“Paraphrase” as a Strategy in Translating Lun Yu(The Analects) into English: A Functional Linguistics Perspective

There are over 60 translated versions of Lun Yu (known as The Analects in the English world) and the method of translation is related to the interpretation of this ancient text.This paper attempts to analyze some translated texts (from Chinese into English) from a functional-syntactic perspective within the Systemic Functional Linguistics framework with the aim of identifying the relationship between form and meaning.One of the findings of the present study is that Chinese translators prefer “paraphrase” as a strategy or method of translating Lun Yu, which is one way of the free translation approach rather than the literal translation approach.