A Comparative Study Of English Translation Of Xiehouyu In Hong Lou Meng

Hong Lou Meng (hereinafter abbreviated as HLM), is the greatest novel of the18th century, revealing the crises and conflicts in the Qing Dynasty with fascinating descriptions of the four big families—Jia, Wang, Shi, Xue, from prosperity to decline. Acclaimed as the encyclopedia of Chinese culture and a treasure house of Chinese language, its achievements reach the highest level in the Chinese classical literature. Since its first appearance, its value in terms of literature, language, art and esthetics appeals to people in China or even in the whole world. Its translation emerges constantly, which helps to popularize the Chinese culture in the world. Feng Qinghua (2006:480) states that the study of the English versions of HLM is just the study of Chinese culture and the Chinese folk languages themselves. The author of the work, Cao Xueqin, applied abundant Chinese folk language patterns in this novel, which brought about the vitality of the work and led to great challenges and difficulties for translators as well. Among those folk language patterns, the application of Xiehouyu (hereinafter abbreviated as XHY) is very striking and charming. However, due to its profound Chinese cultural connotation hidden in them, to translate XHY is a tough job.This thesis attempts to make a comparative study of translation of XHY in the Yangs’and Hawkes’versions of HLM from the perspective of Image theory. Specifically, the dimensions of Image Theory:Base/Profile Organization, Prominence, Perspective, Abstraction are employed to analyze the different linguistic expressions in their versions of XHY, aiming to discover their various construal transmitted by the different choices of words and grammatical constructions and to show their contrasting linguistic expressions can evoke different images for target readers.This thesis includes five chapters. Chapter One serves as a brief introduction to the whole thesis, including the research issue, the purpose and the scope of the thesis, the significance of the thesis and the structure of the thesis. Chapter Two is a literature review. A careful review of the previous studies on HLM and XHY are presented carefully. Chapter Three is composed of introduction to Image theory and its specific dimensions:Base/Profile Organization, Prominence, Perspective, and Abstraction. In the introduction, the writer recalls Cognitive Linguistics and some important terms. Then the connotation of each dimension of Image Theory is discussed in detail. Chapter Four is the highlight of this thesis, in which a detailed introduction to the translation of HLM is given and the brief on the translators, the Yangs and Hawkes, is represented. Then the writer makes a careful and elaborative analysis of typical translation of XHY and compares and contrasts the different images evoked by the distinct versions by applying the four dimensions of Image Theory:Base/Profile Organization, Prominence, Perspective, and Abstraction. The close relationship between construal and translators’general trend in selecting translation strategies is also discussed. Chapter Five is the concluding part. The main content of the whole thesis is restated. The writer points out that translation is a cognitive activity and deems that the application of Image Theory to translation is a new perspective to explore translation, which can detect translators’construal process of the original text. In addition, the limitation of the thesis and the suggestions for further research are also included in this part.By the careful and detailed comparative analysis, the conclusion is obtained:translation is a cognitive activity and the translated versions are the result of cognition. The translators’selection of words and grammatical constructions are just the revelation of their cognition and understanding of the original text. Because of the Yangs’and Hawkes’different construal in Base/Profile Organization, Prominence, Perspective, and Abstraction, their versions of XHY in HLM vary. In addition, construal is closely related with the general trend in translators’selection of translation strategies because different construal results in various expressions in translation which can reflect the general trend in translators’choice of translation strategies. Hence, construal is very important in translation since it can bring about different versions of the same original (can be exchanged with "source") text, which ultimately evoke different images for target readers.To apply the Image Theory to explore the translated versions is a new perspective in the study of translation. Drawing from the different versions, it is possible to infer the translators’ construal of the original language, which is a new perspective in the study of translation and can help to get a clear picture of the characteristics and nature of translation.