Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Object is one of the most important components of a sentence. It is sometimes inevitableto take object into consideration in researches on translation, especially object selection. SunTianqi pointes out, "object selection is the core of the argument realization. What kind ofsemantic components can be selected as object? How about the object alternation in thederivation? And what are the dissimilarities on object selection among different languages?Those are the core and difficult issues of argument realization". However, translation studieson object selection are few. And the translators are often puzzled with the selection of object,which is related to subject, VP, predicative complements. necessary to exploreobject selection in Chinese-into-English translation (hereafter abbreviated as C-E translation).Hong Lou Meng (hereinafter abbreviated as ST) written by Cao Xueqin represents thehighest level of Chinese literature, and enjoys a high reputation both at home and abroad. Thisbook thoroughly displays Chinese language and Chinese culture vividly and represents manyspecific characters. All these prove that Cao Xueqin is a great master of language. Inconsequence，generations upon generations of researchers have enduring enthusiasm for thelanguages of this book. Until now，there are eleven English versions in all. Among thesetranslations, A Dream of Red Mansions which is translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys(hereinafter abbreviated as the Yangs,) and The Story of the Stone which is translated byDavid Hawkes (hereinafter abbreviated as Hawkes') have caught much more attention. Thetwo English versions (hereinafter abbreviated as TTs) are often taken as the research objectsor text materials by many translators, experts and researchers. In addition, they are also takenas the references and examples for discussing the principles or rules of translating Chineseclassical literary works and culture. Since their advent, many domestic translators keep anenduring enthusiasm for the comparison study of the two English translations.
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1.2 Research Significance
Bassnett claimed，"The translator who makes no attempt to understand the howbehind the translation process is like the driver of a Rolls who has no idea what makes the carmove." The thesis aims to analyze object selection in the two English versions and tries todiscover the norms of object selection in the C-E translation in the light of Toury's descriptivetranslation studies，combined with the theory of Chinese as a process-oriented language whileEnglish a result-oriented one. Therefore, the significance of the study is to promote translation studies. Theoretically, itwill present a generalization of the translators' norms, provide a new perspective for theresearch on object selection md make a new distinction between Chinese and English.Practically, the research is also of great importance to help enhance the translators' ability andalso to give them some illuminating guideline in translation.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 On Object
The part can be divided into three small parts: studies on Chinese object, English objectand a contrast between studies on Chinese and English object. Previous studies of Chinese object can be fallen into three aspects: the definition ofobject, the category of object and location of object.Chinese object is defined from many angles. The conventional way is that object is afterthe verb in the form and object is the one on which action acts in the meaning. Fadvocates that objectiveplace (目的位）referring to object is to supplement primary place after narrative verbs (叙述词）composed of transitive verbs and divides objective place into three types. All these studieson object definition present three main points: (1) words acting as object should be a noun orpronoun; (2) object must be acted on by transitive verbs (patient); (3) object is generally afterthe transitive verbs.The viewpoint of agent-patient relation and location is the second way to define object. LvShuxiang [⑶ claims that "agent-patient relation and location” shall be put together to definesubject and object: More specifically, it is in principle that agentive word is subject, andpatient word is object. But if there is only patient word in the sentence and it is located beforethe verb, then it can also be regarded as subject. However, Lv Jiping ['4] holds the oppositeview: if the subject or object is defined in accordance with combining and adoptingselectively the two traditional "analytical methods of agent-patient relation and structuralrelation", it would "bring difficulties to Chinese teachers in teaching, because combining andadopting selectively the two methods would definitely result in various options." The debateslaunched the famous big discussion on object in the history of Chinese studies at last. In 1956,the conclusion was drawn; (1) the definition of object in accordance with agent-patientrelation is flawed; (2) the definition of subject and object shall combine the form and meaning;(3) the standard of syntactic analysis should shift from logical meaning to structure.
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2.2 On Hong Lou Meng and Its Two English Versions
Two English versions of Hong Lou Meng are chosen for the thesis，one is translated byYang Xianyi, and the other is by Hawkes. In this part, the thesis reviews the studies on HongLou Meng and these two English versions.Many translators both at home and abroad undertake the difficult translation activity ofHong Lou Meng for different reasons. From 1830，the whole book or just some chapters havebeen translated by Chinese or foreign translators. Till now. Hong Lou Meng has beentranslated into more than twenty languages and there are more than one hundred translations,among which there are eleven English versions. There are only some book reviews: Gladys Yang, D/ E. Pollard and Robert Hegelpublishing book reviews on Hawkes，versions. And there are only three doctoral thesesand one paper. But among these studies, the studies of object are relatively rare, let alone theobject selection. Li Zilin's doctoral thesis focuses on the zero anaphora based on the Englishversions of Hong Lou Meng,
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Chapter Three Theoretical Basis and Data Collection.......... 16
3.1 Toury's Descriptive Translation Studies........ 16
3.2 Data Collection........ 18
3.3 Summary........ 23
Chapter Four Operational Norms for Translating Chinese Objects........ 24
4.1 Similarities in English Correspondence of Chinese Objects........ 24
4.2 Dissimilarities in English Correspondence of Chinese Objects........ 32
4.3 Integration........ 48
4.4 Summary ........ 56
Chapter Five Norms for Selecting English Objects........ 58
5.1 Similarities in English Object Selection........ 60
5.2 Dissimilarities in English Object Selection........ 67
5.3 Norm-governed Object Selection........ 77
5.4 Summary........ 80
Chapter Five Norms for Selecting English Objects
Norms of object selection can not be found comprehensively just based on the study ofthe ST object translation. So it can not guide the translation practice well，although it can helpto guide object translation sometimes. Translators are supposed to use acceptable English，inwhich the sentence is its basic unit. So this chapter will deal with the selection of Englishobjects as one major syntactic constituent.Based on Touiy's three-phase methodology，Chapter Five，paralleled with Chapter Four，presents "coupled pairs" in a different focus, aiming to analyze which constituents the objectsin the two English versions come from. Within the framework of the classifications of objectin A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language written by Quirk Randolph, the thesiscollects the objects from Chapter Three in the two English versions. From these "coupledpairs“，we also attempt to reconstruct the process of translation through Chinese-Englishobject pair to generalize the norms in C-E translation.The statistics show that 634 objects are used in the Yangs' version and 762 objects inHawkes' version. Those TT objects are from the source objects as well as many othersyntactic constituents，such as subject，predicate, attributive and so on. The two translationsshow some similarities and dissimilarities in the source of their objects. The description andexplanation will be given as follows.
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Conclusion
From the collections and descriptions in Chapter Four and Chapter Five, ST objects aretranslated not only into objects, but also into many other syntactic constituents, such assubject, predicate and so on. At the same time, TT objects are from the source objects as wellas many other syntactic constituents, such as subject, predicate, attributive and so on. Afterthe contrastive study of objects in the ST and the TTs，some findings are obtained based onToury's norm theory.As to the initial norm, the Yangs and Hawkes are more subject to the target culture thanthe source culture to make the TT more acceptable.As to the preliminary norms, the Yangs' is finished under the effect of the then politicalsituation, while Hawkes' has not been affected by some compulsory factors, which is a littlefreer, which is evidenced by their translation methods.The most important is the operational norm reflected in the translation, which is dealtwith in Chapter Four and Chapter Five, as it is related to the presentation and linguistic matterof the TTs. There are more similarities than dissimilarities in translating Chinese objects andselecting English objects between the Yangs' version and Hawkes' version, as they share themain operational norm in C-E translation in object selection: shifting from theprocess-oriented to the result-oriented in translating Chinese into English.
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References (omitted)