A Research On Cultural Connotation Of Flower Words In Chinese And English Poems And Their Translation

The reproduction of cultural elements has been paid much attention to by translators. In the early 1990s, translation studies tended to discuss "cultural turn", the central idea of which is to put the translation in the broader culture space to research. Many scholars and professors have been studying different aspects of cultural translation, but as a part of cultural transmission, the translation of flower words have not given full attention to, especially the cultural connotations of flowers in poems.Flowers in Chinese classical poetry have profound cultural connotative meanings that have developed in China for more than two thousand years. A study of the flower connotations in Chinese classical poems and English poems may pave a road for spreading the flower culture. The poems in Hong Lou Meng not only reflect the creative thinking of Cao Xueqin, but also the classical Chinese culture embodied in literature. Moreover, the flower connotations contained in poems of Hong Lou Meng can be regarded as an epitome of Chinese classical culture.This thesis first finds out the differences and similarities of flower connotations in Chinese classical poems and in English poems by illustration, which provides the foundation of reproduction of cultural elements. Then the flower words in poems of Hong Lou Meng are discussed in detail. Based on the above study of flower words, the author discusses the three main factors influencing the transmission of cultural connotations, which are cultural defaults, readership, and aesthetic standards. And at last some methods to translate culture related flower words are proposed, such as literal translation, substitution, condensation, literal translation with annotation, transliteration and omission, according to the three factors.