| The translation between English and Chinese involves two languages different both in form and in expression, each language e.'~pressing grammatical meanings by special and distinctive means. But similarly, both languages achieve this through the use of function words. Function words, also termed structural words or form words in English, are called xu ci (empty words) in Chinese. In English, however, there is still another term for function words --particles, different from function words in :oncept, but similar in function. Traditionally, the term 'particles' is used in the sense of uninflected words', which embrace a highly heterogeneous category, both functionally and distributionally. It includes not only the traditional conjunctions, prepositions, interjections, and adverbs, but also the relative pronouns/adverbs that are absent in Chinese. Particles play an indispensable role in linking different linguistic units into larger units in English - it is through the use of particles that English expresses complicated thoughts and ideas. On account of the limitation of space, this paper concentrates on particles that possess a connective force in discourse so that the focus of discussion may not be divided. These discourse particles include conjunctions, connective adverbs, relative pronouns/adverbs, and some prepo_itions.This paper begins by questioning what makes the discourse particles become translation problems. It is regarded as the main reason that, apart from the differences between the English language and the Chinese language. the meanings of discourse particles are too general to be of much help in translation. To seek a solution to the translation of discourse particles into Chinese, this paper carries out a systemic survey on them with the help of linguistic theory.Then it tries to sort out in some detail relevant linguistic schools dealing with discourse particles. They are Quirk's traditional grammar, Halliday's systemic-functional grammar, and the pragmatic school that systematically studies the discourse particles. Among the three, Quirk focused on the syntactic properties of discourse particles while the pragmatic approach paid too much attention to their pragmatic properties. As a result, this paper mainly applies Halliday's linguistic theory to the discussion of discourse particles. According to Halliday, language has three metafunctions -- ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function -- which are reflected in clauses or in larger units such as clause complex, paragraph or text. In many cases, discourse particles play an active role in linking clauses into clause complex and connecting semantically related clauses or clause complexes into paragraph or text. But the language in use is not such grammatical units as 'clause' or 'clause complex', but semantic units such as 'text' or 'discourse~ that expresses a relatively complete idea. Discourse particles have a cohesive function in discourse and help achieve coherence. They are a resource of texture of a text.With Halliday's functional grammar as a guiding principle, four translating strategies for the translation of English discourse particles are proposed in this paper, based on the relevantVlinguistic features found in the Chinese language and the English language:(1)To translate discourse particles in terms of parataxis and hypotaxis. English is a hypotactic language that relies heavily on various particles to express meanings and link sentences into a text whereas Chinese is a paratactic language that depends more on its underlying semantic relations in language connection. The distinctive characteristics of the two languages are closely related to the respective cultures, which are decisive. Accordingly, discourse particles should be translated according to the idiomatic expression of the target language.(2)To translate discourse particles in terms of the ideational function of language. The ideational function of language has two aspects: experiential and logical. The experiential aspect is t...
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