Experiential Metafunctional Analysis of the Folk Song of Han “Bei Ge” and Its English Translations

Abstract

This paper attempts to analyze and compare transitivity processes of “Bei Ge” and its six English translations 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 4 versions for the first line, 2 versions for the second, sixth and seventh lines, 5 versions for the third line, 3 versions for the fourth line and 1 version for the fifth and eighth lines, in which the transitivity maintains a high consistency with the original poem. At the end of the paper, a revised version is provided based on the transitivity of the original poem. 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.