Study On Translation Of The Description About Lin Dai-yu’s Personality In David Hawkes’ The Story Of The Stone

Hong Lou Meng, as one of the greatest classical novels in Chinese literature, not onlyhas deep reflection and influence on Chinese feudal society both on literature and socialculture, but also has a large number of artistic achievements. And one of the author CaoXue-qin’s achievements is the description of hundreds of different, vivid and roundedcharacter’s personalities. Since the translation of the great novel appeared, there are a rangeof researches on translation. However, few of them typically focuses on translation of thedescription of the main characters which usually make up the “blood and flesh” of literaryworks in David Hawkes’ translation version The Story of the Stone. As we all know, thepersonality of the main character lays groundwork for the whole novel and supports theauthor’s framework. It is also the place where attracts the readers most. Therefore, giving themain characters appropriate personality is very essential, and of course, not an easy task forthe translators to translate the description of the character’s personality well. This paperbasically uses two research methods: one is the documentary research method to get enoughinformation about Lin Dai-yu’s personality; the other one is experiential summary method todeal with the specific phenomenon in translation practice so as to form systematically andtheoretically to be an experimental way.The study is performed in three chapters. The first part is an introduction, which givesthe readers the significance, purpose, study method, and the structure of the paper. In chapterone, the paper gives us some knowledge of personality in terms of psychology--GeneralPsychology, which includes the definition of personality, the factors resulting in it and severalbasic ways to describe one’s personality in literature works. Then it also takes Lin Dai-yu’spersonality for analysis, concluding her major characteristics and several forming reasonswhich are family, educational, and social backgrounds. Chapter2basically discusses thetranslation about Lin Dai-yu’s personality in the perspective of description, which includesthe objective description from other character’s eyes and words, and subjective descriptionfrom the following three aspects, which are language, action, and psychological portrait tosee whether Hawkes’ translation version completely expresses the message that shows the character’s personality from the original work. Chapter3is a summarized chapter, whichgives us the major translation skills in translating characters’ personalities.The study is the first attempt in translation analysis about the description of Lin Dai-yu’spersonality which can be said to be a creative perspective on the English study of Hong LouMeng. From the translation effects observed and translation skills found in the translationexamples, the author gets several translation principles, which include the processing ofwords, adding the translator’s own understanding, transformation, the use of figures of speech,fuzzy expression and translating allusions. Hopefully, it can provide the latter translators withsome translation advice and methods for translating and transferring the information oncharacters in literary works, which is also the main purpose of the paper.