Translation Of Wine Images In Hong Lou Meng From The Perspective Of Palmer's Cultural Linguistics

Translation is not only a language transformation activity but also a communicative activity that involves all kinds of cultural factors. It entails the cross-cultural communication between the two languages other than a mere transformation process of lexical meanings alone. Therefore, with the development of translation theories, an ever growing amount of attention has been paid to the cultural factors in translation. That is of mighty theoretical and practical impetus to the cultural translation of Hong Lou Meng.In this thesis which is based on Palmer's cultural linguistics, the author attempts to study the translation of wine images in The Story of the Stone, one of the wholly translated English versions of Hong Lou Meng, by David Hawkes and his son-in-law John Minford (hereafter "Hawkes's English version" for short). She mainly discusses the four general principles of images in cultural linguistics before making a thorough study with detailed examples on the translation strategies and methods of wine images under the guidance of these principles in this English version. The paper consists of the following 4 chapters:In Chapter 1, the author explains the relationship among image, culture and language from the perspective of Palmer's cultural linguistics. Cultural linguistics, in essence, is a theory of images. It seeks to understand how speakers deploy speech and how listeners understand it through kinds of images. Language is the play of verbal symbols based on images which are virtually structured by culture. Images, language, culture and their relationship constitute the core of cultural linguistics.By probing Palmer's general principles of images, namely, the principles of perceptual equivalence, spatial equivalence, structural equivalence and transformational equivalence respectively into cognitive linguistics in Chapter 2, the author tries to discuss the application of these four principles to, image understanding and translation.Various wine images in Hong Lou Meng are introduced in Chapter 3. In this unique novel, the author Cao Xueqin uses plenty of wine images to describe the vivid appearances of all people in that society. Thus, readers can find abundant sensory wine images, such as visual, auditory, olfactory and kinesthetic wine images easily in the whole novel. Furthermore, there are some figurative wine images in it as well, like those of simile, metaphor and metonymy, and other images as an organic combination of sensory and figurative sorts.As the pivot of this paper, Chapter 4 offers a case study on the translation of wine images in Hawkes's version The Story of the Stone on the basis of Palmer's four general principles. The author ticks out some cultural and language barriers in image translation and then proposes several suggestions for future research after her study on Hawkes's translation strategies and methods.All in all, language and culture are intimately linked to each other. Language reflects and bears the connotations of culture and is meanwhile restricted by culture in return. It is a necessary approach to understand its culture before people master the language itself. Translation is not only a cross-language and cross-cultural communication activity but also one of the most important means for revitalizing human society. Images in Palmer's cultural linguistics have much to do with translation. They can make a distinctive difference in the course of translation. So translators should optimize them to the fullest. To make a better and more reasonable choice of images in the future translations, translators ought to approach the original works and their translation according to the relationship among images, language and culture seriously.