The Translation of Slangs in Two English Versions of Jin Ping Mei

The Chinese classical novel Jin Ping Mei abounds with a large number of slangs, which correspondingly leads to the difficulty of the novel’s English translation and also gives rise to the emergence of diversified English versions. The two English translators, Clement Egerton and David Roy, adopted completely different translation strategies when dealing with Chinese slangs in the novel. Their different translation purposes account for the significant disparity concerning the slang translation. Clement Egerton pays more attention to the novel’s plot in his English version The Golden Lotus, rather than the unique expressions of the original language, so that in the concrete translation process, a domestication strategy is adopted for the sake of the target language readers’ understanding, resulting in distortion and omission of the slang expressions in the translated text. By contrast, the translation purpose which guides David Roy’ translation The Plum in the Golden Vase is to convey the complexity and literariness of the original Chinese text, and hence the foreignization strategy is employed concerning slang translation, which aims to accurately reproduce the unique expressions of slangs in the original text. Comparatively speaking, David Roy’s translation succeeds in preserving the Chinese slangs to the greatest extent both in form and meaning, and can shed light for the slang translation in other Chinese literary works.