Diachronic Observation Of Request Realization Patterns In English Translations Of Hongloumeng

Speech acts have already been theoretically related to translation,but relevant empirical studies have increased only in the recent decades,which are qualitative in many cases.This paper examines possible translation shifts at the pragmatic level by quantitatively analyzing how requests in Hongloumeng are realized in English by translators ranging from the 1890s to the 1970s.Chinese requests in the first 56 chapters of the novel and their English equivalents in four complete translations3 by Joly,Bonsall,Hawkes,and Hsien-yi Yang＆Gladays Yang are analyzed according to the coding scheme developed in Cross-Cultural Study of Speech Act Realization Patterns（CCS ARP）project,which is widely used in crosslinguistic and interlanguage pragmatics and proves to be applicable in translation studies.The results show that the four translations have statistically significant shifts from the original in strategy distribution（p<0.001）and make different degrees of shifts.Translation shifts display two directions,from directness to indirectness and from indirectness to directness,with the former as the majority.These shifts can be traced back to Chinese and English speakers’different ways to mitigate the imposition of requesting and the translator’s choice of translating strategy.The two types of shifts are more remarkable in later translations（Yang and Hawkes）than in earlier translations（Bonsall and Joly）.Later translations include more conventionally-indirect strategies and fewer direct strategies than earlier translations.These diachronic variations are significant between Hawkes and Bonsall（p<0.05）and between Hawkes and Joly（p<0.05）,which are related to the translators’different translation method:Joly and Bonsall are extremely faithful to the source text,whereas Hawkes adopts a domesticating strategy and renders his translation closer to the receiving culture.The translation of Yang and that of Hawkes,which occur both in the 1970s or so,do not remarkably deviate from one another in the use of request strategy.The present study,by describing microstructural shifts in four English translations of Hongloumeng in terms of request strategies,tries to contribute to the overall pragmatic picture of them which can be utilized to judge the macro-structural shifts and the functionality of these translations,as cross-cultural pragmatic knowledge increasingly matters in the context of globalization.