Experiential Metafunctional Analysis of Liu Xijun's “Bei Chou Ge” and Its English Versions

Abstract

This paper attempts to analyze and compare transitivity processes of “Bei Chou Ge” and its five English versions from the perspective of experiential function of Halliday's systemic-functional linguistics and makes a comment on the similarities and differences between them. Through the analysis of the transitivity of the poem and its translations, it is found that there are 5 versions for the first line, 3 versions for the second, third and sixth lines, and 1 version for the fourth and fifth lines, in which the transitivity maintains a high consistency with the original poem. Spearman Correlation shows that there is a significant positive relationship of transitivity between the version by Watson and the original poem, and the translation by Watson is highly correlated with the transitivity of the original poem with the following coefficient, p = 0.890. This study can give clues to the study of poems and their translations of the transitivity processes, by exploring the differences of participants and circumstantial elements with the theoretical framework of functional grammar.