A Comparative Study Of The Translations Of Hongloumeng By Hawkes, Yang Xianyi And Gladys Yang From The Perspective Of Grammatical Metaphor

Hongloumeng is an important art treasure in world?s literature treasure house which wins lots of acclaims and appreciations.Its literature value also elicits applause from scholars of various countries.Accordingly,scholars of various countries are keen on the translation of Hongloumeng.The translation of the literature work is undoubtedly significant.The quality of the translation of the literature work will have a direct impact on the transmission of cultures.As the epitome of Chinese traditional culture,the translation of Hongloumeng is of vital importance.Among the various translation versions,the version of Hawkes,and the version of Yang Xianyi and Gladys are the most popular.Grammatical metaphor is an important theory in linguistics.It was first proposed by Halliday in his book An Introduction to Functional Grammar.The concept of metaphor was first limited to the lexical level,considering the different meanings of the same words.The emergence of grammatical metaphor theory extends the theory to the grammatical level which considers different expressions of the same meaning.There were various angles towards the study of the versions of Hongloumeng but the research of the versions from the perspective of Hongloumeng was few.Translation is presented to the readers in the final form of language.So it is more corresponding to the nature of translation,thus settling the innovative point of this essay.This paper used the methods of contrastive analysis and documentation to study the two versions.This paper,based on the theory of grammatical metaphor,selects examples from the two versions to make contrastive analyses so as to select the more corresponding ones to the original context,which may bring some experience for the literature translation.Firstly,the grammatical metaphor theory can serve as the complement part to the traditional translation strategies and provide some experience for translation.Secondly,the grammatical metaphor theory is closely connected withthe literature translation.The use of the grammatical metaphor theory can make the translation versions become more faithful to the original ones and better convey the contents of the source texts.Thirdly,the grammatical metaphor theory should be used in specific context.In some circumstance,the congruent form is better than the metaphorical one.