On English Translation Of Protrait Description In Hongloumeng

This paper focuses on portrait description of characters in the English version of Hongloumeng by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang. By means of systematic analysis, it aims at seeking out their guidelines when they translated those parts.At the very beginning, the paper summarizes the features of portrait description in Hongloumeng by Cao Xueqin, whose perspective of beauty was very distinctive. First, Cao was good at describing the exquisite dress and jewelry worn by characters in detail, which served to set off characters'looks and personalities. He achieved excellence in depicting the costume of high-ranking people in terms of color, material and design. Second, in the characterization of young girls, he drew heavily on the essence of the Chinese literary tradition. That is the repeated use of metaphors such as flowers, the moon, water and jade to picture the female beauty. Third, Cao followed the aesthetical perspective of the Chinese literati, whose genteel taste in art applauded the elements of vagueness, hesitancy, uncertainty and contradiction.Chapters Two and Three touch on Yang's translation of portrait description, which is further classified into dress description and looks description in this paper as the focus of meticulous analysis. The analysis of dress description centers on the color, material and design, and that of looks revolves around three of the main characters—Baoyu, Daiyu and Xifeng. As a result, the characteristics of Yang's translation to send the message of beauty become evident. Yang's translation preserved the culture-bound images in full with the purpose of keeping the information with cultural print intact. As for the expressions with little or no cultural connotations, Yang adapted a more flexible approach to translating, taking readers'feelings as priority. For example, in the translation of Chinese dress styles, Yang transformed them into familiar ones in English culture while in that of designs, he resorted to plain translation not to set any obstacle for foreign readers. In the last chapter, the author tries to go beyond the surface, making an attempt at unraveling Yang's guidelines in translation.