Aculture Study Of The Translation Of Male Clothing In Jin Ping Mei

Clothing is the specific symbol that records man’s steps into the gate of civilization, andit helps distinguish human from the others. As one of the characteristics of a nation, clothingcan endow the nation with ethic value and great spirit to reflect the extent of civilization.China has always been famous for its decent clothes and etiquette with its gorgeous andsplendid clothes since ancient time. Chinese clothing culture of different times not onlyenriches Chinese civilization, but also plays an important role in the word culture. In ancientsociety, clothing is the condensation of both material culture and spiritual culture, has directrelation with the political system, social economic and cultural conditions, and can reflect thematerial production and civilization level. In a way, clothing has been paid more of socialfunction than that of practical function. Up to Ming dynasty, the cultural meaning of Chineseclothing reached the climax of feudal society, which can be seen especially in male clothing.Finished in Ming dynasty, Jin Ping Mei has now been among the literary classics of theworld, and has been translated into English, French, German, Korean and Hungarian, so as tobecome popular in the international literature and art field. Clothing is the product of the era,which can show the signs and aesthetic tendency of different times. Clothes of differentnations have different cultural backgrounds,which reflect various connotations. Male clothingin Jin Ping Mei contains plenty of implicit cultural information,so it is a real challenge totranslate these characters full of Chinese traditional cultural richness into English. Whiletranslating between different cultures, the translators had better take the source text as priority,spread the source culture actively, and make readers of target text gradually get to know thesource culture. Trying to retain the uniqueness of source culture and getting the result thatmulti-ethnic cultures coexist and flourish together are the goal that ideal translators shouldstrive for. This paper compares the cultural translation of male clothing in the two English translations of Jin Ping Mei, analyzes the underlying cultural connotation of clothes accordingto the characteristics of Ming dynasty(1368-1644) clothing culture, expects to know aboutthese two English versions and translations tendency.