摘 要

《红楼梦》诞生于18世纪中叶，是中国古典小说艺术的集大成者，它展现了清代中国社会文化的全景。此外，《红楼梦》还是汉语使用的“宝库”。小说中运用了大量诗歌、谚语、典故、熟语等。

作为我国古典白话小说巅峰之作，《红楼梦》在19世纪初即已引起西方关注。在两百多年外译史中，《红楼梦》经历片段翻译、节译、选译、转译等诸多形式，最终在20世纪出现全译本。迄今为止，英语全译本已经超过了10种，其中尤以杨宪益、戴乃迭夫妇的译本和英国汉学家大卫·霍克斯及其女婿约翰·闵福德的译本最为著名，两译本中大量生动形象的熟语的翻译更是引起了翻译界的广泛关注，也是本文的主要研究对象。熟语形式简单，但具有丰富的意义，在人们的语言交流中起到了巨大的作用。无论是非正式场合还是正式场合，无论是文人还是手工劳动者，都离不开熟语的使用。熟语的研究是在一定的语境中研究文化内涵，这就要求研究者具备对当地文化的理解能力。另一方面，研究熟语在翻译作品中的运用，就是研究隐涵的文化意义是如何移植到另一种文化中的。

本文包含四个章节。第一章是作家、作品及译本介绍。第二章是文献综述。第三章对《红楼梦》两种译本进行对比研究，分析《红楼梦》中熟语的翻译策略。第四章是基于以上分析得出的研究结论及本研究的局限性。本文通过对两个译本中熟语翻译的比较，考察了不同译者所使用的翻译策略，反映了译者对翻译活动本质的思考，以及在不同语言中翻译文化负载词的本质。

关键词：《红楼梦》；熟语英译；对比研究；翻译策略

Abstract

A Dream of Red Mansions, one of China’s greatest classic novels throughout the history, appeared in the mid-18th century, which unfolds a panorama of Chinese society and culture in Qing dynasty. Other than its social and cultural significance, it is also a treasure house of Chinese language use. The novel is studded with Chinese poems, proverbs, allusions, idioms and the like .

As the pinnacle of Chinese ancient vernacular novel, it has already attracted the attention of the west in the early 19th century. In the history of foreign language translation for more than two hundred years, A Dream of Red Mansions has been translated into English in various forms, such as fragment translation, abridged translation, selected translation and rendering. There have been more than ten full-length English versions of this novel so far. But A Dream of Red Mansions translated by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang, and The Story of the Stone by David Hawkes and his son-in-law John Minford have gained high reputation. The translation of a large number of vivid idioms in the two translations has aroused widespread concern in the translation community and is also the main research object of this paper. Idioms, concise in form but rich in meaning, which plays a great role in human language communication. Idioms have a wide range of use and users, varying from formal occasions to informal ones and from men of letters to men working with their hands. To study idioms is to study the cultural implications in a certain context, which requires the researchers to be competent in understanding the local culture. On the other hand, to study idioms in translation works is to study how the implied cultural meaning is transferred into another culture.

This paper consists of four chapters. The first chapter is the introduction to the novel, the writer and the translation versions. The second chapter is dedicated to literature review of the present research. In the third chapter, a contrastive study will be conducted between two translation versions to analyze the translation strategies of idioms from A Dream of Red Mansions. The last chapter is the conclusion of the research findings based on the analysis on the above. Other than that, there will be a short narration about the limitations of the present research. By comparing the idiom translation, the paper examines translation strategies used by different translators, which mirror translators’ thoughts about the nature of translation activities and the essence of translating culture-loaded expressions in a different language.

Key Words: The Dream of Red Mansions; Idiom translation; Contrastive study; Translation strategies