A Translation Study On The Characterization Of Wang Xifeng

According to Hatim and Mason's discourse theory, translation process is acommunicative process which takes place within a social context, and translators,as the mediator of the communication between the author of ST and readers of TT,shall establish a contextual equivalence in the translation so that the TT readersmay correctly understand the ST with the help of the context established. Ascontext proposed by Hatim and Mason consists of three levels, namely, thecommunicative level, pragmatic level and semiotic level, and each level has itslexical and syntactic requirements for translators, to establish the contextualequivalence in the translation, translators shall be careful in their lexical andsyntactic choices. Within the framework, contextual equivalence is the assessmentcriterion for the target text. This thesis tries to probe into the issue of characterbuilding of Wang Xifeng in the two versions of translation of Hong Lou Mengthrough the reestablishment of contextual equivalence in the translation to seehow the handling of the three levels of context in translation actions mayinfluence the translators' character building work of Wang Xifeng and what effector effects are achieved. Both target texts are justified by the translators' handlingof the lexical and syntactic requirements raised by establishing contextualequivalence in the translations and we find that, as a result of their differentlexical and syntactic choices, the translators of the two English versions of HongLou Meng have produced two Wang Xifengs with different character features intheir translations. Based on the findings, some suggestions on character buildingare proposed in terms of establishing contextual equivalence. And at last, thisthesis is also intended to attract attentions to a discoursal approach to therebuilding of character in the literature translation.