Functional Grammar as a Helpful Tool for Translator Training

In the 1990s, C. Taylor Torsello (1996) called for the study of grammar as an essential part of translator education and argued that Functional Grammar (FG) could best serve this purpose. The scholar maintained that the grammar which is a useful tool for translators is neither formal, nor contrastive tout court, but rather functional. I still believe that the type of grammar which should be taught to translators-to-be is functional, such as Hallidayan FG theorized within a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) framework (Halliday 1994). Without totally denying the value of contrastive grammar when translating, I agree with Taylor Torsello that it need not represent the first and primary concern for a translator. Conversely, I believe that FG can offer a helpful tool for two main purposes: first, for the text analysis of a source text (ST); second, for the production of a functionally equivalent target text (TT). Such a model proves in fact valuable for describing and interpreting a ST and reproducing its meanings in an effective TT. In this chapter, after briefly illustrating the application of SFL within the discipline of Translation Studies and sketching the Hallidayan analytical model, I shall try to answer the question: Why FG? I shall do first from a theoretical point of view, by introducing the main issues of FG which are relevant for translators and then by presenting practical examples taken from my own experience as a teacher of courses in translation theory and practice addressed to graduate students at the University of Bologna, dealing with the English>Italian language pair.