A Study Of Indirect Translation Problems Based On Florence&Isabel McHughs’ English Translation Of Hongloumeng From The Perspective Of Werner Roller’s Equivalence Theory

In the transmission process of Chinese classics overseas, the accurate and surely splendid translation plays a decisive role. Owning to the territorial factors and cultural differences, the transmission and popularization of Hongloumeng and other literary works have to lean upon the resort of indirect translation (via a third party language instead of the source language itself). Due to the complexity of indirect translation process and the poor mastering of the third party language by the translators who have little cultural background catch, a plenty of mistranslated problems emerge in the indirect translation work.One of the Hongloumeng version-Wang Hsi Lien P ing Pen Hsin Chiian Ch’uan Pu Hsiu Hsiang Hung Lou Meng was partly translated into German (Kuhn version) by German sinologist Franz Kuhn in1932. Based on this German version, American translators, the McHugh sisters turned Hongloumeng into an English version (McHugh version). Miserably, due to the sisters’ nonproficiency of German grammar, plus their incomprehension of the plot of Hongloumeng and corresponded Chinese culture background, there existed some inappropriateness and translation mistakes in McHugh version. Consequently, the gist of this Chinese classic work hasn’t been wholly transferred to the western readers successfully. This is surely a regret for us.In this thesis, the general picture of Hongloumeng translations and the concept of indirect translation will be elucidated. As this paper’s focal point, based on Wang Hsi Lien P’ing Pen Hsin Chiian Ch’uan Pu Hsiu Hsiang Hung Lou Meng and taking Werner Koller’s five principles of equivalences in translation as theoretic framework, Kuhn version and McHugh version will be compared after the gathering and analysis of the corpus. The translation problems in McHugh version will be pointed out, including the inappropriateness and mistakes. Grounded on Werner Koller’s five equivalence principles, the problems are classified into three types (violations of the denotative equivalence, connotative equivalence and formal equivalence) according to which principle they have violated. Moreover, feasible amendment is proposed.After analysis, there are mainly three aspects of deficiencies in McHugh version:1. When translating some of the proper nouns, that is, the names of people with morphemes "-rl" and "-chen", the McHugh sisters of English version just made a rigid transference of them, losing the aesthetic features of these names in the German translation.2. In the process of translating the polysemes of German in Kuhn version, for the translators did not have a general idea of Chinese culture and the plot of Hongloumeng, some of the polysemes were turned into the unwanted meanings instead of the intended entry by the source text. Thus, the retranslation would be misleading and confusing for the readers, especially those who have no idea of the whole story.3. Furthermore, there is some awkwardness not conforming to English habitual usage. These awkward translations are nearly all traced back to German grammar, that is to say, the McHughs just carried and copied the German language into English rigidly without adjustment. There are also some explicit translation mistakes--the addition of unrelated words or omission of the integrant meanings of the source text. This occurrence could possibly be explained by that the sisters did not fully understand the source text. This also attributes to the misuse of synonyms in this translation.The corpus and analysis in this thesis is hoped to be a possible future reference for the studies of indirect translation and McHugh version, which is an important translation of our magnificent cultural work Hongloumeng.