David Hawkes' And Yang Xianyi's Different Translations Of Etiquette-related Concepts In Hong Lou Meng

Basic concepts such as “humanity”, “justice, “etiquette” “virtue and morality”, “loyalty”, “forgiveness”, “trust”, “kindness”, and “filial duty” are of critical importance in understanding Confucian works and ancient Chinese culture. Appropriate translation of these concepts is the critical key to the understanding and mastering of Confusion ideas, moreover the traditional Chinese culture. Besides, it is the problem that Chinese classic translators have a special discussion about in their translation. However, there are no systematic studies on the foreign translation about these core concepts. More focuses are given on the concepts of the classic works such as Analects. Contrarily, studies on literary works, taking Hong Lou Meng as an example, concentrate on their literary values, and, however, pay less attention on its core concepts which in fact stand in the center of the work. This thesis puts forward the idea that etiquette-related concepts are of great significance in understanding and rendering Hong Lou Meng. The author argues that it is impossible to comprehend Hong Lou Meng without little knowledge of the social reality it is deeply imbedded with. China is a country of etiquette which is the basic national system and guiding ideology. Objectives of this study can be concluded as follows: by comparative analysis of David Hawkes' and Yang Xianyi's different translations of etiquette-related concepts in Hong Lou Meng, causes of the different translation strategies are summarized to indicate cultural distortion in translation process from the perspective of translation being a cross-culture communication.This thesis explores the definitions and classifications of etiquette. And the author generalizes the concept of etiquette into the meaning of etiquette, behavior etiquette, etiquette system, and etiquette articles. Accordingly, comparative analysis of David Hawkes' and Yang Xianyi's different translations of etiquette-related concepts on the four levels of the meaning of etiquette, behavior etiquette, etiquette system, and etiquette articles have been done. In general,this thesis argues that Yang Xianyi adopts the strategy of alienation while David Hawkes employs the strategy of adaptation.During the argument of the reasons of differences lying in translating practice, the author adopts recognitive theory in translation and endeavors to prove that different cultural backgrounds have different influence on translators since translation is a trans-cultural process. As to the casual analysis of the disparity of the etiquette-related concepts in each version, the author states that it is translators' horizon and cognition that determines the methods employed in each version. Due to the different cultural background, Hawkes, a sinologist and Yang Xianyi, the native defender, utilize the strategy of foreignizing and domesticating respectively. Due to the impossibility of information copy in translation, different translators inevitably have different translation versions. This thesis aims to prove that the translation of etiquette-related concepts is decisive for intercultural understanding of Hong Lou Meng. How to render cultural-implicated concepts appropriately plays an important role in the dissemination of Chinese culture.