Contrastive Study On Translation Strategies Of Four-Character Chinese Idioms In Hong Lou Meng

Hou Lou Meng, written by Cao Xueqin, is one of the four greatest Chinese classical novels. It is regarded as a model of linguistic art and an encyclopedia of Chinese culture in the 18th century. The novel is mainly about the love story of Baoyu and Daiyu in a rich feudal family. It also describes the dark side of the society in detail, including the declination of the family, the corruptions of officialdom, the nonchalance of people, etc. It is much more than a romantic fiction. There are several hundred characters from every social class in the masterpiece. The sensitive descriptions and the exquisite depictions make every character stand vividly on the paper.Hou Lou Meng has been introduced to many countries in different languages, such as in English, German, Russian, Japanese, and so on. Up to now, there are more than ten versions of it in English. Among them, the two best-known and highly praised ones are A Dream of Red Mansions by Yang Hsien-yi and his wife Gladys Yang– the renowned translators in contemporary China, and The Story of the Stone by the British sinologist David Hawkes and his son-in-law John Minford. Yang's translation, A Dream of Red Mansions, is regarded as the most complete and the most accurate translation works, while Hawkes'translation is regarded as the mile-stone in the translation of Chinese literary works.The extraordinary masterpiece has been attracting many readers and scholars since its appearance. At the end of Qing Dynasty, the criticism and studies about Hong Lou Meng had formed a unique field– redology. The research area of redology has covered almost all aspects of the novel throughout centuries. Different versions of it have also caused attention of translators and researchers. Essays and monographs are published. In October, 2002, the first conference on the translation of Hong Lou Meng was held at Nankai University, which is the first time to push the studies of Hong Lou Meng onto a new stage, on which Hong Lou Meng can be viewed and studied from various perspectives and systematically. Contrastive studies on different translation versions have been more and more prosperous.Cao Xueqin, who is praised as the most important writer with unusual awareness and gorgeous writing skills, applies various kinds of linguistic forms to convey his thoughts. As the crystallization of culture and the vehicle of emotional expression, four-character idioms help readers to enter into Cao Xueqin's mode of thoughts. Four-character idioms are widely and permanently used in China. They are pithy, catchy, featured by rhythm and cadence. They greatly increase the expressiveness of all kinds of emotions and add to the vividness of language. Most idioms are culturally loaded phrases or sentences. The translation of idioms requires that the translator should not only transfer the meanings to the utmost extent, but also make the translations totally acceptable among the target language readers.Domestication and foreignization are frequently-applied strategies in translation. Although they have aroused heated arguments since their birth, they are adopted by many translators in literature translation. In idiom translation of Hong Lou Meng, Yang Hsien-yi, who is source-text-concerned, generally adopts foreignization as his translation strategy. Hawkes, who pays more attention to target language readers, mainly uses domestication as his strategy. Different choices lead to different effects on idiom translation. Yang Hsien-yi's version is closely equivalent to source text and Hawkes'version is more acceptable by target language readers.This thesis is intended to make a contrastive study on the strategies in translating Chinese four-character idioms collected from the former eighty chapters of Hong Lou Meng. By analyzing the translated idioms under the guidance of Nida's equivalence theory, it can be seen clearly that different strategies can lead to different effects in the translation of idioms, and that strategies are not absolute, they should be employed flexibly.My essay falls into four chapters.Chapter one gives a review of equivalence theory. This chapter thoroughly explores the origin and development of Nida's equivalence theory. Its functions to idiom translation are displayed as well.Chapter two presents the concepts, characteristics and classifications of four-character idioms. The importance of Chinese four-character idioms is probed into.Chapter three elaborates on two translation strategies applied by translators to fulfill their tasks—domestication and foreignization.Chapter four contrastively analyzes idiom translation cases in the two versions. The cases will be classified into two parts.