A Study On The Translation Of The Costume Culture In Yangs' Version Of Hong Lou Meng From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Costume culture is the embodiment of material and spiritual civilization of human being's.As the top of the Chinese classical novels,Hong Lou Meng is also a display of traditional Chinese culture.Costume of Hong Lou Meng reflects the fusion of Han nationality and Man nationality at that time and indicates traditional Chinese costume in different dynasties.Characters' costume in Hong Lou Meng has various colors,materials,styles and delicate craftsmanship and plays an important role in establishing characters' image,personality and social status.In order to introduce authentic traditional Chinese culture to the world,Yang Xianyi and his wife Gladys Yang maximally keep traditional Chinese cultural images in the source text.In pragmatic research,Verschueren's Adaptation Theory emphasizes the influence of language,culture and cognition to communication.Therefore,analyzing the costume culture in Yang's version version under the framework of Adaptation Theory could understand the representation of the connotation of costume culture in the SL text.Among the costume descriptions of Hong Lou Meng,the descriptions of Jia Baoyu are the most frequent and detailed and Wang Xifeng's come second.According to the definition of costume culture,this thesis divides the costume descriptions of Jia Baoyu and Wang Xifeng into two kinds:“clothing” and “decoration”,and nine subcategories are consisted in total.This thesis analyzes Yang's version of the costume culture of these two characters in the framework of Adaptation Theory.The thesis firstly discusses the adaptation levels of Yang's version in the TL,and then summarizes the merits and demerits of the Yang's translation on costume and explores the reasons for these merits and demerits.Finally,the paper summarizes enlightenment to the translation of traditional Chinese costume culture.Based on the analysis on Yang's translation to costume culture of Jia Baoyu and Wang Xifeng,the results of the present research includes: 1)Yang's translation of the costume culture not completely adapt to contextual correlates of the TL.Sixty-six percent translations adapt to the contextual correlates of the TL.Yang's translation of the costume culture mainly adapts to the lexical and syntax levels of the TL and cognition,cultural background and aesthetic ability of the TL readers;2)in nine subcategories,“color” and “craftsmanship” all adapt to the contextual correlates of the TL.As a whole,Yang's translation of costume culture are detailed and flexible.However,there is always a part of example in other seven subcategories,which do not adapt to the TL context.Among them,the proportion of “style”and “head decoration” is higher than other subcategories.The reasons for these merits and demerits including the similarities and differences between Chinese and Western costume cultures,translation target and translation method of the translators and the translators' understanding for traditional Chinese costume culture and translation mode of the Yangs;3)in order to convey the cultural connotation of traditional costume images,the translators should not only seek the equivalence of surface meaning,but to adapt to the TL readers' cultural background,aesthetic ability and cognition.And the translators should adopt flexible translation methods under the precondition of understanding traditional Chinese costume culture completely.By extension,this research is hoped to provide references for further study on the costume culture translation in Chinese literary works.