Readings in Systemic Functional Translation Studies
Considerations of Metafunctions
Edited by
Bo Wang [+–]
Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Macau
Bo Wang received his doctoral degree from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His research interests include systemic functional linguistics, translation studies, discourse analysis, and language description. He is co-author of Lao She’s Teahouse and Its Two English Translations (Routledge), Translating Tagore’s Stray Birds into Chinese (Routledge) and Systemic Functional Insights on Language and Linguistics (Springer). He is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Macau, China.
Yuanyi Ma [+–]
Yuanyi Ma received her doctoral degree from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research interests include systemic functional linguistics, translation studies, discourse analysis, and language description. She is co-author of Lao She’s Teahouse and Its Two English Translations (Routledge), Translating Tagore’s Stray Birds into Chinese (Routledge) and Systemic Functional Insights on Language and Linguistics (Springer). She is an independent researcher in China.
Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen [+–]
University of International Business and Economics (UIBE), Beijing
Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen is a Swedish-born linguist and a leading figure in the systemic functional linguistics (SFL) school, having authored or co-authored more than 160 books, refereed journal articles, and papers in refereed conference proceedings, with contributions to three television programs. He is currently Distinguished Professor in the Department of Linguistics at University of International Business and Economics,
Beijing, Distinguished Professor of Linguistics, in the School of Foreign Languages, Hunan University, Guest Professor at Beijing Science and Technology University, and Honorary Professor at the Australian National University. Before this, he was Chair Professor, Department of English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Professor in the Linguistics Department of Macquarie University. Professor Matthiessen has worked in areas as diverse as language typology, linguistics and computing, grammatical descriptions of various languages, grammar and discourse, healthcare communication studies, functional grammar for English-language teachers, text analysis and translation, multisemiotic studies, and the evolution of language. He has supervised over 40 research students.
Beijing, Distinguished Professor of Linguistics, in the School of Foreign Languages, Hunan University, Guest Professor at Beijing Science and Technology University, and Honorary Professor at the Australian National University. Before this, he was Chair Professor, Department of English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Professor in the Linguistics Department of Macquarie University. Professor Matthiessen has worked in areas as diverse as language typology, linguistics and computing, grammatical descriptions of various languages, grammar and discourse, healthcare communication studies, functional grammar for English-language teachers, text analysis and translation, multisemiotic studies, and the evolution of language. He has supervised over 40 research students.
This book is a collection of studies on translation that focus on metafunction – one of the most important organizing principles in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Chapter 1 examines translation equivalence and translation shift in relation to the four metafunctional modes of meaning, interprets the trade-offs in choices made in translation and summarizes the different types of metafunctional translation shifts. Chapter 2 identifies the priority of translation equivalence in terms of the different modes of meaning based on the analysis of Confucius’s The Analects and its translations. Chapters 3-9 focus on the metafunctions, which include the textual metafunction (Chapters 3 and 4), the interpersonal metafunction (Chapter 5 and 6), the experiential metafunction (Chapters 7 and 8) and the logical metafunction (Chapter 4 and 9). Different systems are involved in the analysis from Chapters 3-9, including THEME (Chapters 3 and 4), MOOD (Chapter 5), APPRAISAL (Chapter 6), TRANSITIVITY (Chapters 7 and 8) as well as TAXIS and LOGICO-SEMANTIC TYPE (Chapters 4 and 9).
