Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4，1804-May 19，1864), who was bom in Salem,Massachusetts, was an American novelist and short story writer. He was regarded as thegreatest American novelist in the first half of 19th century. He was also treated as themost influential romanticism novelist of the United States in the 19th century and thepioneer of psychological analysis novel in American. Hawthorn's works tend more todark romanticism and focus on New England. Many his allegories and cautionary talessuggest that guilt, sin and evil are the most inherent natural qualities of humanity. Thesequalities inspired by Puritan and combined with deep psychological themes have thecharacters of historical romanticism and symbolism.Including almost all of the features mentioned above, The Scarlet Letter isrepresented as the magnum opus of Nathaniel Hawthorne.The Scarlet Letter was published in March, 1850. The background was set in the17th-century Puritan Boston. It tells the story of a girl named Hester Prynne, who wasbom in England. She is very charming with deep, black eyes and black long hair andmarries an old scholar Roger Chillingworth. As the British immigration boom,Chillingworth intends to settle in Boston, USA. He asks Hester to depart for Boston first,and then he will arrive after two years. However during these two years, Hester falls inlove with a priest named Arthur Dimmesdale, and has a daughter. According to the lawof the puritans, Hester is sentenced to wear a letter A in the chest which representsadultery. Chillingworth happens to witness the scene when Hester is standing on thescaffold to be exposed to public. Then he feels a great disgrace and makes up his mindto revenge. Arthur is trapped in the inner dilemma for whether to go on hypocrisy life orto restart, which leads to his bad condition. Chillingworth, finally, finds out that Arthuris the one having an affair with Hester. Then he gets treatment of Arthur, and tortures hismental for seven years. During this period of time, Hester earns living by embroidery.She lived lonely and tenaciously but she sticks to helping the poor under the blame byher own.
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1.2Research Background and Significance
Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics (before the appraisal theory has beencreated) could not provide a complete system for seeing authors'/readers' orspeakers'/listeners' views and attitude to situation via language (王振华，2001). Dr.James R. Marin, who teaches in the linguistics department in The University of Sydney,noticed that blind spot. Then he built the theoretical framework of appraisal system in1990s to fill up this void spot. At first, the appraisal theory mainly focused on the affectin the narrative discourse. Then, gradually, other types of discourse were also involved,such as literary criticism, printed media, art criticism, advertising discourse, andhistorical discourse and so on (reference to ledema, Feez & White 1994; lemeda 1995;Eggins & Slade 1997; White 1998，2003; Martin 2000, 2001, 2008a, 2008b; Martin &Rose 2003). It developed more than ten years since the appraisal theory was created inChina. And as Wang Zhen-hua's article, APPRAISAL System and Their Operation: ANew Development in the Systemic Functional Linguistics, was published on the Journalof Foreign Language in November 2001, the appraisal theory was introduced to Chinesescholars.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Study on the Chinese Translation of The Scarlet Letter
As the translation wave of The Scarlet Letter springs, various research and studyon its translation is booming in the academic field.On one side, a lot of scholars studied the theory of it on one certain Chineseversion. Among these papers, feminism is the most frequently analyzed aspect. CaoXiying analyzed the female images constructed by male supremacist as "others" in herthesis, involving five translation versions. Xin Na believes that Hawthorne's feminismconsciousness is inseparable from his family background. From the feminist theory, SunYanhong found inspiration by analyze four Chinese versions of The Scarlet Letter, withan aim to exploring different translators how to reproduce different characters of theoriginal Hester Prynne. Taking four Chinese translations as research object, YanChunyan gave readers a further understanding of feminism translation thoughts via thecase study and focused on the psychological description in this novel.
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2.2 The Appraisal Perspective Study on Chinese Translation
National study of the appraisal theory was started with a paper by ProfessorWAND Zhen-hua, APPRAISAL Systems and Their Operation: A New Development inthe Systemic Functional Linguistics, which was published on Journal of ForeignLanguage, in 2001. This paper brought the APPRAISAL system into China andintroduced it to Chinese scholars, which presented some background knowledge of theAPPRAISAL system and explained its framework and operation. Since then, theAPPRAISAL system had begun to step into the view of Chinese academic field. Duringrecent fifteen years, as the theoretical study on the Appraisal system is always beingimproved at home, Chinese linguistic scholars have also done some applicationresearches, among which, the Appraisal perspective study on translation plays animportant role. Besides, some scholars chose one certain sub-system, among ATTITUDE,ENGAGEMENT and GRADUATION, as a tool to do some research. Qiu Qing and HuYong attempted to investigate the travel Ads of four famous scenery spots in Mt. Lu onGraduation from the Appraisal perspective. Chen Ming-yao talked about the Appraisalanalysis and translation of the Attitude resources in news texts. Xu Yan-mei, taking twoEnglish versions of Kong Yiji as examples, did some research on the verbs translationfrom Engagement perspective.
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Chapter 3 A Brief Introduction to Appraisal Theory..........9
3.1The ATTITUDE System.........10
3.2The ENGAGEMENT System.........13
3.3The GRADUATION System.........15
Chapter 4 The Appraisal Perspective Study of Hester.........16
4.1Case Study One: The Market-Palace.........16
4.2Case Study Two: Hester at Her Needle.........21
4.3Case Study Three: Another View of Hester.........25
4.4Summary.........28
Chapter 5 The Appraisal Perspective Study of Other Characters.........30
5.1Arthur Dimmesdale: The Interior of A Heart.........30
5.2Roger Chillingworth: The Leech and His Patient.........32
5.3Pearl: Pearl.........34
5.4Summary.........35
Chapter 5 The Appraisal Perspective Study of Other Charactersin The Scarlet Letter and Its Two Translation Versions
5.1 Arthur Dimmesdale: The Interior of A Heart
Arthur Dimmesdale was a minister. He was young, well-educated and reputable.But things were changed after Hester settled in this town. Reverend Dimmesdale wasnamed Hester's godly pastor, and fell in love with her，and then had the baby. All thetime, Dimmesdale was inner tortured by the sin he committed, so that his health beganto fail. Finally, he admitted his guilt on a New England holiday in public, and then diedin Hester's arms soon after.The eleventh chapter The Interior of A Heart mainly describes Dimmesdale's metaldilemmas that he was tormented with guilty but he dared not speak it out to the public.We take the forth and to the fifth paragraphs as the corpus, from "While thus sufferingunder bodily disease，and gnawed and tortured by some black trouble of the soul,..." to“…，he questioned with himself whether the grass would ever grow on it，because anaccursed thing must there be buried!"The recorded data shows a large amount of raise force in these two sections. Afterstatistics, there are six superlatives, four comparisons and ten degree adjectives andadverbs acting as force or focus resources, such as "great/greatly", "so", "fair", '"true"and so on. Furthermore, all of them are raise force and sharpen focus.
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Conclusion
In summary, this thesis makes detailed analysis on cases in every selectedparagraph in The Scarlet Letter. By comparing the Appraisal resources between twoChinese versions and the original version, merits and demerits of each translation havebeen found out. According to the research in the chapter four and the chapter five, thespecific findings of translation have shown up as follows:
1.Because of the different expression customs between English and Chineselanguage, generally speaking, the judgment and comments resources are mostfrequently left out，while other resources in attitude system and those in graduationsystem are easier to be translated and preserved.
2.The author employed a great deal of engagement resources, among which theconcessions，the modalities and the denies are used most often, to invite the readers toco-create the character images. These resources are easily ignored or omitted duringtranslation process. But both of two versions we talked about perform pretty good inthis aspect.
3.Some verbs with attitude meanings are called "process" resources in appraisaltheory. Chinese translators more like to turn them into neutral verb embellished bycomment or qualityy adverbs.
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References (omitted)