On Translating Cultural Elements In Hong Lou Meng

According to Eugene A. Nida(1982:12), translating consists in reproducing in thereceptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message. Yettranslation is by means just a change of language systems, but more importantly a bridgebetween different cultures. For truly successful translation, sometimes biculturalism iseven more important than bilingualism, especially in literary translation where culturalelements are ubiquitous.Cultural elements and their proper representation have always been a hard nut intranslation studies both in China and abroad, and have also been a central topic in the circleof translation studies. It’s not easy to tackle cultural translation. Two commonly usedstrategies are known as: domestication, in which the translator leans closer to the sourcetext(ST) and let the target readers get used to the ST, with the purpose of conserving thelinguistic and cultural uniqueness and showing them to foreign readers; and foreignization,in which the translator leans closer to the readers by adapting the ST to the targetlanguage(TL) culture. Theorhetically, it holds that language is a tool of communication andsmoothness should be a achieved by all means so that the translation sounds not translationbut original; that is, cultural differences should be minimized so that the target text(TT)will read natural.(丁树德,2005:30) Translator plays a dominant role in the process oftranslation in that they can have different comprehension of the ST and adopt distinctstrategies and techniques to realize the translation. In this paper, the author makes acomparative study of two English versions of Hong Lou Meng and finds a marked role oftranslator’s subjectivity in the process. Based on different their individual understanding ofthe ST and their respective purposes of translation, the two versions are reasonable in theirown way. In practice, the translator can handle the cultural elements based on hissubjectivity, yet his subjective role is not unlimited and his rendering should also befaithful to the ST. The whole paper is divided into six parts:Introduction. Here are stated the main ideas of the thesis and its overall framework.Chapter One. It’s a literature review of previous studies and findings on the culturaltranslation of Hong Lou Meng. Chapter Two. The importance and principles of cultural translation are discussed.Chapter Three. Some typical representations of Chinese culture in Hong Lou Mengare observed here.Chapter Four. The author makes a comparative study on the translation of variouscultural elements in two English versions of Hong Lou Meng and explores thejustifications for the translator’s decisions.The sixth part is Conclusion.