A Comparative Study Of The English Translations Of The Peer Kinship Terms In Hong Lou Meng

Hong Lou Meng (or A Dream of Red Chamber) is regarded as an encyclopedia of both Chinese language and culture. It is a story mainly about the process of a feudal family going from prosperity to decline. A few hundred figures portrayed in the story reveal countless but complex interpersonal relationships with the employment of various addressing terms, especially kinship terms. From this perspective, the kinship terms in the novel have become important linguistic signs to reflect the complexity of human relationships and culture features of the time.As a masterpiece of Chinese classical literature, Hong Lou Meng has enjoyed enduring popularity and influence among people since its birth in the eighteenth century in the Qing Dynasty. Together with its multilingual translations, Hong Lou Meng has exerted a profound influence in literature and translation studies both home and abroad. Therefore, translators and translation researchers should pay enough attention to the effective transmission of Chinese cultural values.The data of this paper are the eight most frequently used peer kinship terms chosen from Hong Lou Meng (the first 56 chapters) and their corresponding English renditions in the three English versions, which are translated by H. Bencraft (1892-3), David Hawkes and John Minford (1973-86), and Yang Hsien-yi and Glays Yang (1978-80) respectively.Based on previous research, this study first points out the C-values of kinship terms through systematic and comprehensive investigations into the peer kinship terms in Hong Lou Meng with both qualitative and quantitative approaches combined. Then a comparative study of translation strategies used by the three translators is carrid out according to the degree of converting the C-values of peer kinship terms. At last, through a comparison and contrast of English renditions in the three English versions, the study draws a conclusion with reference to the influence of translation strategies employed by the respective translators on their representation of the C-values in the source language.This study clearly shows that the phenomenon of"one address with many references"is commonly found in Hong Lou Meng. For instance, the eight peer kinship terms are used to address not only nuclear family members, but also relatives, even non-relatives, which reveal that the cultural connotation of a same address term varies from person to person. In the renditions of these culture-loaded kinship terms, all the three translators combine semantic translation strategy with communicative translation strategy and represent the C-values of the source language in varying degrees.In comparison among the three translators, Joly predominantly uses semantic translation; the Yangs rank the second place in adopting the same strategy. However, Hawkes prefers communicative translation in dealing with these peer kinship terms.The application of both corpus tools and the quantitative and qualitative approach make up the insufficiencies of previous studies on kinship terms in Hong Lou Meng and provide more referential methods and ideas for the studies of English translations of other classical Chinese literary works. Meanwhile, the study fully validates the feasibility and efficiency of applying Newmark's semantic translation and communicative translation theory to evaluate the rendition of culture-loaded words.