A Comparative Study Of Translating Culturally-loaded Flower Words In Hong Lou Meng

With the development of globalization, cultural communication between countries has become closer and closer. Chinese culture is also widely spread in the world. As the encyclopedia of Chinese culture, Hong Lou Meng has undoubtedly become the first-hand material for foreigners to know about China. Predecessors have made numerous researches on the cultural translation of Hong Lou Meng, but few of them made special discussion on translating Hong Lou Meng from the perspective of flower culture. Therefore, the study on the translation of culturally-loaded flower words in Hong Lou Meng not only enriches studies on the translation of Hong Lou Meng, but also plays a positive role in the cultural communication between China and the international community.Translation is not only the transformation between two languages, but also the communication between two cultures. Eugene A. Nida pointed out that "for truly successful translating, biculturalism is even more important than bilingualism, since words only have meaning in terms of the cultures in which they function". Cultural schema theory is proved to be a well-established theory to guide the activity of translation, which provides the theoretical basis for the translators to conduct cultural translation. Only by decoding the cultural schema in the source language and reconstructing it in the target language, can the translator properly convey the cultural content in the source text into the target text so as to complete cultural translation and promote cultural transmission and communication.This thesis attempts to make a comparative study on the translation of Hong Lou Meng from the perspective of flower culture, with cultural schema theory as the basis. The first chapter gives a brief introduction to the research background, research significance, research questions and structure of this paper. The second chapter makes an overview of the theoretical basis of this study. Language, culture and translation are closely linked to each other. Cultural schema theory plays a guiding role in cultural translation. The third chapter makes a survey of the cultural connotations of Chinese flowers, especially those in Hong Lou Meng. The connotations of flower culture are divided into five aspects—flower and personality, flower and allusion, flower and custom, flower and name, flower and appearance, demonstrating the extensive and profound culture of Chinese flowers. The fourth chapter proposes the methods for the translation of culturally-loaded flower words in Hong Lou Meng. The author first makes a summary of the basic principles for cultural translation. They are principle of faithfulness, principle of functional equivalence and principle of cultural reappearance. Flower culture is an important part of national culture. Therefore, the principles for cultural translation also apply to the translation of flower culture. Then, the author selects some typical examples from Hong Lou Meng and makes a comparison between Yangs’and Hawkes’s translated versions based on cultural schema theory. Finally the author puts forward five methods specifically for the translation of culturally-loaded flower words in Hong Lou Meng, which are literal translation, substitution, free translation, literal translation with amplification or annotation, and transliteration. The last chapter draws the conclusion and summarizes the whole thesis.Through the study, this thesis draws the following conclusions:Chinese flower culture is complex and colorful, which is fully reflected in Hong Lou Meng; when translating culturally-loaded flower words in Hong Lou Meng, Yangs pay more attention to the transmission of Chinese flower culture, while Hawkes attaches more importance to the acceptability of the target readers, which are both understandable; when translating culturally-loaded flower words, translators should give adequate consideration to the target readers’pre-existed cultural schema and choose appropriate translation methods so as to convey the flower culture embodied in the source language, thus achieving the goal of cultural communication.