A Systemic-Functional Approach To The Translation Of Interpersonal Meanings

Since the term "translation studies" was given to this discipline by J. Holmes in 1972, the last thirty years have seen two major schools dominated in this field in succession—the linguistically oriented translation science (or translatology) represented by Nida and the culturally oriented Manipulation School advocated by Bassnett. While translatology limits its attention to intra-textual elements in the pursuit of translation equivalence, the Manipulation School expands the scope of translation studies too large to be an independent discipline. The limitations of the two schools call for a functional approach to translation studies, a "middle way"— to root downwardly in intra-textual elements while looking upwardly at extratextual factors in the process of translation.However, a literature review in the present study shows that the existing functional translation theories, either macro-functional or micro-functional approach, are in no sense satisfactory. (The former refers to theories proposed by Reiss, Vermeer and Nord; the latter refers to theories based on Halliday's Systemic-Functional Grammar mainly by Bell, Baker, Hatim and Mason.) At least two major limitations are obvious. First, in terms of scope, these studies focus mainly on the ideational and textual meaning of a text, leaving the interpersonal meaning and its translation rarely discussed. Secondly, in terms of method, most of them have just made a partial or fragmented application of functional linguistics to translation studies. Thus, an urgent need is a systematic model for the translation of interpersonal meaning.Drawing on the existing literature, the present author proposes to study the translation of interpersonal meanings in three complementary dimensions. The author holds that to study the linguistic elements which can express interpersonal meaning in the communicative dimension is essential, but it is not sufficient. In order to get a sounder understanding of the translation of interpersonal meanings, we should also consider the influences exerted by contextual parameters in the pragmatic dimension and the interacting relationship between language and context in the semiotic...