A Study On The Translation Of Culture-loaded Flower Words In A Dream Of Red Mansions

As the pinnacle of traditional Chinese literature, Hong Lou Meng has been widely accepted for its rich life and cultural contents, extraordinary depth of thoughts, highly skilled and consummate structure, as well as unique artistic and aesthetic values. As the crystallization of Chinese literature and culture, Hong Lou Meng is one of the best channels for westerners to learn about Chinese traditional culture.The thesis studies how to translate the culture-loaded flower words in the Yangs' translated version-A Dream of Red Mansions in order to keep the foreignness and enhance the cross-cultural communication. In addition, a new perspective-cognitive schema is applied to discuss which translation strategies contribute to better effects to shorten the cultural distance when a text is translated from one culture into another. The translation strategies of culture-loaded flower words are put forward in this thesis.The thesis has obtained the following major findings:1) The thesis summarizes the connotations of flower words in Hong Lou Meng, and the role they play in the whole novel. The translators must be bilingual and bicultural, and adopt flexible translation strategies. Otherwise, they can not achieve the aim of cross-cultural communication.2) The Yangs'version is source culture-oriented. They employ various methods to keep the language and cultural flavor in order to introduce the Chinese culture to the English readers.3) There are some problems in the Yangs'translation that are open to objection. Sticking to the original text too much makes their translation obscure, and hence the aim of cultural communication and cultural schema translation is hard to achieve.