2。 Literature Review

2。1 Previous studies on English version of A Dream of Red Mansions

There are nearly 60 versions of A Dream of Red Mansions。 Among all of them, the English version of A Dream of Red Mansions by Yang Xianyi and David Hawkes are the best-known versions。 The two versions play an important role in literary translation circle。 They both serve as a window for the westerners to know more about Chinese culture。

     When Guo Xiaoyong, the Senior Vice Chairman of Translators Association of China, presented Yang Xianyi couple “Translation and Culture Lifetime Achievement Award” at the ceremony, he said “the translation by Yang couple is undoubtedly one of the most recognized and most highly praised by Chinese and overseas scholars。” (郭晓勇 85)。

     In the book Studies of Hongloumeng in Europe, Jiang Qihuang value Hawkes’s version like this “Hawkes translated A Dream of Red Mansions as a sinologist with a high academic level, he had an in-depth study on the original text, and his version is artistically superior。” (姜其煌 86)。He added that Hawkes has perfectly combine translation with study。 Under such circumstances, his version is naturally more brilliant and accurate than other versions。 (姜其煌 164)

     When it comes to the two English versions, Pei Yu said “The two versions are the most authoritative texts spreading in the English spoken countries, each has its own characteristics and they are regarded as equally important in Sinologist circle as well as the Hong studies circle。 The version by Yang couple was produced in China, it has following advantages: first of all, the original text they used won strongly support by the academic circles of studies on A Dream of Red Mansions, so the version is the most rigorous and close to the original text。 Secondly, Mr。 Yang is Chinese with high traditional cultural attainment。 So his version has far fewer mistakes than Hawkes’s version and is the most fidelity one。 (裴钰 248)

2。2 Previous studies on domestication and foreignization

Foreignization and Domestication is a pair of binary opposition concept。 According to Dictionary of Translation Studies, the concept is first used by American translation theorist Lawrence Venuti in 1995。 In his book The Translator’s Invisibility, he points out that as a kind of translation method, the translator should either close to the reader or let the reader close to him。 Schleiermacher, an early thinker in Germany, made a speech named Discuss on translation method, he thought there are only two translation methods--- “the translator leaves the author in peace, as much as possible, and moves the reader towards him; or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author towards him。” (Schleiermacher 1813)

Lawrence Venuti is the representative personage of foreignization method。 He advocates that translation should be oriented to source language culture, and lay emphasis on the foreignness of source language culture in the style and content of translation。 Foreignization is the strategy of retaining the characteristics of language and culture in source text。 Translators should accept the differences between languages and cultures, making the source text more close to the readers and choosing expressions similar to the source language to let the readers enjoy the local conditions and customs as well as the historic culture in foreign lands。 

Nida is the representative personage of domestication method。 He came up with the concept “functional equivalence” 。He thought the version should be oriented to the target language culture。 Translators should make the text more closely conform to the culture of the language being translated to, which may result to the loss of information from the source text。 They should lay emphasis on the target readers and eliminate the cultural factors in the source language in order to manifest the cultural values of the target language and let the readers feel as if they were reading the original texts of their own language。文献综述