A Study Of Translation Shifts In Political Speeches From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Appraisal Theory, as an extension of research on the interpersonal function within Systemic Functional Linguistics, focuses on the resources used by speakers/writers to share their feelings and evaluations and to negotiate relationships with their audiences/readers. It consists of three interconnected sub-systems:Attitude, Engagement and Graduation. To fully deliver the interpersonal meanings, Graduation, which is central to the appraisal system from the perspective of semantics, plays a significant role in the interaction with the other two systems.Since the start of the new century, audiovisual programs have developed rapidly, thus promoting the spreading of cultural products among the public. As a new mode of audiovisual translation, fansubbing is a new form of subtitling’by fans for fans’to encourage the broadcast of the foreign audiovisual programs on the Internet. It becomes popular in the recent ten years. This thesis tries to combine Appraisal Theory with translation studies to explore the realization of interpersonal meanings in political audiovisual programmes through an interdisciplinary approach.The analysis is a case study of two versions of the Chinese fansubbed subtitles of American President Barack H. Obama’s 2014 State of the Union address under the framework of Appraisal Theory. The aim is to find the translation variations of graded resources in fansubtitles and compare the effect of expression between the target texts and the source text in order to explore the potential reasons of the subtitlers’decision making.Major findings show that the 2014 State of the Union Address contains numerous graded resources and translation shifts in Graduation system do exist in the two Chinese fansubtitles. The omission and alteration of Graduation resources somehow up or down scales the delivery of the interpersonal meanings in the address which might be related to the nature of subtitling and the competence of fansubbers. These findings might provide insights for audiovisual translation studies and further fansubbing activities.