Shifts of Cohesion and Coherence in the Translation of Political Speeches

Abstract

Discourse Markers (DMs) are central to maintaining cohesive and coherent translations. Drawing on Halliday and Hassan’s (1976) model to investigate the translation of DMs in political speeches, the study has verified the premise that tampering with the SLT's cohesion grid can adversely affect its relevant undergirding coherence grid. The study has revealed that any incurred cohesion shift in the act of translating would necessarily inscribe a parallel coherence shift, which fuse together to procure a noticeable translation loss. Analysis has isolated three major problems pertinent to translating English DMs into Arabic: (a) mistranslating explicit SL DMs, (b) no translation is given for implicit SL DMs, and (c) no translation is given for explicit SL DMs.