Translation Of Social Deixis In HongLouMeng

In the 1930s, deixis, once called "Pragmatics in a narrow sense", became one of the most fundamental branches of pragmatics and correspondingly, social deixis became an important branch of deixis. Being the indicator of the relationship between the participants in interpersonal communication, it gives prominence to the relative social status of the addresser and addressee and projects different cultures. HongLouMeng, a flamboyant flower of Chinese classical literature, in which four hundred and forty eight characters with various images are molded, is compared to the encyclopedia of Chinese feudal society. The system of hierarchy between ruler and ruled, father and son, elder and younger siblings, the system of symmetrical deference for husband and wife, and the system of symmetrical solidarity between friends are strictly followed. Therefore, the role of the social deixis is of great importance in maintaining the forbidding hierarchical order in the feudal official clan.This paper, firstly, discusses social deixis and the differences of its cultural connotations and analyzes the national cultural factors which lead to the differences; secondly, it makes a statistics on and analysis of the classifications and frequencies of social deixis in HongLouMeng; thirdly, the author has carried out a research into the similarities and differences of the translation of social deixis by the two translators through the comparison and analysis for the purpose of working out the implied cultural factors ulteriorly. All the examples quoted and all the data offered in this paper come from HongLouMeng.The author thinks that the Chinese social deixis and English social deixis connote striking different cultures owing to their different historical development processes. Very complicated and trivial are the oriental social deixis, among which the Chinese social deixis is the most typical. It not only contains numerous and intricate kinship terms but also includes the honorifics and self-abasing terms that respect others and debase the speaker himself. On the one hand, it reflects the influence of the feudal patriarchal hierarchy that reigns over China over two thousand years and forms the basic structure of the family clan and the state; On the other hand, it is the embodiment of the influence of traditional Chinese Taoism- the oneness of the heaven and human being and the invaluable harmony. In HongLouMeng there are 406 addressing terms including numerous and complicated kinship terms, honorifics andself-abasing terms. Whereas, English deictic system is very simple for it has no self-abasing terms, fewer honorifics and its kinship terms are never used as social deixis. British culture can date back to the ancient Greek and Roman culture. British feudal society lasts for quite a short period and then the capitalism sets in. So the concepts of "freedom", "equality" and "democracy", which emphasize ego and advocate personality, are deeply rooted in the heart of the people. Moreover, the western families, mainly the nuclear families, are indifferent to the kin relationships. That is why all the kin relationships are general and obscure except the relationships between father and mother, son and daughter. Thus the writer believes that the differences between English and Chinese social deixis have an intimate relationship with their different history and culture.Exposed to different cultures, the two translators of HongLouMeng are possessed of different cultural ascription senses and different translation goals as well. This difference is particularly reflected in the translation of social deixis. On dealing with the self-abasing terms, both adopt the method of omission to be accord with the readers' expectation; On honorifics, Yang Xianyi mainly uses the method of foreignization, aiming to introduce Chinese culture to the western country, while David Hawks mainly adopts the method of domestication with the focus on the target readers and omits the honorifics as many as possible; On kinship terms, Yang's translation is sim...