Analysis Of The Translation Of 'Xiaodao' In Hongloumeng

Hongloumeng is one of the four famous classical literary works in China. Its writer, Cao Xueqin, became well-known because of his skillful characterization of various characters through individualistic speeches. The speeches in the story are introduced by words such as 'dao', 'wen', 'shuo', etc. due to the fact that in ancient Chinese there was no punctuation. In the first 80 chapters, there are 1219 'xiaodao' to lead speeches made by various characters. This thesis discusses the translation of 'xiaodao' in the English version A Dream of Red Mansions.Through observing and comparing the first 80 chapters of Hongloumeng and A Dream of Red Mansions., it is found that the 1219 'xiaodao' were not translated into one and the same version. Thus, this thesis first finds out all the corresponding translation of 'xiaodao' in the first 80 chapters of A Dream of Red Mansions. Then the thesis finds out the definitions of 'xiaodao' and its translation in various dictionaries, anddeconstruct the definitions into sense components. Through comparing the sense components contained in 'xiao', 'dao' and their translations, it can be judged whether the conceptive meaning of 'xiaodao' is transferred into English.Since words are meaningless unless they are put into certain contexts, this thesis does not only consider the conceptive meanings of 'xiaodao' and its translations, but also their corresponding contextual meanings. Through looking into the contexts of 'xiaodao', it can be determined how one 'xiaodao'. By comparing the contextual meanings of 'xiaodao' and the sense components contained in the corresponding translations, this thesis discusses the appropriateness of the translations.This thesis further discusses some problems concerning translation principles and translation criticism. The freedom of the translators is first discussed. In order to help the foreign readers to understand the source language text as well as the native readers, a translator has certain freedom to addessential background knowledge and express clearly the contextual meaning of some words and phrases when necessary.This thesis argues that one and the same source language work can have more than one target language works because translators differ in the ways of thinking, and they have different social experience and value standard and aptitude. Various target language works of the same source language work provide translation researchers with opportunities to study translation principles and techniques more profoundly, so that the later translators can produce a better translation version of the same source language work.This thesis finally discusses the problem of translation criticism. Traditionally, translation criticism tends to be done from the literary point of view. However, it can also be done effectively with such linguistic tools and theory as corpus linguistics, semantic analysis and the theory of narratology. Different critical viewpoints on translation can give newinsights into translation theory.