative one of the source texts should be first identified, with reference characteristics of Chinese combined then, thus achieving the grammatical coherence of the target one.

Example: Personal Reference and Demonstrative Reference

(ST) The hour of ‘Take that ① off that I may put it ① on’—the one end sincerely aimed at by our revolutions, however, one may seek to disguise it ②—was about to sound (Saint-Amand & Leon, 2022, p. 2).

(TT) ‘你方唱罢我好登场’, 这一历史刻即将到来, 这才是革命的真实意图, 尽管有人可能试图掩盖这一意图.

Analysis: In this example, the ST uses two means of reference, namely, one demonstrative reference, “that ①” and two personal references, “it ① ②”.

In the first half of the ST, the demonstrative reference “that ①” and the personal reference “it ①” are used. Demonstrative reference in English is based on the egocentric principle, which means the speaker chooses demonstrative words centred on himself or herself (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p. 60). For this reason, it can be judged that “that ①” indicates something far away from the speaker. From the perspective of grammatical structure, the part “... Take that ① off that I may put it ① on ...” excludes the subject. According to the following distal deixis “that ①” and the personal pronoun “I”, the omitted object should be the corresponding side of “I”, that is to say “You”. With the context combined, it can be determined that the historical moment described in this part refers to the change of government power in France. The words “that ①” and “it ①” indicate things that are not material objects. “Take that ① off” and “I may put it ① on” means the phenomenon of regime change on the historical stage like “(you) take a curtain call” and “I come on stage”. Therefore, in translation, the literary quotation of “你方唱罢我登场” (“you take a curtain call and I come on stage”) from a Chinese classical novel A Dream of Red Mansions is used for reference, which not only vividly depicts the regime change, but also conforms to the writing features of Chinese historical works.

The reference pronoun “it ②” in the second half refers to “the one end” mentioned above. According to the habit of lexical cohesion or repetition in Chinese, this word is reinstated in “意图” (intention), thereby expressing complete meaning and avoiding unclear indications.

Substitution

Substitution refers to a language form used to replace some words in the previous article, which can be further divided into nominal substitution, verbal substitution, and clause substitution (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, pp. 93–94). In this translation practice, the first two are relatively typical. Moreover, in the substitution phenomenon of English and Chinese discourses, these two aspects demonstrate the most distinguishing contrast.

First, as for the comparison of nominal substitution, the most common word with this function in English is “one”, which can replace countable noun phrase (Hu, 1994, p. 70). In Chinese, the use of non-referential substitutes is not as frequent as that in English, and for the pronoun “one”, it can be translated by the corresponding word-to-word method; however, since Chinese features “preferring concreteness to abstraction”, the lexical cohesion technique is more likely to be adopted, and “ones”, as a plural form with no equivalent characters in Chinese, should be translated in the same way (Wang, 2009, p. 111).

Second, in English discourse, verbal substitution is the use of proverbs to achieve coherence between or among clauses, the most familiar one of which is “do” and its various inflectional forms (Wang, 2009, p. 112). Some Chinese characters, in turn, possess equal functions, such as “这么着”, “来”, “干”, “做” and “办” (Hu, 1994, pp. 73–74). But these fail to be constantly equivalent to the word “do” and its variants. Moreover, featuring parataxis, Chinese emphasizes the completeness of signification. Especially in its historical texts, the use of such proverbs tends to cause problems, including unclear signification and imprecision. In E-C translation, besides the above means, lexical cohesion with the equal cohesive function also serves as an alternative (Wang, 2009, p. 112). Accordingly, by using this method, the coherence of translation can be constructed on the basis of complete signification.

Example 1: Nominal Substitution

(ST) Its duty was to lay aside all questions of self, all competitions for portfolios, and to put the general interests of France above all private ones (Saint-Amand & Leon, 2022, p. 38).

(TT)下议院职责应是抛开己方的问题, 放弃政权的角逐, 将法国的全局利益置于个人私利之上.

Analysis: As a noun substitute in plural form, the word “ones” in the ST replaces the “interests”. For this, the author adopts lexical cohesion to restore the substituted nouns in the TT. To be specific, the expression “private ones” is translated into “个人私利” (personal interest), a typical four-character pattern, achieving the coherent effect of integral signification and also echoing the “general interests” mentioned above.

Example 2: Verbal Substitution

(ST) See here, my dear M. de Falloux, excuse me for telling you, with a frankness that cannot wound you, the Restoration died of nothing but stupidity, and I warrant you that we shall not die as it did (Saint-Amand & Leon, 2022, p. 87).

(TT) 请听我说, 我亲爱的法卢先生. 请恕我直言, 坦率地说并不会伤害你. 王朝 复辟的灭亡只是因为愚蠢, 而我向你保证, 我们绝不会重蹈覆辙.

Analysis: In the ST, the inflectional form of “do”, namely “did”, is used instead of “died of nothing but stupidity”. There are also corresponding Chinese characters with the same usage as “do”, including “干” and “来”, and some in the styles of dialects such as “整”, “搞” and “闹” (Zhang & Wang, 2010, p. 173–174). However, these colloquial characters are not suitable for historical text with a strict writing style, and it would be too wordy to translate the original meaning word for word. With the previous text combined, it can be judged that this substituted act is a historical event, so a set phrase “重蹈覆辙” (falling into the same old trap) with historical style is chosen. Consequently, with the complete signification to form the coherence in the TT, this four-character idiom also embodies the well-written style and language beauty of the historical text.

Ellipsis

Ellipsis means that the word absent from a structure can be retrieved from other clauses or sentences in a text; the omitted content can be inferred from the situation or context, while it is more important to be based on the context only in terms of cohesion (Hu, 1994, p. 76). According to the nature of this means, it can be divided into three categories: nominal ellipsis, verbal ellipsis and clause ellipsis (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p. 145). Some cases combining the former two in the source text are listed for analysis.

In this regard, as Chinese features parataxis, the ellipsis of the subject is more common than that of the predicate verb infrequent, and it mainly expresses meanings through the repetition of the original word or other lexical means (Zhu et al., pp. 70–73). English is hypotaxis-based, with notional verbs mostly omitted by means of morphological markers; by this, sometimes predicate verbs can be left out completely, or verbs and nouns together, while Chinese generally prefer not (Zhu et al., pp. 67–73). Thus, it can be seen that because of the hypotaxis pattern in English, when the grammatical structures of the former and the latter sentence are consistent, most of the repeated verbs will be excluded with the help of grammatical form, and nominal ellipsis is also common. However, Chinese focus more on the completeness of meaning expression and seldom omit nouns (except subject ellipsis), not to mention rarer verbal ellipsis.

Example: Nominal Ellipsis and Verbal Ellipsis

(ST) February 15, an article appeared in the Journal des Débats, which said it is not enough for the opposition to have had sixty banquets during the legislative interval; it means to have them in every quarter of Paris, with a tribune which shall respond in the evening to the legislative tribune. And then the students will have theirs! The Montagnards, the Communists, theirs! For if the right is absolute, it is so for everybody. (Saint-Amand & Leon, 2022, p. 81).

(TT) 1848年2月15日, 《辩论日报》刊登了一篇文章: “立法期间, 反对派举行六十次宴会尚不足够; 也就是说, 到了夜晚, 巴黎的每一个街区都应举办宴会和论坛, 对立法论坛作出响应. 学生们要有自己的宴会！ 山岳派人、共产党人也要有自己的宴会！因为如果 权利是绝对的, 人人都应享有.”

Analysis: In Example 4, the ST uses two cohesive devices of ellipsis, namely nominal ellipsis and verbal one. First of all, the parallel sentence “And then the students will have theirs! the Montagnards, the Communists, theirs!” includes two nominal possessive pronouns, “theirs,” to replace the structure of “their + noun” and to omit the indicated noun components. According to the context, it can be noted that the omitted component refers to the “banquets” mentioned before. Secondly, the second half of the sentence excludes the same part “will have” as the previous one. In light of the hypotaxis feature, repeated verbs can be omitted due to the consistency of grammar and sentence patterns. Correspondingly, the same verb structure here, including modal verbs and notional verbs, is left out through this kind of consistency. To translate the predicate verb structure omitted by grammatical means, the repetition of the original word or other lexical means will be largely used to express the meaning in Chinese (Zhuet al., 2001, p. 73). Therefore, the omitted components are retrieved and translated into “……要有自己的宴会！……也要有自己的宴会！” (...should have their own banquets! ... also should have their own banquets!), to make the TT complete and coherent in structure and semantics.

Conjunction

Conjunction refers to the establishment of a systematic, logical relationship between the preceding part and the following one in text (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p. 227). Halliday and Hasan (1976, p. 236) mainly divide this concept into four types: additive, adversative, causal, and temporal.

These four all exist in English and Chinese texts, which are common to both. Therefore, in E-C translation, the coherence of source text can be reflected by adopting the method of formal correspondence (Wang, 2009, p. 116). Although cohesive devices in the two texts are the same, they are used in different frequencies: English relies on explicit forms, and its frequency of using conjunction is considerably higher than that in Chinese, particularly the logical and temporal relations in English, which are often reflected by explicit grammatical forms, while Chinese often uses implicit word order, so occasionally zero-form conjunction can be adopted in conversion (Wang, 2009, p. 117). Hence, the translation of explicit conjunctive elements in English texts, especially the cohesive devices of temporal conjunction, should be based more on the implicit characteristics of Chinese, but some necessary ones need to be preserved.

Example: Additive and Temporal

(ST) The Débats of February 15 thus pointed out the danger: “When ① peers of France, when ② deputies go to erecting another tribune external to the legislative precinct, they are signing their own abdication; they are making ready their own oppression, theirs and ours, that of the minority as well as that of the majority! What! when ③ the pages of history are not yet turned, when ④ the future is written in the past—almost in the present—in lessons so bloody, how can those who are not enemies be—let the word be spoken without gall or bitterness—how can they be so blind? ” (Saint-Amand & Leon, 2022, p. 81).

(TT) 1848年2月15日, 《辩论日报》指出了这一危险: “法国贵族们、议员们在立法选区外设立另一个论坛, 就相当于签署弃权书; 他们正在为镇压做好准备. 他们是他们, 我们是我们, 正如少数党与多数党！什么！ 在历史的篇章还未翻开, 未来之事写成历史的时刻, ——几乎就在此刻, —— 在这血淋淋的历史教训中, 那些非敌之人怎可如此——无怨无悔地说出这番话—— 他们怎么如此不明是非？”

Analysis: In Example 5, six means of conjunction are used, including two additive ones, “and”, “as well as” and four temporal ones, “when”, which exactly reflects the explicit connection of English.

To start with, the first additive connects “theirs” and “ours”, the complete meaning of which should be “their/our own abdication and oppression”. The direct conversion into “他们的和我们的” (theirs and ours) would cause incomplete signification, but the repetition of the referred things would contribute to wordy translation. So it is finally divided into two clauses, “他们是他们, 我们是我们” (we are two separate sides), to emphasize the confrontation between the two camps. The words “minority” and “majority” linked by the second one “as well as” refer to “theirs” and “ours” mentioned before, which are translated by formal correspondence to avoid repeating the previous emphasis.

Besides, in terms of four temporal conjunctions, “when”, different translation strategies are chosen according to their functions and hidden meanings in the ST. In the coherent chain of Chinese text, the temporal relation is usually embodied in implicit word order (Wang, 2009, p. 116). Therefore, when it comes to “When ①” and “when ②”, the zero-form conjunction method is adopted to avoid the explicit blunt translation of “当……的时候” (when), and “就相当于” (which represents) is added in the second half of the TT to show the implied meaning of “when... are...”. Moreover, “when ③” and “when ④” are presented as “在……的时刻” (at the moment of ...) on the basis of formal correspondence in order to coordinate the following “—almost in the present”.

Semantic Coherence

Lexical cohesion, that is, the use of words to achieve cohesion in a text, can further fall into reiteration and co-occurrence (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, pp. 274–278). It also remains a kind of “lexical semantic relation” (Morris & Graeme, 2006, p. 43), as an independent category of coherence for research, namely semantic coherence (Wang, 2009, p. 170).

Reiteration

Reiteration refers to the recurrence of a word in the form of an original word, synonym, hypernym, hyponym, general word or others in a text (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p. 278). Its relation can be summarized into two types, namely, repetitive relation and synonymous relation; the best translation method for repetitive cohesion in the source text is formal correspondence (Wang, 2009, pp. 173–178). Due to the less difficulty in translating this cohesive device into the project, there is no further explanation.

As for synonymous cohesion, the construction of synonymous relations (in the generalized concept) concerning synonymy, near-synonymy, hyponymy and meronymy enables semantic coherence to be actualized (Wang, 2009, p. 179). In the process of E-C translation, it is of great practical significance to identify the lexical chain formed by synonymous links in English text and use it to determine the choice of target words (Li, 2001, p. 133).

Example: Synonymous Cohesion

(ST) “It is the will of God,” said the Duke de Broglie in the Chamber of Peers, January 13, 1848, “that, after sixty years, we should once more behold conquest with its pitiless demands, military occupation with its greedy exactions, the profanation of holy places, the devastation of holy things, general conscriptions, wholesale confiscations made by revolutionary governments, improvised at the point of the bayonet, and in their turn improvising, in the name of law, inquisition and persecution to the plaudits of the populace.” (Saint-Amand & Leon, 2022, p. 14).

(TT) 1848年1月13日, 贵族院布罗伊公爵如是评价道: “这是上帝的旨意. 六十年后, 我们会再度目睹革命政府军冷酷无情地征服 当地百姓, 贪婪无餍地侵占他人财物, 亵渎圣殿, 破坏圣物, 横征暴敛.他们挥舞着刺刀, 以律法之名, 轮番上演审讯与迫害的戏码, 以期获得民众的喝彩.”

Analysis: For fear of monotony and inflexibility in language, the ST of Example 6 uses multiple synonymous cohesion means to form four groups of coherence patterns: “conquest—military occupation”, “pitiless demands—greedy exactions”, “general conscriptions—wholesale confiscations”, “profanation—devastation”. More specifically, the semantic coherence of these words with the same, similar and related meanings more vividly depicts the atrocities of the Swiss revolutionary government forces. In response to this, for the purpose of faithfulness to the ST and reflection of variability in the TT, diversified expressions are selected after the classification of original meanings, forming a new coherence model “征服—侵占”, “冷酷—无情”, “贪婪—无餍”, “亵渎—破坏”, “横征—暴敛” (conquer—occupy, callous—heartless, greedy—unscrupulous, profane—destructive, and arbitrary—exploitative). In this way, the beauty and richness of Chinese culture and the balance of structure are presented.

Co-Occurrence

Co-occurrence, also known as collocation, refers to the specific connection between or among certain words (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p. 284). Some words hold no regular links under normal circumstances but are limited by register or language use (Hu, 1994, p. 114). For this relation, recognition and reconstruction play an important role in translation. Since English tends to be dominated by polysemous words, the process of E-C translation is to constantly eliminate ambiguity, and the primary reference is context; only by choosing translation strategies according to it can the semantic coherence of the original text be preserved to the maximum extent (Wang, 2009, p. 187). Additionally, the collocation habits of English and Chinese are also influenced by their respective language characteristics and cultural factors (Zhuet al., 2001, p. 209). The interpretation of the co-occurrence relation of English text, as a result, lies in ambiguity elimination and reference to context and source cultures, with Chinese language habits attached then, so as to restore the original semantic coherence and construct the counterpart of the target text.

Example: Co-Occurrence

(ST) As was said by the National, a republican journal: “Nobody had ever so moved the desks, the wooden knives, and the lungs of the peerage. This was not agitation but transport, not spasms, but a sort of high fever. Shouts, bravos, and stampings served as an accompaniment to the effusions of his eloquence. Impassioned himself, almost to frenzy, he spurted over all the benches currents of electricity which made them jump.” (Saint-Amand & Leon, 2022, p. 17).

(TT) 正如共和党报纸《民族报》所报道的, “从未有人能这样煽动全体贵族拍打着桌子, 挥舞着木刀, 并且触动他们的心肺. 这不是煽动, 这是传道; 这不是痉挛, 而是发热. 呐喊、喝彩、跺脚, 仿佛成了他滔滔雄辩的伴奏. 慷慨激昂、几近疯狂, 一时间火花四溅, 令在座诸人几欲跳脚.”

Analysis: In the ST of Example 7, there are three groups of words in co-occurrence relation.

First of all, the three items “desks—wooden knives—lungs” in the first group seemingly have no regular links, but combined with the specific context, they can be identified as the property of “peerage”. Moreover, by adding the verb “moved”, the complete relation chain is clearly shown as “moved the desks—moved the wooden knives—moved the lungs of the peerage”. When it comes to “move”, a polysemous word, its verbal definitions in the English-Chinese Dictionary include “移动” (to change position), “改变” (to change something), and “感动” (cause strong feeling) (Lu, 2007, p. 1266). Then, the choice of these meanings should be related to the ST, which is the commentary of the National Newspaper on the speaker Count Montalembert, with emphasis on the incitement of the speech to the audience. Accordingly, it can be recognized from the context that “move” here also has the implication of “煽动” (incite). As a result, “moved the desks, the wooden knives” is translated into “煽动……拍打着桌子, 挥舞着木刀” (incite ... beat the table and wave wooden knives), and “moved ... lungs” into “触动……心肺” (make ...feel sympathetic) due to the meaning “感动”. Otherwise, without the correct interpretation and reconstruction of the co-occurrence relation, the simple presentation as “移动全体贵族的桌子、木刀、肺” (change all the nobles’ tables, wooden knives and lungs) will cause semantic incoherence.

Secondly, regarding the group “agitation—transport”, there also seems to be no regular connection. As the explanations of “agitation” in the Dictionary embrace “激动” (excitement) and “煽动” (incitement) (Lu, 2007, p. 36), the latter comparatively conforms to the context here. Besides, while “transport” usually means “运输” or “传送” (the activity of carrying goods from one place to another by using lorries or trucks, trains and so on) (Lu, 2007, p. 2160), it also can take the form of “传道” (publicity of moral principles) accordingly. This is coordinated with “煽动” to form semantic coherence and expresses the praise of newspaper comments for the speaker, thereby beautifying the incitement of his speech.

Thirdly, “spasms-a sort of high fever” has some relations, which means both of them belong to diseases. The former refers to “肌肉痉挛” and the latter to “发高热” so semantic coherence can be formed by adopting the literal translation.

Stylistic Coherence

As an essential component of textual coherence, stylistic coherence means literal styles should be consistent, allowing diction to be determined in line with different styles; stylistically, coherence of translation text is constantly achieved through the choice and organization of language forms (Li, 2012, p. 41).

The source text serves as a historical work with a distinct style. To illustrate, its literary forms are protean, ranging from hymns describing great religious and political men to political speeches setting off the intense atmosphere of parliamentary debates and to newspaper reports highlighting social comments. These all enrich the narrative of the French Revolution history in 1848 from political, cultural, religious and social perspectives.

Example: Religious Hymn

(ST) “This man ①,” said he, who holds in his hands the keys to the thoughts of so many men, might have sealed up the intelligence of men, and he ① has opened it. He ② has set the idea of emancipation and liberty on the highest summit where man ② can places a light. The eternal principles, which nothing can sully, and nothing can destroy, which caused our Revolution and survived it, those principles of right, equality, and reciprocal duty which fifty years ago made their appearance in the world for a moment, always grand doubtless, but ferocious, formidable, and terrible under the bonnet rouge, have been transfigured by Pius IX., who has just displayed them to the universe glowing with mildness, sweet and venerable under the tiara. It is, in truth, because their veritable crown is there! Pius IX. is showing the good and secure path to kings and peoples, to statesmen and philosophers, to all mankind. Thanks be to him! ... (Saint-Amand & Leon, 2022, p. 23).

(TT) 诗中写道: “至圣圣父, 执掌众生思想之钥; 众生之慧尘封已久, 圣父启之; 解放与自由之思, 置于人世之巅, 启世人蒙昧. 永恒法则—圣洁无暇、无坚不摧, 赐予吾等革命无限生机; 权利、平等、责任之法则, 半百年前昙花一现; 宏伟神圣之芒, 掩于红帽子之下, 可恶可畏可怖. 庇护九世冕下, 予以重生, 护于三重冠之下. 今于世间, 重现温柔、亲切、庄严之芒. 权利、平等、责任之真正王冠就在于此！冕下赐予国王与人 民、政治家与哲学家乃至世人一条康庄大道. 感恩我主！……

Analysis: Since the ST of Example 8 is defined as “almost a hymn of praise” to the Pope, it should be translated in the style of poetry. If only the fidelity principle is stressed without the consideration for melody, the translation of poetry will be more free (Yuan, 2011, p. 31). Nevertheless, in the translation of this hymn, both the author’s “poetic consciousness” (Wang, 2009, p. 63) and the nature of stylistic coherence are valued.

In the first place, the prose style is adopted as a stylistic form, combining vernacular and classical Chinese, thus being faithful to the ST and achieving stylistic coherence.

Furthermore, in terms of word selection, since the object of praise is the Pope, the address of him in the TT is a major focus of translation. When this figure is mentioned, many versions are used, such as “man”, “he”, and “Pius IX”. At the beginning, the “man ①” is presented as “至圣圣父” (Holy Father) to highlight the praise and respect for the Pope. Then, in accordance with the principle of contextual coherence, the word “he ①” takes the form of “圣父” (abbreviation for Holy Father). In order to avoid extra repetition, “man ②” and “He ②” are treated with zero references. At the end of the TT, the Pope’s title, “Pius IX”, is transformed into “庇护九世冕下” (Your Holiness Pius IX). The honorific title “冕下” (Your Holiness) is added here to show respect for the great man. Additionally, the following personal pronoun, “he”, is invariably termed as “冕下” for the purpose of coherence in addressing. It is worth noting that as for the sentence “Thanks be to him”, the Chinese classic term “感恩我主” (Gratitude to my Holiness) in religious hymns is used to correspond to the original meaning and to show more stylistic characteristics of hymns.

Pragmatic Coherence

Pragmatics studies the meaning of discourse in a language environment that generally refers to linguistic context and cultural context in which narrative text and text factors are located; only by establishing a reasonable relationship with context can any discourse component be interpreted reasonably, thus realizing pragmatic coherence (Wang, 2009, p. 194). However, “cultural default” in a context is a notable obstacle to coherence reconstruction; it means the background knowledge that is shared by all the parties involved in communication and thus omitted tacitly or automatically, so decoding this default really matters in coherence reconstruction, and two corresponding translation strategies, namely covert reservation and overt expression, are provided (Wang, 2009, pp. 223–226).

In the source text, the background information concerning French politics and cultures is left out in many places, that is to say, the so-called “cultural default” case. In translation, explicit treatment is mostly adopted, and comments are added to restore the omission for the purpose of coherence.

Example: Cultural Default

(ST) THE discussion of the Address began in the Chamber of Peers on January 10. It furnished to Count de Montalembert the occasion for one of the finest oratorical triumphs of Louis Philippe’s reign...his father, an émigré who had served in Conde’s army, was a member of the Chamber of Peers and Minister of France at Stockholm under the reign of Charles X. He was himself a member of the Upper Chamber... (Saint-Amand & Leon, 2022, p. 12).

(TT) 1848年1月10日, 贵族院^注关于王座演说展开辩论, 蒙塔朗贝尔伯爵大展辩才, 此场辩论成为国王路易·菲利普统治时期最雄辩演说 之一……父亲是流亡贵族, 查理十世统治时期, 曾在康德军队中服过兵役, 担任过法国贵族院议员、法国驻斯德哥尔摩公使. 他本人也是上议院的议员……

(注: 贵族院, 即1814年到1848年期间法国议会的上议院)

(Note: The Chamber of Peers referred to the Upper Chamber of the French Parliament from 1814 to 1848).

Analysis: Two cases are shown in the ST. Firstly, the default component of “The Address” is the political and cultural information to which the original writer acquiesces. That is, this speech is the throne speech, which readers of the original French text are familiar with. However, no restoration to this in the translation text will cause unclear references, and its readers may fail to get the exact speech referred to. Therefore, overt expression is applicable. Secondly, a logical and “cultural vacancy” (Wang, 2009, p. 223) exists between “the Chamber of Peers” and “the Upper Chamber”. This vacancy also involves the background unknown to readers of the TT, specifically the fact that the French Chamber of Peers served as an alternative name of the Upper Chamber from 1814 to 1848. Without any restoration, it will easily contribute to these readers’ misunderstanding and confusion of the relationship between the two. So, the explicit method and the comment are used to show logic and build coherence for them.

Conclusion

With the four kinds of translation coherence proposed by Wang Dongfeng and the cohesion theory of Halliday and Hasan as a structural framework, this paper studies English source text and the Chinese target texts of The Revolution of 1848. In order to achieve the four kinds of coherence in the Chinese target text, the following different translation strategies are utilized.

1. To achieve grammatical coherence: In view of distinctions in grammatical cohesion between English and Chinese, the cohesive devices used in the source text must be analyzed before translation, then with the expression habits of Chinese considered, in order to generate coherence effects of the target text. First of all, regarding the reference relation, especially personal demonstrative aspects, zero reference and lexical cohesion are frequently used, and occasionally the strategy of formal correspondence. Secondly, when it comes to substitution and ellipsis, differences in the two grammar systems enable the tendency of repetition in Chinese to be a focus, so the omitted or substituted parts are restored in most cases. Finally, to cope with conjunction techniques, zero-form conjunction and form correspondence are chosen by combining the variety of logical relations between the two languages.
2. To achieve semantic coherence: In response to synonymous cohesion, meanings of the source text are followed and classified to form a new semantic coherence model in the translation. As for the most complicated co-occurrence, especially for some words with no regular link, translation strategies are selected according to the context in order to eliminate ambiguity and preserve the original semantic coherence as much as possible. In addition, it is worth noting that with regard to lexical cohesion in historical texts, words featuring historical styles are also ideal choices for translation.
3. To achieve stylistic coherence: In the matter of various writing styles of the source text, besides faithfulness, it is also necessary to decide the way of choosing words accordingly to form stylistic coherence in translation.
4. To achieve pragmatic coherence: In the source text, the cultural information known or acquiesced by the readers in the French culture context is automatically omitted. However, to clarify the French historical classic nature of the source text, a completion and annotation of some cultural terms are needed to help the target readers to have explicit background of the omitted parts.