| The study of Hong Lou Meng,a marvel in the garden of Chinese literature and art and the culmination of the development of the Chinese classical novel,has become a specialized discipline: Redology.Since the 1970 s,when the two full English translations of Hong Lou Meng(Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang’s version and Hawkes and Minford’s version)appeared,the study of the English translation of Hong Lou Meng has taken initial shape to catch up.English translation studies of Hong Lou Meng have mainly focused on the linguistic and cultural differences between the original language and the target language,with most of the attention paid to the content about Chinese culture.Based on the theory of explicitation,this paper makes a comparative study of the explicitation in the translation of cognitive projecting verbs(also known as cognitive reporting verbs)in HLM.It is found that due to the linguistic differences between Chinese and English and the influence of context,the translators of Yangs’ and Hawkes’ versions would unconsciously add their own understanding in their translations.Besides literal translation,they also choose the corresponding specific words and add some modifiers for the sake of clarifying the meaning of sentences.In addition,the use of direct and indirect thoughts projected by cognitive projecting verbs is not always identical with the original.The differences in explicication of cognitive projecting verbs embodied in the two versions can reveal the different styles of the two translations.A comparative study of the two versions can not only provide reference for future translation of cognitive projecting verbs,but is expected to provide a new perspective for translation studies of Hong Lou Meng. |
