Domesticating or foreignizing translations of titles and honorifics in hong lou meng

.. .Domesticating or Foreignizing? Translations of Titles and Honorifics in Hong Lou Meng LIU ZEQUAN (B.A (HTU); Postgraduate Dip (NTU); M.A (HUST, NUS) A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR... identifying and signposting a term of address in its context and determining its position within the system of politeness is very informative for a learner or reader 1.2.5 Hypothesis and questions of. .. usefulness of the dichotomy as a way of analyzing and explaining how translators deal with Chinese titles and honorifics concerned 1.1.2 Translation as Choices The definition of language and culture

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Deep in my heart, I know crystal clear that it is centuries too late to acknowledge, only at this concluding stage of my long and toiling years at the National University of Singapore (NUS), my sincere gratitude to the kind and beloved people who have encouraged and supported me through these painful but gainful years Nevertheless, it

is better later than never to express my heartfelt appreciations, especially in an era when words seem to speak louder than action

To be academically correct, the very first few people to whom I have been unpayably indebted are the faculty at NUS and they are Prof Ho Chee Lick, Dr Kay O’Halloran, Dr James St André, Prof Bao Zhiming, Dr Edward McDonald, Prof Desmond Allison, etc Prof Ho and Dr O’Halloran (whom we intimately addressed as

Dr Kay) and Dr St André were on the academic committee of my dissertation As the head of the committee, Prof Ho has been dutifully patient and enlightening to my research He trained me to query into every academic issue in detail and with determination When he kindly took me on as his supervisee due to the unexpected leave of his predecessor Dr McDonald, I had already been one year on to the road to

my doctoral research in the field of Chinese and English advertisements comparison with both systemic and corpus linguistics as tools Seeing that my former research topic would possibly end me in no where, he considerately advised me to change either himself or myself With reluctance and agony I turned to the present topic, and this is where I am standing now

Dr Kay has always been a reliable teacher and friend for both encouragement and enlightenment She led me on to the road to (Australian) functional grammar during

my second Master of Arts study in English Studies in NUS, with which I completed

my second MA dissertation under the supervision of Dr McDonald She not only

helped in referring me to both the University of Sydney and the City University of Hong Kong, securing me admission to both institutions with Studentship/Scholarship (both of which I turned down, primarily but not exclusively because of the unique bi-lingual environment Singapore as a country offers) She also remained always ready to my help, either during my stay in or absence from Singapore

Dr St André proved a resourceful guide, in both linguistic and academic terms Academically, Dr St André is favourably positioned as a lecturer of Chinese-English translation in the Department of Chinese Studies Linguistically, Dr St André is French by origin, American by nationality, and Chinese by speciality He read and critiqued my dissertation, dined and discussed with me over lunch

While I mentioned Dr McDonald in passing above, he deserves some more words

I did not choose him as both my MA and Ph.D supervisor because he is easily associated with the American junk food brand (which was conveniently conjured up in the mind of many of my friends and colleagues) I followed the Australian because I thought he has much of what I assumed I needed for my systemic functional analysis

of my bank of Singapore Chinese and English beauty advertisements, namely his functional perspective of the Chinese language as a pupil of the founder of functional grammar, M.A.K Halliday and his better half, Prof Hasan

As far as Profs Bao and Allison are concerned, they came to my rescue whenever the need arose They both helped generously when I approached to them for a letter of reference to the University of Sydney and City University of Hong Kong; they listened to me with sympathy and analysed my situation in and out when I went to them with a disheartened frame of mind at the turn of my Ph.D research Prof Bao, in particular, felt for me in our mother tongue, in his capacity not only as coordinator of postgraduate students in the Department of English Language and Literature, but also

as a fellow country man

The second group of people who are always on my heart’s list of gratitude are my

friends, Prof Zhang Yenming (NTU), Prof Goh Yeng-Seng (NTU), Dr Zhu Shenfa,

Dr Hong Huaqing (NTU), Dr Chen Youping (Shanghia Jiaotong), D.r Yang Ruiying (Xi’an Jiaotong), Dr He Jisheng (NUS), Dr Gong Wengao (NUS), etc I would like to thank these nice guys whom I had the pleasure to know and befriend, and who gave

me in an unselfish manner the feeling of being at home while at work

I am also grateful for the National University of Singapore which has so generously financed me through both my second master degree and my doctoral degree studies with a full NUS Research Scholarship, which has contributed to putting

me in financial ease for full-time study in the true sense of the word I also feel a deep sense of gratitude for the good staff in NUS’s English Department, the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and Mrs Goh Bee Hwa in the Registrar’s Office Their consideration, efficiency, help and sense of responsibility have made a deep impression on me Of course, I thank Singapore, a fine, friendly, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-cultural city nation which facilitated my study and stay but imposed no obligation to stay and serve

I am very grateful for my wife and my son The chain of my gratitude would be incomplete if I should forget to thank them For my wife, it is her quiet support and traditional contribution during my absence and studies abroad For my son, it is his silent missing and my inaccessibility as a father

To this day, I confess that doing a Ph.D is a sacred undertaking and this is one of the best, and the most important as well, decisions of my life Additional energy, vitality and dedication for research were required of me I tried to acquire the degree, gain some kind of expertise, and publish something However, I lost quite a lot, some

of which is the dearest to my life and can only be regretted for life! Anyhow, I thank you all for having shared many experiences and thoughts with me throughout the last years

To this day, I confess that a journey is easier chosen than completed, that a

journey is easier to travel when travelled together, that interdependence is certainly more valuable than independence This thesis is the result of six years of work whereby I have been fortunately accompanied and supported by many It is thus a pleasant aspect that I have now the opportunity to express my gratitude for all of them, albeit in whatever little way

Because you, only you, know what I have been through, and, thus, how I have

endeavoured To borrow from Hong Lou Meng, or to talk business once again:

都云作者痴，谁解其中味？

For which Hawkes’s translation can be supplied as sort of an interpretation:

Pages full of idle word

Penned with hot and bitter tears:

All men call the author fool;

None his secret message hears

Liu Zequan

6 June, 2006

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements………i

Table of contents ……… ………….……… v

Summary……….……….ix

List of tables and figures……….……… xi

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION……….……… 1

1.0 Overview……….1

1.1 Two Theoretical Premises……….……… ……….2

1.1.1 Culture, language and translation………2

1.1.2 Translation as choices……… ……… ……….7

1.2 The research……….………10

1.2.1 Focus of the study……….10

1.2.1.1 Social stratification……….……… ………10

1.2.1.2 Dimension of self-denigration……….12

1.2.2 Adopting Venuti: a rationale ……….13

1.2.3 Objectives of the study……… 14

1.2.4 Justification of the study……….15

1.2.5 Hypotheses and questions of the study… ………17

1.3 Hong Lou Meng……….18

1.3.1 The story……….…18

1.3.2 English translations……….………19

1.3.2 General introduction……… 19

1.3.2.2 Abridged versions……… 20

1.3.2.3 Complete translations……… 23

1.3.2.3.1 Joly’s translation……… 24

1.3.2.3.2 Yangs’ translation……….……… 25

1.3.2.3.3 Hawkes’s translation……….26

1.4 Implications of the study……… 27

1.5 Structure of the paper……….30

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW……… 34

2.0 Overview……… 34

2.1 Translation Strategies……….35

2.1.1 Linguistic dichotomies……… 36

2.1.1.1 Literal and free translation………37

2.1.1.2 Formal and dynamic equivalence………38

2.1.1.3 Formal correspondence and textual equivalence……….41

2.1.1.4 Semantic and communicative translation………42

2.1.2 Cultural dichotomies……… 43

2.1.2.1 Alienating and naturalizing……….44

2.1.2.2 Foreignizing and domesticating……… 45

2.1.3 Translation strategies: Conclusion……… 48

2.2 Studies of English HLM……….50

2.2.1 Lin’s studies……… ……… 50

2.2.2 Hong’s studies……… 53

2.2.3 Liu and Gu’s study….……….………54

2.2.4 He’s study…….……….55

2.2.5 Translation studies of HLM: Conclusion………56

2.3 Politeness and Terms of Address……….59

2.3.1 Theories of politeness……….60

2.3.1.1 Brown and Levinson………60

2.3.1.2 Leech……… …62

2.3.1.3 Cross-cultural studies of politeness……….62

2.3.1.4 Gu’s Maxims of Chinese politeness………64

2.3.2 Studies of address terms ………66

2.3.2.1 Universal perspective of address terms……….67

2.3.2.2 Cross-cultural studies of address terms………68

2.3.2.2.1 Wierzbicka’s semantics of titles………69

2.3.2.2.2 Sun’s study of address terms in HLM….……….72

2.3.2.2.3 Gu’s Maxims of Address and Self-denigration……….75

2.4 Framework Construction……… … 79

2.4.1 Gu’s maxims……… … 79

2.4.2 Sun’s principles……… ……… … 81

2.5 Methodology………… ……… … 82

2.5.1 Marking systems……… … 82

2.5.1.1 Marking ST titles……… … 82

2.5.1.2 Marking ST honorifics……… … 83

2.5.1.3 Marking of English renditions……….… … 86

2.6 Conclusion……….88

CHAPTER 3 TITLES (I)……….…….………90

3.0 Overview……… …90

3.1 太太……… ……… ………93

3.1.1 Origin and use of太太……….………93

3.1.2 Renditions of太太 ……….96

3.1.2.1 Hawkes’s 太太…….……….……… … …98

3.1.2.2 Yangs’ 太太…….…… ….……… …102

3.1.2.3 Joly’s太太 ……… 109

3.1.2.4 McHugh and Wang’s太太….……….………111

3.1.2.5 Renditions of太太: conclusion ……….114

3.2 老太太……… ……… ………115

3.2.1 Origin and use ……… ……… 115

3.2.2 Renditions of老太太……… ……… ………117

3.2.2.1 Hawkes’s 老太太………… ……… 117

3.2.2.2 Yangs’老太太……… 122

3.2.2.3 Joly’s老太太………….……… ………….123

3.2.2.4 McHugh and Wang’s老太太……… ……… ……… 124

3.2.2.5 Renditions of老太太: conclusion……… ……….……125

3.3 奶奶and 姑娘 ……… 126

3.3.1 奶奶 ……… 127

3.3.1.1 Hawkes’ 奶奶 ……… 130

3.3.1.2 Yangs and Joly’s 奶奶……….… ……….133

3.3.1.3 McHugh and Wang’s奶奶 ……… … 135

3.3.1.4 Renditions of奶奶: conclusion…….……….…….136

3.3.2 姑娘……… 137

3.4 Conclusion……….……141

CHAPTER 4 TITLES (II) ……….………… 146

4.0 Overview ….……… ……….………… 146

4.1 太爷 ………148

4.1.1 Origin and use of 太爷……… 148

4.1.2 Renditions of 太爷………153

4.1.3 Renditions of太爷: conclusion….……….163

4.2 老爷 ……… … 163

4.2.1 Origin and use of 老爷……… 163

4.2.2 Renditions of 老爷……… 166

4.2.3 Renditions of老爷: conclusion……….… ……… …172

4.3 爷 ……… 172

4.3.1 Origin and use of 爷……… 172

4.3.2 Renditions of 爷……… 174

4.3.3 Renditions of 爷: conclusion….……… 178

4.4 大爷……….………….179

4.4.1 Origin and use of 大爷……… 179

4.4.2 Renditions of大爷…… ……… 181

4.4.3 Renditions of大爷: conclusion… ………191

4.5 Conclusion……… 192

CHAPTER 5 HONORIFIC TERMS……… ……… ………195

5.0 Overview……….195

5.1 Self-other Honorifics……… …….……….197

5.1.1兄 and 弟 198

5.1.1.1 Origin and use of兄 and弟……….……… 198

5.1.1.2 Renditions of兄 and 弟.… ……….…….200

5.1.1.2.1 Hawkes’s兄 and弟………… ……… ……… 201

5.1.1.2.2 Yangs’s兄 and弟 ……… …… ………207

5.1.1.2.3 Joly’s兄 and弟……….……… ……… …… 209

5.1.1.2.4 McHugh and Wang’s兄 and弟 ………….………213

5.1.1.2.5 兄 and 弟: conclusion………… ……… ………… 215

5.1.2 先生, 晚生 and 在下…….………218

5.1.2.1 Origin and use of先生, 晚生 and 在下……… 218

5.1.2.2 Renditions of先生, 晚生 and 在下……….……220

5.1.2.2.1 Hawkes’s先生, 晚生 and 在下……….……… 222

5.1.2.2.2 Yangs’ 先生, 晚生 and 在下…… ……….……… 223

5.1.2.2.3 Joly’s先生, 晚生 and 在下……… 225

5.1.2.2.4 McHugh and Wang’s 先生, 晚生 and 在下………228

5.1.2.2.5 先生, 晚生 and 在下: conclusion… ………230

5.2 Honorifics of Self/Other Extension…… ……… 231

5.2.1 Introduction……….231

5.2.2 Self/other’s wife……….……….……….…233

5.2.3 Self/other’s parents and relatives……….………238

5.2.3.1 Self/other’s (grand-)parents……… ……….………238

5.2.3.2 Siblings of self/other’s wife ……… 243

5.2.4 Things on self/other’s side… ……… 249

5.2.5 Self’s offsprings……… ….254

5.3 Conclusion……… ….257

CHAPTER 6 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS………… ……….260

6.0 Overview……….………260

6.1 Findings……….264

6.1.1 Orientations of the five translations.……… 265

6.1.2 Consistency of the five translations……… … 265

6.1.3 Cultural values trans-omitted……… ………266

6.2 Implications of the study……… 268

6.2.1 Theoretical implications………268

6.2.1.1 Venuti’s dichotomy ……… ……….….268

6.2.1.2 Cultural approach to Translation Studies……….………….………270

6.2.1.3 Studies of Hong Lou Meng……….……… 272

6.2.2 Practical implications……….……… 273

6.2.2.1 Readers’ response to English HLM……… ………273

6.2.2.2 The success of a translation……… …….… 276

6.2.2.3 The relationship between a translation and its strategy………280

6.2.2.4 Culture “trans-(re)lated”…….………….……… 281

6.2.3 Venuti’s dichotomy: a final word …… ……….……….284

6.3 Limitations and future research……… ……… 287

Bibliography……….290

Summary

The primary objective of the present study is to critically evaluate Venuti’s (1995) (in)famous dichotomy of translations into domesticating and foreignizing ones, with special reference to the strategies which are used to deal with culture-specific items To be specific, it is designed to see (1) whether Venuti’s dichotomy can be effectively employed to categorise the five English versions of the eighteenth century

Chinese classic Hong Lou Meng or A Dream of The Red Chamber which have been

produced over one century of time from the 1890s to the 1980s, and (2) how aspects

of translation can be analysed to determine what strategy is used for its production

The study adopts as database two common types of Chinese terms of address/reference and their respective but different English renderings in the five translations: (a) eight titles which are used by social non-equals to address/refer to the Jia masters, and (b) thirty-five other-elevating and self-depreciating honorifics that are employed between social equals Both types of data are taken from the first twelve chapters of the million-word, 120-chapter novel The rationale behind the adoption of address terms as research foci is the integrative perspective of language and culture which views translating as translating culture and translations as choices

A review of the literature in Translation Studies reveals that since times of antiquity, translation strategies have been simplistically polarised in black-and-white characterizations, such as free-literal, communicative-semantic, naturalising- alienating, etc., so much so that there seems no middle way open for translators

Besides, previous studies of the English translations of Hong Lou Meng, though few

and far between, mostly conclude by adopting these dichotomies as matter-of-fact labels On the other hand, while the literature on Politeness Studies shows that although politeness behaviour concerns human communicative behaviour in general,

it varies from culture to culture It follows that, the use terms of address, which

functions as the most conspicuous realizations of linguistic politeness in a culture, is governed with the social norms of address behaviour of the culture As such, an investigation of the renditions of address terms as “cultural key words” should enable not only a glimpse of the cultural values underlying these choices, significantly, it should also provide some insight into the strategy which a translator adopts

The study adopts primarily Gu’s (1990) Address and Self-denigration Maxims

of Chinese titles as frameworks Specifically, Gu’s two maxims is used to capture the pragmatic factors, or “cultural values”, that govern the choice of a title and/or honorific in the ST and then to check the (dis)appearance of the same values in the choices which the five translators make Based on the comparison of the values between the source text (ST) and the target text (TT) underlying the choice of an address term, the strategy which is used for the rendition is proposed Basically, the more a rendition represents the cultural values of its ST counterpart, the more it is foreignized, and vice versa

Significantly, the study, apart from overruling most of the conclusions which

previous studies of the English Hong Lou Men have drawn, disillusions the

applicability of Venuti’s dualizing dichotomies – and all the other dichotomies, for that matter – to characterize translations beyond doubt This is because, of the five

English translations of Hong Lou Meng, only Hawkes’s work can be labelled as a

domesticated production, and Wang’s as a foereignized one, in the true sense of the word All the other three, however, fail to fall into either category, since their translators do not adhere to a single strategy in a systematic manner As such, it is proposed that a continuum along the lines of domesticating-foreignizing be used to capture the extent to which a translation is oriented The study also finds that, despite the highest degree of domesticating, Hawkes’s version is viewed by the majority internet readers as the most popular translation And this finding undoubtedly throws a wet blanket over Venuti’s “call” for foreignizing in translation

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.1 Previous studies of the translations of HLM……….……….28

Table 2.1 Sun’s principles of address used in HLM……… ……….…73

Table 3.1 Titles for the Jias in the corpus……….………92

Table 3.2 Renditions of minor titles for the Jias…… ……… 93

Table 3.3 Use of太太in the corpus………… ……….………… 95

Table 3.4 Renditions of 太太in Hawkes, Yangs and Joly …… ……….…….101

Table 3.5 Renditions of 老太太in Hawkes, Yangs and Joly …… … ……….….119

Table 3.6 Use of奶奶in the corpus………….….……… ……… 129

Table 3.7 Renditions of 奶奶in Hawkes, Yangs and Joly ……….………… …….132

Table 3.8 McHugh and Wang’s renditions of 奶奶……… …135

Table 3.9 Use of 姑娘in the corpus…… ….….….…… ……….……… 138

Table 3.10 Renditions of 姑娘 in Hawkes, Yangs and Joly…….……….…….140

Table 4.1 Titles for non-Jia men and their translations……….………147

Table 4.2 Use of太爷 in the corpus……… …… 149

Table 4.3 Renditions of 太爷 in Hawkes, Yangs and Joly………….………152

Table 4.4 Use of 老爷 in the corpus……….………164

Table 4.5 Renditions of 老爷in Hawkes, Yangs and Joly…….……… ……167

Table 4.6 Use of 爷in the corpus……… … 173

Table 4.7 Renditions of 爷in Hawkes, Yangs and Joly……… ………175

Table 4.8 Use of 大爷 in the corpus……… …….180

Table 4.9 Renditions of 大爷 in Hawkes, Yangs and Joly……….……… 182

Table 5.1 Honorific terms in the corpus……….………196

Table 5.2 Self/Other honorifics in the corpus……… 198

Table 5.3 Use and renditions of 兄and 弟and their compounds……….…………202

Table 5.4 Use and renditions of先生, 晚生and 在下………… ……….221

Table 5.5 Honorifics of self/other extension in the corpus……….233

Table 5.6 Renditions of references to Self/Other’s wife……… 236

Table 5.7 Renditions of references to Self/Other’s (grand-)parents……… …….240

Table 5.8 Renditions of references to siblings of Self/Other’s wife……… 245

Table 5.9 Use and renditions of terms referring to Self/Other’s things… ……….251

Table 5.10 Use and renditions of terms for Self/Other’s siblings……….…….… 256

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 Orientation of the five English translations of HLM…….….….……… 56

Figure 2.2 The Chinese address system……… ……….76 Figure 2.3 Line-up of 兄 and its derivatives on the formality continuum………… 85

Figure 4.1 Relationship between chief characters in HLM……… 151

List of Symbols

Chinese Pinyin Literal English translation

红楼梦 hong lou meng Red Chamber Dream

太太 tai tai Mrs.; madame

老太太 lao tai tai old lady; Venerable Madam

奶奶 nai nai young mistress of the house

兄 xiong elder brother

尊兄 zun xiong respectable elder brother

老兄 lao xiong old elder brother

弟 di younger brother

小弟 xiao di little younger brother

先生 xian sheng Mr

老先生 lao xian sheng old Mr

晚生 wan sheng late born

在下 zai xia your subordinate

贵省 gui sheng your honourable province

贵东家 gui dong jia your honourable host

令亲大人 lingqin da ren your refined great relative

令尊 ling zun your refined respectable (father)

尊翁 zun weng your respectable (old man)

尊名 zun ming your respectable name

尊夫人 zun fu ren your respectable wife

尊府 zun fu your honourable mansion

家父 jia fu my home father

家祖母 jia zu fu my home grandfather

家父母 jia fu mu my home parent

家岳母 jia yue mu my home mother-in-law

贱荆 jian jing my humble wife

贱内 jian nei my humble interior

内人 nei ren my interior woman

儿妇 er fu my son’s woman

内兄 nei xiong my interior elder brother

舍亲 she qin my hut’s relative

小女 xiao nu my little girl

小婿 xiao xu my little son-in-law

敝友 bi you my lowly friend

敝斋 bi zhai my lowly study

小斋 xiao zhai my little study

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.0 OVERVIEW

The present study undertakes to make a product-oriented, descriptive comparison of the first 12 chapters of five English versions of the eighteenth century Chinese novel

hereinafter) with reference to their renditions of eight titles and thirty-five honorific expressions that appear in these chapters While both titles and honorifics pertain to the

general category of Terms of address or TA for short, TA is here taken as an umbrella

term which includes titles, kinship terms and honorifics (both self-deprecatory and elevating ones) which are used both to address and refer to people This generalization can find justification in Chao (1956:217) where both vocatives (i.e., terms of direct address to call persons by) and designatives (i.e., mentioning terms, which one uses as part of connected discourse in speaking of persons) are grouped under the general heading This categorization reflects the true picture of the use of Chinese terms of

other-address in HLM

According to Wierzbicka (1991:333),

1

As will be mentioned later in this chapter, different English titles are used for its various translations To

do fair to all translators, and to avoid confusion, pinyin, the Chinese spelling system, is adopted throughout

this thesis to refer to the Chinese original

2

For purpose of reference and comparison, Chinese terms, such as names of persons, places, buildings,

notions, etc., are all shown in accordance with their Chinese (pinyin) spelling, with their characters and/or

literal meaning supplied in brackets

Every language has its own key words, which reflect the core values of the culture Consequently, cultures can be revealingly studied, compared, and explained to outsiders through their key words

Starting from this perspective, we take terms of address occurring in HLM as “cultural

key words” (CKW) of the Chinese language of the time, and look at them as a specific locus which could possibly require a translator of special attention because of the way they are used and the cultural meaning values with which they are loaded Based on Venuti’s (1995) general premises about foreignizing and domesticating translation strategies, this study primarily intends to contribute to Venuti’s postcolonial translation theory by determining how aspects of translated texts can be practically analysed as actualizations of the two strategies he advocates

culture-This chapter commences with an argumentation for the underlying theses on which this study is established: (i) translating means translating culture, (ii) translating constitutes a process of choice This is followed by a presentation of the objectives, focus, questions as well as hypotheses of the present study After this presentation comes a brief

introduction of the Chinese novel HLM and its five English versions in our scrutiny

Following a discussion of the implications of the study, this chapter concludes with an introduction of the structure of the dissertation

1.1 TWO THEORETICAL PREMISSES

1.1.1 Culture, Language and Translation

The pre-requisite for both the assumption of terms of address as cultural key words and their use as a focus for translation studies here lies in the Sapir-Whorf and

Lotman chorus that no language can exist unless it is steeped in the context of culture; and no culture can exist which does not have at its centre the structure of natural language (Lotman, 1978:211-32) This integrative view of language and culture entails that the meaning of any linguistic item, address terms included, be properly understood only with reference to the cultural context enveloping it Since meaning is of particular importance

in translation, it follows that translation cannot be fully understood outside a cultural frame of reference It thus seems that a brief account of the basic conceptualization of culture, language, and translation, and their relationships with one another should be in place prior to the unfolding of the research analysis

The concept of culture constitutes the concern of many different disciplines such

as philosophy, sociology, anthropology, literature and cultural studies, and the definitions offered in these fields vary in accordance with the particular frame of reference involved

Of these definitions, the humanistic and anthropological concepts of culture stand out as most relevant to translation studies (House, 2002:93) The former concerns itself with the

“cultural heritage” as a model of refinement, an exclusive aggregation of a society’s artifacts, i.e., masterpieces in fine arts, literature, music etc The latter sees culture as encompassing “the overall way of life of a community, i.e., all those traditional, explicit and implicit designs for living which act as potential guides for the behaviour of members

of the culture” (ibid) Culture in this perspective refers not only to the “conventional ideal

of individual refinement, built upon a certain modicum of assimilated knowledge and experience” (Sapir, 1964:81) More importantly, it “embraces…those general attitudes, views of life, and specific manifestations of civilization that give a particular people its

distinctive place in the world” (ibid:83) In what follows, the broad anthropological sense

of culture will be pursued

With regard to the levels at which culture can be analysed, House (2002) summarised four levels with which culture is characterised or differentiated: human, societal/national, demographical and personal The first level is the general human level

“along which human beings differ from animals” in that human beings are capable of reflection, and able to shape and change their environment (ibid:93) The other general ability which prevails universally across all cultures is the politeness phenomenon, which will be reviewed in Section 2.3 below The second level is the societal, national level, where culture functions as “the unifying, binding force which enables human beings to position themselves vis-à-vis systems of government, dominant activities, religious beliefs and values” (ibid) The third level of culture, for House (ibid), “corresponds to the second level but captures various societal and national subgroups” depending on geographical region, social class, age, sex, professional activity and topic Note that although House does not apply the jargon “demographical” to define this level, these features of characterization necessitate the abstraction The fourth level is the personal, the individual one pertaining to the individual’s guidelines of thinking and acting According to House (ibid), this level constitutes cultural consciousness “which enables a human being to be aware of what characterises his or her own culture and makes it distinct from others.”

The integration of human, social and individual views of culture thus likens culture to “the collective programming of the human mind” (Hofstede, 1991:5), a view which gets elaborate formulation in Goodenough’s (1964:36) concept of culture as:

whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its [i.e., a society’s] members, and do so in any role that they accept for any one of themselves…Culture is not a material phenomenon; it does not consist of things, people, behaviour, or emotions It is rather an organization of these things It is the forms of things that people have in mind, their model of perceiving, relating, and otherwise interpreting them

The anthropological view of culture emphasises both the cognitive and social aspects of culture: the former guides and monitors humans actions while the latter stresses the traditional features shared by members of a society The guiding and sharing of a culture primarily take the form of values, norms, traditions, etc., which, in the long run, result in both public and mental/private presentations among the members of the culture who are being constantly influenced by it From the viewpoint of the Prague School of Linguistics or British Contextualism, “schools which conceive of language as primarily a social phenomenon, which is naturally and inextricably intertwined with culture” (House, 2002:92), the influence of culture on the members of the society in which it is embedded

is “exerted most prominently” through language used by the members in their interactions with members of both the same and different socio-cultural groups (ibid:93) This overriding position of language presiding any culture, depends not merely on its taken-for-granted role as the most important means of communicating, of transmitting information, and supplying human bonding It is also established on its use by the members of a culture as the prime means to acquire knowledge of the world, to transmit

or visualize their respective mental presentations In addition, language also functions as

a means to categorise cultural experience, thought and behaviour In a nutshell, language

becomes the prime instrument of a “collective knowledge reservoir” (ibid) to be passed

on from one generation to another

It follows that language and culture are naturally and obviously interrelated, in the most intimate manner, on the levels of semantics where the vocabulary of a language reflects the culture shared by its speakers And this thus naturally brings us back to our preluding assumption of terms of address as cultural key terms As will be reviewed in Section 2.3 below, the use of terms of address to designate people constitutes a universal politeness phenomenon, which falls on the first, i.e., the human, level of our anthropological characterisation of culture However, when, how and what address terms

to use to realize politeness with reference to address behaviour depends on the social norms of a culture And this constitutes the cultural specificity of the universal politeness phenomenon where addressing and/or referring to people is concerned, an identification which corresponds to the second and third levels of the anthropological differentiation of culture, that is the social/national and demographical levels of culture

Recognition of language as falling within the broader context of culture whereby meaning is seen as contextually determined and constructed thus entails a cultural implication for translation, a variability factor the translator has to take into account As Nida (1964:130) incisively puts it, “differences between cultures may cause more severe complications for the translator than do differences in language structure.” This is especially true of situations where CKW are involved In Aixelá’s (1996:57) words,

There is a common tendency to identify [CKW] with those items especially linked to the arbitrary area of each linguistic system – its local institutions, streets, historical figures,

place names, personal names, periodicals, works of art, etc – which will normally present

a translation problem in other languages

Apparently, terms of address pertain to this category of lexical items and will undoubtedly posit a problem in translation To solve this problem, two diametrically opposing approaches emerge as the usual practices, as succinctly depicted by Aixelá (1996:54, original emphasis):

Thus, faced with the difference implied by the other, with a whole series of cultural signs

capable of denying and/or questioning our own way of life, translation provides the receiving society with a wide range of strategies, ranging from conservation (acceptance

of the difference by means of the reproduction of the cultural signs in the source text), to naturalization (transformation of the other into a cultural replica)

Admittedly, however, both Aixelá’s identification and conceptualisation of the two strategies come as nothing new As will be reviewed in 2.1 below, various terms have been conceived to capture the strategical dichotomy of translations, from the time-honoured free-literal, to the contemporary foreignizing-domesticating By adopting Venuti’s dichotomy as a cover term, this study wishes to explore, more specifically, the usefulness of the dichotomy as a way of analyzing and explaining how translators deal with Chinese titles and honorifics concerned

1.1.2 Translation as Choices

The definition of language and culture serves as a vantage point for a cultural approach to translation as taking place in concrete, definable situations that involve members of different cultures (Chesterman, 1993:2; Nord, 1997:23) Since translating means comparing cultures (Nord, 1997:34), the translating process entails, first of all, a process of comparing, and, then, one of motivated choices This observation implies that

translation must be studied as the behaviour of (people who call themselves or are called) translators, together with the end-results of their behaviour, i.e., translations This observation can be understood in the following manners, which is expected to help the adoption of a descriptive approach for the present research

On the one hand, if a text can be called appropriately “a translation”, it must

satisfy the “necessary and sufficient condition” that there must be a relation that can be

definitely perceived as existing between the source text (ST) and the target text (TT) (Chesterman, 1993:3) If we ignore the criterion assumed upon the identification of some mythical “perfect equivalence” (or even “adequate equivalence”) between the two texts in question, we are left with two other means One means of establishing the translation status of a text is by virtue of the translator claiming that such a relation exists and the receiver of the text accepting the claim Under ideal, theoretical conditions, the larger the proportion of receivers who agree with the translator’s claim, the stronger the claim becomes Nevertheless, if the receivers do not agree with the claim, the translation status

of the text becomes dubious In this case, an alternative, more feasible means is necessary And this is descriptive translation studies By using the protocol method, this approach studies individual translation texts as products and translation process as a form of human behaviour Its purpose is to describe and explain any behaviour which leads to something that can be appropriately called a translation In other words, the approach, similar to other general descriptive laws pertaining to any form of human behaviour, describes what translators (at various levels of translation competence) tend to do under certain given circumstances

On the other hand, the rationality of human translation behaviour is procedural rather than prescriptive or substantive It is safe to assume that human translators are rational beings It follows that their translation behaviour is governed by rational decisions What is meant by rational behaviour is two-fold: the translating action is not only based on some kind of text; it is also determined by the context and goal of the behaviour Text here is a broad, functional concept “combining verbal and nonverbal elements, situational clues and ‘hidden’ or presumed information” (Nord, 1997:25) Like any text, a text used as ST in the translating process is no longer the first and foremost criterion for the translator’s decisions Among the various sources of information used by the translator, it may be regarded as an “offer of information” (ibid) Faced with this offer, the translator chooses what s/he regards as interesting, useful or adequate to the desired purpose, and then transfers it into the target culture, making it a new offer of information therein During this process, the translator can be trusted to make rational choices

“heuristically” (Chesterman, 1993:13) These choices are “not fixed in advance in any mathematically precise sense Instead, they are the “best” options the translator can think

of at the time, and represent a combination of his/her “past experience with selective heuristics for reaching a satisfactory choice” (ibid) Behind each rational act is a translation strategy, a potentially conscious procedure for the solution of a problem which [the translator] is faced with when translating a text segment (Lörscher, 1991:76, cited in Cheterman, ibid) Hatim and Mason (1990:12) are right in concluding that “[t]ranslation

is a matter of choice, but choice is always motivated: omissions, additions and alterations may indeed be justified but only in relation to indented meaning” Descriptive translation studies will therefore set out to describe and account for the actual translation choices the translator makes in actual translations

1.2 THE RESEARCH

1.2.1 Focus of the Study

Each culture has developed and defined their own sets and system of address terms and the roles they serve in society, and such socio-cultural terms are “rather static objects and linguistic artefacts” (Hatim, 1999:219) It is thus possible, through forms of address, “to understand a culture’s power structure, particular interpersonal communication patterns, and the normative elements of the family system, structure, and

functions” (Huang and Jia, 2002) As far as the Chinese HLM is concerned, it contains an

abundance of terms of address Sun (1991) classifies the various terms of address used in the novel into four groups, i.e., titles, kinship terms, honorofics and emotional terms He then outlines four principles governing the use of these types of terms respectively, by

members, relatives and servants of the Jia House in HLM The four principles are

Principle of Social Stratification, Principle of Patriarchal Clan, Principle of Politeness and Principle of Emotion However, due to limit of space, this study focuses only on two

dimensions of the Chinese address terms in the first twelve chapters of HLM and their

renderings in the five English versions, i.e titles and honorifics These two dimensions pertain to Sun’s Principle of Social Stratification and Politeness Principle respectively But as will be seen in Section 2.3, since Sun’s Principle of Politeness collates with Gu’s (1990) Self-denigration Maxim, it thus is renamed after Gu as “Principle of Self-denigration” What follows is a justification of the research focus

1.2.1.1 Social Stratification

Titles constitute an important aspect of analysis in this study, not only because

they count for the most instances of address terms used in HLM (Sun, 1991:191), but also

because Chinese and English titles are mostly “false friends” As will be discussed in Chapter 3 below, since the two Jia branches belong to a peerage (at the rank of the Chinese dukedom) descent beyond the royal family, here one would assume that there is a universal phenomenon of address behaviour in both Chinese and English, especially with reference to members of the peerage family But if one relates the English and Chinese peerage system to the respective social conditions in which it is contextualised, more differences than similarities can be identified The superficial universalistic similarities which the caste of the peerage in both English and Chinese shares consist of: (1) the division of peers into five ranks (i.e., Baron, Viscount, Earl, Marquis, and Duke), (2) the conferment of a noble title by a king or queen in Britain and an emperor in old China respectively, (3) the heritability of the title by the eldest son of the conferred, and (4) the customary naming of a place as a territorial designation

Apart from these, Chinese peerage cannot be compared with their British

“counterparts” This is because either legally or politically Chinese peers did not enjoy as many rights and privileges as the British peers did Officially, the British peerage had and still enjoys status higher than their Chinese “counterparts” did in feudal societies In England, the Duke is next only to a Prince in status In old China, say, in the Qing

Dynasty (1616-1911) when the HLM story took place, there were six other hereditary

imperial nobility ranks in between the Prince and the Dukedom, i.e., Imperial Prince (亲

王), Heir of Imperial Prince (世子), Commandery Prince (郡王), Heir of Commandery Prince (长子), Beile (贝勒) and Beile Prince (贝子) (Zhang and Yuan, 1994; Zuo, 1985)

Politically, English law recognises a peerage as an incorporeal and impartible hereditament, inalienable and descendable according to the words of limitations in the grant, if any Peers in Britain used to be the military companions and the tenants-in-chief

of the English monarchs Greater definition of their position and privileges became necessary in the 13th-century with the development of parliamentary institutions The principle right of a peer is to a seat in the upper house of Parliament, the House of Lords, though a life peerage granted to a woman carried with it no seat in the House of Lords (Wallace, 2002) As a corollary of this right, heirs and younger sons of peers can sit in the House of Commons (ibid) Besides, a peerage in Britain enjoys many other privileges,

“although not as many as they once did” (ibid) A peerage has a right to be excused as of right from jury service, a right to be excused from serving as a witness, and freedom from arrest in civil causes, etc Most of these rights, however, were not privileged to the Chinese peers For instance, they could not even sit in an imperial counsel, a procedure similar to the British Parliament They even did not enjoy immunity from civil arrest As

the HLM story tells us, the Jia Mansions were later officially ransacked with all properties

confiscated; even all the people in the big family were arrested, with their servants sold

interactions between socially equal dyads, such as colleagues, old family friends (i.e., 世交

in Chinese) and acquaintances (Sun, 1991:204), it entails elevating both Other (i.e., the hearer) and the people and things that are associated with Other while depreciating Self (i.e., the speaker) and the people and things on Self’s side (Gu, 1990:246) The phenomenon of politeness whereby showing respect to Other and humility to Self is realised by means of special linguistic expressions is peculiar to Chinese, Japanese, Korean and some other cultures (Yao, 1990:147; Gu, 1992:15) In English, people may convey their respect or courtesy to Other But they do not have a particular set of terms which share the nature of Chinese other-elevating terms Instead, they make use of appreciatory epithets (such as “honourable”, “respectable”, “reverend”, etc.) to achieve this purpose Such epithets, coined provisionally, do not come with the practice of depreciating Self in order to “reciprocate” respect to Other (Yao, 1990:147) As such, rendering the Chinese honorifics in question will understandably pose a challenge to the translators, and thus constitutes our focus

1.2.2 Adopting Venuti: A Rationale

The present study adopts Venuti’s (1995) dichotomy of translations into domesticating and foreignizing (abbreviated as “D-F dichotomy” henceforth) (see 2.1.2.2 for conceptual description) on account of two considerations The first is an obvious, as well as practical and convenient consideration: it ties in with the ultimate objective of the research to explore how this dichotomy can be effectively used to epitomise translations,

or the renditions of the Chinese titles and honorifics under investigation In Baker’s (1998c:163) words, our goal is to “investigat[e] the evaluative yardstick that is used in

making statements about translations in a given socio-cultural context” rather than

“attempting to evaluate translations” The second has to do with the critical emphasis of the dichotomy on the cultural values of translations This emphasis conforms to the two underlying assumptions of this study: i.e., translating as translating culture, and terms of address as cultural key terms By adopting terms of address as our foci of analysis, we wish to test how this aspect of translation can be analysed to determine whether they are domesticated or foreignized It is thus expected that the study obtains “intersubjectively testable” (Toury, 1995:3) generalizations of translator behaviour by comparing versions

of the same ST Since the database of the study encompasses the five English versions of

HLM, and since different dichotomies have been employed by previous researchers to

label these versions (see 2.2 for detailed review), the use of Venuti’s dichotomy, apart from doing justice to all these labels, expects to supersede them on the basis of objectively generalizable findings derived

1.2.3 Objectives of the Study

Using titles and honorifics as foci, the study aims to contribute to the existing literature on Venuti’s dichotomy of translations in relation to translation strategy by providing new insights through applying it in practical translation analysis on both a theoretical and practical level As far as the theoretical landscape is concerned, the study intends to have a better understanding of Venuti’s dichotomy, that is, how to conceptualize and examine a translator’s (conscious or subconscious) orientation in handling cultural differences The practical landscape, on the other hand, consists in the

exemplification of how translators domesticates or foreignizes, in different cultural domains, by different means, to different extents, with different degrees of consistency

1.2.4 Justification of the study

This study finds justification from four facets First of all, it constitutes the first systematic application of Venuti’s D-F conceptualisation As will be reviewed in the forthcoming chapter, half a dozen terms have been advocated to epitomise translation strategies throughout the history of translation theory Different as they are in name, they all group translation strategies into an opposing dichotomy, Venuti being no exception Unfortunately however, no study has been conducted with an aim to examine how these dichotomies can be actualised with support from substantial data Therefore, this study,

by focusing on translations of cultural key words from five versions spanning nearly a century (from the 1890s to the 1980s), commits itself to an analysis to see how translators orientates themselves in handling cultural differences when translating

Secondly, this study distinguishes itself from previous ones which also use as data

the English versions of HLM in that it seeks to draw conclusions from intersubjectively

testable translation norms with reference to the aspect of translation under investigation, Norms is here used to mean options which “are regularly taken up by translators at a given time and in a given socio-cultural situation” and “represent an intermediate level between competence and performance” (Baker, 1993:239) As will be seen in the

Literature Review with respect to previous studies of HLM translations, these studies

mostly concern themselves with a contrast and comparison of a modicum of laden instances from two versions Such a practice not only apparently presumes an

culturally-antinomy between the versions under scrutiny More importantly, the scarcity of data used calls into question the reliability and validity of the conclusions thus derived In view of these inadequacies, this study not only relies on a larger database, but also involves all the five available versions

The third justification of the study is connected with both the first and second ones spelt out above That is, it will not only show how to choose some significant domain of cross-cultural difference for case study to substantialize the conceptualisation

of the D-F dichotomy Importantly, this study will devise an analytical framework whereby descriptive analyses can be conducted on the choices under examination for significant conclusions It is thus expected that this study will also contribute in opening

up vistas for the role which a descriptive analysis based on a corpus of source and target texts plays, i.e., its potential in “allow[ing] us to record strategies of translation which are repeatedly opted for, in preference to other strategies, in a given culture or textual system” (Baker, 1993:240)

In addition, this study will offer a different perspective from which Chinese titles and honorifics can be re-examined, not only for its own sake, but for the sake of both language teaching and cross-cultural communication While the way in which one person addresses another and is in turn addressed constitutes a social event of great regularity (Brown, 1965) and forms a part and parcel of the universal phenomenon of politeness, it

is insufficient in language instruction “to label a [linguistic] form as a form of politeness and to leave it at that”, just as it is to master the grammatical rule of the language “to get along and be accepted in a foreign culture” (Braun, 1988:63-64) As far as translation is

concerned, it raises the issue whether literal transference of an address form is always adequate To put it another way, whether identifying and signposting a term of address in its context and determining its position within the system of politeness is very informative for a learner or reader

1.2.5 Hypothesis and questions of the study

This study ties up the general nature of a translation with the meaning values of cultural key words of Chinese honorifics Targeting at its main objective, this study sets out to test the following three inter-related hypotheses:

(1) The dynamics of Chinese politeness as conveyed via titles and honorifics can be

relayed trans-culturally but will involve some degree of linguistic modification at the level of texture

(2) The more meaning or cultural values a rendition acquires, the nearer it is orientated

to the meaning values of its ST counterpart In contrast, the fewer meaning values a rendition scores, the farther away it is orientated from the meaning values of the ST original And as a corollary,

(3) A foreignizing strategy results in renditions which are orientated to the meaning values of their ST counterparts whereas a domesticating strategy in renditions orientated away from the meaning values of their ST original

In line with its objectives and hypotheses, the research tries to find answers to the following questions:

(1) How do the translators concerned orientate themselves respectively to foreignization

or domestication while dealing with the CKW in question?

(2) To what degree do the translators foreignize or domesticate their renditions of the specific CKW and whether their approaches are consistent?

(3) Is there any consistent pattern in the kinds of meaning values perceived in the ST titles and honorifics which are perforce omitted in translation?

1.3 HONG LOU MENG

1.3.1 The Story

Generally considered to be an autobiographical account of the writer’s life, the

standard 120-chapter novel HLM is “a blend of realism and romance, psychological motivation and fate, daily life and supernatural occurrences” (NEB, 1994:218) Its story takes place mainly domestically, within the enclosure of family compound called Jia Fu

(贾府) or The Jia Mansion, the predilection for the closed world of what seems to be a heavenly garden, the glory and luxury of which is depicted in closely observed detail As

“a complex novel” (Hsia, 1996:257), it describes “30 main characters” and involved

“more than 400 minor ones” (NEB, 1994:218) Although the story details the decline of

the Jia family, composed of two main branches, with a proliferation of kinsmen and servants, it primarily focuses on the ill-fated triangular love affair between Baoyu (宝玉), the gifted but obstinate heir of the clan, and his two beautiful cousins, i.e the melancholy Daiyu (黛玉), daughter of his father’s sister, and the vivacious Baochai (宝钗), daughter of his mother’s sister The (en)tangled romance ends with Daiyu’s death in despair while her

rival Baochai, under the arrangement of the paramount Grandmother Jia, or Lady Dowager (Yangs, 1978), steps onto the wedding carpet with Baoyu, who eventually

“perfunctorily discharg[es] his worldly duties” and “pursues the path of holy

indifference” (Hsia, 1996:288) Because of the karmic relation of a magic stone (通灵宝玉)

to the hero Baoyu – of which he is an incarnation, and with which he was born – the

novel HLM is also called 《石头记》 Shi Tou Ji, or The Story of the Stone as Hawkes (1973)

renders it The nearly one million words HLM people lay hands on today is mostly a

combination of eighty chapters of what has been deemed Cao Xue-qin’s (1724-1764)

original manuscript entitled Shi Tou Ji and 40 chapters of continuation believed to be

written by Gao E (高鹗) when it was first published in 1791-1792

1.3.2 English Translations

1.3.2.1 General introduction

The allegorical and marvellous framework of HLM brings a colouring more

Buddhist than Taoist to the work, playing on the reality and fiction underlying the sufferings that threaten when the enjoyment of life in the enchanted world of childhood and adolescence comes to an end It goes without saying that this seems a radically original novel to the western reader: the development of feelings of love in a doomed and unauthentic world This is perhaps owing to the belief that “the greatest love stories have

no time or place” (Doren, 1958:viii) With translations into eighteen languages, in

fifty-three versions, abridged and complete (Zhu, 1997:303) up to date, HLM can be said to be

the only Chinese literary work that has enjoyed such international popularity The proliferation of one foreign novel into so many translations might indicate the interest the

readers in the target languages show in the novel and justify Doren’s (1958:viii) comparison of the Baoyu-and-Daiyu tragedy to that of Romeo-and-Juliet

Since this study is concerned with a comparison of five English translations of the novel, an introduction to these translations will be presented While the term “version” is defined synonymously as “translation”, it is necessary to differentiate between the various

foreign language versions into which HLM has been transformed in the last couple of centuries The distinction that is made here is “adapted” or “abridged” translations versus

“complete” or “integral” ones As is obvious from the modifiers, an adapted/abridged

version is a translation that is made based upon a shortened version of the original, which may be abridged by the translator him/herself or by others In contrast, a complete/integral translation loosely refers to one that renders the original work in an unabridged manner This distinction is necessary because it is virtually impossible to have access to as many instances of renditions for the titles and honorifics in the abridged versions as it is in the complete ones

1.3.2.2 Abridged versions

Attempts at transforming the Chinese novel into English in one way or another can be traced back to the 1840s when Robert Tom, the British consul in Ningbo, translated several extracts of it and got them published as manuals for British citizens

learning Mandarin in the Ningbo journal The Chinese Speaker (《 中 国 话 》) (Hu, 1993:130) This epoch-making undertaking, which initiated the introduction of the Chinese classic, should be attributed to the “China fever” prevalent in Europe at the time

(He, 2001:4) An English version of the HLM story, according to Birch (1959:378), “is

destined to be something of a landmark” And the first attempt to make the HLM story

accessible to the western mind in an abridged format is Wang Liangzhi (王良志)3 in 1927 Focusing on the love affair of Baoyu and Daiyu, he adapted and translated the novel into

a 600,000 word, 95-chapter story, and had it published in New York (Hu, 1993:131) Unfortunately however, neither this work nor studies of it are accessible here

Not long after this attempt, “suddenly two landmarks [of English HLM] rear[ed]

themselves in the same spot” (Birch, 1959:386) On the one hand, another Chinese scholar, Chi-Chen Wang (王际真), a professor of Chinese at the University of Columbia,

got his revised and enlarged English abridgement of Dream of the Red Chamber

published in New York in 1958 According to Hu (1993:131), this work is still deemed with praise and republished several times, and Chi-Chen Wang is thus credited to have

contributed greatly to the introduction and promotion of HLM to the vast western

readership Arthur Waley, the doyen of English translations of many Chinese classics

(e.g., Journey West (《西游记》)) prefaced Wang’s earlier (1929) edition by saying:

It only remains to assure the reader that in Mr Wang’s hands he will be perfectly safe The translation is singularly accurate, and the work of adaptation skilfully performed”

(cited in Doren, 1958:ix)

As for the lengthened second edition, Hawkes acknowledges it as excelling in many aspects, especially in story-telling (Lin, 1976:1), while Doren (1958:viii-ix) adores

It is agreeable to remember now the words of so great an authority and to realize that with the passage of nearly thirty years Mr Wang, in addition to doubling the length of his text, has so perfected his style that the inimitable spirit of the original comes to us freely and fully, with neither let nor hindrance nor any least disloyalty of voice

On the other hand, another concurrent attempt in the English-speaking world to make the Chinese novel accessible to western readers was under way This time it was conducted by two native speakers of English, the McHugh sisters, Florence and Isabel

Entitled The Dream of the Red Chamber and also published in the U.S., there are two

things about this attempt that deserve mentioning here One is that this English translation

is based on an abridged German version by Franz Kuhn (1884-1961) published in 1932, rather than a first-hand adaptation and subsequent translation from the Chinese original The reason why the McHugh sisters adopted this version as their “ST” might be more accountable by the fact that Kuhn’s German abridgement has enjoyed more popular recognition in Europe than any other such attempt before (Zhou, 2000:318), than by the fact that the McHugh sisters cannot speak or read Chinese Indeed, Kuhn’s work has been

adopted as “the original” and translated into French, Italian, Dutch and Hungarian,

besides this English one (Li, 1994:328; Zhou, 2000:318) The other thing worthy of special notice about the McHugh sisters’ version is that it ironically “calls the kettle

black” In the “Introduction” to their work by Kuhn (who is also the translator of Jin Ping

Mei or Plum in the Golden Vase (《金瓶梅》), another vernacular Chinese classic novel), Bencraft Joly’s (1892-93) seminal attempt in translating into English the first fifty-six chapters of the same novel (to be discussed shortly) is criticised as “not even reach[ing] the halfway point of the original”, while Chi-Chen Wang’s 1929 work is charged with

“cover[ing] barely one-fourth of my [Kuhn’s] version, and, particularly in its later part, [being] more in the nature of an abstract than a translation” (Kuhn, 1958:xiv) However,

critics point out that Kuhn’s work is far from the asserted five-sixths of the original Instead, this assertion can only “be intended to imply ‘five-sixths of [the action of] the original” (Birch, 1959:386) In fact it is no more than a condensed adaptation of the original into fifty chapters (forty-five out of the first one hundred, and five out of the final twenty) (Li, 1994:328), which amounts to “280,000 words” (Birch, 1959:387)

1.3.2.3 Complete translations

Whereas the aforementioned adaptors and translators should be credited for making effort in introducing the Chinese novel to the vast English readership, they should also be excused for the incompleteness that lies in their work Given the constraints set by their respective publishers and editors, and the enormity of time and energy the translating requires, these translators have all surmounted formidable heights in producing whatever amount of translation of the Chinese original Just imagine that both

Yangs and Hawkes spent around ten years consulting latest findings in studies of HLM,

clarifying numerous inconsistencies and mysteries, and securing their understanding, just

in order to produce a complete translation of the novel In this perspective, Birch (1959:387) seems justified in saying that these translators “have done real service to a world masterpiece, and…should and will be read, and read widely.”

However, seen from a purely translational perspective, any abridgement of the original will unavoidably lead to elimination of a number of details of compelling interest, just as any adaptation will undoubtedly result in loss, even betrayal, of the genuine, exotic flavour of the original According to Birch (ibid:387), the loss of Wang and McHugh’s abridged translations are “surprising” It is in this vein that both Yangs and Hawkes’s

120-chapter complete translations are most admired This is so because only when a translated literary work carries with it both its narrative appeal and its unique artistry can

it then be expected to acquire status and recognition as a literary work in the target culture and society For the real literary enthusiasts of foreign works, the second most original, enjoyable, insightful and informed appreciation, next only to reading the original, is reserved for the privileged few undertakings derived from a faithful and complete reproduction of the originals The following constitutes an introduction of the three such undertakings

1.3.2.3.1 Joly’s translation

The first attempt at a full translation of HLM bore fruit in 1892-93 when the first fifty-six chapters – under the title of Hung Lou Meng or The Dream of the Red Chamber,

A Chinese Novel – was published in Hong Kong This translation is the work of H

Bencraft Joly (known as乔利 in the Chinese translators and redologists’ circles), British vice-consulate to Macao (Hu, 1993:130; Lin, 1976:1) According to Joly (1892-93: Preface), his endeavour

was suggested not by any pretensions to range among the ranks of the body of sinologues, but by the perplexities and difficulties experienced by [him] as a student in Peking, when

at the completion of the Tzu Erh Chi, [he] had to plunge in the maze of the Hung Lou

Meng

As the first complete though uncompleted translation into a western language,

Joly’s work “represents the highest achievement in the translation of HLM in the

nineteenth century” (Hu, 1993:130) Unfortunately, however, despite his ambitious intention of “affording a helping hand to present and future students of the Chinese