On Tea Domain Translation In Yang's And Hawkes' Versions Of Hong Lou Meng From The Perspective Of Discourse Analysis

The novel Hong Lou Meng could be said as a synthesizer of Chinese traditional culture,in which tea culture is an important ingredient.Tea has been mentioned for more than 270 times in this book,including over ten tea poems and one independent chapter to describe tea affairs.Tea culture is not only an essential part of Chinese traditional culture,but also has the vitality to meet the nature-oriented trend in the globalization.In addition,with the rise of “The Belt and Road Initiatives”,tea cultural output has become an important approach to achieving economic power and cultural power during China's rejuvenation.Therefore,researches on the relevant translation and proper translation strategies have become particularly important.As for the tea-related translation in Chinese classics,they may not meet the present need with the translators' specific motivation and the publishers' requirement of their times.A case in point would be the available versions of Hong Lou Meng.Analyzing and comparing the different versions in relevant sections could reveal whether they have transmitted the original meaning and implications accurately and completely to the target readers will be an effective way to give the translators of the present day a better idea in this respect.This is a main reason behind this research.This thesis compares and analyzes the translation of tea culture in the two English versions of Hong Lou Meng,namely the “A Dream of Red Mansions” and “The Story of the Stone” translated by Yang Xianyi and Hawkes respectively,with an intention to study the translation not only from the traditional language level,but also the broader social and cultural context and provide more theoretic and strategic support to the Chinese tea culture translation.The conclusions are: Versions of different ages could serve the need of specific ages.In order to deliver the culture characteristic and the connotation of tea accurately,translators must fully consider the discourse expressions of the source language in the context,for example,the high-context culture in China.Under the guidance of the principle of the“Macro-Micro-Macro” of discourse analysis,the “four-step methods”will be employed:(1)background-trace method(2)context-reduction method(3)meaning-capture method(4)association-verification method,which will help to adopt better translation strategies and methods to eliminate gaps in meaning,to achieve the semantic coherence and contextual coherence,and spread China's traditional tea culture more effectively.This thesis consists of five chapters: the first part is the introduction of the whole thesis,including the research background,the purpose and significance of the research,the research method and the overall structure.The second part is a literature review.It reviews the current situation of translation studies on Hong Lou Meng in recent years,as well as the research trends and certain problems in discourse analysis and tea culture translation at home and abroad.The third part mainly introduces the theoretical framework and methods used in this thesis.It briefly explains the concept of discourse analysis and the research methods,the translation unit,translation methods and translation criterion under the theoretical framework of discourse analysis.Based on the previous studies,the author compiles the translation strategies and specific steps that can be applied to the translation of traditional Chinese culture,which is the innovative part of this thesis.The fourth part is the main body of this thesis.Firstly,the tea domain words in Hong Lou Meng are summarized and classified,which are generally divided into tea name,tea set,tea water,tea poem,tea ceremony,tea couplet and so forth.Then,guided by the theoretical framework and methodology of the third chapter,it conducts a case study of two versions of the Hong Lou Meng,and specifically analyzes the translation of tea words which are expressed in an implied way,relying deeply on communicative context to render their meaning in this work.The last part is the summary and conclusion of the thesis.In this chapter,the applicability and feasibility of the discourse analysis theory for the translation of tea culture in Chinese classics is proven;and the research framework of translation strategies and translation methods are pointed out with a hope to extend it to the cultural translation of other classical works and make a due contribution to Chinese culture translation.