A Corpus-based Contrastive Register Analysis Of Native And Translated Abstracts In Linguistic Journals

This thesis is a corpus-based contrastive analysis of English native and translated abstracts in linguistic journals under the framework of the Register Theory. Register is defined as "language variation according to use"(Halliday&Hasan,1985:41), which links the language in use with the situational context in which language occurs. Systemic functional linguists contend that situational factors determine linguistic features. Thus the differences in situational factors can lead to the differences in linguistic features. Linguistic differences in translated and non-translated abstracts can be attributed to their different situational variables. Under the Register Theory, the current study is carried out in terms of the situational variables of Field, Tenor and Mode. Field refers to what is taking place and can be realized by the process type and voice. Tenor refers to the participants and their relationship and can be realized through the lexical-grammatical choices of modal verbs and personal pronouns. Mode refers to the role language takes in a particular exchange and can be reflected in conjunction and nominalization.In order to carry out empirical analyses, the author constructs the comparable corpora, namely translated abstract corpus (TAC) with around80,000tokens and non-translated abstract corpus (NAC) with around90.000tokens. Based on the empirical study, it is revealed that under the three situational variables, the two corpora present some differences as follows:With respect to Filed, for both translated and non-translated abstracts, the relational process is the most frequent one, followed by verbal process and mental process. The relational process occurs more in NAC than TAC, and verbal process in NAC is used more than that in TAC and the proportion of mental process in TAC is slightly higher than that in NAC. As for the voice choice, the native speakers tend to use much more passive voice than Chinese. All these linguistic features indicate that non-translated abstracts are more event/idea-oriented rather than action/actor-oriented than translated ones. In views stating, native researchers are more straightforward and bolder than Chinese. With reference to Tenor, Chinese scholars use less modal verbs in general especially less high value modals than native speakers. Besides, the first-person pronouns in NAC occur much more than TAC. These linguistic features demonstrate that non-translated abstracts enjoy greater interactivity than translated ones. As for Mode, Chinese scholars tend to use higher rate of conjunctions and more nominalizations, making translated abstracts more clearly organized and equipped with more compact information.Finally, possible reasons behind the linguistic differences are discussed and some abstract translation suggestions are put forward. Simply, in abstract translation, we Chinese researchers should try to get rid of the influence of the source text and also should try to get rid of the influence of Chinese thinking mode.