Cognitive Context Perspective On The Information Gaps In The Two English Versions Of Hong Lou Meng And Their Adjusting Strategies

Due to the lack of full understanding of information gaps and their potential influences and the deficiency of academic research, a systematic discussion of information gaps has long been neglected. Taking as examples of the two English versions of Hong Lou Meng - A Dream of Red Mansions translated by Yang Xianyi and his wife Gladys Yang and The Story of the Stone translated by David Hawkes and J. Minford, this thesis attempts to analyze the information gaps caused by the translators' different cognitions of contexts from the perspective of cognition. Fundamentally, the study of information gaps will help the translators avoid its negative effects if possible.The significance of context in translation has been universally agreed upon in the field of translation studies at home and abroad. In A Linguistic Theory of Translation, J.C.Catford, introducing Halliday's view on context into translation theory for the first time, emphasizes the importance of context to translation. In Approaches to Translation, Peter Newmark firmly asserts that "context is the overriding factor in all translation, and has primacy over any rule, theory or primary meaning". In Pragmatics and English Learning, He Ziran holds that the translator should manage to reproduce the original contextual effects in the target language context after detailed and correct analysis of the original context. The problems of translation are actually the problems of contextual cognition and context is an important concept in linguistics. Studying contexts from the angle of cognition is a new direction for contextual study. In the entire process of translation, both the correct comprehension of the source text and the appropriate expression in the target language depend on the specific context and negligence of either may lead to misunderstanding and mistranslating - information gap.Taking information gaps from the two complete English versions as examples, the author makes detailed comparisons from the perspective of translator's subjectivity, translator's cognition of context and translator's compensation strategies. Through the comparative study, the influence of translator's translation purpose is obvious: Roughly speaking, Yang Xianyi keeps the Chinese flavor as much as possible, and thus faithfully transfers information to the greatest extent, while Hawkes gives up so much Chinese flavor in order to fit in with the English readers. Therefore, information gaps are inevitable to be produced. Besides the translation purposes, the translator's cognition of context can not be ignored. The author analyzes the information gaps in both Yang Xianyi and Hawkes's versions in the cognition of linguistic context, cognition of cultural context and cognition of situational context. At last, the author explores Yang Xianyi and Hawkes's compensation strategies towards information gaps. Yang Xianyi prefers explicit compensation strategies, whereas Hawkes is inclined to implicit compensation strategies.To conclude the thesis, the cognitive context influences translation, especially on handling the classics which is endowed richly with contexts like Hong Lou Meng.