2026· International Journal of Humanities and Sustainable Innovation· 0 citations
Abstract
Honglou meng, the eighteenth-century Chinese novel by Cao Xueqin, stands as one of the greatest achievements in world literature. Its translation into English has produced two major complete versions: David Hawkes and John Minford's The Story of the Stone (1973–1986) and Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang's A Dream of Red Mansions (1978–1980). These two translations embody fundamentally different translation philosophies. Drawing on Lawrence Venuti's concepts of domestication and foreignization as the primary theoretical framework and supported by Eugene Nida's equivalence theory and Peter Newmark's translation procedures, this paper undertakes a systematic comparative analysis of the two versions across four key textual dimensions: culture-specific items, names and appellations, poetic discourse, and religious and philosophical terminology. The analysis reveals that the Hawkes-Minford version consistently adopts a domesticating strategy, rendering Chinese cultural elements into familiar English forms to maximize readability for the Anglophone reader. In contrast, the Yangs' version follows a predominantly foreignizing approach, preserving the strangeness of the source text and requiring greater cultural effort from its audience. Neither strategy is inherently superior; rather, each serves different readerships and reflects distinct historical and ideological contexts. The paper concludes by arguing that the coexistence of these two approaches enriches the English-language reception of Honglou meng and offers enduring insights for the translation of classical Chinese literature.
This study investigates constructional shifts in two influential English translations of Hong Lou Meng: the version by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang and the Hawkes–Minford version translated by David Hawkes and John Minford. Drawing on Construction Grammar and cognitive approaches to translation, the study adopts a qualitative comparative case-study design to examine how source-language constructions are reconfigured in the two translations. The analysis focuses on three textual domains: culturally loaded terms, poetic structures, and dialogue and narrative voice. Constructional shifts are examined across syntactic, lexical, semantic, pragmatic, and stylistic dimensions, with particular attention to their effects on semantic fidelity, cultural representation, literary style, and target-language readability. The analysis shows that the Yang version generally exhibits a stronger tendency to retain source-text structural relations and culturally specific meanings, whereas the Hawkes–Minford version more frequently employs restructuring, explicitation, and stylistic adaptation to enhance accessibility and literary fluency in English. These recurring differences reveal distinct translational orientations rather than a simple opposition between literal and free translation. The study argues that constructional shift provides an integrated framework for explaining how linguistic form, conceptual organization, cultural meaning, and literary function are reconstructed across languages, thereby contributing to the study of literary translation from a construction-based perspective.
Zhong-Yao Wang, Yu Wang· International Journal of Eng...· 0 citations
Domestication and foreignization are two common strategies for translators to deal with cultural differences. Based on Berman’s translation ethics and twelve deformations, this paper takes Bai Juyi’s the Everlasting Regret (selected sentences) as the object of study, adopts close reading and comparative analysis, and selects the English versions of Xu Yuanchong, Xu Zhongjie and W. J. B. Fletcher for comparative analysis, focusing on the different degrees of domestication and foreignization in the aspects of word choice, syntax, rhetorical organization, cultural transmission and so on, as well as the effects caused by these differences. The study found that in the English translation of classical Chinese poetry, in addition to the necessary domestication adjustment, the translator should retain the cultural background and aesthetic logic of the original poem as much as possible, so that the translation can achieve the purpose of conveying the cultural nature of this special literary genre. Therefore, in the English translation, foreignization enjoys ethical priority.
Chenfan Wang· English Language Teaching an...· 0 citations
Herbert George Wells wrote The Time Machine. This book holds an important place in science fiction history. Studying its Chinese translations can show us some rules behind science fiction translation. This paper uses Andrew Chesterman’s five models of translation ethics. It compares Chen Zhen’s and Qing Run’s Chinese versions. The comparison looks at terminology, sentence structure, and character speech styles. Different ethical orientations do affect translators’ choices. Chen Zhen’s translation leans toward representation and communication ethics. He tries to keep the original’s literary quality and intellectual depth. He uses foreignizing strategies more often. Qing Run’s translation focuses more on service and norm ethics. He values readability and target readers’ habits. He uses domesticating strategies frequently. This study hopes to offer theoretical help for science fiction translation practice. It also tries to broaden the use of translation ethics in literary translation criticism.
Bo Li, Peifang Zhang· Journal of Education and Cul...· 0 citations
Du Fu has long been regarded as the greatest poet in Chinese literary history. Both American sinologist Stephen Owen and Chinese historian William Hung have highly praised his literary achievements and cultural significance. As one of Du Fu’s most representative long narrative poems, Five Hundred Words from Ch’ang-an to Feng-hsien embodies profound social criticism, personal concerns, and rich cultural connotations, making it an important text for the translation and dissemination of classical Chinese poetry. Drawing on Chesterman’s (2016) memes of translation, this study aims to investigate how translation strategies shape the transmission of cultural, ideological, emotional, and poetic memes in the English translation of Du Fu’s poetry, thereby deepening understanding of the preservation, adaptation, and transformation of Chinese classical poetry across cultures. Using qualitative textual analysis, it compares the translation strategies adopted by the two translators and investigates how these strategies influence the transmission of poetic memes across linguistic and cultural boundaries. The analysis focuses on the translation of cultural images, historical allusions, poetic language, and emotional expression. The findings reveal distinct strategic preferences between the two translators. Owen generally adopts a source-oriented approach that emphasizes linguistic fidelity and cultural preservation, whereas Hung tends to employ a more target-oriented approach characterized by explicitness change, interpretation, and cultural filtering, prioritizing readability and accessibility for English readers. These differences influence the fidelity, fecundity, and longevity of poetic memes in the target culture. The study argues that effective meme transmission requires a balance between preserving source-cultural meanings and addressing target readers’ communicative needs.
Hongyuan Feng, Roslina Mamat, Zaid Mohd Zin· International Journal of Eng...· 0 citations
Poetry translation, which requires consistency in both artistic and semantic terms, has been one of the most controversial areas of translation studies, creating various obstacles to theoretical and practical discussions. While translation studies in the 1950s and 1960s were more linguistically oriented and focused on the language level, a cultural approach came to the forefront in the 1970s. Lawrence Venuti’s strategies of “domestication” and “foreignization” in translation are notable examples of this approach. Analyzing the translations produced by a Turkish translator (S. Behlül Toygar) and native English-speaking translator (Roger Finch), this study aims to determine which translation technique each translator primarily uses and the extent to which their translational decisions reflect domestication or foreignization tendencies. Moreover, the study comparatively examines how the translators dealt with the lexical, syntactic, semantic, phonological, and graphological elements of the source text. By comparing these linguistic and stylistic categories, the study identifies the parallels and discrepancies between the two translations, assesses how well they capture the aesthetic and semantic elements of the original poem, and highlights the gains, losses, and changes in poetic form and meaning in the translation from Turkish to English. It was concluded that poetry translation often requires a compromise between meaning, form, and culture, rather than achieving complete equivalence, and that Toygar and Finch, instead of copying Beyatlı’s poem “Flight,” recreated it within new linguistic and cultural contexts.
Senem Üstün Kaya· Türk Dili ve Edebiyatı Dergi...· 0 citations
This study adopts a descriptive research method, taking Zhang Peiji's and DeepSeek's English translations of the Chinese literary essay classicsThe Sight of Father's BackandTransient Daysas research objects, to evaluate the feasibility of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) empowering the cross-cultural re-canonization of essay classics. The study finds that GenAI can be applied to the cross-cultural re-canonization of essay classics, with satisfactory performance at the semantic and grammatical levels. However, regarding GenAI's deficiencies in reproducing the author's style, emotional diction, and tonal rhythm, it is proposed to establish a human-machine collaboration matrix to reshape "canonicity" through three stages: pre-translation text analysis, in-translation instruction adjustment, and post-translation optimization and quality evaluation. This study can provide references for the translation of Chinese essays in cross-cultural re-canonization.
Yuquan Deng· Communications in Humanities...· 0 citations
