《红楼梦》两个译本的人名翻译研究_英语论文

On Names Translation in Yangs & Hawkes' Versions of Hong Lou Meng

摘要

我们都知道，起名在中国是一件非常重要的事情。名字能反映出一个人的品质和个性，例如文化精神、传统美德、美好祝愿、难忘回忆或者特殊的个人品质和特点。作为中国文学作品中珍贵的一部分，《红楼梦》是我国卓越传统文化的骄傲。在整部小说中，有将近600位人物，其中有名字的更是占多数。可想而知，要为这么多人物命名并不轻松，作者曹雪芹一定为此花费了诸多心血。

《红楼梦》英译本，比较有影响的有两个：一个是杨宪益、戴乃迭夫妇的合译本《红楼梦》，另一个牛津大学教授霍克斯与澳大利亚“红学”专家闵福特合译的《石头记》。本文在前人研究的基础上，对人名的功能、《红楼梦》人名的数量、类别进行了梳理，然后就《红楼梦》人名的翻译展开讨论。研究表明：音译法、直译法、意译法和增译法是最行之有效的方法。

关键词：音译；意译；直译；姓名

Abstract

We all know that having names is of great importance in China. Because a name can reflect lots of qualities and characteristics, such as cultural spirits, traditional virtues, best wishes, memories of other things or people and the unique personal qualities and characteristics that a character has. Hong Lou Meng, as one of the treasures of our rich Chinese literature, is truly our pride of excellent national cultural heritage. There are almost 600 characters in this full-length novel, and most of them have their own names. It is a tough mission to name so many characters, from which we can tell that Cao Xue qin (the author) took great pains when he set the names.

Here are two English versions of Chinese classical literary masterpiece Hong Lou Meng that are generally accepted, one is A Dream of Red Mansions, translated by Yang Xianyi and his wife Gladys Yang and the other is the version translated by Hawkes, a professor at the university of Oxford, and an Australian Hong Xue expert John Minford, named The Story of the Stone. This paper, on the basis of predecessors’ researches, summarize the functions of persons’ names, the number of names in Hong Lou Meng and the kinds of names. Then it discusses the translation of persons’ names. As the study shows, the most effective methods are transliteration, literal translation, free translation and amplification.

Key words:  transliteration; free translation; literal translation; names

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

2.1 A General Introduction to Hong Lou Meng 2

2.2 Previous Studies on Appellation Tanslation in Hong Lou Meng 3

          2.2.1 Summary of Names3

          2.2.2 Research on Arts3

          2.2.3 Research on Translation Strategies4

          2.2.4 Research on Functional Equivalence.5

          2.2.5 Research on Ecological Translation...5

3. Research Methodology 6

3.1 Research Design 6

3.2 Data Collection and Data Analysis 6

           3.2.1 Current Research on Names...6

            3.2.2 Functions of Names7

            3.2.3 Classification of Names.8

4. Results and Discussion 8

4.1 Transliteration 8

4.2 Literal Translation 10

4.3 Free Translation 11

4.4 Amplification(French and Latin) 13

5. Conclusion 14

References 16