Chapter One  Introduction

1.1 The Purpose of the Thesis

A Dream in Red Mansions is considered as a treasure of Chinese language, where various Chinese special language patterns have been used. How to translate these language patterns, and how to reveal the Chinese cultural characteristics are great challenges for translators. The translation of animal idioms is the most difficult, because some animals have different symbolic meanings in different cultures. This thesis tries to make a comparative study on the translation of animal idioms in the Yang and the Hawke’s translation of A Dream in Red Mansions, and discusses the two translators how the two translators overcome cultural barriers, complete the translation with different cultural connotation in different languages.

Through the comparison of the text, the author aims to find out the difference of translators’ adaptation to domestication and foreignization strategies, and tries to conclude the translation method of animal idioms.

1.2 The Structure of the Thesis

Chapter One introduces this paper’s aims and significance.

Chapter Two reviews the dispute over domestication and foreignization. The theoretical bases for domestication and foreignization are stated in this part. The present arguments on this subject in China are also presented in this part.

Chapter Three mainly probes into Skopos theory, which offers a viable solution of clash between domestication and foreignization, and discusses different purposes of Yang Hsien-yi and David Hawkes lead to their different tendency in choosing translation strategies.

Chapter Four presents major findings, states the limitations of the research and puts forward recommendations for further research.

Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Definition of Animal Idiom

    There are some different definitions of idiom. It says in The New Oxford Dictionary of English (2002)that “idiom is a group of words established whose meaning not deducible from those of the inpidual words”. And it is defined in Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary (2004) that “an idiom is a speech form or an expression of a given language that is peculiar to itself grammatically or cannot be understood from the inpidual meanings of its elements.” According to CiHai《辞海》(1979)，熟语(the Chinese equivalent of idiom) refers to the fixed phrases or sentences in a language which can not be changed arbitrarily in usage.