A Contrastive Analysis Of Two English Versions Of Yi Jian Xiao Shi From The Perspective Of Metafunctions

The Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) developed by M.A.K. Halliday, has been widely applied to the translation studies by many scholars home and abroad. In the view of SFL, language is considered as one of the social systems and the functions of language can be categorized into three metafunctions:the ideational function, the interpersonal function and the textual function. According to functional grammar, meaning can be thoroughly decoded by functional analysis and this provides an ideal method for understanding the source text as well as for making a comparison between the original and the target, which is helpful in producing a good translation as well as in objectively assessing the translation.In this thesis, the two English versions of Yi Jian Xiao Shi are studied within the framework of SFL. They are compared from the perspectives of three metafunctions respectively. With the theoretical introduction and the illustration of examples, this thesis is expected to provide a keen insight into the translation practice, and more importantly, to further test the applicability of this SFL approach to the translation criticism and translation practice.