Dynamicity & Stativeness In Pippa’s Song And Its Four Chinese Translated Versions Compared From Transitivity Perspective

The applications of Systemic Functional Grammar (hereafter SFG) to literary analysis and translation field are not rare; starting from Halliday himself when he used SFG in the analyzing of William Golding’s The Inheritor which caused many responses. Chinese systemic-functionalist, Huang Guowen applies three meta-functions to the interpretation of English translation of Ancient Chinese poems, proving the scientificity and feasibility of SFG on discourse analysis. However, the analysis on the artistic conception of English poems and the adapted translated Chinese versions in this aspect by using this theory remains to be further explored.Against this background, the author tries to analyze Robert Browning’s Pippa’s Song in terms of dynamicity & stativeness within the framework of transitivity system, and then, goes on to compare its four Chinese translations, attempting to reveal the similarities and differences on the dynamicity and stativeness of the English poem and its Chinese versions and therefore to provide a relatively new method for the appreciation and criticism of English poetry translation. In addition, the author probes into the underlying causes for such discrepancy. The paper is intended to prove that transitivity analysis is a reliable approach to appreciate artistic conception of poems. Pippa’s Song demonstrates the peaceful mind of Pippa through the description of the harmonious and tranquil coexistence of all things in the world, even though the life is hard on the singer, Pippa. The utilization of relational process helps to understand the static beauty in the original poem. Although the four translated Chinese versions resemble the original poem to different extent in terms of process patterns, participants and circumstantial elements, some lines are quite changed not only in transitivity, but also in meaning. The version that accords most with the original poem conveys most of the original artistic conception. Causes for the similarities and dissimilarities are also discussed and concluded as follows. On the one hand, due to high similarity of language structure and universality of transitivity in all languages, part of the three elements (process, participant and circumstance) in translation is able to remain the same as the original. On the other hand, structurally divergences between English and Chinese grammar results in the preference of noun phrases, gerundial phrases, and infinitives etc. in English and notional phrases in Chinese. What’s more, westerners’ objective thinking mode prefers results of action as the focus of expression while Chinese subjective thinking favors the doer of action or action itself. Such divergence inevitably causes difference of dynamicity and stativeness between the original poem and the translations. In spite of all these, translators should try their best to avoid structure dissimilarities so as to pass on the artistic conception of the original poem.