A Comparative Study On Attitudinal Meaning Of Novels In English And Chinese Based On Appraisal Corpus

At the end of the 20th century,the Appraisal Theory,proposed and improved by J.R.Martin,was an expansion of the study of interpersonal meaning within Systemic Functional Linguistics,which was used to systematically and comprehensively study all the evaluative resources of discourse or speakers.The Appraisal System is divided into three sub-systems,namely Attitude,Engagement and Graduation.As the core of the whole system,the attitude system includes affect,judgment and appreciation.In recent years,this theory has been widely used in different types of discourse analysis such as media and education.However,the researches on Chinese and English appraisal resources and their translation regularities based on the theoretical framework of Appraisal System by taking literary works as samples of analysis are still at the infant stage.Translation serves as the bridge for cultural exchange,and is the most direct and effective way to learn from the excellent achievements of foreign culture.In the study of translation,Nida's Equivalence Theory,domesticating translation and foreignizing translation,and Yan Fu's criterion of "faithfulness,expressiveness and elegance" have become general principles.While the German Functionalist Theory has given a new perspective for the development of translation.More scholars have conducted practical translation studies on the basis of this theory,but few have conducted translation studies by the attitudinal meanings on the basis of Functionalist Theory.The linguistic and translation theories are combined in this thesis.By taking the attitude system of the Appraisal System as the analytical framework and the Functionalist Theory as the criterion,the present study searches the inscribed appraisal resources in The Old Man and the Sea by using the Chinese-English Parallel Corpus of Appraisal Meanings(CEPCAM)and then analyzes and compares the distribution of attitude categories in the novel's source text and target text by UAM Corpus Tool,and thus observes the congruency of the appraisal resources between the source text and the target text.At last,the transferable regularities among the attitude categories are summarized,and the differences and similarities in character depiction,the expression of themes,and the transmission of interpersonal meaning in the works are discussed so as to provide a linguistic perspective for English-Chinese translation.The major findings are as follows.Firstly,In 1,674 attitude resources in ST and 1,666 attitude resources in TT,the occurrence of capacity and tenacity accounts for the most compared with other attitudinal sub-categories.Appreciation is in the second place,and Affect is the least.Secondly,most realizations of attitudinal meanings in TT are generally congruent with those in ST.However,some target texts add or omit the attitudinal meanings to the source text or add the force of Graduation to modify the attitudinal resource,which does not influence the theme presenting and character depiction.Thirdly,there are transferable regularities among the attitude subcategories.Capacity can be transferred to Tenacity.Reaction can be transferred to Happiness.Valuation can be transferred to Unhappiness.Tenacity can be transferred to Inclination.The change of realization of attitudinal meanings does not affect the expected effect of the source text on the basis of Functionalist Theory.Lastly,reasons for the different realizations of attitudinal meanings in ST and TT are from three aspects,namely the value orientation of the translator,the acceptability of target readers and the differences between languages.Therefore,the present study makes a contribution to proving that it is practical and feasible to analyze literary works by applying the Appraisal System.Besides,the study verifies the importance of Appraisal System in the systematic analysis of the congruency of meanings between the source text and the target text.The analysis of the attitudinal meanings is helpful to appreciate the original text of literature and deepening the understanding of it,and provides a theoretical basis for adopting linguistic theory in the analysis of the theme of literary works,and appreciation and translation of literary works.Furthermore,the importance and feasibility of combining Appraisal Theory with translation studies is showed in this thesis.Introducing the perspective of evaluation to translation studies is an effective way for translators to improve the quality of translation according to different translation purposes and relevant principles.Therefore,the relevant conclusions of this study can provide valuable basis for the guidance of Appraisal Theory in translation practice.