The Transference Of Cultural Presupposition In English Translation Of A Dream Of Red Mansions

Presupposition originated with arguments in philosophy. It was first put forward by Frege, aphilosopher and architect of modern logic, and became central discussions in the following years.Afterwards, presupposition became a linguistic phenomenon. There are two kinds of presuppositionsin natural language—semantic presupposition and pragmatic presupposition. Pragmaticpresupposition is based on mutual knowledge which requires a lot of cultural knowledge and contextknowledge. As a major branch, cultural presupposition refers to beliefs and philosophy, world valuesetc. is shared by certain society. Wrong understanding of cultural presupposition is the main cause ofmistranslation and misreading. It is also a main obstacle of intercultural-communication andtranslation mistakes. A dream of Red Mansions is one of the most famous classics in China, there isso much cultural information included that even for native readers, some chapters of the novel isquite confusing and difficult to understand. Since then how can translators be aware culturalpresupposition triggers, how can they understand presupposition information and share it accuratelyand efficiently with the target readers become a problem that needs to be further studied.The first chapter in this thesis provides a brief introduction of presupposition, researchmethodology of this thesis and the organization of the thesis. The second chapter talks about thedefinition, classification and features of cultural presupposition. The third chapter represents therelated research and the significance of the transference of cultural presupposition. The forth chaptertalks about cultural presupposition from aspects of allusions, euphemisms, Chinese customs, Chinesehistorical events, geography, etc. The fifth chapter is about strategies of the transference of culturalpresuppositions in A Dream of Red Mansions. The last part is conclusion.The conclusion of this thesis is to avoid misunderstanding and mistranslation because of theinvisibility of cultural presupposition. Translators should know both his native culture and targetculture very well, they should also try to enlarge his own life experience and expand his knowledge.Only in this way, can he feel free and be confident to translate cultural information efficiently andcorrectly.Being a translator, in a way, he needs to have bi-cultural competence.