A Study On Domestication And Foreignization Of Cultural Elements In The Two English Versions Of Hong Lou Meng By The Yangs And David Hawkes

Cultural translation has always been attracting the attention of the scholars both at home and abroad. Recently, how to transfer and spread Chinese culture through translation has already become translator's concern. Hong Lou Meng, as the epitome of the Chinese feudal society, boasts of rich and enormous life and cultural contexts, extraordinary depth of thoughts, consummate writing skills, and unique artistic and aesthetic values. All these, however, pose great challenges to translators. In the translation of cultural elements, there is a variety of translating methods, among which, foreignization and domestication are two important and common strategies. The former is SL culture-oriented, focusing on retaining the specific expressions of the SL culture and transplanting them into the TL culture. But the latter is just the opposite. It is TL culture-oriented, emphasizing the idiomatic expressions of the TL culture and resisting those of the SL culture.Considering that it is a continuum from foreignization to domestication, the author of this thesis divides the process into different grades. Moreover, some specific translation techniques are identified and classified into different grades according to the degree to which the original cultural images are retained in the target language.The thesis is an attempt to explore the different strategies for translating cultural elements in Hong Lou Meng adopted by the Yangs and Hawkes respectively through a comparative study of the two versions. The study is carried out by means of a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis, in which 166 samples are randomly chosen from Hong Lou Meng and its two translated versions.After an all-round investigation and analysis of the two versions, we find that although both the Yangs and Hawkes have employed foreignization and domestication in their translations, they each have their own preference. In the translation of cultural elements, the Yangs prefer to adopt foreignization strategy, while Hawkes is more inclined to domestication translation. Apart from that, through an examination of Hawkes' translation, we can find when there are conflicts between the Chinese and English cultural traditions and aesthetic values, he gives priority to his target language culture. From this we can see that the European ethnocentrism has exerted some influence on Hawkes' translation.In addition, the result of the chi-square test proves that there is statistically significant difference in the choice of translation strategies employed by the Yangs and Hawkes respectively.