A Comparative Study Of Three English Versions Of The Analects From The Perspective Of Funcational Grammar

Halliday's Functional Grammar has been growing mature through continuous amendments and development. Among the ever increasing contents of research, the trend is application of Functional Grammar in discourse analysis. Based on the theory of metafunction, which includes ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function, its capability of valuing language is on the increase. According to this theory, a text is a composite entity of three metafunctions. Therefore, an ideal translation is expected to realize equivalence in all the three metafunctions of the source text. However, this is often not possible due to differences between the source text and the target text. In recent years, several scholars have attempted to apply Functional Grammar in the translation of Chinese classics, and considerable achievements have been made.This dissertation makes a comparative analysis of metafunctions between The Analects and its three English versions, with Functional Grammar as the tool, going from the perspective of the three metafunctions of language, in order to survey the reflection of these functions in the translated text. After the description and application of the systems below these metafunctions, this dissertation proposes the consistence between Chinese and English language in terms of ideational and interpersonal functions, and the divergence in terms of textual function. The purpose is to justify the feasibility and scientificalness of Functional Grammar in Chinese-English translation studies.