A Dream Of Red Mansions And The Teaching Of Diet Culture

China's Four Great Classical Novels play an important role in the teaching of Chinese courses in some countries.For example,in universities' advanced studies class in Malaysia,the Ministry of Education has listed China's four great classical novels.Classic masterpieces provide a good entry point for us to understand the ancients and observe the world.The related teaching activities have also been proved that they can improve the quality of all aspects of the students.So in Malaysia's senior high school exams,the classics account for 1/3.However,as a whole,the emphasis on culture courses in foreign Chinese classes is still not enough,especially in the teaching of diet culture.There is also difficulties of the Chinese diet itself,because compared with other countries' diet,Chinese diet system is really complicated.China has a long history and all ethnic groups have different eating habits.This is a great challenge for TCSL teachers.This article hopes to combine classics teaching with diet culture teaching.Through the translation of food culture vocabulary in the English version of A Dream of Red Mansions,this paper explores how to teach Chinese diet culture to foreign students.However,there is a great distance between the Chinese classics and the times of foreign students' life.For the students in the primary stage,they are greatly influenced by the translated versions of the famous classics because of the language barriers.Therefore,this paper will focus on the translation strategies of the two translations from the perspective of assimilation and dissimilation,taking Yang Xianyi's translation and Hawkes's translation as the objects.China's diet culture has a long history,and it is gradually formed in the long practical diet activities.The atmosphere of life is very rich,not only includes food practice,seasoning and food material,but also has many legendary stories and art paintings,which fully embodies the national features and traditional style.The taste of food in our country is delicious and its appearance is exquisite.It is unique in the world,and the culture behind it attracts more and more foreigners.Taking this as an opportunity can promote the TCFL cultural courses.There are two major considerations in choosing A Dream of Red Mansions as the material for TCFL diet culture teaching to make an analysis.From the perspective of language teaching of TCFL,in terms of language learning,we can focus on the diet culture vocabulary in A Dream in Red Mansions.The novel belongs to modern vernacular works.Mr.Shao Jingmin suggested that modern Chinese has been gradually formed since the early Qing Dynasty,that is,AD1636.Although Wang Li has different views on the specific stages of Chinese,he quoted a large number of "A Dream in Red Aansions" as an example in the Chinese Modern Grammar,and there are such expressions:"Generally speaking,modern times are not nearly 20 or 10 years.The book ":A Dream in Red Mansions" has been over 200 years ago,but it is still universally recognized that the grammar of the book is the same as the modern Chinese,because the grammar is basically the same as the current Beijing dialect grammar." Mr.Tong Qingbing even evaluated the vernacular in this book as"the purest,the most typical,the richest and the most expressive".Therefore,it is reasonable to use it as a material for foreign students to learn Chinese.In terms of culture,Wang Xilian,a famous scholar in Qing Dynasty,wrote a general comment on A Dream in Red Mansions,in which there are such views:"In a novel,it covers poems and songs,stereotyped writing and epistolary essay......storytelling and joking,nothing is not perfect......needlework and cookery,slip over nothing whether big or small......" It can be seen that A Dream of Red Mansions covers many aspects of Chinese culture and is of help for foreign students to better understand Chinese cultureIn the practice of combining A Dream of Red Mansions with the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language,the teaching of food culture in the novel which is interesting for foreign students is not very much.Because in the translation of these words related to the diet,it is often not easy to express their original meanings,so the discrimination and selection of the translation of these words in the TCFL will have a great influence on the teaching effect.At present,two translations are recognized in the Redology world,one is The Story of the Stone,which was published by Hawkes in 80s and is called "Hawkes translation version".The second is the full translation version which appeared almost in the same age with Hawkes version,that is,the translated version of A Dream of Red Mansions by Yang Xianyi and Dai Naidie,which is called "Yang versionf".This paper will list the similarities and differences in the translation of diet vocabulary,sum up some methods and ways to translate Chinese diet words,and study the cultural meaning contained in the diet of A Dream of Red Mansions.