The Metafunctional Analysis Of The English Versions Of Poetry In Hong Lou Meng

Hong Lou Meng, as a representative of the splendid Chinese culture, is one of the most outstanding works in Chinese classic literature. One of the techniques applied in the Chinese classic novels is to insert the verses between the lines in an attempt to make a connecting link between the preceding and the following. Thus Cao Xueqin uses such a technique in Hong Lou Meng as well, in which there are over one hundred poems or verses illustrating the spirit and the personal features of the characters. Moreover, these verses foreshadow the fate or destiny of the figures in the Grand View Garden, which achieves the harmony with the mythos of the works. Hong Lou Meng, the immaculate pearl in the world literature, is always being taken pride of by our nations. Furthermore, the verses in Hong Lou Meng are made the illuminating point in the great works. Enriched with a prosperous vitality, these verses are peculiar in our classic novels, which makes the works different from other novels. Cao Xueqin creates an elaborate style of writing, in which the attitude to life or the temperament, owned by the poets or the poetesses brings out the best in each other with the trait of the praised objects. The individuation contained in the verses causes their outstanding charm distinctively distinguished from those common poetry. Up till now there are many research papers on the translation of Hong Lou Meng, nevertheless, the study on its poetry interpretation is always the hot point in the research field of translated Hong Lou Meng. And one of the most popularly applied works is the analysis skeleton proposed by Xu Yuanchong, who has list a theoretical outline of three beauties—in sound, form and sense in the process of study on the poetry translation of Hong Lou Meng. However, in allusion to the less proportion of the application of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) on the classic poems, this paper makes an attempt to analyze the English versions translated by three well-known interpreters—the couple of Yang Xianyi and David Hawkes, from the perspective of metafunction theory of SFL. By following the introduction of the theoretical claims of SFL, this paper will carry out the analysis from three aspects, i.e. the ideational function, the interpersonal function and the textual function, in order to help the researchers rehandle the problems occurring in the process of translation, especially for the poetry translations. Moreover, the practicality and the operability of SFL applied in the study of poetry translation can be checked out by means of such an analysis.