Re-translation Strategy For The Second World War From The Perspective Of Systemic Functional Linguistics

The Second World War,written by Winston Churchill,one of the most influential and reputable statesman,army officer and writer in the British history,is a bestseller in both the United Kingdom and the United States in the 20 th century,which not only endows itself with high historical value,but also helps its author win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.As a masterpiece of Mr.Churchill's work,The Second World War has also enjoyed a high reputation and popularity in China,which can be evidenced by its five Chinese versions.However,although translators of these five versions are different,none of them have much difference,and what's worse,inaccuracies and omissions can be found in almost every chapter.Therefore,based on the Systemic Functional Linguistics put forward by M.A.K Halliday,this thesis will apply both descriptive method and comparative method to conduct a practical analysis on the translated version of The Second World War published by Yi Lin Press from the perspective of Register Theory and Cultural Context Theory,aiming to explore the errors and deficiencies in this version and probe into the best strategy for retranslation practice.Additionally,the author also incorporates her own translation to investigate whether Register Theory and Cultural Context Theory can be effectively applied to retranslation practice.This research consists of five chapters.Chapter One presents a brief introduction to the research background and significance as well as the objective and methodology of this research.Besides,how the thesis is organized is also shown in this section.Chapter Two is the literature review,which mainly focuses on the relevant studies of retranslation in China at home and abroad.Chapter Three constitutes the theoretical basis of this research,which mainly discusses Halliday's Register Theory and Malinowski's Cultural Context Theory.A brief description of the Three Metafunctions is also included.Chapter Four carries out a practical analysis of twenty-one examples directly extracted from the translations of The Second World War published by Yi Lin Press.The research is conducted under the guidance of Register Theory in order to explore the best approaches for retranslation practice and presents the author's own translation.Chapter Five is the final conclusion.Based on the analysis,the tentative findings of this study can be concluded as follows:(1)a great many inaccuracies and deficiencies can be found in the translated version of The Second World War published by Yi Lin Press;(2)a satisfactory translation should maintain field,tenor and mode equivalence to the target text;(3)Register Theory can be regarded as a powerful tool to guide the retranslation practice of The Second World War,which can not only ensure faithfulness but also avoid information loss in the target text.