Style in speech and narration of two English translations of Hongloumeng : A corpus-based multidimensional study

Isabelle Chou and Kanglong Liu
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China | Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Abstract

This study examines the style of two English translations of Hongloumeng, by David Hawkes, and Xianyi Yang and Gladys Yang. It makes use of multidimensional analysis to identify how the two translations differ in their sub-registers (narration and fictional speech). The results reveal that the Yangs’ translation of narration is relatively more narrative and context-independent, whereas Hawkes’ is more active and context-bound. Similarly, Hawkes’ translation of fictional speech is more conversational and interactional and tends more towards the orality scale with a strong emphasis on the involvement of fictional characters. In contrast, the Yangs’ translation of fictional speech tends to be more informational and explicit. These stylistic differences reflect the translators’ conscious and/or unconscious choices, which are attributable to their language backgrounds, translation strategies, and cultural stances. By taking sub-register variation and the functions of linguistic features into consideration, the article outlines a new approach to investigating translation style.

Keywords:
Publication history

Date received: 29 January 2022

Date accepted: 16 November 2023

Published online: 11 December 2023

Table of contents

Acclaimed as one of the four classical masterpieces in China, Hongloumeng (Cao and Gao 2005; hereafter HLM) has enjoyed enduring fame for its vivid depiction of almost every facet of eighteenth-century China. The first eighty chapters of the novel were authored by Xueqin Cao (1715–1763) while the remaining forty chapters were authored by E. Gao (1738–1885) following Cao’s death. The novel has been translated into more than twenty languages across the centuries (Shengyu and Minford 2017). Among dozens of its English translations, two have been widely read and studied, namely, A Dream of Red Mansions (Cao 1978a, 1978b, 1980a) by Xianyi Yang (also spelled as Hsien-Yi Yang) and Gladys Yang (YT hereafter), and The Story of the Stone, translated by David Hawkes (Cao 1973, 1977, 1980b) and John Minford (Cao 1982, 1986) (HT hereafter). Since their publication, many comparative and contrastive studies have been conducted on various linguistic aspects of these two translations, including metaphor translation (Met and Li 1997; Lian 2014), colour terms (Ke 1995), hedges and boosters (Liu, Kwok, and Moratto 2022), and even idioms (Su 2021). These lines of inquiry have yielded some interesting insights into the translators’ tactics and strategies for handling translation challenges in the novel.

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