A Comparative Study Of The Translation Of Address Terms In Hong Lou Meng

As a means of communication, translating is not only the surface substitution of one language for another, but also the deep exchange of two different cultures. Address terms are a linguistic phenomenon and cultural one as well. Because of different historical development processes and traditional cultures in the East and West, Chinese and English address terms have formulated their own linguistic characteristics and distinctive ethical features, which will definitely bring some difficulties to the translation of address terms, especially address terms in the literary work.Hong Lou Meng, one of Chinese Four Classical Novels, is always regarded as the miniature of Chinese history and culture during Ming and Qing Dynasty, which vividly describes the ups and downs of four big aristocratic families. There are hundreds of characters in the novel, which makes a complicated relation net and good examples for study. The thesis will take the address terms high frequently appeared in the first eighty chapters of Hong Lou Meng as its study object, and the two popular English versions A Dream of Red Mansions (simply addressed as Yang’s version) translated by Chinese translator Yang Xianyi and his wife Gladys Yang and The Story of the Stone (simply addressed as Hawkes’version) translated by English Sinologist David Hawkes and his student John Minford as its research sample. By taking a linguistic and cultural approach, this thesis aims to explore some translation methods and strategies of address terms in Hong Lou Meng on the base of functional equivalence theory.The theory of functional equivalence is proposed by Eugine A. Nida, which provides a completely new criterion for the evaluation of translated works. The closest natural equivalent translation is the translation that can evoke from its readers the same response as the source text does from its readers. It shifts from the focus of message to that of the response of the receptor. Thus, a translator needs to know exactly the cultural differences of address terms between these two languages in order to realize the equivalent translation as much as possible.By comparatively analyzing the translation of address terms in Hong Lou Meng from kinship terms, fictive kinship terms, honorifics and self-abasing terms, the thesis may get the conclusion as follows:Firstly, on dealing with kinship terms, simple as Yang’s translation, he just adopts literal translation method in order to introduce Chinese culture to the western countries. Unlike Yang Xianyi who is very familiar with Chinese complicated kinship address system; Hawkes takes literal translation method and adds some explanations as well to help the target readers.Secondly, when translating fictive kinship terms into English, Yang Xianyi takes the foreignizing translation strategy with the purpose of being faithful to the Chinese culture; while Hawkes adopts the domesticating translation strategy with different flexible methods. Hawkes tries his best to translate all these fictive kinship terms in order to comply with English customs without translating these fictive kinship terms directly, but he also sustains the intimate feelings between the addresser and the addressee produced by using the fictive terms.Lastly, both honorifics and self-abasing terms belong to the category of polite term system. To debase one is for the exchange of showing respect for the other. It is two aspects of one thing, which cannot be considered separately. Both of them adopt the method of omission to deal with the self-abasing terms which are unique in China, while on dealing with the honorifics, they have different translation strategies. Yang Xianyi mainly takes the strategy of foreignization, aiming to introduce Chinese culture to the western countries; while Hawkes mainly adopts the strategy of domestication with the focus on the target readers and omits the honorifics as many as possible.