A Study Of Dietetic Culture Translation In The Story Of The Stone

Hong Lou Meng, one of China’s Four Great Classical Novels, is always seen bymost people as a piece of encyclopedic work which includes a vivid description aboutvarious cultural elements such as diet customs, religions, politics and other facts ofsocial life. Attracted by this reason, many translators in different countries tried theirbest to introduce this great work to their country fellows. But it is just these culturalelements that make this novel very difficult in translation. Among its English versions,The Story of The Stone by David Hawkes is believed to be the best version of HongLou Meng abroad. The most distinguished feature of this version is that Hawkessurmounts the cultural boundaries and presents it to the western people in originalflavor. To readers, it’s more like to read an English original work rather than atranslation version. However, many literary critics criticized that Hawkes adopted toomuch domestication translation of foreign texts in his version, which led too muchunfaithfulness to the source language and its original cultures. This thesis analyzesHawkes’ version on his dietetic culture translation from the culture-exchanging angle,reveals that Hawkes is faithful to Chinese culture in cultural elements translation andhe tried his best to achieve equilibrium in his royalty between the readers and theoriginal work. This will give great reference values to literary translation, culturalexchange and the integration of global cultures.There are plentiful descriptions about the dietary activities in Hong Lou Meng.These vivid writings are not only the representation of the Chinese dietetic culture,but also an essential part of this novel. What is more important is that some of thesedescriptions about the diet activities had deep implicit meanings, as these descriptionsimplied different social status of the characters and the developments of their fates.Thus, the importance and significance of these cultural elements are as a matter ofcourse. Hawkes adopted different translation strategies to translate these foods andtheir cultural connotation in order to reveal the deep meanings of the Chinese foodculture. It gives western readers the same feelings as the Chinese when they read thenovel. This is the unique feature of Hawkes’ version. Most of the other English versions of Hong Lou Meng mainly adopted literaltranslation to translate the cultural information. This kind of translation seems faithfulon surface but puzzled in fact. It usually cannot convey the intended meaning of thetranslator. However, in Hawkes’ version, he comprehensively utilized different waysin translating the food culture in this novel. He translated these cultural mattersaccording to different implicit meaning and the acceptability of the readers. ThereforeHawkes’ translation is much more follows the essence of the original texts. In theperspective of culture exchanging, the ultimate aim of literary translation is to makethe culture treasures of the source language acceptable by the target language readers.The most successful aspect of Hawkes’ version is that the language he used fit quitewell to the language usage of English-speaking countries. Since that culture hasalways changing with times. Each time’s culture has its unique features. So thetranslator must put the readers’ receptivity and their tastes into consideration. Hawkesmade some rewriting and recreation in his translation. Those treatments make his TheStory of The Stone more suitable to the flavor and taste of that time’s westerners, andit’s more beneficial for the spread of Chinese culture at that time.