| As the representative of Chinese four masterpieces, Hong Lou Meng is a couplet novel created by Cao Xueqin, an excellent writer in Qing dynasty. This novel is known as the "encyclopedia of the Chinese feudal society", which describes the rise and fall history of the big four Jia,Shi,Wang and Xue, based on Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu’s love tragedy as a main clue. As the peak of Chinese zhanghui novel, its chapter titles are full of the connotation of classical culture and the excellent language skills, which are worthy of our further study and research. With the increasing of cross-cultural communication and the worldwide spread of Chinese traditional culture,a large number of English versions of Hong Lou Meng occurred to us. The first English version occurred in 1830. There are totally four English versions of Hong Lou Meng occurring in the period from 1830 to 1892. These English version are not very inaccurate, and a few translators even came out with some mistakes. In order to meet the needs of showing exotic style in the book and foreign readers’ curiosity about ancient China, a few translators made a lot of mistakes in their versions, which caused negative impact on foreign readers’ understanding of Hong Lou Meng and traditional Chinese culture to some degree. The most famous two English versions are Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang’s A Dream of Red Mansions and Hawkes’ s The Story of the Stone among a large number of versions. Two English versions came out with their own characteristics, strengths and weaknesses, no matter at home or abroad, in the circle of translation or redology. Hong Lou Meng caused a significant impact all over the world. Yang’s version is more faithful to the original text and keeps the classical style and soul of the original, which is strongly supported by redology circle. There is less errors in Yang’s version and more accurate version,retaining the authenticity of the novel. Rooted in China, Yang’s version is full of thecharm of Chinese classical language and culture. Yang Xianyi himself is a Chinese,and he has Chinese cultural accomplishment and connotation,which is high enough to understand ancient culture more thoroughly. But Yang Xianyi’s version is too strict,which can not jump out of the original novel. The artistic style of literature is a little bit weaker, and not very popular overseas. The English version he gives is lively and vivid with high literal art. It is a typical masterpiece of classical literature with English version. His translation is not only in line with the reading habits of British and American readers, but also a good interpretation of the contents of the original text. However,Hawkes himself, as a Chinese professor at University of Oxford, has a strong interest in Chinese and Chinese culture, and has a very high attainments in Chinese language. But due to the lack of full understanding of Chinese profound classical culture, he still made a few mistakes in his version. Researches on the chapter titles of Hong Lou Meng have a far-reaching influence on the spread of China traditional culture and literary works. So far, there have been a lot of researches on the English versions of this novel, but few satisfied study about their chapter titles. There are many distinctive feature-chapter titles in Zhanghui novels, with the same number of words, symmetrical structure, concise language, the unique charm of language and the formal characteristic(Li Yanchang,2013:169).The skopos theory is the core of the German functional school translation theory.The core principle is the skopos rule. The purpose of translation decides the translation content and translation strategies. The translation skills and strategies are influenced by many factors, such as the translator’s intention, text type, cultural background, and language skills. In these translation strategies, domestication and foreignization are the most important strategies. The two translation strategies of domestication and foreignization are not mutually exclusive, but complementary with each other. Distinctly different English versions from Yang Xianyi and Hawkes come from their different translation purposes,the cultural background and the understanding of the Chinese culture. However, the translator’s translation purpose is not optional, it is decided by the initiator of the translation activities and its target readers. All in all, no matter Yang’s or Hawkes’ s version are both successful versions.Yang’s version is more faithful to the original novel and he tried to bring the classical style of the original and traditional culture to all of the readers, which used more strategies of foreignization. However, Hawkes pursued the smooth and natural style and committed to bring better reading experience to readers in his country more with domestication. He was keen to introduce Chinese classical works to foreign readers.In this paper, Hong Lou Meng, as the top of the four famous works in China, is a model of this study. And we choose the two most famous English versions from Hawkes and Yang Xianyi as the research objects. Based on the skopos theory of German functional school, author tries to explore what translation strategies Yang and Hawkes used in their versions,the reason why they chose different translation strategies in the process of translation and the effect that different translation strategies have achieved in their versions. This paper is composed of five parts. In the first chapter, the author firstly points out the research background, significance of the study and the problems that author may face in this research. In the second chapter,author introduced the origin of chapter titles-the most distinct feature of Chinese zhanghui novel, its development and form, and further introduced the status and significance of this novel. At the same time, it also introduced much about the two English versions:A Dream of Red Mansions and The Story of the Stone. In the third chapter, it points that the guiding theory is the skopos theory of functionalism translation school, and makes the necessary introduction about the three principles of skopos theory. At last, it points out the research method in this chapter. In the fourth chapter, the author made a comparative study about the chapter titles in the two English versions. Comparative study is carried mainly from four aspects, namely the study about the symmetric structure of chapter titles, the use of euphemism, the name of people and places in novel. In this chapter, author explores how the skopos theory has an influence on the translator’s translation strategies, and its effect. In the fifth chapter, it is a final conclusion. It points the deficiencies in the paper and it is the places where should be made a further study. |
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