A Study On The Translation Of The Border Town From The Perspective Of Register

The equivalence of translation and its criteria have always been two controversial and pendent issues. This thesis believes in what House(2015: 23) says, “equivalence is the fundamental criterion of translation quality” and the translation should be equivalent with the original work in context of situation according to Halliday's view of contextual equivalence which is of most highly value in translation equivalence(Halliday, 2001:17). The language variables related to context of situation is register.(Halliday, 1978: 64) Therefore, the translation should get equivalence with the original text in register. This thesis is to expound that register analysis is a feasible way to verify the equivalence between the translated text and the original text and it is an effective tool for evaluation of translation quality.This thesis takes the translation of The Border Town by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang for case study. The Border Town, Shen Congwen's masterpiece, is a native Chinese novella of strong native characteristics and local flavor. Based upon this, the English version by the Yangs is chosen here because the most important characteristic of it is the faithfulness to the original work's meaning and native thought whose reproduction in translation can be explored through equivalence in register between ST and TT. The analysis of the source text and the target text of The Border Town is carried out through the three register variables field, tenor and mode concentrating on the following three questions:1.How does the field of register reproduce that of the original work in the translation of The Border Town?2. How does the tenor of register reproduce that of the original work in the translation of The Border Town?3. How does the mode of register reproduce that of the original work in the translation of The Border Town?To tackle the three questions, the analysis about the three variables is accomplished through the macroscopic and the microcosmic way at the same time. By the macroscopic way, the three register variables field, tenor and mode are analyzed separately under House's categories according to the realization of the three variables field, tenor and mode in ideational meaning, interpersonal meaning and textual meaning, and by the microcosmic way, the analysis of the three variables is specifiedinto the analysis of words and sentences in the original text and the translated text.Through the analysis and comparison in terms of register equivalence, the translated version can be evaluated. On field: the translation mainly achieves to reproduce the field of the original work; but there exist some cases of non-equivalence. The change or loss of the field of the original work causes the change or loss of the ideational meaning or interpersonal meaning. On tenor: all the categories under the tenor of the original work are reproduced in the translation except that the original temporally marked language and some geographical dialect words or expressions do not get reproduced, which contributes to the erosion or loss of the interpersonal meaning in the original work. On mode, the medium and participation under the mode of the original work are successfully reproduced in the translation. On the whole, the field,tenor and mode of the original work are reproduced in the translation. The existing cases of non-equivalence are essentially resulted from the different language systems of Chinese and English. Thus, this study demonstrates that even the most influential version of The Border Town cannot be completely equivalent with the original work from the perspective of register. The equivalence between Source Text and Target Text is in a relative sense.The combination of register and the translation of The Border Town provides a new light for the study of Chinese local novel and broadens the application field of register theory which is proved in this thesis to be an effective tool for translation study and practice.