Studies On C-E Idiom Translation From The Perspective Of Lawrence Venuti’s Theory——Two Versions Of Hongloumeng

As essence of language and sediment of culture, Idiom is a unique compound in the process of culture construction and development. Owing to their conciseness in forms; abundance in implied meanings and vivid in images, they are widely accepted and employed by both Chinese people and English people.A Dream of Red Mansions, as one of China’s greatest classical novels, presenting a roomy and picturesque panorama of its social history. One of the most distinctive characteristics of this novel is its exquisite language art, which contains a large number of extensive usages of idioms. From the19th century till nowadays, there are many translators has been offered their own versions, among whom Yang Xianyi and his wife Gladys Yang and David Hawkes are the most famous for us, also these two versions are the most complete and faithful to the original text.As a very special text form, Idiom has some distinguished characteristics. Therefore, C-E idiom translation still remains a hard nut to crack till now. In order to help the readers who either are Chinese speakers or English speakers to understand this language form better, many translators and translation theorists have long been searching for the most effective translation strategies. How to translate the C-E idioms to make them easier to comprehend? How to translate the C-E idioms to represent a similar or even the same image in the minds of the targeted readers as in the source text? How to remain the distinctive cultural differences in the translation? These are important and necessary problems for us to handle with.This paper based on Lawrence Venuti’s foreignization and domestication theory perspective, compared the two versions translated by Yangs and Hawkes, studied the culture differences through the idioms that appeared in A Dream of Red Mansions and obstacles in translation, at the same time, analyzed the main translation methods of idioms adopted by Hawkes in detail. This paper studies C-E idiom translation from various aspects in order to find effective strategies.In C-E idiom translation, all the translators may always face a choice between adhering to the source language culture and adhering to the target language culture. Whether leaving the author himself in peace or leaving the readers in peace becomes the first important and necessary problem we must consider carefully. A very heated contention over domestication strategy and foreignization strategy has been sponsored in both translation practice and theory fields since domestication strategy and foreignization strategy came into being. As the two most important culture-loaded idiom translation strategies, domestication strategy refers to the target language culture biased which helps the readers to achieve an immediate comprehension of the translated versions when dealing with some cultural features that are rarely seen and hardly comprehensible in direct idiom translation strategy, but the domestication strategy tends to prevent the cultural differences in the source language from these target language readers; while foreignization strategy refers to the source language culture biased, which can help the target language readers to appreciate the source language culture thoroughly and enriches the target language culture background, it is certain that foreignization strategy may make these target readers understanding ability more difficult, because the specific source language culture-loaded idioms are too culture-loaded and unique to comprehend. While these two strategies have their own special advantages and disadvantages, meanwhile, on one hand, we should regard that the aim of translation is culture transmit and communication; on another hand, Chinese and English idioms come from two different culture backgrounds with distinctive national features and cultural characteristics. Consequently, this paper formed a conclusion that foreignization strategy should be employed as the dominant strategy in C-E idiom translation while domestication strategy as the supplementary one. Because foreignization strategy has more effective advantages than domestication strategy in the aspects of transmitting culture differences and enriching the target language culture. However, sometimes a combination of foreignization strategy and domestication strategy is also necessary in C-E idiom translation. Based on the investigation of the field, the thesis attempts to make a great contribution to C-E idiom translation.My research on C-E Idiom translation from Lawrence Venuti’s perspective based on the two versions A Dream of Red Mansions in this paper can be exhibited in the following six chapters:Chapter One serves as a brief introduction of this thesis. Chapter Two is an overview of the research on translation and idiom translation of A Dream of Red Mansions, at the same time, I also research the development of A Dream of Red Mansions. Chapter Three is the theoretical background. Chapter Four is the significant part, which mainly analyzes the cultural differences in C-E Idioms and obstacles in translation. Chapter Five is the illustration of the theoretical framework and its application. Chapter Six serves as the conclusion.