On Hawkes’ Translation Of Hong Lou Meng From The Perspective Of Rewriting Theory

Nowadays, studies at home and abroad of the translations of Hong Lou Menghave adopted various kinds of approaches and theories. Most of the researches focuson the differences of the different translation versions in order to find out whichversion has the characteristics of fidelity. While, the study on translation of this classicfrom the perspective of rewriting and its causes has been scarcely discussed. Lefevereadvances that translation is a process of rewriting, which is constrained by threeelements, that is, ideology, poetics and patronage. From the perspective of rewriting,translation is put into a larger context to transform from “source text orientation” to“target culture orientation”. And such transformation is a landmark in the field oftranslation criticism. At the same time, in the process of rewriting, translator shall takea full account of his or her target readers’ acceptability, which is closely related to thespecific cultural background.Hong Lou Meng is a pearl in the history of the world literature. Its language,being rich and varied, reflects political status in a specific period but also with astrong poetic. Hawkes’ translation of Hong Lou Meng has a reputation among variouskinds of translation versions. This thesis tries to introduce the great influences of threeconstraints on translation of Hong Lou Meng. It is worth mentioning that the outerelements play a very important role in the translation activity, including thetranslator’s identity and the context environment. As the important subject oftranslation, the translator will be definitely influenced by the objective environment inthe process of translation, especially that of ideology in the translation activity.Translation is like an after-life of the original text with creativity.This thesis adopts the method of deduction to give a further explanation of thestrong influence of rewriting on the translation of the literal works. From the perspective of rewriting, every form of rewriting is manipulated by the particulardominant ideology and poetics. That is, translator completes his or her translationconsciously or unconsciously influenced by poetics, ideology and patronage. Theauthor has to stress that it is inevitable to produce defects during rewriting. This thesisillustrates how to make the translations more acceptable for the target readers but witha respect for the original texts. Certainly, more values and more merits have to bestudied to enable this theory to be more valid in enrichment in the effective function.