Cultural Differences Between China And The West Seen From The Poetry Translation In Hong Lou Meng

As one of great litterateurs, Cao Xueqin creates an outstanding works Hong Lou Meng, which takes a unique position in the history of Chinese literature. He describes a vivid and authentic historic picture that shows dramatic features of feudal society by his incomparable writing ways. The main written language of Hong Lou Meng is vernacular Chinese, combining the expressive advantages of classical Chinese and other styles of writing. The novel is a combination of many literary forms, including poems, Ci (slant rhyme poems), Qu (poems with melody), Ci Fu (sentimental composition), ballads, couplets, lantern riddles, and drinkers'wager games.Due to the possession of higher ideology and artistry, the research of Hong Lou Meng has become a special field: Redology, which influences the great development of its translating. This paper lays emphasis on English translation of some poems in two complete English versions, one is A Dream of Red Mansions rendered by Mr. Yang Hsien-yi and his wife Gladys Yang, the other is The Story of the Stone translated by Mr. David Hawkes and Mr. Jon Minford. However, it is not simple to analyze the English translation of these poems. This dissertation draws the comparison of cultural differences between China and the West from the poetry translation, choosing the combination cultural information and poetry translation as the cut-in point.The first part is Introduction that overviews the various English versions and elucidate classifiably 87 theses on English versions of Hong Lou Meng published in 13 core journals during the period from 1980 to 2009. The research theory applied in these theses is mainly translatology, involving literature, comparative literature, linguistics, aesthetics etc. The 87 theses are divided into six types based on the viewpoint and aim of studying. 1) Evaluating on the translation of the specific words and phrases. 2) Studying on the translation of the name of Hong Lou Meng and the history of its English translating. 3) Analyzing the English versions from the viewpoint of discourse analysis. 4) Studying the translating standards, approaches and principles based on some subjects. 5) Focusing on the function of cultural information in the translation. 6) Researching on the English translation of poems.The main body is divided into five chapters. Chapter One states some influential factors for the accomplishment of two complete English versions. Chapter Two gives a brief introduction of cultural differences in poetry translation, illustrating the importance of poems in the original. Chapter Three analyzes the translations of Hao Liao Ge and Xu Hua Wu, which represents Taoism expressed by Yang's version that be loyal to the original and Christianity narrated by Hawkes'version that be accepted easily by the target language readers. Chapter Four states Chinese traditional feudalism and the Western democracy by discussing the different translations of personal pronounce in Jin Ling Pan Ci. Chapter Five deliberates the translation of Feng Zheng Deng Mi, which shows the importance of Chinese network of human relationship and the Western outlook of pursing individuality and freedom.The last part further concludes the researching hotspots. It is worth noting that there is a wide range of topics for papers about English versions, which shows the great achievement of researching in every aspect and represents a new trend that is the cultural shift. From the perspective of cultural consciousness, this thesis systematically expounds the cultural difference between China and the West by comparing the two English versions of some poems in Hong Lou Meng.