| Hong Lou Meng is a great literary work and it is regarded as an encyclopedia of Chinese feudal society. It includes various kinds of literary forms, such as poems, lyrics, songs, Fu (an intricate Chinese literary form combing elements of poetry and prose), Lei (elegiac address), couplets, riddles, drinking games etc. The couplets are well written except several ones written by Jia Zheng's secretaries. The couplets in this novel not only offer important clues to the development of the story but also give the readers excellent descriptions of the characters. They are closely related to the novel and at the same time they can be independent from it. The translation of Chinese couplets is always a hard nut to crack. The reason lies in the fact that there is almost no style in English language to be equivalent with the style of Chinese couplets which was born in Chinese language. However, the English translation of Chinese couplets is still feasible. The style of the Chinese couplets in Hong Lou Meng are conveyed very well at the creative work of two famous translators: Yang Xianyi and David Hawkes. The author of this thesis is interested in the stylistic equivalence in the translation of Chinese couplets and try to answer the following questions: How did the translators convey the style of Chinese couplets? What kind of differences do the two versions lie in? How the differences were made? It takes four parts to present a comparative exposition of the subject besides Introduction and Conclusion: the first chapter is about the theoretical base of the comparison: the stylistic equivalence; the second chapter includes the history of Chinese couplets, the range and style of the couplets in Hong Lou Meng; the third chapter is a detailed comparative study on the two versions from lexical level, grammatical level and textual level by the criteria of stylistic equivalence; the forth chapter gives an account of the underling causes of the differences and similarities between the two versions.
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