On The Translation Of Euphemisms In Honglou Meng

Euphemism is a common language phenomenon in different cultures around the world. It is a language expression of social culture, reflecting universality and peculiarity of the social development, values, ethic as well as nationality and commonness of culture. With the deepening of social and intercultural communication, the employment of euphemism is increasingly important. Compared with its thriving situation, the relevant study on the translation of euphemism is not satisfactory so far.Herein, this study is an attempt to bridge the gap. Excerpting euphemisms from the two English versions (David Hawkes and John Minfrod's The Story of the Stone, Yang Xianyi and his wife Gladys Yang's A Dream of Red Mansions ) of the Chinese Classic novel Honglou meng as a research object, based on translation norm put forward by Gideon Toury and the Skopos theory in'German School'functionalist translation theory, the thesis conducts the comparison and analyses between the two versions and, sets forth some suggestions about the translation of euphemism..This thesis is composed of four chapters.Chapter 1 presents a general view of euphemism, including its definition, origin, developing trend, functions as well as its characteristics shown in Honglou meng, such as hierarchy, aestheticism, and nationality. Chapter 2 provides two theoretical foundation of the study. Chapter 3 explores mainly the translation strategies and four elements influencing the choice of translator, i.e., translation purpose, target reader, ideology and status of source texts, as well as the roles four elements play on the text. Chapter 4 makes a contrastive analysis of the translation of euphemisms in the two versions with the aim at finding out their respective merits and demerits. The thesis classifies euphemisms in Honglou meng into four categories, i.e., death, disease, sexuality, excreta and secretion, then discusses two main strategies, i.e., domestication and foreignization as well as the concrete methods related to them, and lastly makes a further contrast of both versions. In the ending part, a set of tentative methods for translating euphemism are presented. Through the exploration and comparison of euphemism translation in the two versions, the thesis has drawn the following conclusions. From the perspective of translation strategy, domestication and foreignization will exert different influence on translation, but they are not contradictory, for both of them do serve for certain translation purposes. The Yangs'version employs foreignization as the main strategy concurrently supplemented by domestication, whereas Hawkes'version mainly adopts domestication with foreignization as a supplement. As far as the initial norm is concerned, the Yangs'translation approximates more to adequacy (similar to foreinization) while Hawkes'version is more inclined to acceptability (similar to domestication). During the course of analyses, the present author finds out a phenomenon of dysphemizing euphemisms in both versions, and suggests it as one of the methods for euphemism translation. However, it must be pointed out that this method should be used with great caution. If it is used properly, this method will put more flowers on the brocade in depicting the disposition of a specific figure. If used improperly, it will be contrary to what a translator wishes. In addition, a new concept"degree of euphemizing"is put forward, and the version of Hawkes turns out to have a higher degree of euphemizing than that of the Yangs.Upon the analyses of the two versions, the present thesis puts forward a set of translation strategies of euphemism, i.e., 1.A translator should render euphemisms in source text into the corresponding euphemisms in the target language as much as possible. 2. If the implication of euphemisms can be maintained in target language, the method of literal translation should be adopted.3. As to the cultural-specific euphemisms, we can adopt four ways varying in the similarities and dissimilarities of the cultures of source texts and target texts.With the exploration of the translation of euphemisms in Honglou meng, the present author hopes this study could make some humble efforts to the study of this field.