The Application Of Register Analysis In Translation Quality Assessment

Although the cultural turn trend in translation studies in the1990s in China has encouraged morepeople to center on the translation phenomenon beyond language itself, the role of linguistic approacheshas not been replaced. Actually, through perpetual efforts, scholars of linguistic approaches have enhancedlinguistics-oriented translation theories into a new stage in which the function and the social influence oftarget text, rather than the ways of translation, have gained more attention.The rising status of China in the world makes C-E translation, especial classical works translation, thekey and hot topic in the public. Although we have made a great progress both in practice and theory, thereis still a harsh problem we are facing now, that is, the lack of translation quality assessment (TQA) modelsand detailed approaches. An objective translation quality assessment (TQA) model without any doubt has apositive effect on the translator's behavior, version's quality and establishment of bilingual transformationmechanism.Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) proposed by M.A.K. Halliday is one of the most influentiallinguistic theories. Register analysis, an essential part of SFL, is composed of three variables, that is, field,mode and tenor. According to SFL, register forms the interface between the social system and the linguisticsystem; its elements realizes social meanings and are realized in linguistic forms. In the process oftranslating, translators by and large confront problems not only at the linguistic level but also cultural level.As a powerful tool, register theory is practical and necessary to be introduced into translation studies. Thisthesis tries to explore literary translation from the perspective of SFL and evaluate the English version ofBeiying respectively from the field, mode and tenor at both macro and micro levels. In order to be moreobjective, the corpus-based approach is adopted in this thesis. Based on findings, it is safe to say thatregister analysis to some degree makes a valuable contribution to translation quality assessment (TQA).