On Translations Of Attitudinal Resources Of Dar Cy In Pride And Prejudice From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Literary translation is to reproduce the original artistic images in anotherlanguage.Appraisal Theory, developed by James R. Martin and P.R.R.White within theframework of Systemic Functional Linguistics in1990s is an extension ofinterpersonal function of language. It provides a model for researchers to evaluate theinterpersonal relationships the readers/writers construct. However it is found that inthe previous studies, Appraisal Theory is applied in the area of discourse analysis andtext analysis but is seldom used in the area of translation studies. So this thesis is anattempt to broaden the scope of application of Appraisal Theory and to enrich thetranslation theories by Appraisal Theory.Through the analysis of the attitudinal resources of Darcy in the original text ofPride and Prejudice and in the two Chinese versions (Wang Keyi’s version and LeiLimei’s version), the researcher of this thesis aims to explore：1) How do we understand the author’s creation of the character in the light ofattitudinal resources?2) How does the translator reproduce the character by attitudinal resources?3) In what way the appraisal theory can be seen as an efficient criterion to evaluatethe translation quality?This thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter1serves as an introduction. In chapter2an account of the previous study on Pride and Prejudice and some noteworthyresearch on Appraisal Theory is introduced and it is pointed out that Appraisal Theoryis seldom adopted to evaluate literary translations. Chapter3is the theoretical basis.Attitude including its three subcategories (affect, judgment, and appreciation) isdiscussed in detail. In chapter4the author of the novel, the background of the noveland the translators are introduced. Chapter5is the main part of the thesis. Based onAppraisal Theory, the attitudinal resources of Darcy in the original text and translatedversions are analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Chapter6is the conclusion. In the course of studying, the researcher adopts a quantitative method and aqualitative method to evaluate the resources of attitudes in the original text and in thetranslated versions.From a macro view, a quantitative analysis is conducted to see the attribution andpercentage of each kind of appraisals. By counting the number of each kind ofattitudinal resources (affect, judgment and appreciation) in each phase, and calculatingtheir percentages, the researcher tries to interpret Darcy’s different personalities theauthor depicts in different phases. And through comparing the translated versions withthe original, the researcher explores whether the translators reproduce Darcy in theirversions.Then from a micro view, a qualitative analysis is employed to evaluate thetranslation quality by analyzing the realizations and mis-and missing translations ofthe attitudinal resources. Through the qualitative study, it is found that the unfaithfultranslation of attitudinal resources misinterpret the character to a large degree.After analyzing the original text and the translated versions, the researcherconcludes that appraisal theory can be used as an efficient parameter to evaluatetranslation quality and it is hoped that this study can gives some enlightenment to thetranslation studies and can extend the scope of application of Appraisal theory.Of course, there are some limitations in the thesis, such as the subjectivity of theresearch, the limitation of resources, and the imperfect of Appraisal Theory. It issuggested that more literary translations should be collected and analyzed in a moresystematic and scientific way and the subjectivity should be avoided as much aspossible by adopting a more subjective research methodology.