A Comparative Study On Rendering Of Expressive Meaning In The Main Register Of "Jinling Prophecies" And The Twelve Songs In Hong Lou Meng

Hong Lou Meng, one of the greatest Chinese Classical novels, has been translated into dozens of languages since1830s either in abridged versions or complete ones."Jinling Prophecies" and the twelve songs in chapter5are considered to be a dominating outline that echoes the former plots and starts the later plots, and most importantly, hint the tragic fates of the twelve female characters. They both not only contain a large amount of information but also present the unique artistic ways of Chinese classical poetry. A great number of literature genres can be found in this masterpiece even in one poem. Thus in the process of the translation, a problem arises as how to tackle these aesthetic factors in the poems. Based on the previous studies on "Jinling Prophecies" and the twelve songs and theoretically grounded in Cruse's classification criterion of lexical meaning and Chen Xin's classification of expressive meaning, the author in this thesis had a textual analysis focusing on the lexical selection Cao Xueqin made, and had a comparative study on rendering of expressive meaning in the two English versions by the Yang's and David Hawkes from perspectives of culture, language, and psychology, discussed to what extent the expressive meaning can be rendered, how much they have rendered in two versions, and whether the renderings are accessible to English readers, from which to find proper criteria for rendering of expressive meaning in poetry translation.Since the first appearance of this great Chinese classic works, numerous studies have been done on it, concerning almost every aspect of the novel, including "Jinling Prophecies" and the twelve songs respectively. But there is little comparative study on the translation of these two parts as a whole and from the perspective of rendering of expressive meaning. Furthermore, here would be the first time the concealing psycho-information of Cao Xueqin (or the fairy Disenchanted) and the main characters will be analyzed as a research object on expressive meaning in translation studies. The Yang's and Hawkes had great determination and passion for fulfilling their task of translating Hong Lou Meng, but there still exist limits. Through drawing from their experience, we will try to narrow the gap of those limits so as to get some suggestions on how to solve the certain problem, hoping to contribute a little to the translation practice.