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摘 要

“归化”是以目的语文化为归宿而“异化”则是以源语文化为归宿， 归化与异化作为文学翻译研究中非常重要的策略一直以来都受到国内外译者的关注。

此外，中华民俗有着悠久的历史，它应中华民族的社会生活需要而产生，在中国独特的自然与文化环境中积淀。作为中国古典四大名著之首的《红楼梦》，对中国传统文化和清代的民俗风情作了详细的描述，可谓是一部百科全书，一部风俗画卷。因此，研究《红楼梦》中民俗的翻译对传播中华文化大有裨益。

本文以劳伦斯·韦努蒂提出的归化与异化翻译理论为基础，选取了《红楼梦》前80章中所出现的称谓、饮食和节日三类民俗事象，以表格的形式清晰明了地展现杨宪益与霍克斯版的翻译，通过对比，分析两位译者对中华民俗事象的翻译是否一致，如果不一致，两者在翻译策略的选择方面有何不同，各自的倾向性是什么，在翻译民俗事象时使用哪一种策略更优。研究发现，两位译者对中华民俗事象的翻译不一致，杨译在三类民俗中都倾向于使用异化的策略，但仍以归化为辅，霍译则在三类民俗中都倾向于使用归化的策略，同时也以异化为辅。两位译者正是由于各自不同的文化背景以及各自所期望达到的不同的翻译目的才导致选择不同的翻译策略。当然，在翻译中华民俗事象时我们既不能过度异化也不能过度归化，应将归化和异化结合起来，从而更好地翻译中华民俗，传播中华文化。

关键词：翻译 民俗 红楼梦 归化 异化

1. Introduction

1.1 The background of the Thesis

In such an era that the cultural exchanges between China and the rest of the world become more frequent, originally disseminating Chinese culture, especially the Chinese classics, to the world as well as making people over the world feel and understand the charm of Chinese folklore seem to be extremely important and urgent.

As one of the China’s Four Great Classical Novels and the pinnacle of Chinese fiction, A Dream of Red Mansions is a semi-autobiographical family saga written by Cao Xueqin in the middle of the 18th century during the Qing Dynasty. This novel provides great insight in its depiction of the Chinese folklore and is assuredly renowned for a folklore scroll. Thus, the study of this classic has certain significance to inherit, protect and carry forward the traditional culture heritage.

During the recent ten years, studies of the translation of A Dream of Red Mansions have a rapid development, which involves various aspects for instance cultural-loaded words, Mahjong culture, poems, idioms, figure of speech, translation history and so on. The research methodology is not to stick to one pattern for it has both qualitative and quantitative analysis. However, Feng quangong, in his paper named the development status and future prospects of the translation studies of A Dream of Red Mansions, pointed out that the translation studies of this novel in the aspect of language and culture are the core research objects, besides both breadth and depth of these two respects of previous studies still need to be strengthened as well. In terms of breadth, such translation on part of speech, sentence pattern, the style, ordinances and etiquette, Chinese medicine culture and folklore culture can be the object of the research.

Therefore, studying on the translation of Chinese folklore in A Dream of Red Mansions will broaden the scope of research, along with giving huge impetus to the output and dissemination of Chinese culture.

1.2 The purpose of the Thesis

According to the previous studies, there are a large number of theses concerning the study on translation of A Dream of Red Mansions from multitudinous perspectives like functionalism, equivalence, domestication and foreignization, cross-culture or eco-translatology. Some concentrate on the customs, cuisine, tea culture, mythology, proverbs, medicine, religion, paintings, filial piety, festivals, etc, but most of which only select one single content from one perspective to make a elaboration, meantime, a few of theses combine several types of folklore items together and systematically discuss the Chinese folklore translation in A Dream of Red Mansions in two English versions. Therefore, the author of this thesis makes a study on Chinese folklore translation in A Dream of Red Mansions from the perspective of domestication and foreignization. This thesis has three purposes: In the first place, it aims to make a clear understanding of the classification of Chinese folklore items. Secondly, to examine how the translation of Chinese folklore items like address forms, diet and festivals are rendered in the two English versions of A Dream of Red Mansions respectively. Last but not least, to compare the Yangs’ and the Hawkes’ translation of the Chinese folklore, exploring whether the Yangs and the Hawkes are consistent with the translation of Chinese folklore items, if not, what is the difference between the two translators in term of the choice of translation strategies, then finding out their tendency in using the strategies of domestication and foreignization respectively, analyzing and exploring the reason behind this tendency, so as to better translate Chinese folklore and spread the most authentic Chinese culture to the world.

1.3 The structure of the Thesis

The thesis consists of five chapters:

Chapter One makes an introduction to the whole thesis, putting forward the writing background, the research purpose and the structure of this thesis.

Chapter two firstly presents the literature review on the theory of domestication and foreignization, which includes its history, development and arguments from various schools, and then it expounds different views about the previous studies on English versions of A Dream of Red Mansions.

Chapter Three gives a detailed description of folklore items, elaborating its classification and presenting the results of three types of folklore items in the Yang’s and the Hawkes’ versions of A Dream of Red Mansions.

Chapter Four mainly selects three types of Chinese folklore i.e. address forms, diet and festivals from its eleven categories as example to make a comparison of the Yangs and Hawkes’ translation on Chinese folklore in A Dream of Red Mansions, discussing their respective focus on adopting the translation strategies of domestication and foreignization.

Chapter Five concludes the whole thesis, meanwhile; it proposes not only the implications, limitations of the thesis but also some suggestions for further studies.

2. Literature review

2.1 Literature Review on Domestication and Foreignization

Domestication-oriented and Foreignization-oriented translation in the west have been traced back to the ancient Greece and Rome. During that period, translators of The Philological School raised one question i.e. what on earth should we obey, to let the information to adapt people or to let people to adapt the information? Thus, there appears a controversy between literal translation and liberal translation from that time.

In the 17^th century, domesticating translation sprang up in the British translation history. Meanwhile, there have been emerged a number of advocates and scholars who stand by the domesticating translation, for instance, Alexander Fraser Tytler, John Dryden, John Denham and so on.

As a theoretic leading exponent of domestication school, Eugene A.Nida put forward his “Dynamic Equivalence” theory in 1964, in which the word “Equivalence” includes stylistic equivalence, social-cultural equivalence and linguistic equivalence. He claims: “A translation of dynamic equivalence aims at complete naturalness of expression and tries to relate the receptor to modes of behavior relevant within the context of his own culture” (Nida Science 159). In other words, he emphasizes the fluency, transparency and naturalness in the process of translating. Moreover, “dynamic equivalence” stressed that the target reader can appreciate the original and authentic text and even can understand what messages the source text want to convey.

Generally speaking, domesticating translation played a dominant role in the Anglo-American culture. However, in the long term of the translating history, domesticating translation strategy is still challenged by other translation theorists.

In 1813, a famous German translation theorist Friedrich Schleiermacher made a lecture “On the Different Methods of Translating”, in which he bring forward two translating approaches, “Either 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.” In that regard, the former is called foreignizing strategies, the latter is known as domesticating strategies.

Following Schleiermacher, scholars like Francis Newman and William Morris were also inclined to foreignizing translation strategy rather than domesticating translation strategy.

In 1995, based on Schleiermacher and other forerunner’s translation theory, Lawrence Venuti, an American translation historian and the representative figure of foreignization, put forth a pair of core translation terms i.e. domesticating translation and foreignizing translation in his book The Translator’s Invisibility: a History of Translation. He mentioned that the ultimate aim of foreignizing method is to force translators and their readers to realize the ethnocentrism in translation and therefore to write and read translated works in the ways to seek to recognize the linguistic and cultural differences of foreign texts. “The point is rather to elaborate the theoretical, critical, and textual means by which translation can be studied and practiced as a locus of difference, instead of the homogeneity that widely characterizes it today.”(Venuti, 41-42).

In China, the discussions on domestication and foreignization can be dated back to early translators of Buddhist scriptures. During this period, Kumarajimva, a famous Indian Buddhist, favored free translation and he made either addition or omission during his translation in order to better express the source work’s spirit. The earliest translator, An Shigao, he favored literal translation in general. Daoan is one of the representatives of foreignizating translation field for he favored strict literal transition in order to preserve the “foreign” feature in the source text and advocated a nearly word-for-word translation strategy.

During the Tang Dynasty, a famous monk and a distinguished translator Xuanzang proved a natural arena for his skills when he used various translation techniques. He didn’t disscuss translation strategies but his words reflected his inclination towards foreignizaion. Certainly, he also put the domestication in his translation when necessary. Liang Qichao has ever stated that “Xuanzang made a perfect combination of literal translation and free translation. None ever did better that him in such work.”(Luo Xinzhang, 1981:18-19).

From the late of 19^th century to the 1980s, free translation played a leading role. In 1898, Yan Fu raised the criteria of translation namely faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance in his book Evolution and Ethics. Faithfulness means a full and complete conveying of the original content or thought, expressiveness means the version must be clear and flowing without any grammatical mistakes or confused logic or sense, and the last elegance in his opinion, Chinese before Han Dynasty may be regarded as elegant. Moreover, Qian Zhongshu’s convention/translation, Fu Lei’s “spiritual likeness” and Mao Dun’s “artistic creative translation” theory are all the embodiment of the strategy of domestication.

In the middle of 1920s, Lu Xun and Qu Qiubai were the representatives of domestication. Lu Xun put forward the translation principle of “Faithfulness over smoothness.” Qu Qiubai mentioned the translation principle of “Conceptual Equivalence”. On the contrary, Liang Shiqiu and Zhao Jingshen were the representatives of the foreignization. As a supporter of foreignization, Liang Shiqiu strongly opposed Lu Xun’s strategy and considered Lu Xun’s translation as “rigid translation” or even “dead translation.”(Zhao Junfeng,1994:18). Zhao Jingshen proposed his principle of “fluent translation” and stressed that the fluency is the most important thing, while the correctness of the translation is less important. (Chen Fukang,2000:293). Besides, there are numerous translators and scholars like Guo Moruo, Liu Yingkai, Sun Zhili, Wang Jiankai, Yang Xianyi etc who favor foreignizing translation.

Certainly, there are still other scholars like Meng Jiangang and Ping Hong take a compromise position and hold the view that the two strategies are of no precedence to each other and will be co-existent forever.

In conclusion, as time goes by, it is very obvious for people to find that the development and perfections of Domestication and Foreignization in the Chinese and Western Translation History. Meantime, many translators’ views on those two translation strategies tend to be more dialectical.

2.2 Previous studies on English versions of A Dream of Red Mansions

A Dream of Red Mansions is a masterpiece with high ideological and artistic in the history of Chinese literature, which has undoubtedly received unprecedented respect and concern. The English translation of A Dream of Red Mansions not only makes it an extension in the west but also has once set off a climax of translated fiction in translation circle.

The translation of A Dream of Red Mansions dates from 1830s, when John Francis Davis translated two poems in the third chapter of this novel, which can be regarded as the first English version of A Dream of Red Mansions.

From 1846 to 1869, during this period, both Robert Tom and E.C.Bowra chose the way of selective translation of this novel under the title of Dream of Red Chamber.

Later, as the British consul in Macao, H.Bencraft.Joly gave a relative systematic translation of the novel, in which he translated the first 56 chapters of A Dream of Red Mansions during the period from 1892 to 1893.

In the year of 1927, the first abridged translation of the whole novel, by Wang Liangzhi, was published in New York.

And then, between 1929 and 1958, Wang Jizhen and Florence Mchughamp;Isabel Mchugh also published their abridged translation of A Dream of Red Mansions.

As time goes by, the translation of this novel has become increasingly mature, from 1978 to 1980, the first complete English version of A Dream of Red Mansions with its three volumes that translated by Yang Xianyi and his wife Gladys Yang was published by Beijing’s foreign language publishing house.

Another complete English version that translated by David Hawkes and his son-in-law John Minford under the title of The Story of the Stone was published by The British Penguin Publishing Companies. The top eighty chapters were translated by David Hawkes, which has three volumes named Golden Days (1973), the Crab-Flower Club (1977) and the Warning Voice (1980) respectively. The rest forty chapters were translated by the Minford from1982 to 1986, which has two volumes.

Without any doubt, both the Yangs’ A Dream of Red Mansions and the Hawkes’ The Story of the Stone have received high praise by other translation theorists, more importantly, by the readers at home and abroad.

So far, there are nearly sixty versions of A Dream of Red Mansions translated by various kinds of languages. As an encyclopedia of Chinese culture, the study of the complete translation of A Dream of Red Mansions should be regarded as the best and the most valuable thing. Thus, this thesis will make a comparative analysis of the two most influential English versions written by the Yangs and the Hawkes respectively.

3. Folklore items in two English versions of A Dream of Red Mansions

3.1 Classification of Chinese folklore items

Folklore, i.e. folk mores, which refers to a kind of life culture that created, enjoyed and inherited by the general public in such a country or a nation. The folklore originates from the needs of human society and dissolved completely and lively into people’s life. Before drawing a relative uniform definition of the folklore, there has always been much different and complicated controversy about folklore in academic circle. In a broad sense, the folklore includes both the rural folklore and the urban folklore, both ancient folk traditions and the new generation of the folklore phenomenon, not only the folk literature but also the material, spiritual or social organization folklore which inherited in the way of material, behavior and psychology. In a narrow sense, there are four different kinds of theories concerning the folklore i.e. the cultural legacy theory, the spiritual culture theory, the folk literature theory and the traditional culture theory.

Just as the famous saying goes, there are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people's eyes. Apparently, as mentioned above, different person has his different definition about folklore. Certainly, different people have their different criteria on the classification of folklore items as well.

In the first half of the twentieth century, there are two ways of classification about folklore items, which has a great influence on the future. One is the outline style, which bases on the logic with the form of outline to classify the subordination. The other is the parallel style, which bases on the component of the material regardless of whether there has a logical relationship between one category and another.

The representative figure of the outline classification is C.S.Burne who classified the folklore items into three categories from the filed of spirit, behavior and language in her Handbook of Folklore. While Hoffmann-Krayer adopted the parallel style to classify the folklore items into eighteen categories in his book Die Volkskunde ALS

Wissenschaft, for instance, village, building，appliance，symbol，artistry and arts in general，beverages and food，laws，beliefs，folk poetry, folk language，names etc.

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