A Parallel Corpus-based Comparative Study On Euphemism Translation In The Two English Versions Of Hong Lou Meng

Hong Lou Meng is an encyclopedia of the late Chinese feudal society. Centered onthe pictures of the life of the highest nobility, the novel gave a very vivid descriptionabout the entire feudal society’s life at the end of18th century in China; it is a mirrorand microcosm of the society, reflecting the reality of the China’s ancient feudalsociety‘s irrevocable collapse. The reasons why HLM became the peak of Chinesefiction literature include not only its high ideological value, but also its special artisticachievement with grand scale, rigorous structure, vivid characters and elegant language,which worth the taste and appreciation of posterity. Being translated into many kinds oflanguage, HLM plays a critical part in introducing Chinese literature and culture to thewhole world. Among all the English versions of HLM, the two best known are ADream of Red Mansions by the Yangs(Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang) and The Story ofthe Stone by the British Sinologist David Hawkes and Minford.With the continuous development of science and technology and the wideapplication of computer, the linguistic research method that based on the establishmentof corpus has been widely recognized. Parallel corpus make people realize that thetranslation study should be transited from prescriptive study to descriptive study. Sothat the translation study can be more universal and objective, and research method andconclusions are more scientific and reliable. Parallel corpus has a great importance onthe research of the translations of HLM.Euphemism plays a very important part in HLM, it was used for different styles,occasions, emotions and characters, reflecting the richness of Chinese culture.Euphemism, a figure of speech carrying heavy culture, constitutes great barriers duringthe translation. The translation of euphemism poses a huge challenge to translators.Whether these cultural factors can be deal with well will directly affect the success orfailure of translation.In order to deeply explore the pros and cons of euphemism translation in the twotranslation versions of HLM, this paper tries to make a comparative study on thetranslation of euphemism, based on parallel corpus of HLM and the relevance theory ofGutt, answering the following questions:1) What euphemisms are demonstrated inHLM?2) What are differences of the translation strategies of euphemism adopted byHawkes and the Yangs from the perspective of relevance theory?3) What are theunderlying reasons that make the translators adopted different translation strategieswhen translating euphemism in HLM?Through the quantitative statistics and qualitative analysis about the euphemism inHLM, this paper found out that:1) The euphemism in HLM can be divided into sixcategories: death, disease, shame, disgust, social phenomenon and other.2) Euphemism translation in different categories adopted different translation strategies. Theirtranslation strategies include：literal translation, free translation, amplification, omissionand transplanting.3) The different translation strategies adopted by the two translatorsrelated to their cognitive environment.On this basis, we believe that relevance theory has a good applicability to thetranslation of euphemism, at the same time, translation studies in the framework ofrelevance theory has a strong guidance to the euphemism translation.