Comparative Analysis Of Six English Versions Of Xue Er From The Appraisal Perspective

The Analects of Confucius is the classics of Confucian school. The article records thewords and deeds of Confucius and his students which embodies the political proposal, logicthough, moral ideas and educational principles. As for the researches on the The Analects ofConfucius, it is rarely found from the perspective of Appraisal Theory especial thecomparison of six English versions. Hence, the thesis aims to comparatively analyse therealization of appraisal resources of the six English versions of Xue Er.Appraisal Theory consists of Attitude, Engagement and Graduation. Attitude concludesthree subsystems: Affect, Judgement and Appreciation. Engagement contains monogloss andheterogloss. Graduation compromises Force and Focus. With the analysis of Appraisalresources in the discourse, we can find the realization of emotion of the speaker/writer. Inrecent years, more and more scholars study the discourse from Appraisal perspective. While,most of them are concerned with News Media, Advertisement, Speech and so on. Hence, fewof them focus on the Ancient works and their translation.The theme trys to answer thefollowing questions:1) the distribution of Appraisal resources in the source text and targettext;2) the realization of appraisal resources in the target text;3) possible reasons behind thedifference;4) with regard to interpersonal equivalence, which one is the best version.After the observation, the author can draw the conclusion that:1) Attitude resourcesaccount for the majority in the source text. Next is Engagement. Moreover, Judgementresources have the highest frequencies among the sub-systems of Attitude system. Confuciusand his students intend to construct the positive ideology.2) For the realization of Appraisalmeaning in the target language, for the realization of Attitude system, the best is Pan&Wen’sversion, the next is Song, Legge, Waley, Liu and Gu from the top to bottom. For therealization of Engagement system, the best version is Song and Pan&Wen. The next is Legge,Gu, Waley and Liu. For the realization of Graduation system, Song and Pan&Wen’s versions are the best, the next is Liu, Waley, Legge and Gu.3) the author discusses the possible reasonsfor the differences from translator, source text and language&culture.4) with regard to allfactors, the best is Pan&Wen’s version. Song’s version ranks second. The next is Legge,Waley, Liu and Gu.The significance of the thesis lies in the next two aspects: first, the thesis describe andillustrates the translation within the theoretical framework of Appraisal Theory and Zhang’sfour assessing criteria. Meanwhile, the author assesses the quality of six English versions.Second, exploring the equivalence in translation and quality of translation from Appraisalperspective, the thesis widens the scope of application of Appraisal Theory and the researchon translation.