A Study on the English Translation of Chinese Traditional Dress Materials —Taking the Translation of Dream of the Red Chamber by Yang and Huo for Example
As an encyclopedia of Chinese culture, Dream of the Red Chamber written by Cao Xueqin describes Chinese traditional clothing in great detail. Based on the parallel corpus established by Shaoxing University and the English expressions of clothing description translated by Hawks and by Yang Xiangyi and Dai Naidian, the author studies the extracted materials. Given that the clothing materials are characterized by stability and continuity, the author classifies the words of clothing materials into three categories: genus words, species words, and modifiers, and identifies their relationships as independent, hierarchical, parallel and compounding. Incorporating the cultural background knowledge, the author summarizes the translation strategies and principles commonly followed by Yang and Huo. The paper supplements the study of Dream of Red Chambers in terms of its clothing translation, and may provide some reference for English translation of Chinese clothing materials.