A Contrastive Analysis Of Xi Jinping’s Figurative Expressions Between Chinese And English Translation From The Perspective Of Transitivity

Liu Xie,a literary theorist in the Southern Dynasty of China,once said: “one person’s debate can win the treasure of nine tripods;and the tongue of three inches is stronger than a million bold warriors.” It demonstrates the importance of speeches in the ancient.Similarly,since the 18 th National Congress of Communist Party of China,Xi Jinping’s speeches on various occasions have greatly enhanced China’s image and demonstrated culture.His language is plain,humorous,simple,yet profound and comprehensive.In recent years,the studies on Xi’s speeches have been countless,which are mainly done from the perspectives of Rhetorics,Critical Discourse Analysis,Cognitive Linguistics,Pragmatics and Systemic Functional Linguistics theory.When it comes to SFL,Transitivity system,as a significant element of SFL,plays an important role in discourse analysis,but there are few studies done from Transitivity.Thus,it is necessary to analyze Xi Jinping’s figurative expressions between Chinese and English translation from the perspective of Transitivity.The data studied in the present research were collected mainly by observation.What is more,the research adopts qualitative and quantitative methods to make a comparative analysis between Chinese and English translation in accordance with Transitivity System.Referring to the central part,the process of the research is as follows: firstly,it begins with recognizing transitivity processes existed in the data,and demonstrating the proportion of transitivity processes between Chinese and English translation.Secondly,it continues with summarizing similarities and differences between the two languages.And finally,it concludes their reasons.Based on the analysis of transitivity processes on Xi jinping’s figurative expressions between Chinese and English translation,the research summaries the similarities in the following aspects: firstly,material processes,relational processes,mental processes,verbal processes and behavioral processes are used between Chineseand English translation;secondly,material processes,as well as relational processes are more frequent,and the proportion of material processes is the highest between Chinese and English translation;thirdly,each process shares the same function between Chinese and English.Furthermore,the study concludes some differences in the following points.Firstly,there are five processes in Chinese while there are six processes in English.Next,relational processes account for a higher percentage in Chinese.Unlike relational processes,the percentage of mental processes,verbal processes and existential processes in Chinese is lower.Thirdly,the conversion of transitivity processes exits in the two languages.Considering the differences mentioned above,the following explanations are given.Firstly,Chinese has the feature of subjective thinking while English tends to think objectively.Secondly,English is regarded as a static language while Chinese is seen as a dynamic language.Thirdly,it refers to the unequivalence of languages,which produces the differences between Chinese and English translation.