Application Of Transitivity Metaphor To E-C Translation Of Scientific Sentences

As an important part in Halliday's ideational grammatical metaphor theory,the theory of transitivity metaphor is widely studied home and abroad. Under the theoretical framework of this theory, this thesis aims to analyze the application of transitivity metaphor in the E-C translation of scientific sentences from the perspective of process transference. With 200 pairs of English-Chinese sentences excerpted from 10 English for science and technology college textbooks, this thesis conducts a comparative study on these E-C examples embodying process transference of transitivity metaphor. By comparing the use frequency of transference of transitivity metaphor from source to target sentences, this study finds: firstly, among nine types of process transference,the transference between material and relational processes ranks the first in use frequency; secondly, transitivity processes like verbal, behavioral and mental are rarely used; thirdly, transferences from relational, existential and mental to material processes have higher use frequency than their reverse. On the basis of the study,this thesis proposes three applicable translation strategies, namely class-shifts, structure-shifts and rank-shifts. It is hoped that this study can shed some light on the learning and research of EST translation.