ANALYSIS OF THE TRANSLATION OF POEM THE OLD CHARCOAL SELLER FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTIC

Abstract

This paper presents the results of an analysis of a Portuguese translation by António Graça de Abreu of the Chinese poem “The Old Charcoal Seller” (Mài tàn wēng, 卖炭翁) written by Bai Juyi (772-846). Based on Halliday’s theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), from the specific perspective of the ideational metafunction, the study has the principal aim of identifying how the concepts of SFL can, on the one hand, assist translators in choosing appropriate translation strategies and, on the other hand, increase the possibility of avoiding errors that usually occur in the translation process. The study demonstrates that the analysis of the ideational metafunction, as an important principle of SFL, allows us to interpret or, in other words, to decode the realization of the original poem. Theoretically, in the translation process, one should strive for metafunctional equivalence, especially for equivalence in the ideational meta-function. However, in practice, in some cases (for example in poems), the function of the text is not primarily to understand experience or to convey “propositional” meaning, so ideational equivalence becomes less important. In that case, the translation needs to be analysed at multiple levels to find justification for a translation that is metafunctionally non-equivalent but satisfactory.

Keywords
Chinese-portuguese translation; Systemic Functional Linguistic; Chinese poetry