Comparative Study Of The Idiom Translation In English And Mongolian Versions Of A Dream Of Red Mansions From The Cultural Perspective

Seen as the cream of language, idioms are one of the most important cultural elements of a nation and they reflect the culture of the nation. Since idioms are short in forms, rich in connotative meanings and vivid in images, they are popular and widely used by many people in the world, such as Chinese, English, Mongolians and so on. Some times it is easy for translators to translate the idioms, because both the original and target language and culture share similarities with each other. But in other cases, the strong national colors and distinctive cultural connotations of idioms may lead to communicative obstacles between the original language and the target language. In order to overcome such translating obstacles caused by cultural differences, many scholars and translation theorists attempted to find the most effective translation strategies. Therefore, a hot debate on the employment of the domestication and foreignization strategies in cultural translation came into being. The domestication strategy is target-language oriented, emphasizing the fluent expression which is easily understood by target readers. While, the latter one is source-culture oriented, emphasizing the preservation of the original flavors and characteristics of the original text.A Dream of Red Mansions is one of the four great classical novels in China, and it shows us a vast and vivid picture of Chinese feudal society. Meanwhile, it is famous for its distinctive language art and contains a large number of idioms which carry the unique Chinese cultural elements. From the19th century to now, A Dream of Red Mansions has been translated into many versions, including many foreign languages and Chinese ethnic minority languages. In this paper, the author chose the English version by Yang Hsien-yi and his wife Gladys Yang, and the Mongolian version by Mongolian translators (Sainbayaar, Qindamuni, Jida, Dansennima, Dingerjia, and Wangjile) to make a comparative study between C-E and C-M idiom translation from the cultural perspective.The author chose Lawrence Venuti’s domestication and foreignization theory as the basic theoretical support. By applying these two concepts, the author analyzed some examples of idiom translation in English and Mongolian versions of A Dream of Red Mansions. At the end of the thesis, the author comes to a conclusion that both of the domestication and foreignization have advantages and disadvantages. In translation practice, the selection of translation strategy is decided by the purpose of the translation. An effective translation is a result of keeping balance between domestication and foreignization.