| It is an accepted view that translation not only transfers the meaning of a word in one language into another, but carries a culture in the process of meaning transfer from the latter part of the twentieth century.Translating has been playing a crucial role in communication of politics, economy, commerce…etc. between nations and regions throughout history. The study of translation which was primarily linguistic-oriented, centered on the debate of concepts such as "equivalence", "literal and free" translations.However, the 1970s saw a different world in translating field. A lot of new schools of theories appeared with the innovative angels and up to 1990s, Andre Lefevere and Susan Bassnett dismissed the kinds of linguistic theories of translation and argued that the study of the practice of translation was beginning to consider broader issues of context, history and convention. This shift of emphasis is called 'the cultural turn' in translation studies. They argued that a translation always takes place in a continuum and there are all kinds of constraints upon the translator, including cultural constraints especially when the literary works are involved.Hong Lou Meng is thought in some sense to epitomize the whole Chinese culture. The use of myths and symbols in the novel, the riddles and wonderful poems and songs which abound in it, the profound views on the world presented in it…etc, all these exceptional traits make the novel distinguished in Chinese and in world literature. In the 1970s, two complete translated versions appeared, namely A Dream of Red Mansion by Yang Xianyi and GlaydysYang and The Story of the Stone by David Hawkes. This classical work abounds in culturally-loaded idioms, which reflect many aspects of the Chinese in daily life. I shall make an attempt to examine and consider, under Chinese cultural constraints, how both translators deal with the challenge posed by translating Chinese idioms in a frame of the concept "Cultural Turn".
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