Practical Translation Project Design

　Practical Translation Project Design - Translation > Stage 7 > Step 2 > Task 5

　 Categorize What Has Been Observed

When you examine the data, you may obtain a roster of facts or phenomena you have observed. You should not leave them like that. Instead, you have to sort them and put them in categories so that they become easily retrievable information. The process of establishing categories is part of categorization. For example, after examining the cohesion in a piece, you have marked all the cohesive ties existing in the text. You then need to figure out which particular cohesive device is manifested in a given cohesive tie.

Before we set out to do the exercise below, it may be necessary to remind you of the definition of cohesive tie and the major types of cohesive device. Whenever the interpretation of an element in a text depends on another element in the text, a cohesive tie is thought to have been established between the two elements. The major types of cohesive device include: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion (Halliday and Hasan 1976).

Read the following ad for "Pretty Polly" tights, included here with each sentence numbered for ease of reference. Mark all the other cohesive ties following the example. Put them into the appropriate categories.

In the 1930s one man touched the lives of millions of women.[1] He wasn't a film star or a singer but a scientist. [2] He invented nylon. [3] Yet two years later, beset with doubt, he took his own life. [4] Wallace Carothers dedicated his life to women. [5] Nylon by Wallace Carothers. [6] Nylons by Pretty Polly. [7]

(Adapted from Cook 2001: 151)

Cohesive ties:
1. one man[1] … he[2] … he[3] … he[4] … his[4] … Wallace Carothers[5] … his[5] … Wallace Carothers[6]
Categories of cohesion：
Types of Cohesion	Reference	Substitution	Ellipsis	Conjunction	Lexical Cohesion
Instances				(4;5;6)	(2;3;8)

Task 1 - Task 2 - Task 3 - Task 4 - Task 5