Translation Quality Assessment Of To Live From The Perspective Of Meta-functions Of Language

The original novel Huo Zhe written by Yu Hua is one of the ten most influentialbooks of1990s and is awarded the highest literature award of Italy–Premio GrinzaneCavour. Since the novel is so well received abroad, it is our responsibility to makesure that the translation To Live is good enough to present a vivid story and portray theunique features of the characters in the novel. Therefore, the thesis applies the theoryof three meta-functions of language to evaluate the translation quality of To Live so asto provide a comprehensive translation quality assessment.The three meta-functions of language is the core concept of systemic functionallinguistics, including experiential function, interpersonal function and textual function.Corresponding to each meta-function, there are three lexical-grammatical systems.The subsystem of transitivity is the main representation of the experiential function.The subsystem of mood and modality plays special roles in carrying out theinterpersonal functions of language. And the subsystem of theme and rheme is themanifestation of the textual function. These three meta-functions are all usefultranslation quality standards to evaluate whether the original meaning has been fullyreproduced.The thesis applies the theory to TQA and the analysis procedures are as follows:first of all, the thesis introduces the three meta-functions of the original novel HuoZhe in general so as to lay out the foundation for further studies. Then, the translationis compared with the original novel, focusing on the mismatches in terms of thecorresponding lexical-grammatical systems. The thesis states the reason whymismatches occur and the influence they exert to the reproduction of the threemeta-functions and the translation quality by taking into consideration thecharacteristics of the target language and social and cultural factors. After the analysis,the thesis finds out that there exist many mismatches in terms of three meta-functions, namely, three meanings, most of which have exerted adverse influence on thetranslation quality so the thesis concludes that the translation quality is moderate andneeds to be improved. Though the thesis is finished, there are still many limitationsand difficulties that need to be solved in potential follow-up studies in the future.It should be emphasized that because of the nature of written language, themeta-functions are set out step by step. Actually, each clause plays the threemeta-functions at the same time. As a result, when focusing on analyzing themismatches of one function through typical examples, it is inevitable to involve otherfunctions.