摘要

作为中国古典小说四大名著之一的《红楼梦》可谓是我国传统文化百花园中孕育出的一株光彩熠熠的奇葩，有着极高的欣赏价值和研究价值。它是一部内容丰富的历史文卷，是对中国封建社会全貌的一部翔实写照。曹雪芹曾在书中感叹到“满纸荒唐言，一把辛酸泪。都云作者痴，谁解其中味？”。在这由男性主导的封建大家族中，被作者称为是水做的女人，自然是有流不完的眼泪。研究《红楼梦》却忽视其中的“泪”，是不可能完全的理解作家和其作品的。但是迄今为止并没有人全面、系统地研究过《红楼梦》中对哭态描写的具体翻译。本文旨在借由研究《红楼梦》中最具典型的字眼，以描述性翻译学为基础，利用红楼梦平行语料库来研究“哭”这一形态的种种翻译。
本文通过定量与定性相结合的分析方法，首先对《红楼梦》中的“哭”进行系统的分类，并借助语料库统计三种不同类别各自出现的频率；然后再对每一组内关键字的对应翻译分别检索，得出在英译本中各类别的使用频率情况；在此基础上，本文对译者翻译时考虑的因素进行分类讨论研究，分别从“哭”的场合，原因，哭者身份，哭的对象四个角度综合考虑语境对翻译“哭”字的影响。语料库工具的应用以及在定量基础上进行定性分析，弥补了国内关于《红楼梦》中“哭”的翻译研究空缺，为单个字的翻译表达研究和语料库的普及提供了重要范例，希望能为《红楼梦》及其翻译研究贡献微薄之力。

关键词：红楼梦，哭，描述性翻译研究，《红楼梦》平行语料库，语境

Abstract

As one of the China’s Four Great Classical Novels, Hong Lou Meng (hereinafter referred to as HLM) is an extraordinary treasure in Chinese traditional culture possessing great aesthetic and research value. It is regarded as an encyclopedia of Chinese language and culture. The author Cao Xueqin has once commented in the book saying HLM is “Pages full of idle word, penned with hot and bitter tears” (Cao, preface). And in this male-dominated feudal family, the females which according to the author are made by water inevitable have many tears to shed. Therefore, without a carefully analysis of “Ku” in HLM, one can hardly fully comprehend the author and his work. However, up to now there is no systematic and comprehensive research on the translation of “Ku” in HLM and thus this paper is dedicated to make a descriptive study on the expression of “Ku” based on the HLM Parallel Corpus.
In this paper, a combination of quantitative and qualitative method has been employed. The author firstly classifies the expression of “Ku” into three categories and calculates the frequency of each category used in HLM. Then by searching the typical correspondent word in target data the paper generates the frequency of each category in translated versions. Based on the above analysis, the paper continues to examine the factors which influence the translators’ decision of diction through dividing the context into different occasions, causes, status and gender regarding who sheds the tears and objects towards whom one sheds tears. In this paper, the author does not intend to evaluate the English versions in a static and closed way, but rather to adopt a descriptive approach which aims to analyze the translation in an open system and which emphasizes the contextualization of the translations.
The study constitutes the first attempt in translation analysis of the expression of “Ku” in HLM and hopes to popularize the use of corpus in translation studies by serving as an example of lexical translation study, and also shed light on the English studies of HLM.

Key words: Hong Lou Meng, the expressions of “Ku”, descriptive translation study, HLM parallel corpus, context