Translating Tagore's Stray Birds into Chinese: Applying Systemic Functional Linguistics to Chinese Poetry Translation

Translating Tagore’s ‘Stray Birds’ into Chinese explores the choices in poetry translation in light of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and illustrates the ways in which readers can achieve a deeper understanding of translated works in English and Chinese.

Focusing on Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘Stray Birds’, a collection of elegant and philosophical poems, as a source text, Ma and Wang analyse four Chinese target texts by Zheng Zhenduo, Yao Hua, Lu Jinde and Feng Tang and consider their linguistic complexities through SFL. This book analyses the source text and the target texts from the perspectives of the four strata of language, including graphology, phonology, lexicogrammar and context.

Ideal for researchers and academics of SFL, Translation Studies, Linguistics, and Discourse Analysis, Translating Tagore’s ‘Stray Birds’ into Chinese provides an in-depth exploration of SFL and its emerging prominence in the field of Translation Studies.

Yuanyi Ma and Bo Wang received their doctoral degrees from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Their research interests include Systemic Functional Linguistics, translation studies, discourse analysis and language description. They are co-authors of Lao She’s Teahouse and Its Two English Translations: Exploring Chinese Drama Translation with Systemic Functional Linguistics (Routledge), Systemic Functional Translation Studies: Theoretical Insights and New Directions (Equinox) and Systemic Functional Insights on Language and Linguistics (Springer). Bo Wang is currently Associate Research Fellow from School of International Studies, Sun Yat-sen University, China. Yuanyi Ma is Lecturer from Guangdong Polytechnic of Science and Technology, China.