An Analysis Of Translating Metonymy In A Dream Of Red Mansions By Yang Hsien-yi And Gladys Yang

In globalization era, cultural variety has been attached more and more importance, translation plays a key role in cross-cultural communication. Metonymy is one of the cognitive models of mankind, a very powerful and efficient tool with which people conceptualize the world. Metonymic mappings are not arbitrary, but constrained by cultures. In Hong Loumeng, the encyclopedia of Chinese culture, there are a lot of metonymies, the translation of metonymies will directly affect the whole translation work. But the study of the translation strategies of metonymy in Hong Loumeng has not received enough attention, its corpus still needs to be compiled. Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang are the well-known translators in Chinese translation history, A Dream of Red Mansions is their great representative and the crystallization of the sino-western combination. Taking A Dream of Red Mansions translated by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang as the study case to explore the translation strategies of metonymy is valuable for the study of translation strategies, translation practice and translation teaching.The research of translation strategies has been subjective and always based on a personal impression. Although subjective judgment is unavoidable in translation studies, it is desirable to conduct objective analysis of the translators'works as bases for the judgment. Based on the features of metonymy and the contrast between Chinese and English metonymy models, the author attempts to conduct a quantitative and descriptive study of the metonymy translation in A Dream of Red Mansions. A tiny corpus has been built owing to its capacity to generate objective data in a short period of time. All the data are testified by the searching software of CLEC, and all the strategies found are illustrated and analyzed.This thesis compares and contrasts the Chinese and English metonymy, illustrates and analyzes the strategies adopted by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang in translation of metonymy. Through study, it is found that the prerequisites of metonymy translation are: 1) Understanding the cultural differences between SL and TL; 2) Understanding the relationship between the metonymy and the tenor; 3) Cultural interpretation of the metonymy to overcome the visual obstacle of language. The thesis suggests that we can use literary translation in translating metonymies with common models, and we can adopt five strategies in translating metonymies with unique cultural factors: literal translation, retaining the image; literal translation with footnotes; converting the metonymy to its implied meaning in the context; replacing the SL image with an established TL image; omitting the metonymy. These five strategies can be divided into two main trends: foreignization and domestication. Literal translation with footnotes and omitting the metonymy can be used as the compensation methods. If the aim of the translation is cultural message transition, we can mainly employ foreignization in the translation of metonymy with different cultural factors. If not, we should pay attention to cultural compatibility. In the course of Chinese-English translation, absolute domestication or foreignization can't be realized, we should adopt a comprehensive measure, convey the information in the original works at its maximum.Theoretically, this thesis enriches the theory of metonymy translation and Chinese–English translation, further explores the corpus-based study of translation strategies. Practically, the research sheds light on metonymy translation, helps the teaching and learning of English language, English culture and Chinese–English translation. It also promotes the cross-cultural communication between Chinese and English peoples.