The intercultural translation of HongLouMeng is difficult, it is not only because that the translators have their own “preunderstanding” on the original work, but also because of the "cultural filtration" caused by national cultural differences in the process of translation, leading to the translation distortion。 For an instance, when adopting “equivalent translation theory” we may make a correction in this case。 In this sense, besides HongLouMeng, the translating practice of other classics can also refer to similar experience。 Because of the existence of cultural differences, cultural losses in translation is inevitable, in this paper, in the hope to provide a beneficial reference for the translators in the future, if possible, to minimize the cultural losses, the author makes the analysis of the differences and orientations of linguistic rhetoric, cultural identity, translation standpoint and strategy manifested on Yang Xianyi and Hawkes during the process of translation。

    Over the years, large sums of money has been invested by the relevant domestic departments, to push Chinese scholars to translate local literature and related academic works into many languages。 Why does not this exert an influence in the international academic circles and the corresponding nations of target languages? We should reflect on the problems concerning cultural identity, position and strategy of translation, and do not waste the huge funds again。

This paper chooses the English versions of HongLouMeng respectively translated by Yang Xianyi and Hawkes, and will take the part of translation of idioms as a breakthrough point, and classify these idioms into four types of Chinese idioms, proverbs, locutions and two-part allegorical sayings, then select some translating examples in the foregoing two versions to make comparative analysis。

2。 Literature Review

2。1 An Introduction to Idioms

The idiom is a kind of Chinese fixed language, as for the definition of the idiom units, there still remains controversial arguments among the researchers。 In Chinese Description Lexicology by Liu Shuxin, idioms are pided into ten categories。 And this paper is going to take four of the most common categories in idiom (Chinese idiom, proverb, two-part allegorical saying, locution) as the research objects。

Mainly, we classify idioms according to the form, meaning, stylistic colouring etc。。。 The traditional linguistics tends to pursue the "internal consistency" and "foreign exclusiveness" of the classifying results, and it acquiesces the equal statues of the same category (e。g。 locution category or proverb category) members of equal status, and clear boundaries among different categories (e。g。 the boundary between locution category and proverb category)。 In fact, the whole distribution of idioms is a more complex situation, specifically, the distribution characteristics of some idioms are not the one and only for this kind of idiom, that is to say, other kind of idioms may also possess the same characteristic。 For example, "the significance of the double-layer" is a characteristic jointly possessed by a part of Chinese idioms and locutions。 Therefore, when classifying the idioms, scholars tend to choose a number of distribution characteristics with distinct significance as the basis of classification, but the classification results show that these classification principles still seem difficult to generalize all the linguistic facts。文献综述

2。1。1 The definition of locutions

Locution is an important part of idiom, the definition of locutions has always been an especially controversial topic for scholars。 The following are some of the more representative views。

(1) Locutions are the idioms with the following features: "the form and structure is fixed, the morpheme order can not be changed or replaced; the significance is solid, the semantic meaning is not equal to the sum of the meaning of morphemes; the oral color is distinct, some locutions are vulgar; the rhetoric effect。"