An Analysis Of The Retranslation Of The Second World War From The Perspective Of Register Theory

Winston Churchill is one of the most important leaders in the 20 th century.Under his leadership,the Great Britain won the Second World War.Besides this,Churchill was also an excellent writer.He won the Nobel Prize in 1953.He wrote The Second World War,which played an important role in recording the second world war for the next generation.Meanwhile,The Second World War is also a great literary book.Churchill spent six years finishing the 3,600,000 words,including a lot of letters,official documents,telegraphic correspondence,etc.All of these provide important historic information.Hence translating these books is a great challenge for anyone.There are nearly two to three translation versions of the Second World War.But these versions are similar with slight alterations.And they are published by Yilin Press Company and the South Press Company.This paper chooses the translation of Yilin Press in 2012 as the data.Yilin Press is one of the most influential Press companies in China.After reading this version of translation,I found that there are some problems in it.Register theory was developed by Halliday and other linguists.They developed this theory with the combination of context,culture elements,etc.Register theory includes field,tenor and mode.Field is about the content of text.It should be the priority of a translator.Tenor is related to personal relationships while mode is about the way of expressions.In translation,the most important thing is to respect the content of the original text.The content can't be omitted or distorted.Then the translator should pay attention to participants or the interpersonal relationship.Lastly,the way of expressing things should also be attached great importance.This paper is divided into five chapters.The first chapter is the introduction,which is mainly about research background,research significance,objectives and methods.The second chapter is literature review,which mainly discusses retranslation.It introduces definitions and characteristics of retranslation and the reasons of retranslation.The third chapter is the theoretical framework.It discusses register theory,namely field,tenor and mode.And field equivalence,tenor equivalence and mode equivalence are also introduced.Part of three metafunctions will be included.The fourth chapter is the practical analysis.In this chapter,typical examples from the translation of Yilin Press are abstracted.Register theory will be used to analyze these cases.At the same time,my retranslation version will also be provided.And the two versions will be compared from the perspectives of field,tenor and mode.The last chapter is conclusion.This part will give a summary of the paper,including major findings and limitations for the future researches.