A Chinese-English Translation Report On Lin Daiyu’s Poems

Hong Lou Meng(HLM for short in this thesis)is a condensation of traditional Chinese culture,involving many literary genres like poetic,narrative and dialogue styles etc.This feature of “embodying diversiform styles” is also reflected in its poems.These poems are not only an indispensable component of the whole novel,but also largely composed by Cao Xueqin in the name of the novel characters.It is believed that Lin Daiyu has composed the largest number of poems among all the characters,which not only depict her sensitive personality and boast great artistic and research value,but also are closely related with the plot development of this novel.For this reason,the translation of Lin Daiyu′s poems is not only beneficial to the improvement of poems translation capacity,but also to the communication of Chinese traditional and classical cultures.In eighteenth century,the western translation theorist Alexander Fraser Tytler systematically puts forward his translation principles in his book Essay on the Principles of Translation(Tytler,2007): firstly,a translation should give a complete transcript of the sense of the original work;secondly,the style and manner of writing should be of the same character as that of the original;lastly,a translation should have all the fluency of the original composition.These principles have not only become a creed and study subject of many translators,but also been widely quoted by theorists.In this translation report,the author exhaustly describes how to meet the requirements of Tytler′s translation principles in the perspectives of sense,form and fluency by translating Lin Daiyu′s poems.Finally,by solving difficulties encountered in translation process,the author concludes that the target text can be easier for analyzing and understanding,and the translation quality and efficiency can be further improved if the translation is carried out under the guidance of translation theories.