Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Press conferences of the Ministry of National Defense (referred to as MND hereafter) of the People’s Republic of China (referred to as PRC hereafter), as a form of official discourse, play an essential role in making a formal expression of China’s political views, promoting its political philosophy, and guiding public opinions both at home and abroad. In military diplomacy, MND press conferences function as a key tool for manifesting China’s military stance and promoting mil-to-mil relations between China and other countries.
As far as communication is concerned, the expression and implication of what a communicator means or intends to do is more or less related to his/her attitudes, stances, judgments and so on, which, generally speaking, all come under the concept of modality. The modality system, as discussed in Halliday’s (1994, 2004, 2009, 2014) Systemic Functional Grammar, has always been regarded as a vital language device in realizing the interpersonal meta-function of a discourse as one of the three meta-functions (ideational, interpersonal and textual meta-functions) defined by him. Through the device of modality, a speaker is able to participate in a certain context, and thus to reveal his/her attitudes and to try to exert influence on others’ attitudes and acts.
In the context of official discourse, an accurate as well as effective way of expression is demanded in case the information of a nation’s stance and attitude intended to deliver be mis-expressed, mis-decoded and misjudged. The translation of spokespersons’ discourses in MND press conferences, demands even more attention to those attitude-related parts of the language, for the fact that declaration of our stance in military affairs in particular usually involves state sovereignty and territorial integrity, the loss and gain in a nation’s political, economic and military interests, and even the stability of the surrounding regions and the world at large. In that case, whether MND press conference interpreters are able to choose the accurate language resources in their interpretation is of great importance.
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1.2 Research Purpose and Significance
This thesis, adopting a systemic functional approach, aims to undertake a descriptive study from the perspective of the modality system to offer a comprehensive analysis of modality meaning translation in MND spokespersons’ discourses. The analysis will examine both modality meaning preservations and modality meaning shifts in press conference interpreting (PRI). Specifically, distribution of grammatical resources for modality in modality preservations and tendencies in different types of modality shifts are summarized and analyzed and factors causing modality shifts are discussed.
The significance of the thesis is two-fold. Theoretically, the study offers a description of modality systems in MND spokespersons’ discourses in both the source language (referred to as SL hereafter) and the target language (referred to as TL hereafter), which helps to grasp the big picture of how modality resources in Chinese is used as a crucial grammatical resource in the construction of this type of official discourse, and how modality resources in English is applied to reconstruct the discourse. Practically, the analysis helps to get an in-depth understanding of the official discourse generated by the governmental military entity, and offers feasible ways to identify modality meanings in the original discourse and then to reproduce them in the TL, in the hope to help promote effectiveness and accuracy of our official discourses in international communication. A part from that, in this research, abundant work is done that may help interpreting learners to grasp basic rules about modality translation, including summary and classification of major types of modality expressions in both Chinese and English, comparisons among similar Chinese expressions, and analysis on Chinese and English modality expressions that are semantically “equivalent” and could be taken as reciprocal counterparts in SL and TL.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Previous Studies on Translation of Modality Meanings
The earliest discussion about modality translation between Chinese and other languages is made by Hu Zhuanglin (Hu et al., 1989). Based on three meta-functions in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), Hu et al. discuss the connotation of an essential concept in translation studies--“equivalence”, including achieving equivalence of modality meanings between Chinese and English. From then on, systemic functional approach is widely adopted in researches on C-E/E-C modality translation and interpreting.
2.1.1 Studies on Modality Meanings in Literary Translation
Huang (2001, 2002, 2003) is the earliest Chinese scholar who introduces theories of SFL into the discussion of strategies in translating Chinese ancient poetry. Theory of modality system is included. His discussion starts from Halliday’s (2001:16) claim that translators should try to achieve meta-functional equivalence during the translation process. Huang then takes the discussion into practice and analyzes how ideational, interpersonal, and textual functional equivalences are achieved in different translations of Chinese ancient poetry. As an essential element to realize interpersonal function, modality meaning translation is attached to due importance. Li (2007:105), in his Ph.D. dissertation, assesses interpersonal function equivalence realized in five English versions of Shu Dao Nan (《蜀道难》) within Halliday’s framework. He argues that to translate modality meanings of a poem properly, a translator is expected to recognize four vectors of type, value, orientation and polarity. In his prescriptive study, Li manages to apply the theory of modality system to translation quality assessment. However, in some of his discussions, he seems to fail to deal with the incompatibility between the Chinese language and Halliday’s modality system.
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2.2 Previous Comparative Studies on Modality in Official Discourses
Apart from discussions on modality from the perspective of translation studies, comparative linguistics analysis of modality in official discourses from China and other countries, also sheds light on the present study. Jiang (2015) compares modal expressions in Military Report of China and U.S. Military Assessment Reports published by both sides since 2011 within the framework of functional grammar, and concludes that in both reports, modalization takes a larger percentage than modulation; low and median value modal expressions are more frequently used than those with high modality value; more objective explicit modal expressions are used than other three orientations. She then argues that such similarities may result from both reports’ informative function and the requirement to be objective and acceptable. Meanwhile, she also finds out certain differences and discusses the possible causes: 1) to emphasizes the writers’ authoritative position, more modal words of obligation are used in the Chinese corpus than in the English one; 2) due to different thinking patterns, almost no expansion of predicator and nominalization is used in the Chinese corpus. She believes such analysis of modality meanings “in military discourses will help to have a more profound understanding of the hidden intentions”.
Zhu Xuan (2014) examines the preference of modality meaning realization in State of the Union Address (SUA) of the US and the Report on the Work of Government (RWG) of China published from 2011-2013. Her findings are as follows: though modal operators are the most frequently used type of expression in both reports, richer modality resources are deployed in SUA, with RWG relying mainly on modal operators and adjuncts. Besides, different from Jiang’s study mentioned above, Zhu’s research reflects two opposite results: 1) in terms of modality type, modulation takes a larger percentage than modalization in both reports and 2) except in modality types of probability and usuality in RWG, subjective orientations take a dominant percentage in both reports. She argues that such features can result from cultures and political systems that generate the discourses.
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Chapter Three Theoretical Framework .................................................... 13
3.1 Types of Modality ............................................ 14
3.2 Values of Modality ....................................... 15
Chapter Four Methodology ...................................... 19
4.1 Research Questions ............................................. 19
4.2 Data Collection ........................................ 19
Chapter Five Preservations and Shifts of Modality Meanings in the English Transcripts of the Conference .................................... 27
5.1 Preservations of the Original Modality Meanings ........................... 27
5.1.1 Probability ....................................... 28
5.1.2 Usuality ........................................ 30
Chapter Five Preservations and Shifts of Modality Meanings in the English Transcripts of the Conference
5.1 Preservations of the Original Modality Meanings
The discussion of translations that stay in the same modality type, orientation and value is fundamental in the present study. Although most studies, even including this one, put emphasis on changes of modality meanings in translation, for the obvious reason that directly choosing corresponding TL modal expressions may be taken for granted by interpreters, these “direct” choices remain essential and fundamental to the analysis of the whole modality system construed in the TT. One can get a preliminary grasp of these features through the proportions taken by preservations and shifts in modality translation of spokespersons’ discourses. Out of the 720 pairs of clauses identified as containing modality meanings, 579 pairs keep the same modality meanings in the TT, which take up as much as 80.1 percent of all modal clauses. At the same time, shifts occur in 141 pairs, which take up 19.9 percent.
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Chapter Six Conclusion
6.1 Major Findings
The thesis gives an overall description of interpreting of modality meanings in MND spokespersons’ discourses. The description is separated into two parts: modality preservations and modality shifts in translation. The major findings are as follows.
Firstly, among cases of modality meaning translation, modality preservations take up 80.1 percent, which play the dominant role, while modality shifts take up 19.9 percent.
Secondly, in modality preservations, the description is conducted according to modality types of probability, usuality, obligation and inclination. Three observations are made. (1) In terms of types of modal expressions, all three types are applied in both the ST and TT, i.e. modal operators, combination of modal operators and adjuncts, and metaphor of modality, indicating that as an important resource that humans resort to for interpersonal exchanges, Chinese and English modality systems share a lot in common, which is convenient for a large part of modal clauses to be interpreted “correspondingly”. Interpreters should have the ability not only to identify different types of modal expressions, but also to find the “corresponding” way of expression in English based on the shared features between Chinese and English. (2) Although congruence between the two languages’ modality system brings a relatively systematic means for the “corresponding” translation, gaps do exist. As confirmed by Halliday (2004: 630), there are no systematic forms for making the subjective orientation explicit in the case of usuality or inclination in English, and the same is true in Chinese. This leads to no metaphorical expressions for explicitly subjective orientations in usuality and for inclination modals at all in both the ST and TT. Another gap existing in the Chinese usuality modal is that modal operators are not resorted to as a way of expression in the modality type, which results in the lack of modal operators for usuality in the TT. (3) In translating implicitly subjective orientation, interpreters have more restricted choices of modal operators and modal adjuncts compared with what are used in the ST. Abundant modal operators as well as modal adjuncts in Chinese bear subtle differences pragmatically speaking and thus enables a speaker of Chinese to choose among several similar ones, leading to many-to-one relationships between Chinese and English when they are interpreted.
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