A Study On Wang Rongpei’s English Translation Of The Handan Dream From The Perspective Of George Steiner’s Hermeneutic Motion Theory

The Handan Dream is one of the“Linchuan Four Dreams”of the famous Ming Dynasty dramatist Tang Xianzu in the 16^thcentury.It is also the last dream of the Four Dreams.It is built on the legend of the Tang Dynasty writer Shen Jiji,A Tale Within the Pillow,also called Huang Liang Mei Meng.It has a strong representativeness in the classical opera world,especially in perilous drama field.It is a play that is built into ideological,artistic and philosophical values.At present,the English translation of The Handan Dream is translated only by Professor Wang Rongpei of Dalian University of Foreign Languages and recorded in Library of Chinese Classics.George Steiner,a British translation theorist,pioneered the introduction to hermeneutics into the field of translation studies and created a model of translation theory of hermeneutics.This thesis studies the application of George Steiner’s fourfold translation theory in the process of translation of opera literature,and discusses how the translator translates the source text to the target text through trust,aggression,incorporation and compensation.This thesis starts with the value of The Handan Dream and the translator’s own translation quality,then conclude that Professor Wang Rongpei trust the text of The Handan Dream.The second is the aggression,which means that the translator must go deep into the original and understand it.By enumerating examples,the analysis proves that the translator extracts the source text from both the language level and the religious culture,thus affecting the translation.Through a large number of examples,this thesis illustrates the traditional Chinese culture and opera professional terms to prove that the translator keeps the original information as much as possible.Due to the aggression and incorporation,the translator may directly or indirectly lead to the lack of the original information in translation process.Therefore,the final movement is compensation.Professor Wang Rongpei makes up the source text from rhyme and paratext to retain the source text.This thesis makes use of the hermeneutic translation theory and take the English translation of The Handan Dream as an example to explore the applicability of the four movements of translation to opera literature,thus providing valuable strategies and reference for the translation of Chinese classics in the future.