A Contrastive Study On Name Translation In Two Unabridged Versions

Hong Lou Meng, one of the "Four Greatest Classical Novels", is generallyacknowledged as the encyclopedia of Chinese feudalism society for its abundantdescription of Chinese traditional culture. Names in this novel reflect the Chinesetraditional culture in a deep level. In this masterpiece, four hundred names ofcharacters are arranged into a unique name system by the writer. Therefore, whentranslated into other foreign languages, translation of names in Hong Lou Meng hasbecome a significant task for translators.Early at the beginning of19thcentury, English missionary Robert Morrisonintroduced Hong Lou Meng to western readers and till the end of20thcentury, therewere already seven abridged versions and three unabridged versions. Every versionshows different characteristics owing to different translation backgrounds, translationpurposes and translation strategies, accordingly, name translation in different versionstake on different forms. This thesis presents a brief review of name translation inEnglish versions of Hong Lou Meng, and focuses on contrastive study of nametranslation in two unabridged versions: Dream of the Red Mansion translated by YangXianyi and Gladys Yang; The Story of the Stone translated by David Hawkes and JohnMinford. The thesis explores advantages and shortcomings of different nametranslation strategies, including transliteration with Wade-Giles system and ChinesePinyin system, sense translation and application of compensatory name translationstrategies. The thesis also explains factors which influence the choice of nametranslation strategy.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one is a basic introduction from theaspects of background, purpose, significance, methodology and outline of theresearch; Chapter two is literature review in which the process of English translationof Hong Lou Meng is presented and researches on translation strategies and name translation in two unabridged versions of Hong Lou Meng are summarized todemonstrate the achievements and weak points of the previous researches. Chapterthree gives a brief introduction to name system in Hong Lou Meng, and then presentsname translation in three abridged versions and two unabridged versions as languagematerials for the next chapter. Chapter four does contrastive analysis of nametranslation in unabridged versions, demonstrates advantages and shortcomings ofdifferent name translation strategies and explores reasons for different choices ofname translation. Chapter five concludes the research and points out the limitationsand openness of the research.The author holds that name translation in two unabridged versions have theircharacteristics and different name translation strategies are adopted by the twotranslators according to the characteristics of names and styles of original texts; thereis no standard strategy for name translation; transliteration, sense translation andapplication of compensatory translation strategies all have advantages andshortcomings; translation background, translation purpose and translation strategy ofthe whole text have influences on the choice of name translation strategy. The authorhopes that the research can provide language materials and inspiration for Chinesename translation.