摘要

《红楼梦》是国内外文坛的一朵奇葩，享有很高的文学和艺术价值。随着中西文化的交流，《红楼梦》目前已有九个英译本，其中最成功的是由杨宪益、戴乃迭翻译的A Dream of Red Mansions和霍克斯、闵福德翻译的The Story of the Stone。《红楼梦》蕴含了丰富的宗教文化，中国传统的佛、道思想在该著作中有很多体现，信奉基督教的西方读者在阅读时难免遇到宗教方面的文化壁垒，对译者而言如何处理这种文化壁垒尤为重要。杨宪益、戴乃迭的译本主要采用了异化翻译法；霍克斯、闵福德的译本则使用了归化法。本文对比了杨、霍译本在翻译过程中处理宗教意象、宗教思想、死亡诠释的方法，总结了两个译本的翻译策略，分析了影响译者选取各自翻译方法和策略的因素：译者的意图，目标读者和历史政治背景。

关键词：《红楼梦》；宗教文化；异化法；归化法

Abstract

Hong Long Meng is a masterpiece at home and abroad, enjoying high literature and art value. With the increasing culture exchanges between China and English-speaking countries, nine English versions appeared. Among them, the most successful and influential are A Dream of Red Mansions translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang and The Story of the Stone by David Hawkes and John Minford. Hong Long Meng contains rich religious cultures, embodying Chinese traditional Buddhism and Taoism ideology in many places. It is no doubt that the western readers who believe in Christianity will encounter culture barriers, since it is very important for translators to deal with those barriers appropriately. On religious element translation, the Yangs mainly adopted domestication and Hawkes used foreignization mostly. This paper makes a comparison between two versions’ translation for religious images, religious ideology and interpretations on death to conclude translation strategies. Finally, it analyzes the factors influencing translators to choose translation principles. Those factors are translators’ purpose, target readers and historical and political backgrounds.

Key words: Hong Long Meng; religious cultures; domestication; foreignization

Introduction

Before the emergence of “culture turn”, translation has been seen as a tool merely transferring one language to another. But since “culture turn”, translation has shifted its focus on from language level to culture level. That is to say, the mastery of foreign languages is not enough for translators. They should put an emphasis on cultural differences to achieve cultural exchanges.