A Contrastive Study Of The Three-body Problem And Its English Version From The Perspective Of Systemic Functional Linguistics

The Three-Body Problem,one of the best novels in present China and authored by the distinguished writer of science fiction Liu Cixin,won the “Hugo Award”,the highest award for science fiction in the world.It serves as a landmark in the history of Chinese science fictions.However,since the publishing of the The Three-Body Problem trilogy,there are only about 20 academic papers to study it.Moreover,the research methods in these papers are single,where qualitative analysis and inductive methods are common.And the research results are mainly concentrated in the field of literature and literary art with a big gap in the field of linguistics to be further explored.The present thesis is aimed to explore Three Body: King Wen of Zhou and the Long Night excerpted from the first part of The Three-Body Problem trilogy and its translation from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics(SFL).Based on the metafunctions: ideational function,interpersonal function,and textual function,which are one of the most important theories of SFL,this paper makes a contrastive analysis of Three Body: King Wen of Zhou and the Long Night and its translation by means of a qualitative and quantitative research method.It aims to explore whether the English translation is consistent with the original text in terms of the three metafunctions and prove the feasibility and applicability of SFL in translation studies.As for the ideational function,both texts are comparatively analyzed from the perspective of transitivity including material process,relational process,mental process,behavioral process,verbal process and existential process.For the interpersonal function,both texts are comparatively analyzed from the perspective of type and value of the modal verbs.And the modal system mainly refers to the positive indicative mood,the negative indicative mood,interrogative mood,the imperative mood and the exclamatory mood.For the textual function,they are analyzed from the perspective of the theme and rheme.The results reveal that the closer the translation is to the original text in terms of three metafunctions,the more accurately and faithfully the meaning of the original text can be expressed.With regard to the ideational function,translation tends to stay the same with the original text in the choice of process,participant as well as circumstantial elements in transitivity system of the experiential function,while some translations attempt to turn certain processes to circumstances.But most of translations construct the same kind of logical relationship.In terms of interpersonal function,the original text uses slightly more high-value and low-value modal verbs than its translation,and the translation is more prone to expressing the underlying information of the original text with medium-value modal verbs.As to mood,the translation tends to uses the same mood as the original text.In terms of textual function,most of the translations have the same theme and rhythm as the original text.This paper consists of five chapters.The Chapter One introduces the writing background of the paper,an overview of The Three-Body Problem,the research method,objectives,questions and the paper structure.The Chapter Two presents a literature review in terms of research status of SFL abroad and at home as well as the extraordinary achievements and significance of The Three-Body Problem.The Chapter Three is concerned with the theoretical framework of this dissertation,namely,the three major metafunctions: interpersonal function,experiential function and textual function,as well as their branches that best embody each function.In Chapter Four,based on the metafunctions of SFG,we present our research results and make an overall text contrastive analysis of the original text and its translation,including how to compare and analyze the two texts and then make a statistics.The Chapter Five is the conclusion of the dissertation,describing the guiding significance of this research to science fiction works,the shortcomings of the dissertation itself and the prospect of further research.