This paper reports the attempt to apply the functional approach to the translation teaching practice that guides students in their study of Chinese essays and their English translations. The famed modern Chinese essay...This paper reports the attempt to apply the functional approach to the translation teaching practice that guides students in their study of Chinese essays and their English translations. The famed modern Chinese essay Belying and its three English translations were taken for case study from the perspective of Experiential Function in Systemic Functional Linguistics. A process type analysis of Beiying and its English translations was conducted, including analysis of texts, sample processes, distributions of process types in Beiying and analyses of similarities and differences in the distributions. Results are as follows： 1） The similarities between English and Chinese texts lie in the experiential world, which makes translation possible. The process types in the essay text are directly related to genre, and the material process predominates among the process types in essay texts. 2） The differences are that the percentage of the material process in the ST is higher than that in the three English translations, and this shows the characteristics of verb-prominence in Chinese and nominalization in English. 3） Cultural differences in translation are the root-cause of linguistic differences. These results from the case of practicing the functional approach to the teaching of translation can help students gain understanding of English translations of Beiying and can provide some inspiration for the teaching of Chinese-English essay translation and the related studies.展开更多
文摘This paper reports the attempt to apply the functional approach to the translation teaching practice that guides students in their study of Chinese essays and their English translations. The famed modern Chinese essay Belying and its three English translations were taken for case study from the perspective of Experiential Function in Systemic Functional Linguistics. A process type analysis of Beiying and its English translations was conducted, including analysis of texts, sample processes, distributions of process types in Beiying and analyses of similarities and differences in the distributions. Results are as follows： 1） The similarities between English and Chinese texts lie in the experiential world, which makes translation possible. The process types in the essay text are directly related to genre, and the material process predominates among the process types in essay texts. 2） The differences are that the percentage of the material process in the ST is higher than that in the three English translations, and this shows the characteristics of verb-prominence in Chinese and nominalization in English. 3） Cultural differences in translation are the root-cause of linguistic differences. These results from the case of practicing the functional approach to the teaching of translation can help students gain understanding of English translations of Beiying and can provide some inspiration for the teaching of Chinese-English essay translation and the related studies.
