A Comparative Study Of Poem Translation In Hong Lou Meng From View Of Semantic Translation And Communicative Translation

It has been generally accepted that translation is not only a cross-language activity, but also a cross-cultural activity. But the conflict between the original author and the target reader, and that between the source and the target language remain there. How to resolve the conflicts is still open to different translators under different situations. Against the backdrop of an unprecedented quick speed of globalization and cultural integration, it is every translator's responsibility to respect and maintain ethnical cultures so as to carry on diversification and multiculturalism. Translating of Chinese classics should, therefore, be made in the spirit of preserving and introducing Chinese cultural sense and heritage. Yet, how to maintain the source language cultural peculiarity in translation? This thesis aims to answer the question through a comparative study of translation of poetry in classical Chinese novel, Hong Lou Meng. It has been translated by two renowned translators, namely David Hawkes and Yang Xianyi with two contrastive translation strategies, domestication and foreignization. We shall see through case studies that Yang, regarding preserving and introducing Chinese cultural heritage as his purpose, adopted more semantic and source culture-oriented translation; while Hawkes, with a purpose of pleasing the target reader, adopted communicative and target culture-oriented translation. In traditional critique, critics are always in favor of one method and against another. The analysis leads to the conclusion that both semantic translation and communicative translation have their advantages and drawbacks. None of above methods can singly fulfill translation task. Generally speaking, the author thinks that no single method can solve all problems in translation; the principle of translation should be relative and polysynthetic, but not absolute. Only when translators take advantages of both translation methods, can they reproduce the cultural connotation of Hong Lou Meng, achieve the goal of cultural communication between China and Western countries simultaneously.