| Poems take an indispensable part in Hong Lou Meng,and have their own academic and practical meaning.They have highly-concise words,rich connotation and harmonious sound effect,which is hard to reproduce in translation.In retrospect,poems in Hong Lou Meng have been studied by various scholars concentrating on single or series of poems.When the scope is confined to one typical poetic style or extended to cover dozens of poems,the combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis is necessary for more comprehensive researches.Therefore,this study selects rhymed verses in the novel and their three full English versions,attempting to reveal stylistic features of original poems and how translators recreate these features in their versions.In order to ensure the objectivity and reliability of this paper,an English-Chinese text corpus and speech corpus are conducted with the utilization of Editpad,Antconc,Interphonic,and Praat,provided with the selected and synthesized data of Chinese original and three English versions.Lexical-textual-phonological pattern is chosen to reveal the style of the rhymed verses in the original and translated texts.The research results are as follows:At the lexical level,rhymed verses are most created for chanting objects and displaying joy of life for upper classes,and “ ? ”,“ ? ”are among the most frequently-occurred words.In translation,Yang and Hawkes tend to use multiword and figurative language for writing,while Bonsall selects plain words and simple expressions.Four-word parallel structures appear in original text for 42 times,Bonsall makes word-for-word reproduction for 39 of them,Hawkes tends to disorganize images in his translation to achieve sound effect,Yang basically ensures faithfulness to source text with minor adjustments.In the textual field,because Chinese is featured with parataxis while English is hypotaxis,cohesive devices are of necessity to add in translation.When translating,Bonsall prefers to conduct “I” and “it” for writing.In his text,inconsistency on references exists.Hawkes utilizes the variations of “you” to create immersiveexperience for readers.Yang uses more third persons to narrate poems objectively.In addition to personal references,“and” is chosen as representative conjunction.Bonsall only utilizes 2 of all 175 “and” to connect two lines.Yang uses 27(of 125),Hawkes uses 48(of 135).For overt cohesive devices,semicolons are preferred by Yang to indicate relations among lines.Meanwhile,Hawkes' s selection of punctuation is variable: besides semicolons,colons are used to elicit following lines and dashes are widely used in linking verse.In contrast,periods occupy most in Bonsall's and covert connections rarely appear.In terms of phonological level,Hawkes attaches most importance to sound beauty,Yang medium and Bonsall attaches the least.For reduplication,three translators all use various rhythmical ways to translate,including alliteration,onomatopoeia and repetition.As for the rhyme scheme,Yang and Hawkes both emphasize its uniformity within same suite poems while Bonsall seldom correlate it with specific topics.In addition,compared with other two translators,Hawkes has similar number of syllables in his translation and the tone range of his version is more prominent in conveying characters' emotion.To sum up,in poem translation,the discussion from the level of lexis,cohesive devices and phonology are helpful to reveal the stylistic features of both original and translated texts.It is also of much value to translation studies and dissemination of traditional Chinese culture. |
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