A Contextualized Investigation of the Explicitation of
Reporting Verbs in the English Translations of Hong Lou Meng:
With reference to Wang Xifeng’s Utterances
Abstract：Abstract: Drawing as data from the first 56 chapters of Hong Lou Meng (or Dream of the Red Chamber) and their four English translations, this study, first of all, to investigated how reporting verbs such as “SHUO” (to speak), “DAO” (to tell) and “SHUO DAO” (to speak or tell) were maneuvered in the Chinese source text to portray the character of Wang Xifeng, i.e., how the tripartite relationship between the content of her utterances, the mode of her speech and the dyads concerned was construed via the choice of such verbs. The study then proceeded to contrast the four translations with an aim to see how the verbs in question were explicitated in order to represent the character of Xifeng and her manner of speech, to what extent their renditions differ with each other. It is found that the tripartite relationship between the content, the manner and the dyads of Xifeng’s reported speech not only affects the author’s choice of reporting verbs, but has an impact on the translators’ renditions as well. It is also found that while the translators’ choices manifest various degrees of explicitation, they seem to overdo original English authors in both the types and tokens of such verbs, a phenomenon which entails further studies.
