On The Techniques And Strategies By The Yangs And Hawkes In Translating Hongloumeng

In today's world of 21st Century, with the rapid development of society and modernization of science and technology, international connections of various kinds in the field of politics, economy and culture have witnessed an increasing growth, therefore, cross-cultural exchanges and contacts among people from all over the world have seen an unprecedented frequency. As a bridge of exchanging two different languages, translation plays an essential role in cross-cultural communication, for translation is not a mere language exchange but more importantly, a reflection of cultures, philosophies and life values, etc. Cultural factors have always been a focus of concern in the translation circle.Through the study of cultural translation, people have come up with various ways of translation to cope with cultural barriers in communication. Foreignization and domestication are two most typical translation approaches. Since 1800s, over a dozen of English translations for Hongloumeng—a Chinese classical literature work by Cao Xueqin of Qing Dynasty—have come out. Among these English translations, the version translated by Chinese scholar Yang Xianyi and his wife Gladys Yang, and another version by British scholar David Hawkes are generally accepted as the best ones. Each of them has its own style and unique feature but differs in translation techniques and approaches.Hongloumeng covers almost all aspects of Chinese culture. The two versions differ a lot in translating the cultural factors of the original text. This thesis aims at exploring the reasons behind their differences in translation of cultural factors through comparison and analysis of the choices of wording, sentence structures, and idiomatic expressions of the two versions, and thus throwing some light on the translation approaches in dealing with cultural factors. The thesis also offers the author's own ideas about translation...