《红楼梦》中随身饰品翻译中的问题及对策_英语论文

Problems and strategies in Chinese-English Translation of the Personal Adornment Terms in A Dream of the Red Mansions

摘要

翻译作为人类社会历史最悠久的文化活动之一，为数千年来人类之间的文化交流做出了不可估量的贡献。翻译的目的就是为了相互交流和理解。真正地做到统一是不可能的，只有力求以此方式消除思维差异。翻译者往往因为各种原因选择不同的翻译策略。其中最常用的两个分别是归化策略和异化策略。

《红楼梦》是我国四大名著之首，蕴含了取之不尽的中国传统文化的力量。因此，本文以《红楼梦》研究对象，参考杨宪益、戴乃迭和霍克斯的两个权威英译版本，对其中人物服饰与配饰的英译进行对比研究。

随身饰品是人类在精神文明的产物。文学范畴中被归于外貌描写。凭借对随身饰物的观察与研究，可以判断其所有者的内心。在通过随身饰品的描写展现人物这方面，曹雪芹颇为精通。

结合两位译者不同的文化背景与翻译目的，探讨影响译者的翻译倾向的因素。通过以上对比研究，可以得出这样的结论，即两种译本为适应不同的时代需求和不同的读者需求，采取的翻译策略各自不同，不能绝对地对其进行褒贬，厚此薄彼。

另外，对于中国文学经典的翻译，还需要做更深入的研究与尝试，以便更好地传播中国传统文化。

关键词：《红楼梦》；归化；异化；文化差异

Abstract

As one of the century-old cultural activities in human history, translation made great contributions to the communication between people with different languages and cultures in the world. The purpose of translation is to achieve a mutual understanding and unity between the people concerned, but an ideal unity is impossible to achieve to its full length, so that we could only try our best to get rid of the differences in the people’s mind. Generally, translators choose different translational strategies, the two most common ones of which are foreignization and domestication.

A Dream of the Red Mansions is one of the four Chinese classic masterpieces, containing inestimable cultural value. Therefore, this thesis focused on the Chinese-English translation of personal adornments and clothes in A Dream of the Red Mansions, and chose two authoritative translated English versions: A Story of the Stone translated by David Hawkes and A Dream of the Red Mansions translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang.

Personal adornment is an outcome of moral civilization of human beings and has been attributed to appearance description in the literary category. Through the observation and study to personal adornments, we can know one’s character. Cao Xueqin was good at displaying the characters’ personality by describing personal adornments.

Starting from the discussion of different cultural backgrounds and different translation aims of translators, the thesis further studied the factors affecting inclination of translators. The comparison of the two versions shows us the distinct styles of the translators, likes their words, their skills and their understanding. A conclusion has been drawn by us that the two different translation strategies adopted by different translators meet the requirements of different times and are fit to readers in different cultural background. We could not completely praise or criticize one of them with personal biases.

The translation of elites of Chinese literature needs further research and discussion.

Key words: A Dream of the Red Mansions; domestication; foreignization; cultural difference