A Comparative Study Of The Direct Speech Of The Two English Versions Of Hong Lou Meng From The Perspective Of Literary Stylistics

Hong Lou Meng (HLM), the great mid-eighteenth-century work of Cao Xueqin, hasalways been regarded as a masterpiece of Chinese classical novels. Up till now,numerous studies have been made on various aspects of the source language andtarget language version, such as the translation of idioms, poems, proverbs and so on.This study focuses on the translation of direct speech presentation in two translationversions: one is under the title of A Dream of the Red Mansions by Yang Xianyi andhis wife Gladys Yang, and the other The Story of the Stone by David Hawkes andJohn Minford. By doing so, the author tends to offer a new point of view to the studyof the translation of HLM. The author uses the knowledge of deceptive equivalence,and also speech presentation to illuminate the translation of HLM. Firstly, the authorillustrates the modes of speech presentation and its functions, especially the directspeech. Then the author compares different ways the two translators employ totranslate direct speech and their effects and functions. For this purpose, theoreticalanalysis will be supported by typical examples from the two translations. The mainmethods the thesis uses are comparison and induction.This thesis is composed of five parts, in which the introduction serves as the firstchapter. The second chapter is devoted to the literature review of the translation studyconcerned HLM and literary stylistics. The third chapter introduces the theoreticalframework of the present study in which several theoretical concepts related to thisthesis several theoretical concepts related to this thesis are introduced, including directspeech, indirect speech free indirect and narrative reports of speech acts, as well as theconcept of deceptive equivalence. Chapter four is the detailed comparative studies ofthe direct speech of the two translated versions. And in the last part, the conclusion isreached.