A Study On The Translation Of Four-character Chinese Idioms In Hong Lou Meng From The Perspective Of Communication

This thesis is a study on the translation of Hong Lou Meng under the guidance ofNewmark’s theories. Hong Lou Meng, as a classical Chinese novel, may be regardedas an encyclopedia of Chinese culture and society of its time. Up to now, it has beentranslated into23languages. Among them, the most influential and famous are ADream of Red Mansions by Yang Hsien-yi＆Gladys Yang and The Story of theStone by David Hawkes and John Minford. This thesis is a comparative study of bothEnglish versions.Four-character idioms are a type of set phrases in Chinese. They are used inutterances to make them vivid and strong, but it is not easy for target language readersto understand because of their unique characteristics. The examples in this thesis aremainly collected from the first eighty chapters of the novel. By analyzing thetranslated versions under the guidance of Newmark’s theory of semantic translationand communicative translation, it can be seen clearly that communicative translationattempts to render the exact contextual meaning of the original in such a way that bothlanguage and content are readily acceptable and comprehensible to the readerswhereas in semantic translation, translator should keep the meaning of the originaltexts as faithful as possible within the limit of the semantic and syntactic structures ofthe source texts. Generally speaking, the application of methods should not beabsolute; communicative translation or semantic translation or both, should be employed flexibly in the translation of idioms.Domestication and foreignization are two commonly used translation strategies.In the translation of Hong Lou Meng, Yang Hsien-yi chose foreignization as histranslation strategy, and his translation is source-text-concerned. David Hawkes isreader-concerned and adopted domestication as his strategy.This thesis is composed of five chapters and each chapter has its own objectives.Chapter One is an introduction to the thesis. Chapter Two reviews semantictranslation and communicative translation, including their definition, theoretical basis,and their application to translation. Chapter Three studies the four-character idioms inthe novel. In order to make these idioms understood better, the chapter discusses theconcept and characteristics of idioms, as well as the analysis of idiom translation.Chapter Four presents a brief review of domestication and foreignization applied bytranslators. In Chapter Five, idioms in the two English versions of the novel areanalyzed on the basis of contrast. Finally, the writer draws a conclusion andgeneralizes the whole thesis briefly with the contributions as well as limitations.