Research Of Translation Of Idioms In It O Sohei’s Japanese Translation (1980) Of A Dream In Red Mansions

Japan, being the first foreign country to accept A Dream in Red Mansions, is of critical importance in Redology overseas. For more than 200 years since the introduction of the novel, Redology in Japan has mainly been focusing on historical essays. However, articles about Japanese translations are rarely seen.This thesis, choosing Ito Sohei’s complete translation as its original text, takes the translations of idiomatic phrases as examples and analyzes the literal, figurative and extended meaning of the idioms as well as the preservation of information (such as Chinese cultural allusions) in the Japanese translation. On this basis, the thesis makes a further comparison of interpretation and extension of idioms between the original Chinese cultural context and the Japanese one. In this way, it enables us to find the missing part that is prone to lose in the Chinese-Japanese translation of idiomatic phrases through examining the different aesthetic perceptions between Chinese and Japanese readers in the matter of the logic of plot and the integrity of thinking.There are 4 chapters in this thesis. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction and presents:a) the concept of "idioms" in both the Chinese and Japanese languages, b) the characteristics of idioms employed in A Dream in Red Mansions, and c) issues of choosing Ito Sohei’s translation as the original text for this thesis. In Chapter 2, idioms such as "snakes and vipers creeping around among the dragons" and "monks have no child but lots of dutiful sons" are taken as examples to examine the preservation of figurative and extended meaning of "idiom that has literal meaning" in the target language during the process of translation. Chapter 3 takes expressions such as "bearing the rod and willingly taking the punishment" and "the magistrates are free to burn down houses, while the common people are forbidden even to light lamps" as examples to analyze how these "idioms containing cultural allusions" are translated into the target language. Chapter 4 summaries the technique of "foreignization" utilized in Ito Sohei’s translation and concludes its pros and cons.