A Functional Approach To The Translation Of Appraisal Verbs

In the field of theoretical research of translation, a convincing conclusion has not yet been reached over what should be given priority in translation, culture or texts. An increasing number of translation theorists and linguists suggest that focus be given to conduct more translation empirical research. The appraisal theory, which was first introduced by Martin in the early 1990s,is an extension of interpersonal meaning in Systemic Functional Linguistics. It consists of three main systems: Attitude, Graduation and Engagement. This theory has been applied in the analysis of many texts of different genres and types. This thesis attempts to apply the Appraisal theory in verbs'translation, a new domain which was rarely discussed or studied by my predecessors. By comparing and analyzing two different translation versions of Lu Xun's fiction, this thesis aims at categorizing the verbs with appraisal meaning and exploring the question as to how to translate them properly.The thesis consists of seven chapters. Chapter one is an introduction to the general background, the key concepts'definition and the research questions involved in the thesis. Chapter two is dedicated to reviewing the previous studies and researches on using SFL into the translation fields, the development of the Appraisal theory and the previous studies about Lu Xun's fiction. The following three chapters are the central parts of this study which introduce the theoretical framework of the three main sub-systems of the Appraisal theory– Attitude, Engagement and Graduation and analyze the verb's translation within each system. Chapter six discusses how to classify and translate the Appraisal verbs. The last chapter summarizes the major findings and limitations of the present study, and provides some suggestions for further scholarly study.