A Comparative Analysis Of Two English Versions Of Hongloumeng From The Perspective Of Interpersonal Metaphor

As one of China's Four classics, Hongloumeng can be described as a monumental work in the history of literature. In the two hundred years after its birth, Hongloumeng has enjoyed great popularity and a long-lasting effect. With the deepening of international cultural exchanges, the studies of English versions of Hongloumeng are of epoch-making significance. Among its various English versions, the two translated by Yang Xiang-yi and his wife Gladys Yang, David Hawkes and John Minford are acknowledged as the most famous and authoritative, thus become the research focus of domestic and foreign scholars after its publication.Systemic Functional Grammar Theory holds that metaphor not only exists at lexical level but also grammatical level. The application of grammatical metaphors plays a key role in the conveying of interpersonal meaning in verbal communication. Interpersonal metaphor, as an important part of grammatical metaphor, is a crucial means to realize interpersonal meaning. In verbal communication, when expressing a certain meaning metaphorically rather than congruently, we exert the pragmatic function, social function and textual function of language. The interpersonal metaphors in discourses suggest the relationship, the social status and the degree of intimacy between the speakers. Therefore,studying the reconstruction of interpersonal meaning in the source text through interpersonal metaphor is an important criterion of appreciating translation versions.With Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar as the theoretical framework, this paper aims to explore three questions: 1) What are the similarities and differences in the use of interpersonal metaphors between the two English versions of Hongloumeng? 2)What are the possible causes for such similarities and differences? 3) To what degree is the interpersonal meaning of the source text represented in its two English versions?This paper firstly reviews the thirty-year studies of English versions of Hongloumeng and then combines qualitative with quantitative analysis, with all the discourses of Pinger as the corpus, to explore the translation of interpersonal metaphors in two English versions of Hongloumeng.Through the analyses, the author finds that: 1) Two English versions are roughly in the same tendency in the use of interpersonal metaphor, among which there is no clear difference between two versions in terms of the metaphor of mood, while Hawkes'employment of metaphor of modality is far more than the Yangs'; 2) Definitely, the translation results are influenced by many factors, with the translator's knowledge background and the purpose of translation as the least negligible part; 3) Through the discourse analysis, two versions are about equal regarding the reconstruction level of the interpersonal meaning. To be more specific, Hawkes' translation is readers-oriented and employs domestication method, which makes the translation more euphemistic and acceptable for the western readers, while Yang's translation is aimed at spreading traditional Chinese culture and thus pays more attention to giving full play to the source text and highlighting the characters' trenchant personality. This paper is expected to enrich the studies of interpersonal metaphor theory and English versions of Hongloumeng.