Synchronic re grammaticalization: The translation of modal adjuncts in Chinese government regulatory academic discourse

Abstract

Although considerable research has been devoted to the translation of modality from Chinese into English, existing studies have focused predominantly on individual modal lexical items or localized translation phenomena, with relatively limited attention to the systemic transformation mechanisms of modal adjuncts within Chinese social science academic texts. Drawing on Halliday and Matthiessen’s Systemic Functional Linguistics theory of modality, this study examines the English rendering of modal adjuncts in government regulatory academic discourse, based on a self built small scale Chinese English parallel corpus from a monograph chapter on Chinese regulatory theory. The findings demonstrate that the translation of modal adjuncts in academic texts is not a matter of straightforward formal adverb for adverb matching, but rather a target language oriented process of synchronic “re grammaticalization”. In this translational process, modal adjunct translation necessitates cross categorial shifts in grammatical realization, alongside the reconstruction of semantic prosody to fit English academic stylistic conventions. Such cross categorial adjustments are realised via predicate absorption, nominalization, adjectivization, prepositional comment constructions and referential pragmatic calibration. This study sheds light on the mechanisms through which modal adjunct meanings are reconstructed in cross linguistic outbound academic translation, and may offer practical implications for the international dissemination of Chinese characteristic social science academic discourse.