A Comparative Study Of Cross-cultural Construction Of Interpersonal Meaning Between The Two English Versions Of Hong Lou Meng

Along with the continuous development of translation theories, the importance of interpersonal meaning research, which is always ignored in the long-term traditional research of translation, began to be realized. Systemic functional linguistics, generally thought to have originated in the1970s, emphasizes the main purpose of lingual communication lies in constructing and maintaining proper interpersonal meaning. As translation is a kind of human act that is cross-lingual and cross-cultural, constructing the interpersonal relationship among the original writer, translator and the target language readers becomes one of the major purposes of translation activity, and the construction of interpersonal meaning of the context is one of the major contents in translation.Hong Lou Meng, a classic novel in Chinese history, has the most complicated relationships between the characters. Thus, the construction of interpersonal meaning in this novel becomes very important in the course of translation. As one of the major characters in Hong Lou Meng, the sophisticated Wang Xifeng always arouses the attention of the researchers. Based on systemic functional linguistics, the author of this thesis tries to make a tentative study on the cross-cultural construction of interpersonal meaning by the comparative analysis of Wang Xifeng’s discourse in Yang Xianyi’s version and Hawkes’version.In light of systemic functional linguistic, the major functions of language are divided into interpersonal function, ideational function and textual function. The meanings of language are sectioned into interpersonal meaning, ideational meaning and contextual meaning. In the course of translation, the original writer, translator and the target language readers are under different cultural and lingual backgrounds. Translator not only has to decode the communication between the writer and the original language reader, accomplish the communication with the writer, but also has to consider the expectation and acceptance of the target language reader, accomplish the communication with the target reader, thus constructs the interpersonal communication between the original writer and the target language reader. This whole process is fulfilled by constructing the interpersonal meaning in the context, and it involves the construction of mood, modality and appraisal.With specific examples, the author of this thesis makes great efforts to make a comparative study on Wang Xifeng’s discourse in the two English versions of the classic masterpiece Hong Lou Meng, illustrating from the perspectives of mood, modality and appraisal. Through the comparative analysis of the cross-cultural construction of interpersonal meaning of these two English versions, the author concludes that because the two translators have different cultural and lingual backgrounds, sometimes they are different in decoding the culture of original text, measuring the target readers’ expectation and acceptance, which leads to different word choosing in the process of constructing interpersonal meaning in translation, consequently the effects differ in these conditions. Thus, the cross-cultural construction of interpersonal meaning through mood, modality and appraisal should be high lightened in the course of translation and should be an effective tool in translation criticism.