A Contrastive Study Of The Adverbial Structures Between The Two English Versions Of Hong Lou Meng

The contrastive study between the two English versions of Hong Lou Meng has long been a hot-spot issue in English-Chinese contrastive study. This thesis, with the introduction of Toury’s theory of translation norm and a thorough analysis of the distribution of the adverbial structures within Yang’s version and that of Hawkes, has explored the linguistic similarities and differences between the two versions for a better understanding of the translation strategies adopted in the two versions as well as of the motivations behind the discrepancy between Chinese and English. Judging from the theoretical analysis and the generalization of the sampled cases, we are convinced that there are some norms governing the translation and the selection of adverbial structures at lexical, syntactic and textual levels. All the translators observe those norms to different extents, which mainly contribute to the similarities of the adverbial structures between the two versions; on the other hand, there are also several occasions on which the translators disobey the norms and produce quite different translations. We maintain that those differences generally originate from the influence of initial norm and preliminary norm, and the discrepancy between English and Chinese thinking modes. To be exact, Yang’s version tends to be more affected by Chinese thinking mode and his own translation purpose, which renders its expressions more dynamic and procedural-oriented, and its syntactic forms more source-text-oriented, while Hawkes’version seems to be more influenced by English thinking mode which more reinforces its feature as static and result-oriented, with more flexible and extensive use of adverbials. From the perspective of Toury’s descriptive translation model, Yang’s version tends to be more typical of an adequate translation, while Hawkes’ version seems more characteristic of an acceptable translation.