A Study On The Translations Of Pragmatic Implications In The Descriptions Of Characters In Hong Lou Meng

Hong Lou Meng is an encyclopedia of Chinese traditional culture. It is not an easy job to introduce such a great novel to the western readers whose values, cultural traditions and religious beliefs are so different from Chinese people. Thus the translating job is not only to transform meanings in linguistic sense, but also in cultural sense. Ever since its manuscripts made their appearance to the world, Redology has been developing continuously and the studies have involved many kinds of aspects of the novel. Though these studies are comprehensive and painstaking, they are still far from sufficient and adequate especially for the criticism on the translated versions. To develop the plot, depict the character behavior, psychology, personalities, and discourse features, and present the purport, the author of Hong Long Meng employed excellent writing skills especially using a lot of pragmatic implications to give the readers vast space for imagination, which made the novel rank the China’s highest peak of classical novel art.This thesis combined the theories of Pragmatics and Translation together to analyze how translators try to achieve pragmatic equivalence and discuss the factors influencing the degree of pragmatic equivalence. A series of theories are employed in this thesis: context, Conversational Implications and Pragmatic Presupposition. The author of this thesis attempts to discuss how translators are able to interpret the intended meanings in the SL and represent them in the TL accurately with the help of these theories. The present study proves that a full sense of pragmatic equivalence is hardly to be achieved. Different linguistic features of the two languages, the gap between two cultures, misunderstandings for the original novel, influence from ideology and the subjectivity of translators make a full-mark translation full of difficulties. Thus a good translation starts with the overcoming of these difficulties. The study of this thesis will attempt to offer a new perspective for the translation of fiction and provide a guideline to translation practice to some extent.