A Comparative Study Of The Translation Of Jinling Prophecies In Three English Version Of Hong Lou Meng—From The Perspective Of Plural Complementary Translation Standard

It has been for centuries that translators and translation schools had been arguing about which is the best translation standard, such as "Adherence to essentials"," faithfulness","resemblance in spirit" or "Transmigration". However,"hundreds of thoughts in the world may have the same goal", the theory of plural complementary translation standard, purposed by Professor Gu Zhengkun in1988, offers a new perspective to solve the problem of the translation study. Evaluating translation works from a plural standard perspective instead of a single standard is of great instructive importance especially for poem translation. Professor Gu pointed out that translation is pluralistic from the perspective of plural complementary translation standard and it is impossible to have only one concrete translation theory. We should be tolerant to the synchronic existence of plural translation standards, of which the complementary standard system consists. This system can be divided into three levels, firs: is the absolute standard—the source text, which can never be achieved: second is the supreme standard—the optimum closeness, which is an abstract expression of concrete standards; third is the plural concrete standards groups, which are set from translation practice.Hong Lou Meng is a comprehensive embodiment of excellent traditional Chinese culture, and is always an important subject of scholars and translators. The research of it gradually became a special school—studies on Hong Lou Meng, or Redology. Its wide spread and deep influence can be seen from Jingshi Zhuzhi Ci that "if one’s talking is without mentioning Hong Lou Meng, he must be muddled and lack knowledge of allusions". The novel is written in modern vernacular Chinese, while verses, ditties, odes and songs, riddles written on lanterns, poetic couplet, catch-words for drinking and other styles of traditional Chinese literature are organic parts of it, thereby Hong Lou Meng is an "embodying diversiform styles" in a real sense. At present, there are three important complete English versions of it:Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang’s A Dream of Red Mansions, Hawkes and Minford’s The Story of the Stone, and Bonsall’s The Red Dream Chamber, which is known by the public in2004. Jinling Prophesies serve as the "literature eye" of Hong Lou Meng. In the form of "foreshadowing poems", they implicitly reveal fates of important characters of the novel, and indicate the outcome of the story at the very beginning. The poetic form, allusions, metaphors and puns, which are of rich classical Chinese cultural characteristics, make the novel more interesting, meanwhile are specific obstacles during translation process.By reviewing early researches on the translation of Jinling Prophesies, the author found that academic studies on Jinling Prophesies from the plural complementary perspective is not many, and most of the studies focused on Yangs’version and Hawkes’version. There are not many researches on JLP in Bonsall’s version. Moreover, most of the studies focused on the translation of the information in JLP. and representation of their poetic form is less concerned with. This thesis takes the concrete standards as the analytic framework of the translation of JLP in the three versions on phonetic, semantic and syntactic levels. Through analyzing translation of rhyme, rhythm, puns, rebus, antithesis, ellipsis and etc of JLP. this thesis tries to find suitable translation methods for JLP.Due to phonetic and grammatical differences between Chinese and English, and characteristics of classical Chinese poetry, such as rhyme, rhythm, puns, rebus, antithesis, are not known in western culture, it is hard to represent the poetic and implicit form of JLP in translation. During the translation process, translators of the three versions convert the poetic form of the original into English poetic form, or directly explain the meaning of JLP, and then implicit devices, such as rhyme, rhythm, puns and rebus, are omitted or directly expressed. However, neither literal translation nor free translation can make target readers enjoy the pleasure as the readers of source language. The author believes that the most important thing for translator to translate poems like JLP, whose major function is indication, is to represent the information of the original, and then is the representation of their rhyme, rhythm and poetic form. The author also believes that with the wide spread and internationalization of Chinese culture, the difficulties caused by the untranslatable factors of Chinese poetry committed in the translation process now will gradually decrease, and readers of the target language will enjoy the pleasure that readers of the source language have enjoyed.