On Translating Transferred Epithet From The Perspective Of Transitivity Theory

Translating figures of speech has been frequently talked about in translation studies.Among all figures of speech,transferred epithet with the incongruency between its syntactic structure and semantic structure,has been given a great deal of attention to.It is conventionally viewed as a result of modifier transfer——a shift of modifier from animate to inanimate,which leads to confusion in distinguishing transferred epithet from personification,metaphor and metonymy.The thesis bases its study on how semantic and syntactic structures interact to get the four figures of speech working from the perspective of transitivity.It redefines transferred epithet as a figure of speech,explains its generation mechanism and elucidates the process of its decoding and recoding.The thesis offers a theoretical ground for translators to identify transferred epithet and choose appropriate translation methods.Modifier transfer is one of the most important features of transferred epithet.Since modifier-head construction personification,metaphor and metonymy are all constructed by “transferred modifier + head” in syntactic structure,this similarity easily blurs the line between these figures of speech.It is found in the thesis that transferred epithet is modifierhead construction in syntactic level,but a transitivity study on the syntactic relation reveals its semantic structure: process-circumstance.The semantic structure is the basis for understanding and identifying transferred epithet.Apart from the emphasis on generation mechanism and distinction of transferred epithet,the thesis also explores the translation methods for this figure of speech.Transitivity theory helps to explain the decoding and recoding of transferred epithet from semantic representation and it reveals the importance of semantic equivalence.Many English transferred epithet sentences are selected as research material in the thesis on the basis of semantic representation,two translation methods: “direct translation” and “compensation translation” are put forward.On condition that the translation is understood by target language readers as well as the wording and textual arrangement are allowed in target language,for those sentences that have the same semantic and syntactic representations in both English and Chinese,it is suggested that “direct translation ” is used to reproduce the rhetorical effect of the source text,otherwise syntactic form is abandoned,compensation translation is a better choice.As a whole,the distinction and translation of transferred epithet in the thesis take semantic structure as the entry point.Transitivity theory is effective in helping translators to analyze and solve various difficulties they confront in distinguishing and translating transferred epithet and it is also effective in choosing appropriate translation methods.