Domestication And Foreignization In The Translation Of Address Forms In Hong Lou Meng

Due to the great difference between Chinese address system and English address system, translators will face to great difficulties in translating them. Hong Lou Meng embodies the core cultures of Chinese society and it is rich and complex in the use of address forms, therefore, in translation practice, it is of greater difficulty to render those Chinese address forms to English and transfer correctly the implied cultural information to the English readers.This thesis focuses on the comparative study on the different translation strategies-domestication and foreignization from the perspective of culture and translation, taking the two translated works of Hong Lou Meng—A Dream of Red Mansions translated by Yang Xianyi & Gladys Yang and The Story of the Stone translated by David Hawks & John Minford as examples.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One is a general introduction to the study. It states the aim of the study, the methodology of the study and the organization of the thesis. Chapter Two serves as a literature review on the translation of address forms. It mainly deals with the definition and categorization of address forms. The previous publications on the translation of address forms are also mentioned and commended. Chapter Three presents the two often-used translation strategies: domestication and foreignization in the translation of address forms in Hong Lou Meng. The definition of domestication and foreignization and their theoretic basis are briefly introduced. Arguments between them both at home and abroad are reviewed. What's more, it points out the national and cultural characteristics of the address forms in Hong Lou Meng. And then leads the topic to the skopos theory. Because of their different translating purposes, the Yangs and Hawkes thus adopted two different translating strategies: domestication and foreignization in the two versions. Chapter Four provides a detailed analysis of the translation of the address forms in the novel under discussion. Abundant examples of address forms translated differently by the strategy of domestication and the strategy of foreignization are compared and analyzed. In this chapter, examples of the translations of address forms are classified into two big categories (kinship forms and social address forms). Each of them has many sub-groups. Chapter Five concludes the research findings and gives a summary of the study. It also presents the limitations of the study and proposes suggestions for further research.