An Analysis Of The Translation Of Chrysanthemum Poems In Two English Versions Of Hong Lou Meng From The Perspective Of The Conceptual Metaphor

Hong Lou Meng, the masterpiece of Cao Xueqin, is a great success in Chinese literary field. It covers almost every aspect of the life at that time, so it is called the encyclopedia of the late Qing Dynasty. At the beginning of the book, the author pointed out that some truths in the book were hidden, and therefore, so many fans are carried away by the book and they are so curious about the ending of the characters’ in the book. It is like a mystery that needs to be unfolded.Conceptual metaphor theory was first proposed by G.Lakoff. This theory believes that metaphor is not a kind of figure of speech, but a basic form of human thoughts and cognition. Through mappings from the source domain to the target domain, the conceptual metaphor helps us to understand the world better. But metaphor is under the influence of culture so when we interpret metaphor, we must take cultural influence into account. The conceptual metaphor consists of three parts: structural metaphor, orientational metaphor, and ontological metaphor.This paper will center on the three aspects to interpret the twelve chrysanthemum poems in Hong Lou Meng by comparing the two English translation versions of David Hawkes and Yang Hsien-yi. It aims to figure out the image of the chrysanthemum to find the messages the author tried to send out to his readers.Through comparing the two translation versions of the two translators, the author personally believes that Yang Hsien-yi outperformed David Hawkes in terms of image expression. From the perspective of conceptual metaphor, Yang Hsien-yi’s translation paid more attention to the mapping from source domain to target domain while David Hawkes sometimes omitted the images. Therefore, his translation lost the source domain, not to mention the mapping.