A Study Of Overtranslation And Undertranslation Of Shuyu In Hongloumeng By Hawkes From The Perspective Of Frame Semantics

Shuyu is the essence of Chinese deeply rooted in the Chinese culture, and labeled with the culture along with concise words and wealth of connotation. Due to cultural and linguistic differences between two nations, information bias emerges in the course of cultural transmission and the translation would more or less distort the original text and result in the amplification or shrink of original information, namely, overtranslation and undertranslation. The thesis attempts to discuss OT and UT from the cognitive frame perspective and cognitive framework is the knowledge structure suitable for expression of objective reality in the memory and a network where components work harmoniously.Fillmore is the first person who introduces the concept of frame into the linguistic field as well as views it as conceptual structure or experience space. People in various races, region and linguistic communities experience different things, which affect people’s cognition and linguistic frame. Translators’cognitive prototype is culturally restricted plus it is not always equal that the match of conceptual message triggered by the original language and conceptual prototype in the target language, therefore, the translation is hard to get rid of the negative effect by the mother tongue frame and subjective judgment, which will result in overtranslation and undertranslation. Guided by the frame semantics, the thesis will propose same translation methods to deal with overtranslation and undertranslation via the analysis of the culture-bound Shuyu and its translation. American scholar Eugene A. Nida says,"in any translation, there will be a type of’loss’of semantic content, but the process should be so designed as to keep this to a minimum." That is the purpose of the thesis to keep OT and UT to minimum by way of the Frame semantics.The first chapter gives the concrete description of frame semantics and its influence on translation. The thesis, in a new view, i.e. cognitive view, studies frame semantics’contributions to translation and translator’s frame influence on the translation process; Shuyu will be introduced in chapter two, especially the features of Shuyu in Hongloumeng; the third chapter defines overtranslation and undertranslation and elaborates their causes, in which the thesis emphasizes the translator factor; the core of the thesis is placed in chapter four and five. To begin with, frame semantics will be applied in the Shuyu OT and UT by Hawkes in Hongloumeng. Then, combined the characteristics of Shuyu in Hongloumeng with frame semantics theory, the translation methods will be proposed to keep OT and UT of Shuyu to a minimum, for example, selection of culture-loaded words in frame semantics and some concrete translation methods; and the last part concludes the thesis.