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- 下一篇：日语论文电视剧《花子与安妮》看日本人的求知精神
Chapter Three Translation Strategies of the Dietetic Culture in Hong Lou Meng 13
3.1 Documentary translation 13
3.2 Instrumentary translation 14
Chapter Four Conclusion 18
References 20
A Research on the Translation Strategies of Dietetic Culture in Hong Lou Meng
Chapter One Introduction
Hong Lou Meng, one of the most classic Chinese masterpieces, was written in the middle of 18th century mainly by Cao Xueqin. The appearance of this novel is considered to be the peak of Chinese traditional literature. The first complete translation of the 120-chapter novel came into being in 1973, translated by David Hawkes and John Minford and published by Penguin Books Ltd. From 1973 to 1980, Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang's complete translation was published gradually by Foreign Languages Press. Both of the two versions are praised a lot.
Yang Xianyi and Hawkes attempted to represent the artistic and culture value of this great novel in English and their efforts indeed make great contribution to the translation of Hong Lou Meng. David Hawkes, as a westerner, he translated the book to introduce it to western readers as a good novel. His translation aimed at the Western readers who may have little knowledge about Chinese culture but want to read the literary content. In order to cater to the requirement of those readers, Hawkes chose to put the understandability and acceptability of the translation in the first place. While Yang Xianyi, as an Chinese translator, his main purpose is to introduce Chinese culture to the world, so from his perspective, faithfulness to the target text is more important than readability and acceptability in some degree. He addresses his translation to the foreign readers who are interested in Chinese culture and at least have a little knowledge about China.
In the 21st century, culture plays a crucial role in forming a country’s soft power and culture communication between the west and China is becoming increasingly frequent. However, the fact is the output of Chinese culture is out of proportion to the input of western culture. Efforts have to be made to promote relatively balanced culture communication between China and western countries and to strengthen the influence of traditional Chinese culture. To achieve this purpose, the translation of Chinese traditional literary works should be better improved.
Dietetic culture, one of the most famous and splendid culture of China, has been popular all around the world, with the opening of millions of Chinese restaurants in foreign lands. Over the years, increasing number of foreigners have become interested in Chinese dietetic culture and the development of the translation of cuisine names have been urgent and necessary. Therefore, many scholars start to focus on the practical translation of cuisine names, especially the translation of cuisine names on the menus of Chinese restaurant. However, the translation of dietetic culture in literary works was ignored for some time. After 1980s, when the two complete English versions of Hong Lou Meng was published, related studies and criticisms start to develop as well. Over the last 30 years, scholars have explored almost all the aspects involved in the translation of Hong Lou Meng from various perspectives. Some of them focused on the study of translation strategies, such as Wang Qianjin who published an essay named A Comparative Study on the Translation Strategies of Dietary Culture in Hong Lou Meng (Wang, 2006) and Peng Aimin who wrote an essay named A Research on the Translation of Cuisine Names in Hong Lou Meng (Peng, 2006). Some of them tried to study the translation of this novel from culture perspective, such as Dai Qing’e and Yang Chenghu who published an essay named A Contrast Study of the Translations of Foods and Drinks in Hong Lou Meng from the Perspective of Culture (Dai &Yang, 2009). Some of them paid more attention to the specific study of some kind of food in Hong Lou Meng, such as Yang Dingyi who wrote the essay named On Translation of Soups in Four Versions of Hong Lou Meng from Functional Equivalence Theory (Yang, 2010).