A Comparative Study Of Nickname Translations In Hongloumeng From The Perspective Of Semantic And Communicative Translation

Hongloumeng, a masterpiece in Chinese literature, is well-received by readers at home and abroad. Studies on translations of Hongloumeng occupy an important place in the field of Redology and Translatology. The author of Hongloumeng creates numerous lifelike characters with their distinctive personalities. Nicknames of many characters are well-known. Nicknames play an important role in portraying the vivid images and distinctive personalities, showing writer’s great linguistic skills. Meanwhile, they are one of the highlights of this masterpiece. Concise and short in the choice of words, the nicknames in Hongloumeng embrace abundant cultural profundity of Chinese nation, and profound allusions hide behind those simple words. Moreover, these nicknames are highly literary for its rich employment of many kinds of rhetorical devices, such as puns, allusions, metaphors and euphemism. Therefore, translation of nicknames poses a challenge for translators. On one hand, it’s difficult to find complete equivalent expressions between source language and target language as there is vast cultural gap between the source language and target language; on the other hand, the various rhetoric devices employed in nicknames cannot be faithfully reproduced in target language.Although tremendous research is undertaken on the English versions of Hongloumeng, the monographic research on the translation of nicknames in Hongloumeng is rarely done. In the existing literature, there are only five theses analyzing the nickname translation from the perspective of linguistics, culture and philosophy. Therefore, judging from the research status of nickname translation, there remains great potential for further exploration of translation of nickname.Taking Peter Newmark’s semantic and communicative translation theory as the theoretical backbone, selecting three influential complete English versions (Hawkes’English Version, Yang Hsien-yi’s English Version and Bonsall’s English Version), the thesis makes a qualitative and descriptive analysis on the translations of nicknames in three English versions. Comparative and descriptive analysis is conducted on what concrete techniques and methods are applied in the translations of nicknames in Hongloumeng by three translators.The thesis finds out that the three translators all translated the nicknames semantically, which coincides with the Peter Newmark’s theory in translating literary text, that is, the literary texts need to be translated semantically. Bonsall mainly adopted semantic translation with great efforts to preserve the style of the source text. While in Hawkes and Yang Hsien-yi’s versions, both semantic and communicative translation are adopted, but inclining to STr. Y&Y’s version strives to preserve the style of the original, making the translation maintain the identity of the original culture and its spirit faithfully. Communication translation is used in H&M’s version with more consideration on the acceptability of the target text readership, aiming to achieve more natural and smooth translation, removing obstacles for target text readership.The topic of the thesis is expected to enrich the content and broaden the horizon of translation study of Hongloumeng. It also attempts to demonstrate the explanatory power of Peter Newmark’s translation theory in literary texts. The author of the thesis aims to provide some references to related translation research on other Chinese classical literary works.