On Hawkes’ Translation Of Euphemisms In Hong Lou Meng——from The Perspective Of Translation Ethics

Hawkes’English version of Hong Lou Meng, namely, The Story of the Stone, is widely considered to be of domestication style. Using linguistic expressions that are familiar to the target reader, he represents the artistic charm of the source text and plays a significant role in introducing Hong Lou Meng to the world. This thesis takes Hawkes’euphemism translation as key point and makes an investigation into the ethical motivation of his translation strategies.In recent years, translation ethics has become a hot topic in the circle of translation study. As a cross-cultural activity, translation needs ethics as its guidance to cope with various interrelationships involved and, to coordinate the conflict between the foreign and the domestic cultures. Andrew Chesterman, a translation theorist in the Netherland, bases his research on the previous studies, and summarizes four models of translation ethics, namely:ethics of representation, ethics of service, ethics of communication, norm-based ethics. And later he puts forward one more model:ethics of commitment, a professional commitment for translators. The first four models are of descriptive nature and the last one prescriptive. This thesis, thus, chooses the first four models as its theoretical foundation to investigate Hawkes’ ethical motivation. From a great number of cases, it can be found that: when translating euphemisms with cultural universality, Hawkes spares no efforts to find correspondences in the target language and mainly adopts literal translation and free translation; when it comes to the euphemisms reflecting cultural diversities, Hawkes resorts to free translation, amplification, omission and transplanting. On the whole, his translation is of domestication style. Chesterman’s four models of translation ethics are all reflected in Hawkes’translation practice and what he mainly follows are ethics of representation and norm-based ethics. He strives to represent the euphemistic color embodied in the source text. When ethics of representation conflicts with norm-based ethics due to cultural differences, he coordinates the contradiction by adding explanation between lines or by other methods. On more occasions, however, he chooses to follow the norm-based ethics, using the expressions that are familiar to the target reader in order to make his version intelligible and acceptable. Thus, his domestication strategies are motivated by his reader-oriented ethics.Finally, in some cases, it is Hawkes’ over-compliance to the norms of the target language that leads to the loss of some cultural elements in the source text and consequently deprives the target reader of opportunities to know more about the foreign culture. Since norm is a dynamic concept and the expectations of the target reader are changing with time, the translation ethics of "respecting differences" is becoming increasingly important in the background of the globalization. From a cultural point of view, a translator should respect and treat equally the foreign culture, and also retain appropriately the cultural differences embodied in the source text. In the translation practice, a translator is supposed to integrate domestication at the language level with foreignization at the culture level to seek the co-existence and fusion of different cultures.