摘 要
委婉语是社会文化领域的语言映射。《红楼梦》作为一部反映中国传统文化的百科全书，涉及了各类委婉语，如何准确、客观地翻译这些委婉语就成了一个很重要的问题。本文比较了杨宪益与霍克斯的两个《红楼梦》英译本，从直译、意译、加注等翻译技巧上对《红楼梦》委婉语的译法进行归纳分析，并结合两个英译本的优缺点，指出《红楼梦》委婉语的翻译既要保留原文所要表达的文化思想，又要使目标读者通俗易懂，这才是本文的翻译目的所在。
关键词：《红楼梦》；委婉语：翻译技巧
Abstract
Euphemism is a language expression of social culture. The Dreams of the Red Mansions, as an encyclopedia of Chinese traditional culture, contains a large number of euphemisms. The accurate and appropriate translation of such culture-loaded words is certainly a big problem. Taking the two complete translated versions—Yangs’ and Hawkes' version, as an example, this paper tends to summarize the problems and methods in translating euphemisms by using the literal translation, free translation and explanation added in the text. It is concluded that when we are translating the euphemisms in A Dreams of Red Mansions, we should not only retain the original culture, but also make the versions easy to be understood by the target readers, and that is very target of the translation.
Key words：A Dreams of Red Mansions, euphemism, translation techniques
contents
1. Introduction 1
2. The Study of Euphemism in and out of China 2
2.1 Present researches on A Dream of Red Mansions 2
2.2 Euphemism in English 3
2.3 Euphemism in Chinese 3
2.4 The comparison of euphemism in Chinese and English 4
3. Euphemisms in A Dreams of Red Mansions 6
3.1 Euphemisms about death 6
3.2 Euphemisms about disease 7
3.3 Euphemisms about sex 7
3.4 Euphemisms about pregnancy 8
4 . Translation Techniques of Euphemisms in A Dreams of Red Mansions 10
4.1 Literal translation 10
4.2 Free translation 11
4.3 Explanation added in text 12
5. Conclusion 14
Acknowledgements 15
References 16
