Equivalent Effect Translation Of Figures Of Speech Of Hong Lou Meng

Hong Lou Meng is the greatest masterpiece among the classical Chinese novels; its language is of great artistic value. As the most direct and intensive embodiment of its language art , several major figures of speech prominent either for quantity or quality are selected as the object of my study and classified into three groups, namely phonetic, syntactic and lexical figures of speech. With Equivalent Effect Translation theory elaborated by Nida and Jin Di as translation criteria, translation approaches and translation effect of the selected figures of speech in SL Text and its two English versions by Hawkes and The Yangs are compared and appreciated. According to Equivalent Effect theory, the readers of the translated text should be able to understand and appreciate it in essentially the same manner as the original readers did. Therefore, both the form and content of the original text can and should be changed or adjusted under certain condition. Because of proper treatment of reservation, deletion and adjustment at various level and various aspects of the original text, Hawkes achieves higher level of equivalent effect translation much more often than the Yangs. When the corresponding approach is not possible, Hawkes tries to apply those active translation approaches, namely adaptation, shifts of figures of speech, and recreation of new figures of speech more frequently than the Yangs, and use the passive translation approaches such as deletion, transliteration, paraphrase, and annotation less frequently than the Yangs. In all, flexibility and creativity of translator are essential for the achievement of equivalent effect translation of figures of speech in literary works.