A Corpus-based Comparative Study Of Translation Shifts Of Personal Deixis In Hong Lou Meng

In recent years,there are many studies about the translation of the personal deixis and about the pragmatic aspects of point of view in personal deixis.The translation shifts have gained great development as well.The translation studies of Hong Lou Meng(to be abbreviated as HLM)have also attracted much attention for a long time.However,based on the corpus of translation,the studies of translation shifts of point of view in personal deixis which are combined with translation style of translators are still blank,especially those aiming to investigate different translators' subjectivity.Based on the Chinese-English parallel corpus of HLM,this paper investigated the similarities and differences of the translation shifts of point of view in personal deixis of the first 80 chapters of different translation versions of HLM — Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang's version and Hawkes' s version.It is found that main translation shifts category of the two versions is about the translation shifts of first person point of view,and the main translation forms of the two versions are about the parallel form of first person viewpoint into the singular form of first person viewpoint,the second person viewpoint into the first person viewpoint,and the third person viewpoint into the first person viewpoint.It is also found that the main differences are that the total number and its percentage of the examples of translation shifts of Hawkes' s version is more and higher than that of the Yangs' version,and the translation forms of the former is more various than the latter.As for the translation,Yang Xianyi and his wife are inclined to use “my + appellation” and“first name” which are inclined to explicit the third party referred to and clarify the relations between the speaker,the hearer and the third party,while Hawkes translate more into “appellation + last name/first name”,“first name”,and “the + appellation”,and they can explicit the third party referred to and be more helpful for the speaker to express positive/negative feelings for the third party referred to.Based on these differences,it is considered that the subjectivity of Hawkes is more prominent than the Yangs.As for the change of the following degree of the principle of proximity and the principle of status,it is found that there is no change in the the parallel form of first personviewpoint into the singular form of first person viewpoint.However,the following degree of the principle of proximity and the principle of status have changed in the second person viewpoint into the first person viewpoint,which are the following degree of principle of proximity of target texts are both higher than their source texts,and the rising degree of Hawkes' s version is higher than the Yangs' version.However,the following degree of principle of status of target texts are both lower than their source texts,and the falling degree of the Yangs' version is higher than Hawkes' s version.The reasons of translation shifts are owed to the distance between two different languages,cultures,the temporal and spatial distance and the differences of thinking mode or expression habit of author and translator,and the utterance motivation and the utterance effect.