This paper is to make a contrastive study of translation strategies of idioms in A Dream of Red Mansions. There are two well-known English translation versions of the novel; one was translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang and the other by foreign translator David Hawkes. The paper mainly focuses on the use of idioms in the novel, and their English equivalents in these two translation versions. By comparing the idiom translation, the paper examines translation strategies used by different translators, which mirror translators’ thoughts about the nature of translation activities and the essence of translating culture-loaded expressions in a different language.

A Dream of Red Mansions,one of China’s greatest classic novels throughout the history, unfolds a panorama of Chinese society and culture in Qing dynasty. Other than its social and cultural significance, it is also a treasure house of Chinese language use. The novel is studded with Chinese poems, proverbs, allusions, idioms and the like . Idioms, concise in form but rich in meaning, are the research subject of the present paper. To study idioms is to study the cultural implications in a certain context, which requires the researchers to be competent in understanding the local culture. On the other hand, to study idioms in translation works is to study how the implied cultural meaning is transferred into another culture. Idioms have a wide range of use and users, varying from formal occasions to informal ones and from men of letters to men working with their hands. Evidently, it’s not an easy task to study idioms and their translations; it must be a great challenge for translators to translate A Dream of Red Mansions. To a certain degree, it determines the success of the translation of an entire novel. Therefore, it is of great importance to study the translation art of idioms in A Dream of Red Mansions and make a contrastive study on translation strategies applied by different translators.

There are a large number of articles on English translations of A Dream of Red Mansions, touching on such research subjects as poems in the novel, language features of different characters, proper names, a system of Chinese appellations, dressing, use of rhetoric devices, and etc. As for different translation versions, the one translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang is quite popular among scholars at home and abroad. In addition, a number of papers tend to talk about the version translated by David Hawkes. However, very few papers study A Dream of Red Mansions by means of contrasting these two translation versions, even less from the perspective of idiom translations. Hence, this paper examines the idiom translations in two versions with the purpose of taking a close look at the difference of translation strategies employed respectively.

2. 研究的基本内容与方案

First of all, the paper will briefly introduce the masterpiece A Dream of Red Mansions, the author Cao Xueqin, backgrounds the novel was written and its translations. The second part is dedicated to literature review of the present research. Thirdly, a contrastive study will be conducted between two translation versions to analyze the translation strategies of idioms from A Dream of Red Mansions with solid evidence. The last part is the conclusion of the research findings based on the analysis on the above. Other than that, there will be a short narration about the limitations of the present research. The present author expects to shed soft light on the translation study of A Dream of Red Mansions. This paper mainly adopts literature reading and contrastive methods. First, it collects and classify subject-related research findings from previous studies. Second, it makes a contrastive study in the present research.Third, a conclusion will be drawn from the contrastive study of translation strategies of idioms of two versions.

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