On Adaptation Strategy For Chinese Culture Export: From The Perspective Of Translation Strategy Of Mahjong Culture In The Two English Versions Of Hong Lou Meng

With the development of cultural globalization, Chinese culture, as the most extensive and profound part in oriental cultures is facing the shock from western dominant culture. Meanwhile, being an important medium of strengthening the impacts of our own culture and resisting foreign culture aggression, translation is also obviously unbalanced. Under such circumstances, culture export has become a crucial sustainable strategy against the shock from western culture. However, there is a variety of controversy over the approach and channel of culture export. Thus, by adopting the Mahjong culture, which is typical in Chinese culture, in Hong Lou Meng, honored as "an encyclopedia of Chinese culture", and comparing the specific translation strategies as manifested in the two English versions, this thesis has explored the adaptation strategy for Chinese culture export from the perspective of adaptation theory.As the most influential classic works in the history of Chinese literature, Hong Lou Meng embodies abundant folk culture and can be regarded as the epitome of Chinese culture. Up to the present, there have been more than 15 translated versions in different languages, among which the most significant and influential are the two English versions, namely, A Dream of Red Mansions, translated by the Chinese scholar Yang Xianyi and his wife Gladys Yang, and The Story of the Stone, translated by the English sinologist David Hawkes and his student John Minford.This thesis discusses the different translation strategies employed in the two English versions to deal with the Mahjong culture, namely, foreignization or domestication, or both. These two translation strategies find their current in the stream of the culture turn. To distinguish, foreignization is source language (SL for short, and henceforth) oriented and lays much emphasis on preserving the cultural characteristics of the SL; whereas domestication is target language (TL for short, and henceforth) oriented, which may lead to deleting and rewriting the source text (ST for short, and henceforth) for the adaptation of the translation to the language norms and social values presented in TL. Until now, as opinions vary on the choice of domestication and foreignization, no consensus can be reached among scholars at home and abroad.As the Secretary of International Pragmatics Association, Verschueren proposes the Theory of Adaptation in his work Understanding Pragmatics, which provides us with a completely new angle to interpret pragmatics, as well as translation. Verschueren believes that language use must be constituted by continuous choice making, consciously or unconsciously, for intralinguistic or extralinguistic reasons. Meanwhile, he also makes a brief summary on some important concepts, such as choice making, the three hierarchically related properties of language:variability, negotiability and adaptability, and four angles for pragmatic analysis of linguistic phenomena. This thesis makes a tentative study of the translation strategies employed by the translators of the two English versions to deal with the Mahjong culture in Hong Lou Meng, and then to analyze how various adaptation strategies are applied for the purpose of Chinese culture export.With the comparison and analysis of the examples from the two English versions, it is found that the Yangs are inclined to adopt foreignization more frequently, while David Hawkes is apt to employ domestication. However, the choice of strategy is not made in a fixed but a flexible manner whenever necessary. From the perspective of adaptation theory, the choices of the translation strategy made by the two great translators result from the translators'adaptation of their translations due to their respective different cultural backgrounds, different translation aims and intended readers. Therefore, when exporting the culture of marked Chinese characteristics, we need to widely apply the adaptation strategy, from linguistic adaptation, at such levels as morphology, syntax, semantics, style, and cohesion and coherence, to extra-linguistic adaptation, at such levels as physical world, social world and mental world. In this way, we could export and disseminate to a large extent the essence of Chinese culture to the world, clear the misunderstanding of Chinese culture by western countries, and rebuild an appropriate national image of China.