A Comparative Study Of The Expressions Of Daiyu's "Ku" In Hong Lou Meng And Its Three English Versions

Hong Lou Meng (HLM in short) or"A Dream of the Red Chamber"is regarded as an encyclopedia of both Chinese language and culture. Known as the"book of tears", Hong Lou Meng according to the author is"Pages full of idle word, penned with hot and bitter tears"(Cao, preface). So"tears"may be the key to understand the author and the great work. The tears of Lin Daiyu, one of the heroines, are preeminent among the tears of all of the other characters. The tears represent Lin Daiyu, the author, as well as HLM. Without Daiyu's tears, there is no great tragedy. The primary objective of this study is to make a comparative study of Lin Daiyu's"ku"("cry") in HLM (the first 56 chapters) and the English renditions in the three complete translations in a both qualitative and quantitative approach. To be specific, this study is designed to investigate how the author describes Lin Daiyu's"ku", how aspects of translation can be analyzed to represent the features of Daiyu's"ku", and what strategies are used for its representation.A review of the literature in Translation Studies reveals that, since times of antiquity, translation strategies have been simplistically polarized in black-and-white characterizations, so much so that there seems no middle way open for translators. In this paper, the author does not intend to evaluate the English versions in a static and closed way, but rather to adopt a descriptive approach which is aimed to analyze the translation in an open system and which emphasizes to contextualization of the translations. Besides, the context in translation is adopted in order to analyze the source and target data. In this thesis, a combination of quantitative and qualitative method has been employed. With the aid of corpus tools, the data of Daiyu's"ku"is searched and categorized. Apart from quantitative and qualitative methods for the analysis of data, the main method that guides the thesis is the comparative study method, which focuses not only on the differences between the source and target data, but also on the similarities and differences among the three English versions.Significantly, in the study, two ways of expressing Daiyu's"ku"are found, i.e. the direct way and indirect way. It is also found some characteristics of expressions of Daiyu's"ku": especially the use of many four-word phrase forms and vivid words. We also analyze data in context, contexts which affect the expressing of Daiyu's"ku"since context plays a vital role in translation. By comparing the source data, the translators'choices of words and translation strategies reveal their preferences and styles. Finally, factors which might affect the translators'choices and preferences are discussed, and these include different language systems, intentions, target audiences, or the competence of the translators.The study constitutes the first attempt in translation analysis of Daiyu's"ku"which sheds light on the English studies of Hong Lou Meng, and which is hoped to contribute to the lexical teaching and translation teaching.