Liu Baiwei

In the novel “A Dream of Red Mansions” the author Cao Xueqin connects the characters’ nicknames with the characters themselves and the themes of the work, forming the epithet metaphor. The translation of these metaphors has a far-reaching significance for cross-cultural communication. Thus, the object of our research includes the personal names and nicknames of the novel’s characters, with a special focus on their translation into Russian. The aim of the paper is to confirm or question the adequacy of the translation technique adopted by the translator in each particular case. Based on the conceptual metaphor theory, this paper sorts out some epithets in the 1958 Russian translation of “A Dream of Red Mansions,” explores the formation mechanism of epithet metaphor in the combination of literary and cultural contexts, and puts forward corresponding translation strategies for different interpretations of metaphor in different cultural contexts. The originality of research consists, first, in examining both personal names and nicknames and, second, in evaluating each technique employed by the translator in the light of both the linguocultural and text-centered approaches.

In recent years, with the improvement of machine translation technology, more and more people believe that human translation will lose its living space in the future. Various translation software including Netease youdao, Microsoft Bing, Google translation, Iflytek translation and others emerge in an endless stream, involving more and more languages, which not only improves the accuracy of translation but also arouses concerns about the development prospect of human translation among practitioners. Through studying the language environment of the countries along the route in the context of the One Belt and Road initiative, this paper aims to discuss the future of machine translation and human translation, and focuses on the embodiment of human factors in machine translation, then points out that there are no irreconcilable contradictions between machine translation and human translation, but they complement each other, i. e. the correct combination of these two types of translation will ensure reliable AI translation in the future.