Modern Foreign Languages (Quarterly) Vol.24, No.1 January 2001: 78-84 Guangzhou, China Aspects of Translation from a Discoursal PerspectiveZHANG Mei-fangTranslation is a new discipline in academic terms. It is just starting to feature as a subject of study in its own right. Like other new disciplines, it needs to draw on the findings and t heories of other related disciplines in order to develop its own methods. But which disciplines it can be naturally and effectively related to is still a matter of some controversy.Linguistics is a discipline which studies language both in its own right and as a tool for communication. It should therefore have a great deal to offer to the budding discipline of translation studies. This is particularly true of functional linguistics which no longer restricts itself to the study of linguistic structure and phenomena, but extends itself to the study of language in use. In creating a new text out of a previously existing one, translators inevitably go beyond what is said and written in the original text, trying to see the context in which the text unfolds and in which it is to be interpreted. In studying this complex process at work, we are in effect seeking insights which take us beyond translation itself towards the whole relationship between language activity and the social context in which it takes place.This paper aims at introducing M.A.K. Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics to explain some aspects of translation. According to Halliday and Hasan (1989), language is either for action or for information, so it is organized by the function it is called on to serve and shaped by its purposes. All use s of language have a context. The textual features enable the discourse to cohere not only with itself but also with its context of situation which is analyzed by Halliday and Hasan into three components (field of discourse, tenor of discourse and mode of discourse), corresponding to the three metafunctions of language (ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function). Apart from the context of situation which is the immediate environment, there is also a broader background against which the text has to be interpreted: its context of culture. The context of culture is the institutional and ideological background that gives value to the text and constrains its interpretation.In this paper, the theory of context of culture and context of situation will be briefly examined and an English TEXT and its two Chinese versions will be analyzed. It is not the aim of this short paper to build any translation theory in relation to discourse analysis, but rather to look into detailed analysis for areas where the discoursal theory of language can bring insights to English/Chinese translation.Keywords: discourse analysis context of situation context of culturetranslation Correspondence: Department of EnglishSchool of Foreign LanguagesZhongshan UniversityGuangzhou,Guangdong 510275P .R .China<zhangmeifang28@>中国・广州现代外语（季刊）第24卷2001年第1期（总第91期）：78-84 从语篇分析的角度看翻译中的对等张美芳翻译学是一个崭新的研究领域，需要利用相关学科的研究成果以建立自己的研究架构和研究方法。
然而，利用哪些相关学科理论以及如何利用这些理论，至今仍未有定论。
本文以韩礼德的系统功能语法为基础，从语篇分析的角度，在语篇体裁和语域变体两方面对英汉翻译中的问题进行分析，希望所运用的语篇分析理论能解释翻译中的一些现象及其“对等”与“非对等”问题。
关键词： 语篇分析文化语境情景语境翻译1. 引言M.A.K. Halliday曾经说过，“如果能用一个语言学模式来描写翻译过程，是非常有意义的。
我们应该根据语言活动本身的模式来描写，而不是以先入之见从语言研究领域外部去描写”(见Bell 1991:XVI)。
在过去十多年，西方一些语言学者努力尝试用功能语言学理论去探讨翻译中的问题。
例如，J. C. Catford（1965）以系统功能语言学为基础，提出了“翻译等值论”。
他认为，翻译实践的中心问题是寻求等值成分：等值关系可以在“层面”(levels, 语法、词汇、语音、词形等) 和“等级”(ranks, 语法结构、句子、短语、词、词素等) 的任何一个交叉点上建立。
B. Hatim 和I. Mason（1990；1997）以系统功能语言学中的语篇分析理论为依据，从交际的角度分析各种类型的文本及其译本。
R.T. B ell （1991）和M. Baker（1992）等学者也从系统功能学的角度提出了翻译研究的新途经。
然而，西方学者通常都不把汉语作为研究对象，这在一定程度上使中国读者对他们的理论敬而远之。
我国也有一些学者试图从语篇方面去讨论翻译问题（见李运兴1998，居祖纯1998，姚暨荣2000），把翻译研究从以句子为研究单位扩大到语篇。
有些学者也曾以Halliday 的语言学理论讨论翻译中的问题（见陈宏薇1996，张美芳1999），但大多数人在讨论语篇翻译时，只是从自己对语篇的理解进行分析，未能以一个经得起推敲的语言学模式来作为理论框架。
因此，到目前为止，对于语篇翻译的讨论仍然是众说纷纭，莫衷一是。
本文以韩礼德的系统功能语法为基础，从语篇分析的角度，在体裁和语域变体两方面对英汉翻译中的问题进行分析，希望所运用的语篇分析理论能解释翻译中的一些现象及其“对等”与“非对等”问题。
2. 关于语篇分析一般认为，语篇分析是一门新兴的、尚未定性的学科。
它没有一个单一的理论作指导，也没有公认的分析步骤和分析方法(见黄国文1988:7；Hatch 1992:1；Schiffrin 1994:1)。
美国著名语篇分析学者Schiffrin (1994) 在Approaches to Discourse 一书中介绍了六种可用于语篇分析的理论：言语行为理论(Speech act theory)、互动社会语言学 (Interactional sociolinguistics)、交际文化学 (the Ethnography of communication)、语用学 (Pragmatics)、会话分析 (Conversational analysis)、变异分析 (Variation analysis)。
系统功能语法的创始人M.A.K. Halliday 在An Introduction to functional Grammar (1985/1994) 一书中明确指出，他建构的功能语法的目的是为语篇分析提供一个理论框架，这个框架可用来分析英语中任何口头语篇或书面语篇。