Analyzing Chinese To English Idiom’s Translation Strategy In A Dream Of Red Mansions

The traditional concept of language translation depicts it as the interlingual communication; however, in the present academia many scholars reject this notion and claim that the translation activity is primarily a tool for cross-cultural and intercultural communication. The purpose of translation is to enable the source language culture and the target language culture to communicate and interact with each other. As the quintessence of language, idiom is a language formation of a fixed expression using in the context, it can reflect the culture characteristics. Since the absolute equivalence of Chinese idiom translation does not exist, the author considered that the multi-dimensions of culture, pragmatic cognition, and receptor should be integrated with the translation process. The assessment and revision of Chinese idiom translation should base on the dynamic relationship between communicative process and the translation strategies. In order to be practical and convincible to demonstrate idiom translation through a cross-cultural perspective, this paper selects idioms from Xianyi Yang and Gladys Yang’s translation of Honglou Meng [A Dream of Red Mansions], a well-known Chinese classical novel.