A linguistic analysis of Nazik al-Malika's poem “ʔ ana” and its two English translations : a systemic functional approach

الملخص EN

The present study is an attempt at linking meaning making in the process of translation to Systemic Functional Grammar (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014), bearing into mind the fact that the grammatical system is meaning-oriented.

Given the relevance of systemic functional grammar to the process of meaning making into context, it serves as an approach to textual interpretation by identifying the lexicogrammatically choices contributing to the construction of meaning.

Based on Halliday's theoretical framework, the current study is a comparison of the recreation of the image of the speaker's tormented self and identity in Nazik Al-Malika's Poem “ʔ ana” and its two English translations.

The lexicogrammatically choices of the poet and the two translators are compared from the perspective of transitivity to examine how they are rendered into the English translation, with a view to revealing how the experiential meaning of the ideational meta function is re-narrated in the English translations.

The data of the current study consists of English translations which pay considerable attention to those examples which are highly representative of the transitivity system.