Comparison Of The Regulated Verse Translation Of Hong Lou Meng

The great classical Chinese novel-Hong Lou Meng creates a miracle since its birth in the mid-eighteenth century. As a somewhat unfinished novel, it is not only known to nearly every household in China but also accepted in the world. Dozens of languages including English, French, German, Japanese, Russion, etc. are used in translating it and the flourishing studies of it at home and abroad have developed themselves into a specialized subject-"redology", which is rather rare in the history of the Chinese as well as the world literature.This book is regarded by many people as an "encyclopedia" on Chinese feudal society not only for the richness of its content but also for its successful incorporating with almost all the techniques of literary merit developed in the previous periods. Of the various literary forms existing in Hong Lou Meng, the regulated verse is a very special one both for its significance to the whole novel and for the unique charm it possesses. However, this verse part has always been omitted in many translated versions either because of the myth the translator hold that it is unimportant or because of the difficulty in rendering it, which is really a regret. Fortunately, the British sinologist, David Hawkes and the Chinese scholar Yang Xianyi and his wife Gladys Yang give in the 1970s the complete versions in which the verse part is satisfactorily represented.This thesis intends to give a tentative study of the translations on the regulated verse of Hong Lou Meng by comparing the two complete versions. It takes five parts to present a comparatively reasonable exposition of the subject: the first part gives a brief account of the regulated verses in Hong Lou Meng, including the characteristics of the regulated verse as well as the difficulties may be encountered in rendering it; the second part gives a brief introduction of the translated versions (abridged versions & full versions) and puts the emphasis on the introduction of David Hawkes' The Story of the Stone and the Yang's A Dream of Red Mansions; the third part makes comparison from the angle of form while the fourth and the fifth parts make comparison from the angle of sound and sense respectively.