A Study Of C-E Translation Of Biography From The Perspective Of Register

With the deepening of China’s opening-up, Beijing Jiaotong University keeps pace with the times, attaches importance to the education of foreign students, and establishes the multi-disciplinary and multi-level international education system. As the first edition of the archive of Northern Jiaotong University (now Beijing Jiaotong University) published in June2001by China Railway Publishing House, Archive of Northern Jiaotong University (hereinafter referred to as Archive) epitomizes the connotation of campus culture and spiritual culture and plays a significant role in school’s foreign exchange.Characters in the Archive are mainly related to the history of the school and the expressions of school names, position titles and historical events, and also declarative and short sentences are mostly used to reflect the objectivity and historical significance of the Archive. By consulting with the relevant staff in the History Museum of the school, the author learns that there is still no English version of the Archive, and does the C-E translation practice of21characters’ biographies in chapter14of the Archive at the tutor’s proposal.Under the theoretical framework of Halliday’s Register theory, the author does deep research on the studied translation text from the three variants of register:field, tenor and mode. In respect of ideational meaning and translation equivalence, the equivalence of ideational meaning is realized by the equivalence of the words’ meanings and relational processes of transitivity system; in respect of interpersonal meaning and translation equivalence, the interpersonal meaning is realized by the analysis of mood system, modality system and appraisal system so as to make the translation accord with the source text; in respect of textual meaning and translation equivalence, the textual meaning is realized by the analysis of theme and rheme and cohesive devices so as to make the translation coherent and compact. It is hoped that this translation practice could promote the smooth practice of follow-up translation of the Archive and a thorough English translation of characters’ biographies could be formed to provide certain reference for the subsequent researchers.