| Grammatical metaphor is an important concept in systemic functional linguistics. Halliday advanced the notion of grammatical metaphor in his introduction to functional grammar in 1985. He pointed out the grammatical metaphor consists of ideational metaphor and interpersonal metaphor, Interpersonal metaphor can be sub-categorized as two types: metaphor of mood and metaphor of modality. Interpersonal meaning is a concept which concerns the interpersonal relationship between speakers. It is not only concerned with the extent of intimacy or the level of familiarity between the speaker and the hearer but also related to the speaker’s attitude or judgment of the event. Though mood metaphors are frequently used to achieve special interpersonal meaning both in English and Chinese, the differences of linguistic devices in realizing mood metaphors are easily neglected and lead to unequivalence in interpersonal meaning during translation.Thunderstorm is one of the classical modern Chinese dramas. Eight main roles of distinct characteristics created by Cao Yu are in a sophisticated and subtle relationship, the establishment of which mostly depends on dialogues between each other.Within the framework of interpersonal metafunction of Systemic Functional Grammar, this paper endeavors to conduct a comparative analysis of mood metaphors in the original text of Thunderstorm and in its two translated versions. Moreover, in light of mood system and modality system, this paper concludes all the possible compensation strategies to bridge the gap of interpersonal meaning during translation. Specifically, in mood system, if similar metaphorical choice of mood in the two languages can reach the same goal of speech role, we can adopt the same clause pattern as the original text. Otherwise, congruent form or other metaphorical choices will be adopted. In modality system, modal meanings can be compensated through addition of modal operators or modal adjuncts, shift in polarity, and the use of metaphor of modality.The present study is conducted in the hope that it may have some enlightenment on achieving equivalence of interpersonal meaning in translating Chinese mood metaphors. |
