A Comparative Study Of English Translations Of Huangdi Neijing From The Perspective Of Ideational Metafunction

As an important literature for traditional Chinese medicine(TCM),Huangdi Neijing has made great contribution to the development of traditional Chinese medicine.Wang Bing,a medical scientist in Tang Dynasty,said that its style is concise,its ideas are vast,its principles are deep,and its goal is profound.The main function of Huangdi Neijing is to introduce theories of Traditional Chinese Medicine.And this function is mainly realized by ideational metafunction,which is represented mainly by transitivity system.This thesis,from the perspective of ideational metafunction,conducted analysis on the transitivity system in the source text and four target texts in both qualitative and quantitative manner.The source text employed in this thesis is 300 Classic Items in Huangdi Neijing(《<内经>名言三百句》)by Zhang Ke(章恪),and the four English versions are by Ilza Veith(version V),Maoshing Ni(version N),Paul U.Unschuld et al(version U),Li Zhaoguo(version L)respectively.Through the analysis of the transitivity system in source text and target texts,it is found that:(1)in source text,the total number of process is 635,in which material process and relational process occur more frequently than other types of process.In version L,the total number of process is 605,in N version,the total number of process is 681,in version U,the total number of process is 716,and in version V,the total number of process is 732.(2)In the process of translation,shifts of process which mainly occur between material and relational process,can be identified in all the four versions.In version L,148 shifts of process are identified,154 shifts in version N,148 shifts in version U,and 193 shifts in V version.Shifts in version U and version L are least,so their ways presenting transitivity systems are similar to that of the source text.The number of shifts in version N is approximate to those of version U and version L.But it’s reasonable to infer that more shifts could be identified in version N if there were no omission.In version V,due to the misinterpretation of source text,shifts occur most frequently among the four versions,which in general causes the deviation of ideational meaning.(3)Maintenance of the original process,contraction of process(except for omission)or amplification of participants,in general,does not cause deviation of ideational meaning,while shift into other process,in general,causes deviation of ideational meaning.(4)Furthermore,through the comparison of the transitivity system of the four English versions,this thesis finds that version N can convey the ideational meaning of the source text relatively well if not take omission of process into account.As for version L and version U,whose way of presenting transitivity system even though is similar to that of the source text in form,they are not as good as version N in terms of conveyance of ideational meaning.Deviation in version V occur more frequently than other versions.