The Translation Of Cultural Default In Hong Lou Meng From The Perspective Of Skopostheorie

In the process of writing, the writer tends to omit the information shared with the intended readers which concerns cultural background knowledge. This kind of information is called cultural default. Cultural default can improve the efficiency of communication between the writer and the intended readers, leave the intended readers the room for imagination and increase the aesthetic effect of the text. Due to the different background knowledge, the target readers cannot get coherent understanding of the cultural default involved as the intended readers of the source text do. Therefore, cultural default causes difficulty to translation.Hong Lou Meng is a masterpiece in Chinese classical literature. It reaches the peak of Chinese classical novel in both contents and artistic achievement. Colorful Chinese culture is reflected in this great novel. The profound language, the writer's special intention and vivid description of the aspects of society make this masterpiece full of Chinese cultural flavour. The traditional Chinese culture reflected in Hong Lou Meng is not only the artistic treasure of China but also that of the world. So the translation of Hong Lou Meng is helpful to the spread of Chinese culture. But the translation of cultural default in Hong Lou Meng is a big challenge to translators. The previous studies of the translation of cultural default in Hong Lou Meng are mainly based on some concrete translation strategies and methods, which often cause dispute on the evaluations. This thesis attempts to analyse the translation of cultural default in Hong Lou Meng from the perspective of Skopostheorie.Skopostheorie is an important part of the German functionalist translation theory. Skopostheorie holds that the skopos (purpose) is the most important principle to translation.Translation strategies and methods are determined by the skopos and serve the skopos. The skopos of the Yangs is to spread Chinese culture, so they mainly apply foreignization in their translation to preserve Chinese culture in the source text. The skopos of Hawkes is to let the target readers get pleasure in their reading, so he mainly applies domestication to make his translation fluent and more acceptable to the readers. This thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter One is the introduction of the whole thesis. Chapter Two is literature review. Chapter Three is about cultural default which contains:the connections between culture, language and translation; the definition, the causes and the functions of cultural default. Chapter Four is the introduction of Skopostheorie, including:the historical review, three rules of the Skopostheorie and the Yangs' and Hawkes' Skopos. Chapter Five offers the analysis of the translation of cultural default in Hong Lou Meng with the comparison of the two versions from the perspective of Skopostheorie. Chapter Six is the conclusion.