Experiential meaning refers to one of the major metafunctional modes of meaning that construe “the model of experience” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 61). Considering language as a meaning-making system in the sense of SFL, there are four modes of metafunctional meanings inherent in language, which are fulfilled along with the realization of three metafunctions, viz., ideational metafunction, realized in expressing experiential and logical meanings, interpersonal metafunction (enacting relationships in a sociocultural context through interpersonal meaning), and textual metafunction (facilitating the first two functions coherently in textual meaning). They are termed as such because they are innate in language and are indispensable factors that can themselves be used to analyze language. Among them, experiential meaning embodies the original writer's understanding of a certain experience of the world, i.e., experiential meaning is the innate meaning for all kinds of texts, be it literature or non-literature, as they all comprise the author's meaning-making of the world. Therefore, experiential meaning can facilitate analysis of the translation of ACPP in political texts, regardless of the differences in text genres. Further, experiential meaning is the primary parameter in the metafunction system as other meanings cannot be registered without the representation of the experience of the world in the first place (e.g., Matthiessen, 2014, p. 277; Huang, 2016, p. 300–301).

Transitivity is the lexicogrammatical network and has been proposed by Halliday and Matthiessen (2004, 2014) as the direct resource for the realization of experiential meaning in terms of the rank of a clause within the ideational metafunction. In other words, we can see how experiential meaning is represented by analyzing the linguistic forms through which the meaning is realized, i.e., the transitivity system. Such a lexicogrammatical system is greatly influenced by other essential strata in SFL, i.e., the context that links lexicogrammar with semantics. To conceptualize the context more pragmatically, the register theory was developed by Halliday and Matthiessen (2004, 2014), Wang et al. (2019). Matthiessen (2015) defined register as “a functional variety of language, i.e., the meanings at risk in a given type of context” and offered specific parameters to examine contextual elements in texts, thus clearly enunciating the theoretical framework for analyzing the representation of experiential meaning lexicogrammatically and contextually in SFL.

Overall, in the sense of SFL, language is conceived as a meaning-making system that can realize its experiential meanings through the choices of transitivity linguistic forms, which are then influenced by the contextual variables of the register (see Figure 1). Such basic ideas later form the foundations for SFTS as an applicable theory, as SFL shows a “strong interrelation between the linguistic choices, the aim of the form of communication and the sociocultural framework” (Munday et al., 2022, p. 122).

Two problems were noticed in our review of previous studies on the translation of Xi's works of Governance. First, though the past few years have witnessed an increasing number of studies involving the translation of Xi's books, few are dedicated to the Chinse–English translation of ACPP quoted in them. Much of the research explores the translation strategies and skills of the volumes or their specific linguistic features, including the translation of Chinese-specific expressions, or Chinese culture-loaded words, though involving the ACPP. Second, although various theories, the –additional translation theories or the modern ones–were adopted from different research perspectives, SFL was barely employed by them in translating Chinese-specific expressions or the ACPP in Xi's works, thus offering avenues for this study to explore.

Despite the paucity of studies directly linked to the subject of this study, inspiration can be gained from various studies which share common points to facilitate this study. Similar conclusions arrived at by different authors on the English translation strategies of allusions and expressions with Chinese characteristics, ACPP included, can be instructive for this study to examine the extent to which the experiential meaning may be changed. For instance, Zhu (2020), through a corpus-based textual analysis, summarized factors to the successful translations of allusions in Governance Volume I, including the poetry and prose, and calculated the frequency and proportion of translation approaches. Zhao X. (2017), Zhao (2018) integrated theories of cultural and sociological approaches and systematically studied the translation norms and strategies of five types of texts, comprising the Chinese-specific cultural items and ACPP in the central committee literature, including the first volume of Governance. They all drew similar conclusions regarding the tendency of translation strategies used for rendering the allusions of ACPP and unique Chinese expressions in Governance volumes: “a flexible use of translation methods” with literal translation or foreignization as the major methods, supplemented by other approaches, such as free translation, domestication, simplification, cultural alternatives, and offering extra explanation within the text (Zhu, 2020, p. 89). A literal translation is closely connected to a formal equivalence which, according to Nida (1964), seeks the closest match to the ST in both content and structural form, while free translation does not prioritize the maintenance of the original form. Such a conclusion can favor this study by offering a preliminary knowledge of how much the TT may be shifted regarding the experiential meaning.

Regarding the notion of transitivity in SFL, unlike the transitivity in traditional grammar that seeks superficial structural features of texts in terms of the relationship between a verb and its object, Halliday's transitivity theory considers a clause as an analytical unit and can thus bring the semantic, contextual, and textual meanings into consideration. The English transitivity system developed by Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) has become one of the mainstream analytical frameworks in translation studies, with its strong power of explanation and the most comprehensive theoretical network employed so far in analyzing the transitivity of languages. This system was employed in this study too.

According to the two scholars (ibid.), experiential meaning is realized at the lexicogrammatical level through transitivity, where experiences are construed as the flow of events in clauses. A clause consists of three components:

Halliday (1994), Halliday and Matthiessen (2004, 2014) focused on the core element—process—often realized by the verb or verbal group, and categorized it into six English process types. Among them, there are the core process types used most commonly in English: the material process that construes what is happening or what is being done in the event; the mental process construing the experience of the world of consciousness; and the relational process used to characterize and identify the relationships among entities. The other less common ones are the subsidiary process types: the behavioral process which construes physiological and psychological behavioral experiences like breathing, coughing, and sleeping; the verbal process which creates a narrative, and the existential process which shows the existence of things. As for the detailed classification of English process types, the subtypes of the three major processes and the specific examples of verbs for the six processes are provided in Supplementary Table 1, according to Halliday and Matthiessen (2014, p. 169–248). Participants and circumstances as complementary elements in English clauses are usually realized by the nominal group (or noun) and the adverbial group, respectively. Each process type has a model for construing a particular domain of experience, with its typical configuration of participants and circumstances.

As for the Chinese transitivity system, despite their structural differences, Chinese and English share numerous commonalities in transitivity, particularly in processes, due to the similarity of human experiences, leading to similar sentence patterns and process types (Zhao, 2006). Processes barely change despite cultural differences, for it is the participant and circumstance components that mainly load the sociocultural elements. Several other core studies (e.g., Halliday and Matthiessen, 1999; Li, 2004a,b; Halliday and Webster, 2005; Peng, 2011) also proved that the transitivity systems of Chinese and English are proximate, despite superficial differences in the linguistic strata. Therefore, so far, the classification of the six Chinese process types remains the first choice for the most comparative Chinese–English translation studies (e.g., Huang, 2003; Si and Li, 2013; Wang and Ma, 2020), identical to Halliday's six English processes. Such a Chinese transitivity analytical approach can provide items comparable to the same classification English transitivity system, offering clearer results of how the translation is shifted from the original text. So, to make a comparative translation study between the two languages, we employed a six-process-type approach in Chinese, with reference to the classification criteria and description of SFL in Chinese in this study.

Regarding the types of process shifts, drawing on the insights of Matthiessen's (2001, 2014) model on metafunctional variations, an important resource for doing transitivity analysis in translation studies, we examined process shifts from the following aspects:

The types of participant and circumstance shifts are studied where rank shifts occurred. Halliday divided a sentence into four categories from the bottom to top on the scale of rank: morpheme, word (Chinese character), word group (or phrase), and clause, to better analyze the lexicogrammar of one language. When one of these categories is transformed into the other at the rank level, there is a rank shift. Therefore, concerning participant and circumstance shifts, this research examined where there are obvious changes from the word group rank to the clause rank or vice versa.

The reason this study investigated such rank shifts first is that they tend to occur in English–Chinese translation when we study the transitivity shifts, for the two languages' different habits of expressing one thing bring out the inclination to use different rank scales. Therefore, when we compare the ST and TT and try to locate changes with the analytical unit of the transitivity system being the clause rank, rank shifts should be more visible than other types of participant and circumstance shifts. Moreover, as per Section “Types of transitivity shifts for comparative analysis”, each kind of process provides its own model for construing a particular domain of experience, with its own typically direct and indirect participants. This means that the shift from one process type to another must lead to the change of participants accordingly. Therefore, there is no point in simply analyzing such participant shifts caused by the shifts among different process types. Also, we should not pay too much attention to the shift among different types of circumstances, as they are not obvious enough, compared to those circumstance rank shifts.

Halliday (1985, p. 29) defined register as “a variety of language, corresponding to a variety of situations” and set three variables for describing and analyzing register: field (“what's going on in the situation”), tenor (“who is taking part in the situation”) and mode (“what role is being played by language and other semiotic systems in the situation”). These contextual factors determine the choice of linguistic forms (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2014, p. 34).

What this study considered in terms of the register of the factors motivating transitivity shifts is the field variable, more specifically, the fields of activity directly linked to the reproduction of experiential meaning. Matthiessen (2015, p. 55–56), developed eight main fields of activity (see Figure 2) to describe the nature of the activity that comprises the situation. As for the analytical unit for the fields of activity, one single sentence can serve as a self-contained unit. Therefore, ST and TT collected in Xi's books were analyzed in the unit of a sentence, being placed in the specific context of the sentence before the identification of fields, thus ensuring the effectiveness of the data.

The process shifts we analyzed here are those among different process types, within one process type, and the expansion and compression of process types, as in Section “Types of transitivity shifts for comparative analysis”. Regarding the overall trend of how various process types construct the experiential meaning in ST and TT, Tables 2, 3 illustrate that among the six process types, the material clause is used the most, accounting for over 50% of the ST and TT. Relational process ranks the second and mental process the third, which proved again Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) statement that material, mental, and relational clauses constitute the three principal types that occur more often in many discourses. On the contrary, the verbal process is barely used both in the ST and TT.

Concerning the distribution of process types in ST and TT, Tables 2, 3 reveal that material and relational processes are still exploited the most. If we compare the frequency of process types in the TT with the ST (see Figure 3), there are decreases in all the other four process types, except the material and relational ones. Typical political texts also characteristically use more material and relational clauses to construct meaning and build relationships among different entities. Therefore, literary texts and their TT in political texts can still not eliminate the texture of political texts themselves to a certain degree.

Nominalization refers to the downgrading of the rank from verbs (verbal groups) that serves the six processes to nouns (nominal groups). In this section, we will discuss the nominalization of verbs and verbal phrases serving all process types, which function as participants and circumstances in a clause after the change.

Regarding the distribution and frequency of nominalizations, first, we can see from Table 7 and Figure 4 that there are 39 participant nominalizations, 17 circumstance nominalizations, and nine nominalizations of other types. Participant nominalizations are slightly higher than circumstance nominalizations. Besides, there is the tendency for participant and circumstance nominalizations to occur mainly where there are the core process types in the ST, accounting for over 87%. Among them, the material clause is the easiest that is shifted to the nominal group compared to the other types of process, amounting to 60.71%, followed by relational, mental, and behavioral clauses.

For instance, the original text “物必先腐, 而后虫生” (Things must rot first, and then insects would grow) (Xi, 2014a, p. 16) consists of two material clauses. While in the translation “Worms can only grow in something rotten” (Xi, 2014b, p. 17), one of the material clauses was rendered as “something rotten”, functioning as a circumstance in the whole clause following the proposition “in”. For the participant nominalization of a material clause, one typical example is that while rendering “宽一分, 民受赐不止一分” (showing more mercy to the people and they will be benefited a lot) (Xi, 2017a, p. 148), the translator shifted the original material clause “宽一分” to a nominal group in the TT as “A bit of leniency on my side” (the whole translation is “A bit of leniency on my side will benefit the people”) (Xi, 2017b, p. 162), serving as the Actor participant in the new material clause.

Proceeding to the nominalization of the three subsidiary processes, no verbal clauses are shifted into the nominal groups in the three volumes. Participant and circumstance nominalization of a behavioral clause comprises a greater proportion than that of the other two subsidiary process types, accounting for over 10%. However, all the cases come from the three sentences of “耳闻之不如目见之, 目见之不如足践之” (Xi, 2014a, p. 417), “耳得之而为声, 目遇之而成色” (Xi, 2020a, p. 507) and “听言观行” (Xi, 2020a, p. 124). The five verbal groups (“耳闻”, “目见”, “耳得”, “目遇”, and “听言”) serving the behavioral embedded clauses were rendered as nominal participants: “hearing”, “seeing” (Xi, 2014b, p. 467), “ear”, “eye”, and “words” (Xi, 2020b, p. 587). With such scattered examples, it might not be typical and representative enough to say that participant and circumstance nominalizations of a behavioral clause tend to occur more often than other subsidiary processes.

Further, a few cases are eventually shifted into nominal phrases, not being a clause with participants and circumstances anymore, thus falling under the other types of nominalization. For example, “四维不张, 国乃灭亡” (Xi, 2014a, p. 168) was translated as “Propriety, righteousness, honesty and a sense of shame—the four anchors of our moral foundation, and a question of life and death for the country” (Xi, 2014b, p. 188). The whole translated sentence consists of several nominal phrases, downgrading the rank of a clause to the word group. However, as the translation itself is not a clause, there are of course no participant and circumstance element components in it.

The tendency of participant and circumstance nominalization of the three core process types, in particular the material clause, can change the density of experiential meaning expressed in one clause. The ST tends to use more verbal groups or verbs that constitute process types in a sentence to construe experiential meaning in Chinese, while the English translations tend to transform parts of those processes into nominal groups or nouns serving as participants and circumstances, leaving fewer processes in a clause. The fewer the processes with more participant or circumstance elements in a clause, however, the denser the experiential meaning realized in one clause and the more highlighted the meaning of the processes left after the shifts.

Example 1. Participant nominalization:

ST: “尚贤者, 政之本也。” 各级党委和政府要认真贯彻党和国家关于留学人员工作的方针政策, 更大规模、更有成效地培养我国改革开放和社会主义现代化建设急需的各级各类人才。 (Xi, 2014a, p. 61).

TT: “‘Exaltation of the virtuous is fundamental to governance.' Party committees and governments at all levels must earnestly implement Party and government policies concerning students and scholars studying abroad, and train more effectively and on a larger scale all kinds of talented people badly needed by our reform, opening up and modernization” (Xi, 2014b, p. 67).

In this case, “者” is a modal particle that does not contain real meanings. “尚贤者” is an embedded identifying-relational clause that functions as a participant in the whole sentence “尚贤者, 政之本也” (respecting the virtuous is the root of governance). In the English translation, “尚贤者” was reproduced as a nominal group “exaltation of the virtuous”, instead of rendering it as an embedded clause with a verbal group to be consistent with the original structure. The experiential meaning realized in two clauses in the ST now is condensed into one clause in English, stressing the most important process based on the translators' understanding.

Example 2. Circumstance nominalization:

ST: “志不立, 天下无可成之事。理想信念动摇是最危险的动摇, 理想信念滑坡是最危险的滑坡。” (Xi, 2017a, p. 34).

TT: “‘Without resolve, one can accomplish nothing.' The wavering of one's faith and ideal is the most dangerous risk” (Xi, 2017b, p. 34).

In this example “志不立, 天下无可成之事” (if ambition is not established, nothing can be done in the world), one of the two material clauses “志不立” was reproduced as a circumstance element “without resolve” in translation. So, there is only one material process left, compressing the density of meaning in that single clause.

First, the tendency of participant and circumstance nominalization is ascribed to the different language habits. English prioritizes the use of nouns and nominal groups to present an experience of the world, while in Chinese verbs and verbal phrases are always the first choices. This different tradition of configuration language structure results in the inclination of replacing Chinese processes with nominal phrases. Second, the difference in logical structure between the two languages can also result in the rank shift of nominalization. English prefers to present things systematically in one sentence, while Chinese tends to describe them linearly. That therefore often makes Chinese clauses turn into one English sentence with several embedded clauses. Nominalization is one of the ways to realize such a trend, changing the Chinese verbal groups that serve processes in clauses to English nominal groups that can form embedded clauses in one complicated sentence. Third, the high frequency of material and relational processes distributed in the ST can also be the reason for participant and circumstance nominalization in many cases occurring in these two types of clauses in the ST.

The study found the existence of only five fields of expounding, reporting, exploring, sharing, and enabling in the materials (see Table 8 and Figure 5). Among them, exploring and enabling fields are used more often, comprising about 80% both in ST and TT, because in most cases, as shown in the following instances, the ACPP was quoted by President Xi to argue, discuss, or explore certain values and opinions publicly, to offer instructions or to warn people to avoid doing unwise things.

Example 1. Field of exploring:

ST: “一花独放不是春, 百花齐放春满园。 如果世界上只有一种花朵, 就算这种花朵再美, 那也是单调的。” (Xi, 2014a, p. 258).

TT: “As we often say in China, a single flower does not make spring, while one hundred flowers in full blossom bring spring to the garden. All countries are closely linked and share converging interests. They should both pool and share their strength” (Xi, 2014b, p. 283).

This example of exploring the field is part of Xi's address at the headquarters of UNESCO in 2014. Here, the prose in ST was invoked to stress the idea that all civilizations and cultures together make the world diverse and beautiful and thus, all countries need to work together. That functional nature of activity remains unchanged in TT–hence the same field of exploring in TT.

Example 2. Field of enabling:

ST: “…………非公有制经济要健康发展, 前提是非公有制经济人士要健康成长。……我们共产党内对领导干部也是这样要求的, 而且要求得更严……我们都要 自强不息, 止于至善。…………” (Xi, 2017a, p. 263).

TT: “…the healthy development of the private sector depends on those working in the sector…In the CPC, officials are required to do likewise, and the bar is even higher…We should constantly improve ourselves and strive for excellence” (Xi, 2017b, p. 287).

This sentence about enabling field comes from Xi's speech during the 4^th Session of the 12^th CPPCC National Committee in 2016. The ancient Chinese prose here was quoted to instruct that Party members needed to keep developing themselves, which in turn will lead to the improvement of the people and a robust economy. The functional nature of saying these words in both ST and TT is to provide instructions and form the field of enabling.

Statistics show that changes in the field of activity can lead to process shifts. Although Table 9 suggests that only about 14% of the fields of activity in ST were changed in their translations, this study found that where there is a shift in the field of activity, it is a process shift. In other words, when the original contextual field of activity is transformed in the TT, the process also tends to be changed to play different functions accordingly.

Example 1:

ST: “用人得当, 首先要知人。知人不深、识人不准, 往往会出现用人不 当、用人失误。 不知人之短, 不知人 之长, 不知人长中之短, 不知人短中之长, 则不可以用人, 不可以教人。” (Xi, 2014a, p. 418).

TT: “To employ officials, the most important thing is to know them. If we do not know them thoroughly and accurately enough, we may employ them inappropriately ‘Having no idea of a person's weakness and strength, the weak part of the strength or the strong part of the weakness, we have no ground for appointing or even training that person”' (Xi, 2014b, p. 469).

Here, the ACPP quoted in the ST is expressed in the field of enabling one to regulate one's behavior and avoid people employing talents wrongly. The imperative sentence with the imperative mood of “不可以” clearly tells the readers what the people cannot do, while the other clauses of “不知人之短, 不知人之长, 不知人长中之短, 不知人短中之长” list the prerequisites. While in the TT, the field of enabling was translated as the field of reporting, presenting the description that it is groundless to employ someone we do not know. While the two material clauses “不可以用人, 不可以教人” was rendered as a relational process “we have no ground for appointing or even training that person”, there emerges the transformation from the enabling field to the reporting field, so that the whole sentence sounds less peremptory. Such process shift is brought into existence in the interaction between the text and context– in this case, the change of process and field of activity.

Example 2.

ST: “功崇惟志, 业广惟勤。我国仍处于并将长期处于社会主义初级阶段, 实现中国梦, 创造全体人民更加美好的生活, 任重而道远……” (Xi, 2014a, p. 49).

TT: “‘One must both have great ambition and make tireless efforts to achieve great exploits.' China is still in the primary stage of socialism and will remain so for a long time to come. There is still much to do and a long way to go before we can realize the Chinese Dream and create a better life for all our people...” (Xi, 2014b, p. 60).

Similarly, in this example, the expounding field of “功崇惟志, 业广惟勤” was translated as the enabling field by using the modal verb “must”. Here, “惟” refers to “lie in” and the original quote contains two circumstantial-attributive-relational clauses, literally meaning fruitful achievements lie in ambition and great business lies in diligence. However, they were translated into one possessive-attributive-relational clause and two material clauses in English. The shift within the relational process type here is partly caused by and also leads to the change in the field of activity.

Through a case study of Xi's Governance volumes and comparing the transitivity systems of ST and TT, this research found that in general, there exists a high proportion of various process shifts as well as participant and circumstance rank shifts, which can lead to a certain degree of experiential meaning shift in the translations, even if we ignore the necessary shifts caused by language differences. Specifically, several transitivity shift tendencies were discovered, as follows:

First, there are three major tendencies of process shifts.

This study also found that compression, rather than expansion of processes, is the tendency in translating the ACPP in political texts, including the omission of processes and the compression of several process types into one. It indicates the TT is inclined to simplify certain experiences to make the language acceptable in English, by omitting unnecessary processes or condensing several processes into one. Such a tendency can bring about a change in the intensiveness of experiential meaning realized in clauses.

Second, there is the tendency for participant and circumstance rank shifts of nominalization. It means that verbs or verbal groups in a clause are changed to nouns or nominal groups that function as participants or circumstances. This trend can change the density of experiential meaning conveyed in one clause. The fewer processes with more participants or circumstances in a clause, the denser the experiential meaning realized in one clause and the more emphasis on the meaning expressed in processes.

Regarding possible factors motivating the transitivity shifts, this study discovered that the genre of political texts, language differences, and the distribution of process types in ST and TT as well as the delicacy level of the transitivity system can lead to the aforesaid transitivity shift tendencies. Besides, we can also go beyond to consider the motivations for those shifts from the contextual perspective of the field in the register theory. Regarding the field factors to transitivity shifts, it can be seen from the statistics where there was a change of the field of activity, there was a process shift in translation because when the field is shifted, the process also tends to be transformed to play different functions accordingly.

These findings of the study have to be seen in the light of some limitations. The first is the inability to cover the fourth volume of Governance and its English translation released in July 2022. Due to time constraints, we could study the ACPP in the first three volumes of the paper alone, leaving space for future systematic functional translation studies to explore more materials. Secondly, the identification of transitivity process types in this research is based on empirical studies and is therefore subject to a certain bias, which may potentially influence the tendencies of transitivity shifts. However, whenever there is ambiguity in determining the process type for one clause, we would put the verb or verbal group into a border unit of the sentence or even the whole passage, rather than think only of the clause itself. Halliday (2002b) suggested in this regard the use of “trinocular perspective” which involves the combination of semantics, lexicogrammar, as well as phonology and graphology. Besides, it is proven by previous research (e.g., Halliday, 2002a; Halliday and Webster, 2004) that extralinguistic factors, such as register, are also directly related to the pattern of process types. Therefore, we also considered the contextual elements, if necessary, in choosing the most suitable process type for the clause. The third is the lack of previous studies on the topic of ACPP translations in Governance or other political texts with transitivity. Although the transitivity system has been widely used in literary translation studies, prior research on the translation of ACPP in Xi's works or other political texts is limited. However, this research proved that transitivity could offer a perspective on such a topic for experiential meaning, as the primary mode of metafunctional meaning is inherent in all languages, regardless of the differences in text genre. More theories are expected on this topic through further research. Another limitation lies in the scope and depth of the analysis and discussions. This study focuses on transitivity shifts within the experiential metafunction. However, there may be room for shifts between experiential and other metafunctions, leaving space for other systematic functional translation studies to explore. Moreover, as Li (2005, p. 98) suggested long before, the linguistic patterns of translation shifts will only serve for a starting point for investigating the reasons behind such shifts. To penetrate deeply into this area, the ultimate goal of translation shift studies will be the exploration of translation norms motivating shift tendencies, thus the translators' and even patrons' overall perception to literary translation in political texts during a certain period. Therefore, more empirical studies are expected for further advancement in this research field.