Abstract
A Dream of Red Mansions is one of the four famous Chinese classics, written in the middle of the Qing Dynasty，it touched thousands of people by having portrayed the tragic love between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu, this novel depicts multifarious contradictions in four big aristocratic families represented by the family of Jia, went through a long period from its boom to bust, explicitly or implicitly, suggested a dynasty’s thriving to decline. It attracted many researchers and scholars to devoted their life in studying as it fully displayed many characteristics of Chinese feudal culture , including clothing, food, architecture, social system, conventions, philosophy, education and art, etc, and over two hundred beautiful and well-designed traditional poetry which not only constitute an inseparable part of the whole work, but also reflect traditional Chinese culture. In this thesis, the author would choose Yang’s version as a base to review the English translation strategy of the poetry in this novel. By studying the translation of these poems, we will try to find good and referential translation approaches.
Keywords A Dream of Red Mansions; Poetry; Translation Strategies
Contents
Abstract I
Contents II
1. Introduction 3
2. Features of Poetry 5
2.1 Language Features of Poetry 5
2.1.1 The Conciseness in Poetry 5
2.1.2 The Rhyme and Rhythm of Poetry 5
2.2 Form Features in Poetry 7
3. Specific Method Adopted in “ A Dream of Red Mansions” 10
3.1 Literal Translation or Free Translation 10
3.2 Method of Metaphors and Similes 11
3.3 Amplification and Omission in Translation 13
4. Conclusion 16
References 17
