The Influence Of Socio-cultural Context On Translation

Hong Lou Meng, a classical realistic novel, represents the peak of artistic accomplishment of ancient Chinese classical novels. It is a tragedy of love and marriage revolving around Jia Baoyu, Lin Daiyu and Xue Baochai. Through the love story, the novel provides a microcosm of the world of its time, including the feudal system and the aristocratic way of life. It reveals the darkness and evils of the final stage of the feudal society, which is destined to collapse quickly.Context has been widely studied by scholars, ever since the term was proposed by Malinowski. Since the cultural turn in the 1970's, more attention has been paid to cultural context. Based on the research, a new school--Translation Studies came into being. The school started to study the relationship between cultural context and translation systematically and scientifically, so as to criticize translation works objectively, and to explain translation process scientifically. Drawing on these researches, this thesis attempts to employ the theories to discuss the influence of socio-cultural context on the translation of Hong Lou Meng.Hong Lou Meng is a"cultural novel"which includes different styles of Chinese ancient literature such as poetry, ci, opera and rhyme-prose, and reveals various aspects of the feudal society in politics, ethics, religion and social systems. By analyzing the two English versions of Hong Lou Meng in the socio-cultural perspective, this thesis attempts to examine the theories on the influence of socio-cultural factors on translation, and explain the differences in A Dream of Red Mansions and The Story of the Stone. The significance of the research lies in two aspects: to advance the socio-cultural theory and to bring about objective criticism on these two English versions and their translators. The thesis consists of four chapters besides the introduction.