Observation Of Ideology And Poetics In A Dream Of Red Mansions

Language is a useful tool for people to express their thoughts and to communicate with one another in society. Culture is a collection of values, beliefs, customs, way of thinking, etc. that have been commonly accepted among people in a certain community. Language is the carrier of culture, via which cultural exchanges come into reality and promote the social development and progress. On the other hand, language is one of the shaping forces in history that may gradually mold certain cultures. The fact that language and culture interact with each other posits to translators a challenge, that is, they have to master languages as well as cultures. Each translator is likely to meet and thus has to solve problems concerning cultural differences during the process of translations. Since ideology dominates to a large degree in the cultural system and poetics mainly in the literary one, translation will inevitably be influenced by ideological and poetic factors with the purpose of introducing and publicizing a particular theme and literary genres.It has been widely acknowledged that Hong Lou Meng is one of the most outstanding classical Chinese masterpieces in the history of Chinese literature. From the time when it was composed arid made known to the public, people from various fields and with different purposes have been devoting themselves to the so called "Redology" in diverse schools, such as, earlier explorations into the concealed true events under its legendary and fictitious "veil"; precise textual researches into its editions, authorship and other relevant subjects; heated discussions over its theme; or increasing studies on its literary characteristics, covering from structure, characterization, language, description and so on. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China, scholars began to apply the Marxist theories to analyzing this great novel and turn to concentrate on researches into class contradictions and class struggles. This ideological change is reflected on translation as that it is essential for translators to present the works' theme in accordance with the current ideology. Besides, it is not infrequently that translations try hard to retain as much as possible the original images along with poetics of the source language. Therefore, translators also need to keep in mind the introduction of new literary devices to foreign readers and the maintenance of strangeness of certain literary forms.The English translations of Hong Lou Meng before the 1970s had been taking the form of either selected parts or abridged editions, aiming at telling the tragic love story and portraying the distinctive Chinese customs. The full version by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang became the focus of researches mostly because of its faithful translation strategy in order to introduce this classical Chinese novel to the western world. Influenced largely by the then studies focused on its political and social theme, the Yangs chose to faithfully expose class contradictions and class struggle in the dark rules of the time when Cao Xueqin created his work. The thesis is attempting to apply Cultural School's theories of translation under influences of ideology and poetics, analyze translation examples selected from A Dream of Red Mansions and make observation of ideology and poetics in the translation. Apart from the Introduction and Conclusion, this thesis is composed of five chapters:Chapter One gives a brief introduction to the definition of culture and the relationship between language, culture and translation. Chapter Two presents "Cultural School" and its ideas of ideology and poetics. Next, Chapter Three comprehensively introduces the great novel Hong Lou Meng; its author Cao Xueqin; and the researches into Hong Lou Meng in China, including the "old Redology" before the May Fourth Movement of 1919, the "new Redology" after the May Fourth Movement headed by Hu Shi, the mass movement in 1954 led by Chairman Mao to criticize the subjective idealism of Hu Shi school, and the current studies after the Cultural Revolution. Meanwhile, Chapter Four introduces English versions of Hong Lou Meng, especially the one translated by the Yangs: A Dream of Red Mansions. Chapter Five analyzes specific examples in A Dream of Red Mansions in order to observe the ways the ideology and poetics affect the translation and how they are reflected in it.