The English Translation Of Hong Lou Meng

Within the field of literary translation in China, the English translation of Hong LouMeng (e.g., into A Dream of Red Mansions, and The Story of the Stone) constitutes animportant area, with some English versions of the novel becoming canonical. Naturally, thestudy of the English translation of Hong Lou Meng has been flourishing in the field of literarytranslation studies in China, where scholars are exploring it fruitfully from various viewpoints.Studies so far, however, are still suffering from such inadequacies as the negligence of thenature and features of the English translation of Hong Lou Meng, the lack of comprehensivephilosophical guidance and the overuse of humanistic or postmodern theories which prioritizethe subjectivity of translator over the objectivity of translation. It is therefore necessary toinvestigate the nature and features of the English translation of Hong Lou Meng through theuse of more systemic guidelines and more objective theoretical perspectives.This study, therefore, attempts to explore the nature and properties of the Englishtranslation of Hong Lou Meng systemically and objectively through a method integratingprocedures of deductive reasoning and case analysis, with the dialectical systemic thinkingsalient in systems sciences as a heuristic, on the basis of memetic theories as developed byRichard Dawkins, Susan Blackmore and others to illuminate the propagation and evolution ofhuman culture from a Darwinian orientation, with reference to relevant insights fromtranslation studies, and through the analysis of authentic cases, samples or examples. Throughthis study, a memetics-based systemic view of the nature and features of the Englishtranslation of Hong Lou Meng is obtained: In terms of its general entity and relationships, theEnglish translation of Hong Lou Meng is essentially the cross-language spreading of certainChinese cultural memes to the English Meme Pool and their development in the Westerncircumstances, thus acquiring the nature of interlingual meme transmission and cross-poolmeme evolution. In terms of its environmental connections, the English translation of HongLou Meng is conditioned doubly by the Chinese and English Meme Pools and needs to adaptto various factors in the English Meme Pool, especially other memes as rivals, language and text as media, and readers with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds as hosts, thusexhibiting the characteristics of double culture selection and foreign setting adaptation. Interms of its internal organization, the English translation of Hong Lou Meng comprises suchcomponents as the Hong Lou Meng meme complex, its Chinese and English texts as mediaand translators as hosts with a structure chiefly defined by intercultural communicationmethods allowing different degrees of mutation, thus revealing the features of interlingualreplication and variation. In terms of its operational process, the English translation of HongLou Meng constitutes a course of interlingual communication of certain Chinese culturalmemes involving the phases of manifold assimilation and prolonged retention in Chinese andproductive expression and prolific transmission in English, thus acquiring the properties ofcopying fidelity, fecundity, and longevity.This study may be practically and theoretically significant to literary translation in China.Practically, its outcomes may help to enhance the translators’ awareness of literary translationas cultural selection and survival of the fittest and enable them to produce target texts bothwith source culture characteristics and in line with the requirements of the target culture andaddressees. Theoretically, this study may help to solve the problem of current studiesneglecting the nature and features of the object of study, lacking a dialectical systemicorientation, relying too much on humanistic theories which overstress the subjectivity oftranslators, and consequently failing to formulate a dialectical systemic view of the nature andfeatures of literary translation.