A Study Of B·S· Bonsall’s Translation Of Idioms In Hong Lou Meng From The Perspective Of George Steiner’s Fourfold Translation Motion Theory

At the zenith of Chinese narrative literature, Hong Lou Meng, attaining the great achievement that no other novel has accomplished, is an encyclopedia, which covers poems and verses, buildings and clothes, games and riddles, food and medicine, festival and custom and religion and culture and the like, all of which not only reflect the profound culture of China but also make it gain wider reputation among readers as time goes by. In Hong Lou Meng, idioms play a vitally important and indispensable role. They employ the dialogue to shape the personality and temperament of different characters. What the character says is the real reflection of his or her disposition to some extent. Ascribing to the humor and vividness of idioms, characters in it turn out to be more appealing. Without idioms, merely by the plain language the outcome or such effect can not be reached. Due to its unique and exclusive features and the profound culture and humor, the language in Hong Lou Meng becomes more expressive and appealing, and more attractive and fascinating. However, the translation of idioms becomes difficult owing to its profundity in culture, succinct expressions and unique language forms and features.Hermeneutics is a discipline on the study of understanding and interpreting. And translation is in dire need of the thorough, penetrating and all-round understanding of the original text before the interpretation of the original text is presented by the translator in a certain approach. From George Steiner’s perspective, interpretation is a sort of translation. Concerning the whole translating process, George Steiner proposes the Fourfold Translation Motion theory that is trust, aggression, incorporation, and compensation. In his book After Babel:Aspects of Language and Translation in1975, he presents the four steps minutely. In the English version by Bonsall, be it literal translation or liberal translation or the combination of both, what the translator has done in the duration of translation can be easily seen. In the step of "incorporation", the translator can choose to keep the original text intact or adapt the original text to the target language so as to be easily understood by the target readers. Via data collecting, literal translation is chiefly adopted by Bonsall’s version, which mirrors that Bonsall prefers to maintain the culture of the original text. As far as idiom translation is concerned, some literal translations are vivid whereas other literal translations merely attach importance to their surface meanings and inevitably neglect their deep meanings. Excessive literal translation will make the translated text hard to be understood, as a result of which the appropriate combination with liberal translation and literal and liberal translation will make the translation more readable and understandable.The thesis is comprised of five chapters. Chapter one principally introduces the research objective, purpose and significance, methodology and the layout of the whole thesis. Chapter two serves as the theoretical framework. Chapter three and chapter four is the main body of the thesis. Chapter three primarily places emphasis on idioms, idioms in Hong Lou Meng and idioms in The Red Chamber Dream by Bonsall. Chapter four analyzes idiom translation methods adopted by Bonsall with the help of concrete examples from the perspective of George Steiner’s Fourfold Translation Motion theory that is trust, aggression, incorporation, and compensation. Chapter five is the conclusion of the thesis, which is in hope of obtaining a deeper understanding of idiom translation of The Red Chamber Dream by Bonsall and shedding some light on the relevant research in the future.