An Analysis Of English Political Speeches And Their Chinese Versions From The Perspective Of Experiential Function

With the development of the economic globalization and economic integration, the communication between countries and international organizations become more and more frequent and the ways of communication have been created, one of which is political speech. As an important political speech, the inaugural speech has been widespread concerned. Many experts and scholars use different theories on the research of political speech from different views and have achieved fruitful results. The functional linguistics theory to the analysis of English political speeches and its Chinese translation is a new way, which promotes the diversity of political speech analysis method and is beneficial to people's deep understanding to political speech language. The translation of English political speeches will achieve a new understanding.This thesis bases on the theory of Halliday's systemic function. It selects the inaugural speech of U.S. President Barack Obama, Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill and Cameron to be the corpus and analyzes them from the perspective of transitivity and voice. By analyzing these speeches, it can be found that the proportion of Material Process and Psychological Process sentences is about 60%. The proportion of Relation Process sentences is about 25%. The proportion of Existing Process and Verbal Process sentences is about 15%. The proportion of Behavior Process is 0%. By comparing the original text and its translation version, it can be found that after translation Material Process sentences have not changed. This is mainly because that Material Process sentences can express the facts and events and the action verbs express the behavior and have the objectivity. So the translation should also use such material process verbs to express the same meaning. Psychological Process sentences are the same as Material Process sentences. Psychological Process sentences can express the opinions and ideas of the speaker. So the translation should also use such Psychological Process sentences verbs to express the same meaning. Almost half of the Relation process sentences have been transformed into Material Process sentences. This is Relationship Relationship sentences express the characteristics and properties of the things. The verbs of Recognition Process sentences are the verbs of Identifying Recognition Process sentences when translated into Chinese of the four word phrases. It also conforms to the characteristics of the seriousness of political speech language Relation Process sentences can express the nature and character of the object. Most of the Relation process sentences are Identifying Relation process sentences. So the main verb be should translated to the relevant process. Existing process express the state of things and the surrounding environment, etc. Verbal Process sentences express the source of the words the speaker cited, mainly including direct reference and indirect reference. Behavior Process sentences express physical activity between material and mental process. The political speech lays emphasis on the formal speech. So the translation of the English political speech should observe the rules of transitivity. Among four inaugural speeches, the proportion of active voice is 70% and the proportion of passive voice is 30%. This suggests that the speaker pays more attention to expressing their views and opinions. After translated, some passive voice sentences are changed into active voice sentences. The sentence order has changed, the original subject is changed into object, because Chinese tend to use more active voice sentences. So English political speech in the translation process need to change appropriately the passive sentences into active voice. That can make expression more smooth and sentence cohesion is more appropriate.