On The Translation Of Chapter Titles In Hong Lou Meng From The Perspective Of Translator’s Subjectivity

Hong Lou Meng, the summit of Chinese classical literary, is regarded as the“encyclopedia of China feudal society”. As an outstanding chapter title novel, Hong LouMeng moves the chapter title novels to its zenith. In recent years, with the emergence of theEnglish versions of Hong Lou Meng, more and more studies have conducted on thetranslation of Hong Lou Meng. However, the study on the chapter title translation is far fromenough which deserves studying in both form and content.For a long time, critics have been focusing on the source text while commenting ontranslations. They take such criterion as ‘loyalty’and ‘faithfulness’ to evaluate translations butignore the value of the translators as independent creators. As independent individuals withtheir own thoughts, experiences, personalities and purposes for translating, the translator arebound to show their own subjectivity in translation. In recent years, with translationbecoming an independent subject, translator’s subjectivity is getting more and more attention.In this thesis, I would like to do the study from the weak point in the translation study ofHong Lou Meng, the chapter title translation from the perspective of translator’s subjectivity.In this thesis, I will mainly use two versions, one by Yang Hisen-yi and the other by DavidHawkes, as study corpus from which I will select some chapter titles as examples.This thesis is divided into five parts. The first part, the introduction, mainly talks abouthow I select this topic and the meaning in doing this study, the background and structure ofthe thesis. The second part is the literature review, in which I will give a detailed introductionto the recent studies on the translation of Hong Lou Meng. The third part is systematicintroduction to translator’s subjectivity, which is also the theoretical basis of this thesis. Inthis part, I’m going to introduce translator’s subjectivity from5aspects respectively, itsdefinition, the origin and development of translator’s invisibility, translator’s subjectivity from invisibility to visibility, translators’ subjectivity in modern translation studies and thefuture of translator’s subjectivity. The fourth part is the main body of the thesis, which carrieson in three sections to show how translator’s subjectivity manifest in the choice of source text,in the choice of translation strategy, and in the translation on the linguistic level. The last partcomes to a natural conclusion. In this part, the thesis will make a summary of whole study.