Equivalence Of Interpersonal Meaning In Judicial Text Translation-from The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

The trend of globalization brings with it more and more communication among different nations. In the communication, legal translation, especially translation in judicial field, plays an increasingly important role.Interpersonal meaning is about one's role relationship with other people and his/her attitude towards others. Since the 1990s, the Systemic Functional Linguists led by Martin have developed the Appraisal framework as an extension of the SFG. It provides researchers a model of analyzing interpersonal meaning, exploring the way language is used to make evaluation, to adopt stances, and construct interpersonal relationships.According to Halliday (2001), translation equivalence should be defined in respect of the metafunctions--ideational, interpersonal and textual. This thesis attempts to apply it into a new domain that it has never set foot in-judicial text. Through analyzing the Appraisal resources in 10 English judicial texts and a comparison between an English Indictment and its five Chinese versions, the author hopes to find the dominant Appraisal patterns in judicial text, and how Appraisal Theory can be applied in translation study.Through the study it is found that Appraisal resources are widely employed in constructing the interpersonal meaning in judicial text. There are certain features of the Appraisal patterns. That is, judicial text writers have an obvious preference to inclination, valuation and social sanction in Attitude system and acknowledge, deny and pronounce in Engagement system. This feature is determined by the special tenor of judicial text.It is proved that Appraisal theory can also to be applied to the assessment of translation, examining that whether the interpersonal meaning in the TT is equivalent to that of the ST.