In Hong Lou Meng, the straightforward description of the appearances of young women characters is highly prevalent; Cao used rhetorical devices of metaphors and similes to present abstract beauty into something visual. As English and Chinese culture and the norms of works of literature do not share the same standard of beauty and the choice of images, the translation, on one hand, runs into the dilemma of keeping the image of the original and thus compromises its reader’s understanding; yet on the other hand, abandoning the image of the original loses the image of beauty depicted in the source text. This paper concentrates on translation into English of the metaphors utilised in describing the beauty of females in Hong Lou Meng, by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang (1978) and by David Hawkes and John Minford (1973). Linguistic metaphors are categorised based on Dagut’s (1976) notion of shared cultural experiences and semantic association whilst the main aim is to find out the extent to which the original image could be retained. The findings show that retention of images in translating beauty-related metaphors is acceptable in shared metaphors and half-shared metaphors. As for non-shared metaphors, the retention of images is acceptable with some additional ‘help’ by adding sense. Meanwhile, the usage of standard TL image, be it added with sense or made more explicit through the usage of simile, should be avoided as far as possible in canonised texts.

Keywords: metaphor; Hong Lou Meng; beauty; translation; image

Cao, X. Q. (2005). Hong Lou Meng. Beijing: Publishing House.

Collins Online English Dictionary. (n.d.). Citation. In Collinsdictionary.com. Retrieved Sept 6, 2020, from https://www.collinsdictionary.com/

Dagut, M. (1976). 'Can" metaphor" be translated?'. Babel. 22(1), 21-33.

Feng, Q. (2012). A study on the English translation of Hong Lou Meng from the perspective of extended rhetoric. PhD thesis, Nankai University, Tianjin.

Germano, V. C. (2013). Cross-cultural study of facial beauty. Journal of Psychology in Africa. 23(1), 87-89.

Gibbs, R. (1994). The poetics of mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hawkes, D. & Minford, J. (1973). The story of the stone. London: Penguin Group.

House, J. (1997). Translation quality assessment: A model revisited. Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.

Jiang, X. (2016). Translatability and translation techniques of English metaphors -- a case study of economic news. Master’s thesis, Hunan Normal University, Hunan.

Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphor we live by. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Lakoff, G. (1993). The contemporary theory of metaphor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Larson, M. L. (1984). Meaning-based translation: A guide to cross-language equivalence. Maryland: University Press of America.

Li, J. (2017). The differences among the selection of original manuscripts of three English versions of Hong Lou Meng. Journal of Dream of Red Mansions. 6, 260-262.

Liang, Y. (2008). On the translation of portrait description in Hong Lou Meng. Master thesis, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai.

Liu, F. G. (2008). A study of C-E metaphor translation principles. PhD thesis, East China Normal University, Shanghai.

Liu, G. (2017). A study of domestication and foreignisation strategies in two English translated edition of Liao Zhai Zhi Yi. Master’s thesis, University of Malaya, Kuala

Lumpur.

Mandelblit, N. (1995). The cognitive view of metaphor and its implications for translation theory. Translation and Meaning, 3, 483-495.

Newmark, P. (1988). A textbook of translation (vol 1). New York: Prentice Hall.

Richards, I. A. (1936). The philosophy of rhetoric. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Schäffner, C. (2004). Metaphor and translation: Some implications of a cognitive approach. Journal of Pragmatics. 36, 1253–1269.

Shen, W. Y. (2009). From the dress and adornment to the look and spirit: A survey of the cultural translation of clothing and ornaments in Hong Lou Meng. PhD thesis,

Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai.

Shi, Q. Q. (2018). Strategies for metaphor translation: A case study on the Chinese-English translation of Dead Ashes. Master’s thesis, Beijing Foreign Studies

University, Beijing.

Shu, D. F. (2000). Studies in metaphor. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.

The British National Corpus, version 3 (BNC XML Edition). (2007). Retrieved March 28, 2020, from http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/

Panahbar, E., Hesabi, A. & Pirnajmuddin, H. (2016). Aesthetics in the relationship of conceptual metaphors and cultural models in the translation of Rubayyat of

Khayyam. 3L: The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies. 22(3), 49-63. DOI: http://doi.org/10.17576/3L-2016-2203-04

Venuti, L. (1995). The translator‘s invisibility: A history of translation. London: Routledge.

Wang, Y. (2007). Cognitive Linguistics. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.

Wang, Y. (2010). The translation of metaphors in Hong Lou Meng. Master’s thesis, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai.

Wu, Y. Q. & Natalia, F. D. (2017). Translating the fluid texts of Hong Lou Meng. Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies. 4(3), 1-17. DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1080/23306343.2017.1340129

Xu, G. S. (1982). How many characters were written in Dream of Red Mansions? Journal of Shanghai Normal University. 82(02), 25-28.

Yang, X. Y. & Glaydys, Y. (1978). A dream of red mansions. Beijing: Foreign Language Press.

Yu, Y. Q. (2009). Integration of Chinese and Western thought patterns: A study of Yang Xianyi’s translation Style. PhD thesis, Shanghai International Studies

University, Shanghai.

Zahra, K., Imran, H. A. & Tan, K. H. (2014). Emotional temperament in food-related metaphors: A cross-cultural account of the conceptualisations of ANGER. 3L: The

Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies. 20(1), 33-48.