Domestication Or Foreignization: An Analysis Of The Two Versions Of Hong Lou Meng From A Postcolonial Perspective

Post-colonialism study is a new and hot topic in academic field these years, and even newer to be applied to the translation studies. Postcolonial translation studies are completely different from traditional ones for the involvement of ideology. With the advent of the cultural turn in translation studies, scholars begin to cast their eyes to the political issues that manipulate translation. One prerequisite of the thesis is that postcolonial translation studies are no longer purely an aesthetic or linguistic act, but a political act. The power difference in the world determines the translation currency and material, and translation strategies are also determined by different ideology and power.Hong Lou Meng, one of the greatest Chinese classical works is endowed richly with Chinese culture. It is said to be a great encyclopedia of Chinese culture because it involves nearly every aspect of the culture. How to translate it into English remains a challenge for translators. With the development of cultural exchanges between China and other countries, Hong Lou Meng has been translated into dozens of languages and spreads to all over the world. Taking the two translated works of Hong Lou Meng—A Dream of Red Mansions translated by the couple of Yang Xianyi and The Story of the Stone translated by David Hawkes as example, this thesis is an attempt to explore the unequal cultural exchange between Chinese and English, which was caused by different ideologies with different powers.Firstly, the thesis gives a brief review of the development of translation studies, the cultural turn and postcolonial theory. Through the contrastive analysis of the two versions, the thesis discusses the adoption of different translation strategies, that is, domestication and foreignization by different translators to deal with culture elements. The unequal cultural exchange in the translations causes the rethinking of the two strategies from a postcoionial perspective. The author points out that one should not pursuit absolute domestication or foreignization in the translation, but a third method--- 'Hybridity' is supposed to be a more suitable translation strategy in translation studies from the postcolonial perspective, and that an open mind towards different approaches in translation studies will be conducive to the relatively young discipline, promoting it to develop in a more comprehensive and systematic manner.