Exploring Chinese-English Translation From The Perspective Of Functional Discourse Analysis

Translation studies as a burgeoning discipline needs to draw on findings and theories from various related disciplines in order to enrich its own theoretical and methodological explorations. However, there is no consensus as to which disciplines it can naturally and fruitfully be related to. Linguistics is a discipline which studies language both in its own right and as a tool for generating meanings. Therefore it has a great deal to offer to translation studies, especially when translation is regarded not as a sterile and static literal exercise but as an act of communication. This is particularly true of Functional Discourse Analysis, a sub-discipline of modem linguistics, which probes into a text as a communicative event rather than mere strings of words.This thesis attempts to establish links between these two disciplines and explore areas of common interest. Approaching Chinese-English (C-E) translation from the perspective of Functional Discourse Analysis, this author attempts to analyze contrastive features of English and Chinese and offer suggestions as to what strategic adjustments translators should make to ensure high quality in C-E translation.This thesis is composed of five chapters plus an introduction and a conclusion. Chapter One presents a review of related concepts and researches in order to formulate a theoretical framework for this study. The following four chapters follow a largely hierarchical order - from the macro down to the micro level as well as from context to lexico-grammar. Chapter Two focuses on "context of culture" and discusses ways in which genre lays constraints on translation. Chapter Three, with a focus on the concept of "context of situation," attempts to answer questions as to in what aspects and to what extent translation is influenced by register variables, i.e. field, tenor and mode. Chapter Four is directed towards metafunctions of language - ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function, elaborating on how these metafunctions work as parameters for assessing C-E translation. Chapter Five consists of detailed discussions of such systems as transitivity, voice, mood, modality, appraisal, theme-rheme and cohesion, and they are presented with a view to establishing the relevance of these systems to C-E translation.