从霍克思译本《红楼梦》看中国古代服饰的翻译技巧文献综述

Literature Review文献综述On the Translation of Traditional Costumes in A Dream of Red Mansionsby David Hawkes从霍克思译本《红楼梦》看中国古代服饰的翻译技巧1.IntroductionThe Chinese traditional civilization and concepts consider the costumes as one kind of symbol of social identity and political status. That makes people play their own role seriously, and never overstep the rule. So, in ancient time, costumes are one part of politics, its importance is far beyond the costumes' status in modern society. And what would be termed as"The Encyclopaedia of Chinese culture ", A Dream of Red Mansions not only has captured the world's attention about its religious culture, catering culture, classical art and literary merit, but also has the unique artistic value of Chinese traditional costumes for over 5000 years.As one part of A Dream of Red Mansions, the author Cao Xueqin pays much attention to describe characters' costumes which have a great number of varieties, different styles and colorful and amazing collocations, no wonder people call this book" the Grand View Garden of Costumes". So, the research of translations about the traditional costumes in A Dream of Red Mansions will have great influence on the translation of Chinese traditional costumes, and even do little good to the translation of exchanges in Chinese culture between countries in the whole world.2.Literature Review2.1. Study in ChinaA Dream of Red Mansions is generally considered appears in the Qing dynasty, Qianlong period(1745), with the form of original manuscripts copied by hand. But it is only about 16 chapters, then other manuscripts appeared latter, such as the one has been found in1761. All of these manuscripts are named the Story of the Stone, and made comments by "ZhiYan Zhai". "A Dream of Red Mansions has great artistic achievements. For instance, the novel provides a large number of detailed descriptions of everyday life. Cao Xueqin attained many aspects including poetry, drama, art, architecture, costumes and gardens"(Highlights of Chinese Culture, Song Li,2009).What is reason about the emergence of A Dream of Red Mansions? For what purpose the author write this novel? And with what kind of conditions? These are worth for us thinking about them. Once a famous Redologist named Feng Qiyong (1924) has said the author writes this novel because of the two reasons below: one is the era's ferment of social thoughts which give his too much stimulus, another reason is the decline of his family. The decline of his family compelled him to see the cruel reality, and all of these elements inspired him to write A Dream of Red Mansions(the Inside and Outside word of A Dream of Red Mansions, Feng Qiyong, 2002).As time goes by, A Dream of Red Mansions have spread out broader and broader gradually for more than 200 years, and also thanks to the people who constantly research and analysis A Dream of Red Mansions, that makes it become the classical novel's writing model. These researchers have a common name -- Redologists. From now on, there are millions of books, papers, reports, speeches and so on which are talking about A Dream of Red Mansions. They talk about the characters, the religion, the traditional etiquette, the architectures, the poems, the translations and so on. However, because of the topic about this paper is about translation techniques, a few examples about these translations' researches by Chinese Redololgists will be introduced after.From the former content, it is a very obvious conclusion that the English translation of A Dream of Red Mansions only has two complete versions written by Yang Hsien-Yi and Hawkes. After these two versions facing the public, a plenty of people begin to do researches in them, one of these researchers is Professor Chen Hongwei(1944), she says," In 19th century, the research about A Dream of Red Mansions mainly talks about 'suoyin' which means doing researches in finding out the connotations hidden in the original text, that makes the translators translate a few chapters of A Dream of Red Mansions by their own understanding, and lead to many common misconception in the translation. In 1920s, the study of new Redology has a deeper progress of A Dream of Red Mansions, Yang Hsien-Yiand Hawkes' versions use a large amount of these new research achievements."（the Unforgettable Journey, Chen Hongwei, 2002）2.2. Study AbroadAs a literary scripture, A Dream of Red Mansions has everlasting fans in foreign countries. Translation makes that comes true, and we all know that translation is one kind of cross-languages communicative activities, and it is also one kind of cross-cultures communicative activities.Many people, even the Redologists do not know the English translation version by H.B.Joly very well, but Edward Chalmers Werner expresses his opinion about it in the Chinese Magazine(1927, 4th) named the Translation of Chinese. In this paper, Edward comes up with some very sharp pieces of criticism, he says that, it is not one kind of good translation work when the Chinese structure can be seen from the English version. In 1973, David Hawkes published the Story of the Stone. The English and American magazines use many essays to introduce it, but all of the introductions pay attention to the novel's content and culture characteristics, they almost ignore the translation version itself. Tao Sanders thinks the publishing of the Story of the Stone in Penguin Books Ltd is such a kind of milestone of the translation between Chinese and English literature. Hawkes expresses the original novel's value correctly, and because of this trait, the Story of the Stone conquers the readers perfectly.According to the incomplete statistics, the translation of A Dream of Red Mansions in Europe and America has seven kinds of version in English, two kind of versions in French, and one kind of version in Russian, German, Hungarian, Italian, the Dutch, Greek and Latin. There is no space to introduce them all, but the version of Yang Hsien-Yi is worth introducing. In 1994, Beijing Foreign Languages Press published A Dream of Red Mansions translated by Yang Hsien-Yi and Gladys Yang. This is the only version translated by the Chinese translator. Thanks to all of the translators, their hard work for the translation of A Dream of Red Mansions, makes this novel become international and gain millions of foreign readers.3.Theoretical Framework and MethodologyIn this paper, a deep research about some typical parts of costumes in A Dream of Red Mansions which translates by David Hawkes will be conducted. Guan Shijie (Guan Shijie, Intercultural Communication Study, 1995) once said that, we can never translate the culture between two places completely, and it either has no possibility to avoid. All the translation activities in the world work between this two poles. That means it is very difficult for our language learners to build a bridge between the international culture and all of our traditional civilization, art, history, customs etc. The traditional costumes are a member of them which should be payed much attention to work on them. In addition, a plenty of examples in A Dream of Red Mansions will be analysed about the translation techniques to translates Chinese traditional costumes.In addition, a plenty of examples in A Dream of Red Mansions will be taken to analyse the translation techniques to translates Chinese traditional costumes. In addition, the methods of Literature analysis, analytical method, comparative method and so on will be used in this essay. At last, the most important part is to work out how to use these techniques in our daily translation work. I hope this paper will have some advantages in translation activities.ReferencesCheng, Met &Li, Bingbing, Cultural transplantation and transformation:Metaphor translation of A Dream of Red Mansions[J], Routledge, V ol5, Issue2, Page227-235,28.Apr.2010Chris, Ryan, The case of Cao Xueqin's dream of the red mansions and grand view gardens[J], Beijing, Journal of Travel Research, V ol 48, No 1, Page14-28, 2009Edward, Chalmers Werner, The translation of Chinese[J], Beijing, Chinese Magazine, V ol 4, 1927David, Hawkes translates, The Story of the Stone[M], By Cao Xueqin London, Penguin Books Ltd, 1973Yang, Xianyi & Glady Yang translates, A Dream of Red Mansions[M], By Cao Xueqin in Beijing, Beijing Foreign Languages Press, 1994Yuan, Gao, On culture difference in the two English versions of A Dream of Red Mansions[J], Asian Social Science, V ol 5,No 3，2009曹雪芹，《红楼梦》[M]，北京，人民文学出版社，2008陈宏薇，难忘的历程——《红楼梦》英译事业的描写性研究[P]，天津，全国《红楼梦》翻译研讨会，2002樊永前，翻译技能与技巧[M]，北京，气象出版社，2009冯其庸，《红楼梦》的外部世界与内部世界[P]，天津，全国《红楼梦》翻译研讨会，2002 关世杰，跨文化交流学[M]，北京，北京大学出版社，1995姜其煌，欧美红学[M]，郑州，大象出版社，2006李希凡、冯其庸[Z]，红楼梦大辞典, 文化艺术出版社，2010宋莉，中国文化概况[M]，哈尔滨，哈尔滨工业大学出版社，2009王环，从杨译本《红楼梦》看服饰翻译及配饰表达的翻译方法[J]，济南，科技信息刊，山东省技术开发服务中心，2009年第6期。