The Study Of The Dialogues Of Hong Lou Meng (or A Dream Of Red Mansions) From The Perspective Of Cultural Translation

Hong Lou Meng is the encyclopedia of Chinese feudal society and is the crystallization of rich Chinese culture. It is one of the greatest works in the long history of China and occupies a unique position in Chinese literature. As a novelistic monument, it revives China in the 18th century and its various social aspects. On the one hand, the novel basically adopts two types of writing: narration and dialogue. Compared with narration, the essence of dialogue in the novel is not only in its volume but also in creating the characters as well as in its cultural connotation: Chinese feudal relationship, Chinese religion and Chinese custom etc. As a result, the dialogues in Hong Lou Meng are worth translators'further studies not only in its linguistic value, but also in its cultural value. At the same time, cultural translation has been developing because of the inseparable interrelationship between culture and translation. It has been accepted that translation is essentially a communication process between cultures rather than simply between languages. The focus of this dissertation is placed upon the analysis of the translations of those dialogues in Yang Shien-yi's A Dream of Red Mansions from the perspective of cultural translation. The analysis in this dissertation is executed both from a macro and a micro perspective. The macro perspective helps the author of this dissertation extract a "narrow"and specific Chinese culture system from the dialogues. This specific system can provide practical help for those potential readers and interested researchers within the context of Hong Lou Meng (or A Dream of Red Mansions). While the micro perspective helps the author organize some detailed analysis through nine common cultural translation methods, whose applications in Yang's version have their gains as well as losses. Determined by the complex nature of translation itself and the strict requirements of specific cultural contexts, some definite and clear evaluations towards the above applications are actually hard to be given. Though it's hard to achieve the best in the field of translation, it's possible to achieve better through systematic analysis and evaluation of those translations. At last, a better future of translating Chinese classical works will depend on the hard work of all who care about it and are willing to devote to it.