1. Introduction
Chapter 5 of A Dream of Red Mansions, “Jia Baoyu’s Soul Visits the Land of Illusion”, occupies a pivotal position in the narrative structure of the novel. In this paper, “Dream Translation” refers specifically to the translation of cultural elements (core concepts, mythological images, and allusions) within the dream episode in Chapter 5. Through Baoyu’s dream, this chapter introduces the mythological space of the Land of Illusion and employs the fortune poems of the Twelve Beauties of Jinling and the twelve songs of A Dream of Red Mansions to foreshadow the fates of the main characters. From a narrative perspective, Chapter 5 is a typical instance of prolepsis; from a cultural perspective, the Land of Illusion integrates Taoism, Buddhism, folk beliefs, and literati traditions into a complex system of cultural symbols. As some scholars have pointed out, A Dream of Red Mansions is “an encyclopedia of Chinese culture” [1], and Chapter 5 is a highly condensed manifestation of this encyclopedia.
Since the 1970 s, several influential English translations of A Dream of Red Mansions have appeared, the most representative being David Hawkes’s The Story of the Stone [2] and Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang’s A Dream of Red Mansions [3]. The two translations are often reduced to a binary opposition of “domestication vs. foreignization”. However, this paradigm can hardly explain the translators’ strategic fluidity regarding specific cultural elements: Hawkes exhibits creative domestication for “Maiden’s Tears” but tends toward literal translation in the fortune poems; the Yangs lean toward foreignization in core concepts but adopt domestication for terms like “Goddess”. These observations suggest that a more nuanced analytical framework is needed-one that moves beyond static labeling and examines how and why translators adjust their strategies across different cultural domains.
To this end, this paper selects Chapter 5 and three categories of cultural elements for focused analysis. The selection is motivated by three considerations. First, Chapter 5 presents the novel’s mythological framework in its most concentrated form, making it a natural site for examining how translators handle dense cultural symbolism. Second, the three categories examined—core concepts (e.g., “the Land of Illusion” and “the Fairy Disenchantment/the Goddess of Disillusion”), mythological images (place names, tea and wine names), and allusions (in the fortune poems)—represent distinct types of cultural challenge: philosophical-religious terminology, visual-spatial imagery, and intertextual literary references. Third, these examples have been widely discussed in existing translation scholarship on A Dream of Red Mansions, allowing for comparability with prior research while enabling new analytical insights. The source text used in this comparison is published in the Chinese-English bilingual edition by Foreign Languages Press; the English versions compared are David Hawkes’s The Story of the Stone (Penguin, 1973) and Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang’s A Dream of Red Mansions (Foreign Languages Press, 1999).
This paper is not satisfied with the simplistic labeling of domestication/foreignization. Instead, from the perspective of cultural translation, it examines the two translators’ strategic choices, motivations, and effects in handling the cultural codes of the Land of Illusion, and reflects on the core dilemmas of cultural translation: how heterogeneous cultures are understood, transformed, and reproduced in translation.
2. Cultural Translation
Cultural translation emphasizes that translation is not merely a matter of linguistic conversion but a reproduction of cultural meaning. Lawrence Venuti’s theory of “domestication and foreignization” is a core concept in this field: domestication refers to making the translation conform to the norms of the target culture, allowing the reader to “stay at home”; foreignization refers to preserving the cultural differences of the source text, making the reader “go to the other” [4]. However, domestication and foreignization are not a binary opposition but exist as a continuum. More importantly, Venuti’s theory carries a strong ideological-critical dimension: he advocates foreignization to counter the long-dominant tradition of domestication in Anglo-American translation. Therefore, simply using domestication/foreignization as descriptive labels while ignoring their critical dimension is a theoretical simplification.
Susan Bassnett’s view of cultural translation emphasizes that translation is “communication within and between cultures”, and that the translator must negotiate and mediate between the source and target cultures [5]. Paul Ricoeur proposes “translation as interpretation”, arguing that translation is not about finding equivalents between two languages but about “re-expressing” meaning between two cultures [6]. These perspectives remind us that translation studies should not stop at judging “domestication or foreignization” but should ask: “Why did the translator make such a choice?” and “What cultural effects does this choice produce?”.
To ensure that the case analyses are systematic and replicable, this study adopts the following explicit comparison criteria for each case: a) semantic accuracy, whether the translation conveys the denotative meaning of the source term; b) preservation of cultural connotation, whether the translation retains the culturally specific associations, philosophical underpinnings, or intertextual references embedded in the source; c) readability, whether the translation is comprehensible and syntactically natural for the target reader without excessive cognitive strain; and d) literary effect, whether the translation achieves an aesthetic or rhetorical impact comparable to that of the original in its literary context. Each case analysis follows the path of “strategy description-motive inference-effect evaluation”, with each of the four criteria assessed in turn where applicable.
Based on the above, this paper analyzes three dimensions: core concepts (e.g., “the Land of Illusion”, “the Fairy Disenchantment/the Goddess of Disillusion”), mythological images (place names, tea and wine names), and allusions (in the fortune poems).
3. Translation of Core Concepts
Core concepts in Chapter 5, such as the name of the mythological realm and its presiding deity, carry dense philosophical and religious connotations that have no direct equivalents in English. Their translation reveals the fundamental tension between preserving cultural specificity and ensuring target-reader comprehensibility. This section examines two such concepts, tracing how each translator navigates this tension and what their choices reveal about their broader translation philosophies.
3.1. Translation of “the Land of Illusion” (太虚幻境)
Hawkes translates the name as “the Land of Illusion”; the Yangs translate it as “Taixu Huanjing (the Illusion)”.
The four characters “Taixu Huanjing” (太虚幻境) contain three layers of cultural meaning: first, “Taixu” (太虚) originates from Taoism, referring to the state of the primordial “Way” (as in Zhuangzi: “not wandering beyond the Great Void”); second, “Huan” originates from Buddhism, referring to the illusory and unreal nature of the phenomenal world (as in the Diamond Sutra: “all conditioned phenomena are like dreams, illusions, bubbles, and shadows”); third, “Jing” comes from the Buddhist concept of “realm” (viṣaya), referring to the object-world perceived by the mind.
Hawkes’s “Land of Illusion” uses “Illusion” to correspond to “Huan”. In the Western philosophical tradition, Illusion is opposed to reality, from Plato’s cave allegory to Descartes’ “evil demon”, all sharing similarities with “Huan”. However, this correspondence is not perfect: the Western epistemological tradition emphasizes Illusion as “sensory deception” or “false cognition”, whereas the Buddhist “Huan” emphasizes dependent origination and emptiness, an ontological judgment. More crucially, the Taoist cosmological connotations of “Taixu” disappear entirely in “Land of Illusion”. Hawkes’s choice reflects his translation philosophy: prioritizing intelligibility for English readers over complete transmission of cultural information. In his translator’s preface, he explicitly states that his goal is “to produce a readable, not overly sinicized English novel” [7], a goal that leads him to sacrifice some cultural connotations.
The Yangs’ “Taixu Huanjing (the Illusion)” adopts a different strategy: retaining the pinyin signals to the reader that this is a proper noun requiring understanding, with the bracketed English translation providing basic semantic cues. Its advantage is avoiding the simple replacement of Chinese concepts with Western ones, preserving the awareness that “this is a concept from a different culture”; its disadvantage is also clear—for English readers unfamiliar with pinyin, “Taixu Huanjing” is a string of meaningless syllables. The Yangs’ choice reflects their translation goal: introducing Chinese culture to the world. In an interview, they expressed their hope that English readers would “be exposed to the original flavor of the text as much as possible” [8], even if that meant a higher barrier to comprehension.
Assessed against the four criteria: a) semantically, both translations convey the core “illusion” component, but neither captures the full tripartite structure; b) culturally, Yangs’ retention of pinyin preserves greater cultural specificity, while Hawkes’s version is more target-oriented; c) in readability, Hawkes’s version is distinctly more accessible; d) in literary effect, Hawkes’s choice creates a familiar mythic resonance for Western readers, whereas the Yangs’ version produces an effect of estrangement that may prompt curiosity about the source culture. The effects of the two strategies require careful evaluation. Simply asserting that Hawkes’s translation makes readers “lose the Taoist origin” may be too harsh, if the target reader knows nothing about Taoism, “Taixu” is not an everyday concept for the original reader either. Similarly, the Yangs’ practice of retaining pinyin is valuable in academic research, but in ordinary reading contexts, readers are likely to skip the pinyin and read “the Illusion” directly. This case illustrates that the dilemmas of cultural translation are often structural. Neither strategy fully preserves all three cultural layers (Taoist cosmology, Buddhist illusion, and perceptual realm). What distinguishes the two translations is not correctness but the type of reading experience they prioritize: fluency and readability in Hawkes, cultural specificity and academic fidelity in the Yangs.
3.2. Translation of “the Fairy Disenchantment/the Goddess of
Disillusion” (Jinghuan Xiangu) (警幻仙姑)
Hawkes translates the name as “the Fairy Disenchantment”; the Yangs translate it as “the Goddess of Disillusion”.
The character “Jing” (警) is a translation difficulty, carrying multiple meanings such as “to warn”, “to alert”, and “to awaken”. In Buddhist contexts, “Jing” (警) is often associated with “awakening” (bodhi). “Jinghuan” (警幻) means “to warn against the illusion of dreams”, and this naming itself indicates the function of the Land of Illusion: to make Baoyu (and the reader) awaken to the dreamlike nature of life.
Hawkes’s “Disenchantment” derives from “enchantment”; disenchantment means “to remove enchantment” or “to awaken from confusion”, capturing the core function of “Jing”. However, “disenchantment” in Western contexts is associated with Weber’s “disenchantment of the world”, carrying connotations of rationalization and secularization, and its distance from Buddhist “awakening” is worth noting. Moreover, “Fairy” in contemporary English more often refers to small sprites in fairy tales, which may diminish the character’s solemnity.
The Yangs’ “Disillusion” derives from “illusion”; disillusion means “to free from illusion”, closer to the Buddhist concept of “Huan”, but “disillusion” in Chinese may carry emotional overtones of “disappointment”, whereas “Jing” emphasizes the active function of “warning”. The Yangs’ translation of “Xiangu” (仙姑) as “Goddess”, referring to goddesses in Greco-Roman mythology, is also a domestication strategy.
A noteworthy finding is that in the translation of “Xiangu” (仙姑), both translators chose domestication strategies (Fairy/Goddess), rather than the Yangs’ usual foreignizing tendency. This suggests that translators’ strategic choices are context-dependent: when a source concept has a functionally similar category in the target culture, even a foreignizing translator may choose domestication; only when no such category exists does the strategic divergence become apparent. It is worth noting, however, that no gender-neutral or culturally neutral alternative exists in English. Both translators resort to gendered mythological figures (Fairy/Goddess) as the least imperfect approximation.
4. Translation of Mythological Images
Mythological images are not arbitrary spatial markers but condensed carriers of Taoist-Buddhist cosmology and moral allegory. Their translation therefore involves not only toponymic conventions but also the transference of an entire cultural-semantic network. The following analysis examines how Hawkes and the Yangs negotiate this complexity in their respective versions.
4.1. Translation of Place Names
The first category of mythological images concerns toponyms within the Land of Illusion. In Chapter 5, after Baoyu enters the Land of Illusion with the Fairy Disenchantment/the Goddess of Disillusion, he passes through place names such as “Fangchun Shan Qianxiang Dong” (放春山遣香洞) and “Niehai Qingtian” (孽海情天).
Hawkes translates “Fangchun Shan” (放春山) as “Spring Comes Mountain” and “Qianxiang Dong” (遣香洞) as “Emits Fragrance Cave”; the Yangs translate them as “Fragrant Spring Mountain” and “Grotto of Emitted Fragrance”. For “Niehai Qingtian” (孽海情天), Hawkes translates “Sea of Grief” and “Heaven of Love”; the Yangs translate “The Sea of Retribution” and “The Sky of Love”.
Applying the four criteria: a) semantically, both translations convey the basic toponymic function; b) in cultural connotation, the Yangs’ “Retribution” captures the karmic dimension of “Nie” more faithfully than Hawkes’s “Grief”, which reduces a cosmic principle to an individual emotion; c) in readability, Hawkes’s “Sea of Grief” and “Heaven of Love” are more immediately transparent to English readers; d) in literary effect, Hawkes’s version creates a more direct emotional impact, while the Yangs’ demand greater cultural knowledge from the reader. Hawkes’s “Spring Comes” retains the meaning of “spring” but loses the active agency of “releasing” (放); the Yangs’ “Fragrant Spring” merges “releasing spring” and “emitting fragrance”, highlighting the image of “fragrance”, but also weakens the action of “releasing”. Both translations have their gains and losses.
“Niehai” (孽海) is a more complex case. “Nie” (孽) refers to karmic sin or obstruction. “Sea of Grief” turns “Nie” (孽) into “grief”, a typical domestication strategy, but “grief” is an individual emotion, whereas “Nie” is a cosmic causal law. The Yangs’ “Sea of Retribution” is more accurate, as “Retribution” has connotations of “karmic retribution” in both legal and religious contexts, approaching the Buddhist concept of karmic fruition. In terms of cultural-connotation preservation, the Yangs’ version is demonstrably closer to the source than Hawkes’s.
4.2. Translation of Tea and Wine Images
In Chapter 5, Baoyu tastes two special kinds of tea and wine in the Land of Illusion: “Qianhong Yiku” (千红一窟) and “Wanyan Tongbei” (万艳同杯).
Hawkes translates the former as “Maiden’s Tears” and the latter as the Latin phrase “Lachrymae Rerum”; the Yangs translate the former as “Thousand Red Flowers in One Cavern” and the latter as “Ten Thousand Beauties in One Cup”.
The ingenuity of these two names lies in their homophonic puns: “Qianhong Yiku” (千红一窟) puns on “a thousand reds, one cry” (千红一哭), and “Wanyan Tongbei” (万艳同杯) puns on “ten thousand beauties, one sorrow” (万艳同悲). Hawkes’s “Maiden’s Tears” directly brings out the meaning of “cry”; “Lachrymae Rerum” (tears of things) comes from Virgil’s Aeneid (“sunt lacrimae rerum”), connecting Chinese tragedy with the Western classical tradition, a model of creative domestication. Assessed against the criteria: a) semantically, Hawkes’s version conveys the tragic implication, while the Yangs’ convey only the literal surface; b) in cultural-connotation preservation, the Yangs’ retain the floral imagery but loses the homophonic puns, whereas Hawkes sacrifices the original imagery to achieve functional equivalence; c) in readability, the Yangs’ version is syntactically straightforward, while Hawkes’s Latin phrase may pose a challenge; d) in literary effect, Hawkes’s choice creates intertextual resonance with the Western classical tradition, targeting a literary reader, while the Yangs’ version preserves the exotic visual imagery. This choice suggests that Hawkes’s target reader is not the “general reader” but the “literary reader” familiar with classical traditions. Whether this is a strength or a limitation depends on the intended audience—a point Hawkes does not explicitly address in his preface.
The Yangs’ translation retains the literal imagery but loses the homophonic puns of “cry” and “sorrow”. Its advantage is preserving the visual imagery, allowing readers to see the images of “flowers” and “beauties”; its disadvantage is that readers who are unaware of the puns cannot perceive the tragic prophecy.
The gains and losses of the two strategies can be summarized as follows: Hawkes replaces formal correspondence with functional equivalence, enabling English readers to immediately feel the tragic implications, but at the cost of losing Chinese-style imagery and punning rhetoric; the Yangs remain faithful to the original imagery, but English readers may see only “flowers” and “beauties” without the “cry” and “sorrow”. There is no “correct” choice here, only different trade-offs and that is precisely the core dilemma of cultural translation.
5. Translation of Allusions
Taking the fortune poem for Daiyu and Baochai as an example: “Ketan tingji de, kanlian yongxu cai. Yudai lin zhong gua, jinzan xue li mai.” (可叹停机德，堪怜咏絮才。玉带林中挂，金簪雪里埋。)
The fortune poem for Daiyu and Baochai is selected here because it contains two distinct types of allusions (historical figures and homophonic puns) and because it has been widely discussed in existing translation studies on A Dream of Red Mansions, enabling comparability with prior research.
This poem contains two important allusions. “Tingji de” (停机德) (the virtue of stopping the loom) comes from the story of Le Yangzi’s wife in the Book of the Later Han: Le Yangzi, having left home to study, thought of returning; his wife cut the cloth on the loom to symbolize that stopping one’s studies was like cutting the cloth. This alludes to Xue Baochai’s “wifely virtue”. “Yongxu cai” (咏絮才) (talent of reciting willow catkins) comes from the story of Xie Daoyun in A New Account of the Tales of the World: on a snowy day, Xie An asked what the falling snow resembled; his nephew said “like salt thrown in the air”, while Xie Daoyun said “more like willow catkins carried by the wind”. This alludes to Lin Daiyu’s poetic talent.
Hawkes’s translation:
One was a pattern of female virtue,
One a wit who made other wits seem slow.
The jade belt in the greenwood hangs,
The gold pin is buried beneath the snow.
The Yangs’ translation:
Alas for her wifely virtue,
Her wit to sing of willowdown, poor maid!
Buried in snow the broken golden hairpin,
And hanging in the wood the belt of jade.
Hawkes completely discards the specific allusions: “female virtue” abstractly summarizes “the virtue of stopping the loom” (停机德), and “a wit” abstractly summarizes “the talent of reciting willow catkins” (咏絮才), ensuring reading fluency, but the reader cannot learn the specific cultural connotations of these virtues and talents. The Yangs retain the literal allusions: “wifely virtue” is closer to the gender-specific “female virtue”; “to sing of willowdown” retains the image of Xie Daoyun reciting willow catkins, allowing the reader at least to see the poetic image of “willow catkins”. Assessed by the criteria: a) semantically, both convey the basic contrast between virtue and talent; b) in cultural-connotation preservation, the Yangs’ version is clearly superior, as it retains the specific allusion to Xie Daoyun; c) in readability, Hawkes’s version is more immediately transparent; d) in literary effect, both achieve a poetic register, but the Yangs’ create a more defamiliarized reading experience that may prompt curiosity about the source. However, without familiarity with A New Account of the Tales of the World, the reader still cannot understand why “singing of willowdown” represents talent.
The last two lines use imagery to metaphorize the characters’ fates. “Yudai lin” (玉带林) (jade belt in the wood) puns on “Lin Daiyu” (林黛玉), and “jinzan xue” (金簪雪) (golden hairpin in the snow) puns on “Xue Baochai” (薛宝钗). Both Hawkes and the Yangs choose to translate the imagery literally, without adding explanatory content. This indicates that when facing poetic metaphors, both translators believe that preserving the literary quality of the original takes priority over conveying the punning information.
It is worth asking: in the highly compressed poetic form of the fortune poem, is any translation possible that simultaneously conveys the literal meaning, the allusive connotations, the poetic rhythm, and the fateful hints? The answer is most likely no. The translation of the fortune poems faces a structural dilemma: the conciseness of the five-character quatrain cannot be fully retained; the cultural specificity of the allusions cannot be fully explained in the limited lines; the homophonic puns are almost impossible to reproduce. Therefore, the “losses” suffered by the two translators are largely structural, not a matter of personal choice errors.
6. Conclusions
The preceding analysis of allusions in the fortune poems has revealed a structural dilemma that also permeates other dimensions of cultural translation. Based on the case analyses in the preceding sections, this concluding chapter synthesizes the main findings regarding the two translators’ strategic fluidity, evaluates the respective merits and limitations of their approaches, and reflects on the theoretical implications of these findings for cultural translation studies. It also acknowledges the limitations of the present study and outlines directions for future research.
6.1. Main Findings
First, Hawkes and the Yangs are not simply a “domestication school” and a “foreignization school”. Their strategic choices are context-dependent. On concepts with functionally similar categories in the target culture (e.g., “Xiangu”), both chose domestication; on metaphorical images in the fortune poems, both chose literal translation; on the core concept of “the Land of Illusion”, the two diverged; on puns, Hawkes chose creative domestication while the Yangs retained the literal surface. Reducing the translators to simple labels is an oversimplification.
Second, both strategies have merits and limitations. Hawkes’s translation is fluent and natural, enabling English readers to immediately feel the literary charm of the Land of Illusion. The Yangs’ translation is faithful and rigorous, preserving cultural elements of the original as much as possible, but the threshold for reading is higher.
Third, the structural dilemma faced in translating the fortune poems deserves serious attention. Our evaluation of translators should not stop at “what has been lost” but should ask: “Given that not everything can be preserved, are the translator’s trade-offs reasonable and consistent with their stated goals?”.
6.2. Theoretical Reflections
The “domestication/foreignization” dichotomy is useful as a descriptive tool but limited as an evaluative standard. The key question is whether the translator’s strategic choices are consistent with their translation goals and effective for their intended readership. Moreover, the dilemmas of cultural translation are structural rather than personal: heterogeneity must be preserved, otherwise cultural differences are erased; heterogeneity must also be transformed, otherwise the target reader cannot understand. There is no perfect solution, only different trade-offs.
Furthermore, paratextual materials—including translators’ prefaces, footnotes, and appendices—play a crucial role in interpreting translation strategy. Hawkes’s explicit statement in his introduction that he aimed “to produce a readable, not overly sinicized English novel” directly informs our understanding of his domestication choices, while the Yangs’ decision to include a comprehensive character list and explanatory notes in their edition signals their commitment to cultural transmission. These paratexts do not merely accompany the translation; they actively shape the reader’s interpretive frame and provide evidence for inferring the translators’ underlying philosophies. In the case of the fortune poems, for instance, the absence of explanatory footnotes in both editions suggests that both translators prioritized the poetic integrity of the lines over exegetical completeness-a strategic choice that would be difficult to infer from the text alone without recourse to paratextual evidence.
6.3. Practical Implications for Translators of Classical Chinese
Literature
The findings of this study offer a concrete practical implication: rather than committing to a single overarching strategy (domestication or foreignization), translators of classical Chinese literature would benefit from adopting a context-sensitive approach—assessing each cultural element by its function (whether philosophical, imagistic, or allusive) and its degree of cultural specificity, and then calibrating the translation strategy accordingly. This framework helps translators decide, in practice, whether to prioritize readability or cultural fidelity on a case-by-case basis, rather than applying a uniform policy across the entire text.
6.4. Limitations and Future Directions
This study has three limitations: 1) it selects only representative cases rather than comprehensively examining all cultural elements of Chapter 5; 2) the discussion of reception effects is largely based on textual analysis, lacking systematic reader response research; 3) the discussion of the translators’ philosophies relies mainly on public statements, lacking deeper intellectual-historical contextualization.
Future research may: 1) conduct reader reception studies to investigate English readers’ comprehension and aesthetic responses; 2) analyze paratexts (prefaces, notes, appendices) to more comprehensively examine translation philosophies; 3) draw on eco-translatology’s three-dimensional framework (linguistic, cultural, and communicative dimensions) to establish a more systematic model of cultural translation criticism.